Poisoning the Right to Water in South Africa: What Can the Law Do?

This paper examines the major problems currently facing South Africa’s water sector and identifies that water shortages will be a significant issue to deal with in the near future. The problem of shortage is exacerbated by severe water quality concerns. The role of the law in addressing these water concerns is examined and it is shown that the law, on paper, is able to address most of these issues and to provide for an integrated water resource management system. Failure to implement the law in the past, however, has led to situations arising that are beyond the power of the law to address and innovative solutions will have to be found. For the future, the law will have to be implemented appropriately in order to avoid similar problems arising again

Professional education and the role of general practitioners in public health and population health

During their subsequent careers many GPs gain additional skills in areas such as epidemiology, health program management, evaluation, biostatistics and health economics.12 There are many Australian GPs who have gained qualifications such as a Master of Public Health, and there are many GP members among the Fellows of the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, all contributing to the public health and population health focus of Australian general practice

Projections of the future path of the gender wage gap in Great Britain

Purpose &ndash; The paper attempts to project the future trend of the gender wage gap in Great Britain up to 2031.Design/methodology/approach &ndash; The empirical analysis utilises the British Household Panel Study Wave F together with Office for National Statistics (ONS) demographic projections. The methodology combines the ONS projections with assumptions relating to the evolution of educational attainment in order to project the future distribution of human capital skills and consequently the future size of the gender wage gap.Findings &ndash; The analysis suggests that gender wage convergence will be slow, with little female progress by 2031 unless there is a large rise in returns to female experience.Originality/value &ndash; The paper has projected the pattern of male and female skill acquisition together with the associated trend in wages up to 2031.<br /

Patterns and process during the diversification of the cichlid fishes in Lake Malawi, Africa

The 500-1000 cichlid species endemic to Lake Malawi constitute one of the most rapid and extensive radiations of vertebrates ever discovered. The objective of this dissertation was to test the assumptions and predictions of several recently published models of cichlid speciation. First, a novel assay of female choice was used to evaluate the role of visual cues during conspecific recognition. The results of this experiment demonstrate that females are able to identify conspecific mates using only visual cues. Second, the assumptions of a recent model of speciation via intrasexual selection were tested by comparing aggressive behavior during territorial contests among five closely related cichlid species from Lake Malawi. I found that interactions between conspicuously heteromorphic males tend to be less aggressive than between those of homomorphic males. Third, I used transect data to evaluate the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that have affected the dispersal of 17 closely related cichlid species introduced to Thumbi West Island in Lake Malawi. A quarter of a century after their initial introduction, I found that the translocated cichlid community around Thumbi West Island is still in a state of flux, as many species continue to spread around the island. Next, I evaluated the patterns of divergence predicted by three competing speciation models that differ in the temporal action of natural and sexual selection by using AFLP to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among 20 species of the ubiquitous rock dwelling subgenus Pseudotropheus tropheops. I found that cladogenesis is associated with numerous unambiguous changes in male color states. A geometric morphometric analysis of the lower jaw of these taxa revealed that the repeated differentiation of jaw morphology is associated with species habitat preference. Finally, I used AFLP data to reconstruct the evolution of species within three genera of sand dwelling cichlids that construct elaborate male display platforms. I found that sister taxa with distinct bower morphologies, and that exist in discrete leks separated by only 1-2m of depth, are divergent in both sexually selected and ecological traits. These phylogenies suggest that the forces of sexual and ecological selection have been intertwined during the speciation of these groups

History Written with Lightning : Religion, White Supremacy, and the Rise and Fall of Thomas Dixon, Jr

