Coloured women leaving abusive spousal relationships: a phenomenological study

Spousal abuse is a global phenomenon that occurs in many cultures and affects most of the world’s population of women. Over the past 30 years, spousal abuse has become increasingly recognized as a problem, and women in many countries have organized to advocate for change. The issue of wife abuse has been taken up by the public as an issue of general concern more than once since the latter part of the nineteenth century. It came into the limelight again in the early 1970’s in the United States, its progress towards public awareness corresponding with the growth of the women’s movement. In broad terms, the women’s movement may be divided into two major feminist perspectives. First wave feminism is principally concerned with equalities between the genders whereas second wave feminism uses women’s differences to oppose the ‘legalities’ of a patriarchal world. The phenomenon of women being abused in intimate relationships has been referred to as “the problem that had no name.” Indeed, one of the most important contributions of second wave feminism was the labels it provided to previously unnamed, largely unspoken, taboo problems that women confronted. Without a label to refer to a phenomenon, that phenomenon is extremely difficult to describe, to discuss, to count, and analyse. In South Africa concern about wife abuse, started in the early 1980’s. Inspired by the action of overseas movements, South African feminists began to mobilize around violence against women. In the South African context, violence against women must be viewed against the socio-political background of apartheid, race, class, and gender relations. In an historic context of overwhelming oppression and state-sanctioned violence, a culture of violence developed. Over time this situation is accepted as a norm and becomes a primary means of conflict resolution- including between domestic partners. Accurate statistics on the problem of spousal abuse in South Africa are unavailable since national prevalence studies have not been conducted. Difficulties in obtaining prevalence to date have been exacerbated by fragmentation created by the former apartheid bureaucracy; the lack of resources to confront the problem of spousal abuse; and the fact that the problem is often unrecognized and under reported. However, preliminary findings from available research indicate that spousal abuse in South Africa is a serious and extensive problem. The abuse reported in these studies ranged from verbal insults, threats, physical injury and even death. Numerous studies found that spousal abuse is seen as a private matter, so that the abused woman does not have the support of friends, family or the authority to help her stop the abuse or to leave the relationship. Spousal abuse is sequential, developmental and dynamic. The situation of the abused woman is unlike many other crisis in that it is transcrisis; that is, it is cyclical, reaching many peak levels over extended periods of time. For a variety of reasons it is rare for women to leave an abusive spousal relationship for good after the first abusive incident. Continued and increased abuse over a period of years is the typical pattern of abusive spousal relationships. Research has indicated that abusive spousal relationships typically include a life-threatening history of injuries and psychosocial problems that entrap the women in the relationships. Limited research has been undertaken on the experience of women who do manage to leave abusive spousal relationships despite the debilitating physical and emotional sequelae of the abuse and a lack of family and societal support. This investigation aims to address and explore the experience “Coloured” women who managed to leave abusive spousal relationships. As the literature review will indicate, the social-cultural context of “Coloured” is one that not only makes them susceptible to experiencing spousal abuse but it also predisposes them to remain in these relationships. The investigation seeks those themes, emotions and thoughts which are central and significant in the women’s experience. It explores the manner in which leaving comes about and is incorporated into the women’s sense of self and understanding of the world. Essentially, the research aims to provide some understanding of what the experience of leaving an abusive relationship entails and the personal meaning it holds for the women. In order to ensure that the women's own subjective experiences, and their own interpretations and understanding of those experiences will be the focal point, as opposed to that of the researcher, the existential-phenomenological system of inquiry is employed. The existential-phenomenological approach is not only utilized as a specific research methodology but is also adopted as an overall attitude towards doing research. The participants in the study are viewed as beings-in-the-world, thereby acknowledging that the experience of leaving occurs in a context in which the participants act on and are simultaneously acted upon by their lived-worlds. Qualitative access to the subjective realm of the women is attempted through a qualitative design through which rich data is collected through in-depth, open-ended interviews which facilitates unique and personal descriptions. A pilot interview with a woman who left an abusive spousal relationship indicated that the research question (How did you experience leaving the abusive relationship?) together with broad open-ended questions, facilitated the attainment of rich, vital, substantive descriptions of the experience of leaving. Three “Coloured” women, who left their abusive spousal relationships at least two years ago, were then sourced from previously “Coloured” designated communities and interviewed for the purpose of this study. The qualification in terms of time is important since this study is interested in the experience of women who left their abusive relationships permanently and research has shown that many women leave abusive spousal relationships only to return after some time.Dr. I. Van der Merwe Prof. W. Schoema

