Rural solid waste in the Western Cape

Solid waste as a management problem is mostly perceived to be an urban problem. This can be attributed to the concentration of industrial and human waste producers there, as well as to the fact that urban waste is managed. Rural waste is more often than not ignored, or at best is shoddily managed. The Western Cape offers a special challenge, with its aesthetically and agriculturally highly sensitive and valuable landscape accommodating a large rural population at fairly high density. In the virtual absence of public waste removal services, private waste management practice is bound to be marginal and to produce environmental and especially water pollution impacts. Questionnaire and field surveys of 350 land owners were therefore conducted to establish the extent of rural waste generation and to devise a management strategy for a study area covering the Stellenbosch district on the outskirts of Cape Town. The project is reported in full by Steyl (1996)

Enzootic geophagia of calves and lambs in Northern Cape and Northwest and the possible role of chronic manganese poisoning

(South African J of Animal Science, 2000, 30, Supplement 1: 105-106

First principles calculation of uniaxial magnetic anisotropy and magnetostriction in strained CMR films

We performed first - principles relativistic full-potential linearized augmented plane wave calculations for strained tetragonal ferromagnetic La(Ba)MnO$_3$ with an assumed experimental structure of thin strained tetragonal La$_{0.67}$Ca$_{0.33}$MnO$_3$ (LCMO) films grown on SrTiO$_3$[001] and LaAlO$_3$[001] substrates. The calculated uniaxial magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) values, are in good quantitative agreement with experiment for LCMO films on SrTiO$_3$ substrate. We also analyze the applicability of linear magnetoelastic theory for describing the stain dependence of MAE, and estimate magnetostriction coefficient $\lambda_{001}$.Comment: Talk given at APS99 Meeting, Atlanta, 199

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors

The geography of education: new frontiers [Die geografie van onderwys: nuwe fronte]

The prominence of education as a prerequisite for social and economic development necessitates continuous research on all elements of the subject. Drawing on an exhaustive overview of literature from all disciplines addressing spatial aspects of education-related issues, the scope for geographical research in this field is discussed. Paradigmatic vantage points from the divergent positivist and structuralist schools are compared and the spatial approach is justified. In conclusion a scheme is devised to accommodate research on the geography of education from a reformist epistemology. A scale-specific approach is recommended which allows traditional geographers to study spatial inequalities in education at the meso and macro scale. Structuralist theory accounting for the effects/outcomes of the educational system is considered more appropriate for studies at the micro scale. -from English summar

( Land use change in the rural-urban fringe of Cape Town). [Grondgebruikverandering in die landelikstedelike oorgangsone van Kaapstad.]

The spatial expansion characteristic of modern cities is mainly concentrated along the edge of built-up urban areas. This intermingling of often incompatible urban and rural land uses leads to the development of a rural-urban fringe which often constitutes a problem area within the wider city structure. This paper evaluates the effect of urban expansion on the fringe zone from a reconstruction of successive land use patterns(1960 and 1977) for Cape Town. The nature of the process of areal urban expansion is detailed. Final urbanization is shown to be preceded by a preparatory phase in which typical fringe land use types are located along an ill-defined transition zone adjacent to the built-up urban boundary.-English summar