Baptist minister and author of novels, plays, sermons, and essays, Thomas Dixon, Jr. today remains most known as the storyteller behind the 1915 D. W. Griffith Film The Birth of a Nation. I argue that Thomas Dixon crafted a white supremacist rhetoric and narrative of modern whiteness indebted to the structures of Fundamentalist Christianity. With varying degrees of success, later writers struggled with the legacy the Dixonian cultural narrative bequeathed them.;Fundamentalist theology offered a whole host of tropes, metaphors, and arguments to its users. In short, Fundamentalism presented a rhetorical stance that was, in the hands of an ambitious and designing opportunist like Dixon, capable of being adapted for other purposes. Dixon structured his narrative of whiteness like a religion and drew the blueprints for that architecture from the Fundamentalist theology that he and his brother A. C. Dixon promulgated. That Fundamentalist mindset included consequential interpretations of the apocalypse that divided theological positions between premillennial and postmillennial points of view. Drawing on rhetorical analysis from Kenneth Burke, I analyze the ways Thomas Dixon crafted a blueprint for a revived Klan trained for constant surveillance of eschatological signs as a way to intervene and avoid the racial apocalypse he prophesied. Fundamentalist rhetoric and imagery provided Dixon tropes, arguments, and stirring icons that he could assimilate and incorporate into his vision of whiteness. This morality play for Dixon had some form of a threatening black man who menaced a pure white woman and called forth a white paladin of vengeance to be her savior. This savior then grouped all the men in the community in a white supremacist cult that would forestall the racial apocalypse Dixon worried would arrive. This study traces Dixon\u27s creations, strategies, and eventual failure at dressing his white supremacy in religious robes.;Far more than being a study of one author, this project ranges beyond Dixon himself to his impact on a surprisingly wide range of twentieth-century cultural texts and artifacts, including film. From the immediate response from writers like Charles Chesnutt, Kelly Miller, Sutton Griggs, and W. E. B. Du Bois to the epic engagements of William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell, Dixon\u27s legacy has involved several writers in its wake. Ultimately the rise and fall of Thomas Dixon\u27s version of white supremacy offers a view of America\u27s racial and sexual obsessions and the rhetoric bestowed by white Protestantism through which to articulate and structure those obsessions into narratives and social formations designed to consolidate and preserve whiteness. Any view of the Dixonian narrative that treats it as a freakish aberration ignores the centrality and popularity that it enjoyed at its height, and such a view would risk misunderstanding the forces that shaped such a damaging vision, one that inspired the second Ku Klux Klan and codified the symbol of the burning cross. Religion and racism run throughout the cultural and literary history of the United States, but they were never so infamously mingled and menacingly deployed than in the writings of Thomas Dixon

Lesioning of the Nucleus of the Hippocampal Commissure Followed by Food Deprivation Stress in Birds Demonstrates Simultaneous Involvement in both the Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis and the Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Thyroid Axis

The hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is the regulatory system for the neuroendocrine stress response within vertebrates. Within the HPA axis corticotropin releasing hormone (CRH) is a major regulator and driving hormone. A structure named the nucleus of the hippocampal commissure (NHpC) has been found to contain CRH neurons and also these neurons respond to early food deprivation stress significantly prior to the paraventricular nucleus (PVN), the major driving nucleus of the classic neuroendocrine HPA axis. The objective of this study was to perform a knock down of the NHpC via electrolytic lesioning, thus eliminating a significant portion of its population of CRH neurons. An experiment was designed to determine whether the elimination of CRH neurons within the NHpC would have a significant effect on HPA function following exposure of broiler chicks to food deprivation (FD). Male chicks (BW 300-350g, 10-14 d) were used in this experiment and split into 3 groups: 1) Sham surgical controls without FD (SHAM), 2) Sham surgical birds with 2h FD stress (SHAM+FD), and 3) Birds subjected to electrolytic lesioning and 2h FD (LES+FD). Blood, brain and anterior pituitary (APit) were sampled promptly from each bird at 2h of FD for the LES+FD and SHAM+FD groups and intermittently for SHAM CON birds. RT-PCR was performed for gene expression within the NHpC, PVN and anterior pituitary (APit) and a radioimmunoassay was performed to determine plasma corticosterone (CORT) concentrations. All RT-PCR data were analyzed with the Tukey Kramer HSD test and all CORT data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA. Electrolytic lesioning of the NHpC significantly reduced plasma CORT in the LES+FD group compared to intact levels in the SHAM+FD group. Decreased CORT occurred concurrently with decreased amounts of CRH mRNA within the NHpC of the LES + FD group. Supporting this, Proopiomelanocortin heteronuclear RNA (POMC hnRNA) within the APit was significantly downregulated. Interestingly, PVN CRH levels were found to be significantly decreased in the LES+FD group of birds with no lesioning of the PVN itself. Results suggest a possible neural connection from the NHpC to the PVN exists, resulting in down regulation of CRH expression in the PVN. Corticotropin releasing hormone receptor 2 (CRHR2) was found to be significantly downregulated within the PVN and APit in the LES+FD group of birds. Thyroid stimulating hormone beta (TSHβ) was also downregulated along with CRHR2 in the PVN and APit suggesting that CRHR2 expression within the PVN could be an important part of the hypothalamo-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis. In conclusion, lesioning the NHpC had a significant effect on the HPA axis. CRH neurons within the NHpC and/or PVN had a significant effect on the HPA and/or HPT axes