Building human security in Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville, 2010.Armed conflict in Ituri since 1996 to the present day has resulted in the widespread and severe violation of human rights that include massive killings, rape, torture, mutilation and property destruction that has infringed peace and security in the province. Many studies on Ituri armed conflict point out land, minerals and identity as underlying causes of this social breakdown that lead to continued insecurity in Ituri. While acknowledging that there are many things that threaten the lives of individuals in times of war, this study focuses exclusively on the perceptions of the people from Ituri about the meaning and threats to peace and security as well as building human security in the province. To investigate these perceptions, I use the concept of human security which is a new way of thinking about peace and security. Although, this concept has a broad meaning, I mostly focus on its components that promote the protection of civilians against severe and widespread threats and as a people-centred approach, it advocates for the responsibility to protect civilians by their governments and the international community while the latter is given the full mandate by the UN, through its Security Council to intervene in countries whereby, governments are the perpetrators of violence on its own civilians or whereby governments are unable to contain violence perpetrated by warring fractions on innocent civilians and causing the displacement of millions from their home. I used a qualitative approach that sought to obtain as many as possible the views of participants which in turn were described thoroughfully so as to obtain patterns and themes that explain exactly what participants think is the meaning of peace and security and what could be the possible threats that make them feel insecure. To reach my goal, I used participant observation, focus group and semi-structured interview methods. 105 participants were selected randomly to participate in the research, that is, 94 in focus groups and 11 in semi-structured interviews. An additional 31 participants were also interviewed in Johannesburg to validate the data collected previously. Content analysis was used to analyse data. The study finds that there are various meanings to security and that threats to peace and security depend on the kind of meanings that people from Ituri perceive to be the meaning of security. The meaning of security depends on the context in which people live. Both victims and perpetrators ‘should’ work towards the achievement of peace and security. From the findings, it was concluded that the international community should not play both arsonist and fireman roles, rather engaging honestly and sincerely in building peace and security in the province of Ituri. This may lead to sustainable peace and security in the province

Early Diagnosis of HIV Infection in Infants - One Caribbean and Six Sub-Saharan African Countries, 2011-2015.

Pediatric human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains an important public health issue in resource-limited settings. In 2015, 1.4 million children aged 50% decline. The most common challenges for access to testing for early infant diagnosis included difficulties in specimen transport, long turnaround time between specimen collection and receipt of results, and limitations in supply chain management. Further reductions in HIV mortality in children can be achieved through continued expansion and improvement of services for early infant diagnosis in PEPFAR-supported countries, including initiatives targeted to reach HIV-exposed infants, ensure access to programs for early infant diagnosis of HIV, and facilitate prompt linkage to treatment for children diagnosed with HIV infection

The Kihema causative construction within Baker’s theory of incorporation

Baker (1988) states that the causative verb is a morpheme that needs to be attached to a host. A base verb must move cyclically and fuses with the causative verb in a higher clause. By the projection principle, this movement should not destroy thematically relevant structures; hence, the moved verb root must leave a trace to allow theta role assignment to the stranded subject and to head the embedded clausal complement, which the causative morpheme lexically selects. This causative construction has an impact on the argument structure of the verb turning an intransitive verb into a transitive verb and a transitive verb into a ditransitive verb. The aim of this article is to examine whether or not Baker’s claims can be applied to Kihema, a Bantu language spoken in the north-eastern province of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this article, I provide empirical evidence that according to Baker’s incorporation theory, the Kihema morphological causative construction is the result of a syntactic process in which the base verb (= V2) undergoes head movement to combine with the causative affix (= V1) in the structure. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2009, 27(1): 25–3

Experimental investigation of cuttings lifting efficiency using low and high density polyethylene beads in different hole angles

This study investigates the impact of low and high density polyethylene beads on wellbore cleaning using water-based mud at different hole angles of 0°, 60°, and 90°. The polyethylene beads concertation is varied from 1 to 5% by volume. Experimental investigations were accomplished using 11ft long acrylic concentric annulus flow test section with a 1.80in casing inner diameter equipped with a fixed inner pipe of 0.85in as the outer diameter. A total of 66 runs were completed using sand of size ranging from 1.18 – 2.00mm and density of 2.65 g/cc. Mud density and viscosity were maintained at 10 ppg and 7cp respectively, in a flow velocity of 0.80m/s. The densities of low and high density polyethylene beads were 0.92 g/cc and 0.96 g/cc respectively while their size was 3mm in spherical shape. The introduction of polyethylene beads were found to be more efficient in the vertical hole in which the incremental cuttings transport ratio was more than 15% being registered. This was due to sufficient buoyancy force provided by the low density polyethylene beads to counteract the gravity force and reduce the slip velocity of cuttings due to their low densities. In addition, the impulsive force due to collision between beads and sand enabled the cuttings to be lifted more efficiently

Effect of wettability on oil recovery and breakthrough time for immiscible gas flooding

The effect of wettability on oil recovery at higher water saturation is still not fully understood, especially in the case of mixed wettability. This study was conducted to examine the effects of wettability on oil recovery and breakthrough time through experiments for two wettability conditions (water-wet and mixed-wet) and three water saturations (20%, 40%, and 60%). Clashach sandstone core with a porosity of 12.8% and a permeability of 75 md was utilized as the porous media. Immiscible gas flooding was performed by injecting nitrogen gas into the core at room temperature and pressure. The results showed 54.3% and 48.8% of the initial oil in place (IOIP) as the ultimate oil recovery at 40% water saturation from mixed-wet core and water-wet core respectively. In contrast, the water-wet core displayed better results (32.6% of the IOIP) in terms of breakthrough time compared to the results of water-wet core (10.6% of the IOIP) at the same water saturation. In conclusion, oil recovery was found highly dependent on water saturation while breakthrough time was mainly affected by the wettability of the cores