Philanthropy and Equity: The Case of South Africa

This paper explores the potential role for philanthropy to promote greater equity in South Africa. It also aims to stimulate further discussion and debate about how philanthropic resources can best contribute to a more just and equitable South Africa, and encourage others engaged in philanthropy elsewhere in the world to reflect on South Africa's experience

Physical attractiveness as a threat in intragroup dynamics

This experiment focuses on an area not heavily touched on within social psychology—physical attractiveness and intragroup dynamics. When joining a group, a physically attractive individual may cause existing group members to feel unsure about their own attractiveness, prompting potentially negative perceptions and actions towards the new member. This work addresses physical attractiveness in the context of a small group with a 2 (self-prototypicality: prototypical vs. peripheral) x 2 (target status: newcomer vs. old-timer) x 2 (target attractiveness: attractive vs. non-attractive) experimental design. Participants (N = 147) played online game, “Speedy Ball”, which is designed to simulate a small group context. Dependent measures included feelings of uncertainty, self-attractiveness, and group identification, as well as perceptions of warmth, competence, and distance from the other members of their group. In addition, participants also picked a member for leadership and a member to be removed from the group. Results did not provide conclusive evidence to support the hypothesis that newcomer attractiveness is threatening in an intragroup context. Somewhat contrary to predictions, participants who were peripheral rated the attractive target higher in warmth than the unattractive target. In addition, participants tended to promote attractive individuals to leadership and tended remove unattractive targets from the group. Interestingly, while participants removed fewer attractive targets, they removed more newcomer attractive targets than old-timer attractive targets. This trend did not reflect in the unattractive targets, suggesting that old-timer status may matter for attractive individuals in avoiding removal from the group. The study demonstrates the complexity of studying intragroup contexts and makes a case for including individual characteristics in future research regarding newcomer acceptance

What happended to Kliptown?

This Research Report comprises two parts: a theoretical introduction and a creative component entitled “What Happened to Kliptown?” The overall piece of work focuses on Kliptown, an historic area about 20 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg, between Eldorado Park and Soweto. Kliptown was the site of the Congress of the People in June 1955 where the Freedom Charter was reviewed and adopted. The Research Report focuses on the work of the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) in Kliptown to build a monument and set of buildings on Freedom Square, re-named the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication. The JDA’s work in Kliptown was initiated in preparation for their hosting 50th anniversary celebrations in June 2005. The theoretical introduction explores themes of development and memorialisation in post-apartheid South Africa as well as ‘the spectacle’ and ‘the ordinary’ in relation to Kliptown’s development. The essay also explores the writing process for the creative piece including: • My choice of topic; • My choice of form and structure; and • The process of writing and revising. The creative component of “What Happened to Kliptown?” is written in the first person, present tense. The piece charts my journey to explore the new Square in Kliptown and its impact, especially in relation to how the residents of Kliptown engage with the Square. I then explore the perspective of some of the people who worked for the JDA on the project. The piece is written in numerous sections and scenes that weave together stories from Kliptown’s history, Kliptown’s present and my personal experience

Experiments in general chemistry

vii, 152 p.; 27 cm

CONVERSION OF 17-HYDROXY-PREGNENOLONE TO CORTISOL BY NORMAL AND HYPERPLASTIC HUMAN ADRENAL SLICES

Progesterone 1 is a metabolic precursor common to cortisol and corticosterone biosynthesis in the adrenal cortex. However, incubation of radioac-tive progesterone with bovine adrenal homogenates (1) and human adrenal slices (2, 3) yields corti-costerone with a specific activity greater than that of cortisol, even though the amount of cortisol produced is greater. Although hypotheses involv-ing enzyme kinetics have been suggested to explain these results, other pathways of cortisol biosynthe-sis may exist that do not involve progesterone. The pathway from progesterone to cortisol is believed to be via 17-hydroxyprogesterone- * 11-deoxycortisol-> cortisol (4). Progesterone is de-rived from A5-pregnenolone upon oxidation of the 3,8-hydroxyl group and a shift of the double bond. Hydroxylation of A5-pregnenolone to 17a-hydroxy-A5-pregnenolone is considered the first step in adrenal androgen biosynthesis (5). Conversion of 17-hydroxy-A'5-pregnonolone to 17a-hydroxy-pro-gesterone by oxidation of the 3/3-hydroxyl group and a shift of the double bond appeared to be a reasonable alternative possibility for cortisol bio-synthesis. Indeed, Weliky and Engel (6) re-ported that 17-hydroxy-_A5-pregnenolone is metab-olized to cortisol by sheep adrenal homogenates and by slices of a human adrenal tumor, and the pres-ent authors in preliminary reports have shown th

THE NATURE OF THE ALDOSTERONE-STIMULATING FACTOR IN DOG KIDNEYS

Previous studies (2-4) have demonstrated that nephrectomy lowers control aldosterone secretion rates and prevents the increase in aldosterone secretion that follows hemorrhage. Injection of saline extracts of kidneys (3, 4) from normal dogs into hypophysectomized, nephrectomized dogs stimulated aldosterone secretion markedly while also stimulating 17-hydroxycorticoid and corti-costerone secretion. A marked pressor response also occurred. These observations suggested that the kidney secreted an aldosterone-stimulating fac-tor. The stimulation of glucocorticoid secretion by the saline kidney extracts raised the possibility that ACTH was present in the kidney extract. This possibility appeared to be supported by the finding of Richards and Sayers (5) that exoge-nous ACTH accumulated preferentially in the kid-ney. On the other hand, the pressor response produced by the saline kidney extracts suggested that the extracts contained renin. Considerable indirect evidence (6) suggested that the renin-angiotensin system may play an important role in the regulation of aldosterone secretion. To investigate the nature of this kidney factor, the effect of several substances on adrenocortical secretion of hypophysectomized, nephrectomized dogs has been studied. Saline extracts of kidneys from hypophysectomized dogs, and dog anterior pituitaries, commercial ACTH, semipurified renin extracts, and synthetic angiotensin II have been assayed. The results indicate that the aldosterone-stimulating factor in the dog kidney is renin. * This work was supported by Grants C-3998 and A-3818 from the U. S. Public Health Service and a grant