Multilayer Reversible Data Hiding Via Histogram Shifting

Concealing messages from unauthorised people has been desired since written communication first began. With advancements in digital communication technology and the growth of computer power and storage, the difficulty of ensuring the privacy of individuals and the protection of copyright has become increasingly challenging. Steganography finds a role in attempting to address these growing concerns. Problems arise in the steganography method because of the trade-off between capacity and imperceptibility whereby increasing the embedding capacity increases the distortion in the stego object and it thus becomes suspect. Another problem is concerned with non-retrieval of the original cover object whereby misplacing data could be crucial for example in the case of medical images. Reversible data hiding technique based on histogram shifting addresses the problem of retrieving the original cover. Embedding the secret message by shifting the histogram between the pair of the peak and minimum points wastes the embedding capacity and does not control the distortion in the stego image for various secret messages sizes. In this research, a technique for reversible data hiding is proposed which enables the retrieval of both the hidden secret message and the original image at the receiver’s side. The proposed technique considers the size of the secret message and the distribution of the colour values within the cover image to determine the value of the optimal pair or set of container and carried colours within the best sub image instead of the pair of peak and minimum points. The experimental results show that the proposed technique increases the embedding capacity within the cover image and produces a stego image with a high peak signal-to-noise ratio value. In addition, the experimental results show that by using the proposed re-shifting and extraction formulas, the technique has the ability to extract the hidden data and retrieve the original images from the stego images. In comparison to the traditional histogram-shifting techniques, the proposed technique significantly improves the stego image quality and the embedding capacity. Thus, this research has contributed to two principles, namely improvements in capacity and quality

Adaptive Non-Linear High Gain Observer Based Sensorless Speed Estimation of an Induction Motor

International audienc

Semi-Automatic Method to Assist Expert for Association Rules Validation

Abstract-In order to help the expert to validate association rules extracted from data, some quality measures are proposed in the literature. We distinguish two categories: objective and subjective measures. The first one depends on a fixed threshold and on data quality from which the rules are extracted. The second one consists on providing to the expert some tools in the objective to explore and visualize rules during the evaluation step. However, the number of extracted rules to validate remains high. Thus, the manually mining rules task is very hard. To solve this problem, we propose, in this paper, a semi-automatic method to assist the expert during the association rule's validation. Our method uses rule-based classification as follow: (i) We transform association rules into classification rules (classifiers), (ii) We use the generated classifiers for data classification. (iii) We visualize association rules with their quality classification to give an idea to the expert and to assist him during validation process

Study of the Anti-Inflammatory and Healing Properties of the Rhizomes of Carthamus Caeruleus L. (Asteraceae) Harvested in the Region of Tipaza

Background: In some regions of Algeria, in Tipaza, natural medicine still occupies a place of choice in the treatment of many pathologies, among these natural remedies are quoted extracts of the rhizomes of Carthamus caeruleus L are used to treat burns with these astringent properties. Medicinal plant extracts contain a variety of phenolic compounds that are attributed to various biological activities (antioxidant and antimicrobial activity). Methods: Our present study was conducted on the roots of Carthamus caeruleus L. harvested in the Tipaza region during the spring season. In order to promote this plant, we evaluated the anti-inflammatory activity and healing activity of the aqueous extract of the powder of the roots of Carthamus caereulus L. Studying the anti-inflammatory effect by measuring the volume of the edema of the paw that has received carrageenan 1%. Circular incision of 2 cm in diameter was made in Wistar rats to evaluate the healing activity of the aqueous pasty extract of the rhizomes of Carthamus caeruleus L at 100 mg/kg. Results: They show that aqueous extracts of Carthamus caeruleus L rhizomes at the dose of 100 mg/kg are opposed to the increased edema induced by the carrageenan 1% in rats with a percentage of inhibition of edema volume of 87.34% at the 6th hour.  Concerning the healing activity, the results show that the application of the aqueous extracts of the roots of Carthamus caereulus L.at dose of 100 mg/kg on the wounds causes their healing at the end of 14 days. Conclusion: Aqueous extracts of the roots of Carthamus caereulus L. show healing properties and anti-inflammatory effects. These results could justify the use of this plant in traditional medicine against inflammatory diseases

Isolated anti-Ro/SSA thrombocytopenia: a rare feature of neonatal lupus

We report a rare case of isolated thrombocytopenia related to anti-Ro/SSA antibodies. The mother was  followed for unlabeled familial thrombocytopenia. The mother had positive anti-Ro/SSA antibodies. She was asymptomatic without skin lesions or other criteria neither of systemic lupus erythematosus nor other  connective tissue disease. Pregnancy was uneventful. The postnatal examination was normal. On the first day of life, blood cells count showed thrombocytopenia at 40 x 109/L. Within the second day of life, platelet level  dropped to 20 x 109/L. The management of thrombocytopenia included platelet transfusion and human  immunoglobulin infusion. On the fifth day of life, there has been a drop in platelet count to 10 x 109/L requiring renewed platelet transfusion and human immunoglobulin infusion. On the 10th of life platelets rate was stable around 60 x 109/L. The infant had no evidence of cardiac, dermatologic or hepatobilary involvement initially or throughout follow up.Key words: Neonatal lupus erythematosus, thrombocytopenia, anti-Ro/SS

Study of the Biological Activities of the Seeds of the Plant Ceratonia Siliqua L. Recovered in the Bejaia Region

Background: Ceratonia siliqua is a plant that belongs to the Fabaceae family. It is frequently used in our culinary and medical traditions to fight cholesterol, acute diarrhea and digestive disorders. Methods: The hydrogen atom or electron donation abilities of the corresponding extracts and some pure compounds were measured from the bleaching of the purple-colored methanol solution of 2, 20-diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH), studying the anti-inflammatory effect by measuring the volume of the edema of the paw that has received carrageenan 1%. Antimicrobial activity in vitro was screened by using disc diffusion and micro-dilution methods. Results: The determination of the polyphenols of the methanolic extracts of the seeds reveals the richness of our extracts in polyphenols is 30 mg of gallic acid / g of extract. The aqueous and methanolic extract flavonoid assay shows that they contain high levels of flavonoids with contents of 07 and 10 mg equivalent of quercetin / g of extract respectively. The aqueous and methanolic extracts of Ceratonia siliqua seeds from the Bejaia region could bring the stable free radical 2.2 diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) to yellow-colored diphenylpicrylhydrazine with respective IC 50 values of 0.7 mg/ml and 0.2 mg/ml. They exhibit lower antioxidant activity than ascorbic acid (0.038 μg / ml). Determination of anti-inflammatory activity revealed that our aqueous and methanolic extracts of Ceratonia siliqua L seeds are able to reduce edema up to 81.89%. The methanoid extracts of Ceratonia siliqua L. seeds have a medium antibacterial action against bacteria: E. coli (13 mm), Staphylococcus aureus (12 mm) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (12 mm). On the other hand, the aqueous extracts of the seeds of Ceratonia siliqua L have a weak antibacterial action against the same bacteria with a diameter of inhibition of 9 mm. However, the aqueous extracts of Ceratonia siliqua L seeds are endowed with a very important inhibitory action against candida albicans and it is similar to that of the antibiotic, antifungal Econazole (1%). Conclusion: According to the results observed, the two extracts of the seeds and pods have a potential anti-free radical and antioxidant measured compared to the standard antioxidant used. The results of the antimicrobial activity carried out in vitro on the 3 bacterial strains indicate that the two methanolic extracts of this plant have low antibacterial activity

MHD heat transfer in W-shaped inclined cavity containing a porous medium saturated with Ag/Al2O3 hybrid nanofluid in the presence of uniform heat generation/absorption

© 2020 by the Authors. In this paper, a 2D numerical study of natural convection heat transfer in a W-shaped inclined enclosure with a variable aspect ratio was performed. The enclosure contained a porous medium saturated with Ag/Al2O3 hybrid nanofluid in the presence of uniform heat generation or absorption under the effect of a uniform magnetic field. The vertical walls of the enclosure were heated differentially; however, the top and bottom walls were kept insulated. The governing equations were solved with numerical simulation software COMSOL Multiphysics which is based on the finite element method. The results showed that the convection heat transfer was improved with the increase of the aspect ratio; the average Nusselt number reached a maximum for an aspect ratio (AR) = 0.7 and the effect of the inclination was practically negligible for an aspect ratio of AR = 0.7. The maximum heat transfer performance was obtained for an inclination of ω = 15 and the minimum is obtained for ω = 30. The addition of composite nanoparticles ameliorated the convection heat transfer performance. This effect was proportional to the increase of Rayleigh and Darcy numbers, the aspect ratio and the fraction of Ag in the volumetric fraction of nanoparticles