The Right of Public Participation in the Law-Making Process and the Role of the Legislature in the Promotion of this Right

In 2006, the South African Constitutional Court found a constitutional right to participate in the legislative process in the case of Doctors for Life, Case CCT 12/05 (decided 17 August 2006). In this article, we argue that, first, legislation is better when legislators are required to invite and attend to public input, and, second, citizenship is better when legislators are required to invite and attend to public input. Doctors for Life puts South Africa on the road to improving both legislation and citizenship. In the United States, this road is largely untraveled. While rejecting traditional representative democracy as an adequate expression of political participation, Doctors for Life does not go as far as it could in terms of entrenching public participation in the South African legislative process. Nonetheless, it offers a model of an interim place that the United States can consider. The case also offers a model for international human rights exploration in an area of underdeveloped theory, especially in regard to enhancing respect and dignity as aspects of citizenship in a democratic state

A quantification of heat load as assessed by indicators of tissue damage in rats.

Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1984.Heatstroke is an illness that occurs when body temperature is grossly elevated, causing widespread tissue damage. The extent of tissue damage depends on the level of body temperature elevation and the duration. Despite the fact that the diagnosis of heatstroke is based on sound scientific principles, namely the elevation of serum enzyme levels as indicators of tissue damage, the sensitivity of these parameters of tissue damage in the prodromal period of heatstroke is less well established, especially for sub-lethal stress conditions. Furthermore, it is not known to what extent given elevations in serum enzyme levels reflect the nature of various combinations of hyperthermia and its duration as sustained during the prodromal period. In an attempt to throw some light on the questions posed above anaesthetized rats were exposed to three different sets of thermal conditions. However, the amount of heat gained over and above baseline levels was controlled to a 20% rise irrespective of the experimental conditions. Above this increment animals did not survive thus indicating excessive stress. Plasma enzyme levels were assayed in each group of animals upon termination of stress, six hours post-stress and 24 hours post-stress in order to investigate the patterns of enzyme release as well as the sensitivity of the respective indicators of tissue damage. On the basis of plasma enzyme assays, the tissue damage sustained during these particular experimental conditions was mild to moderate, completely reversible, not indicative of heatstroke but merely of generalized tissue damage. The results suggest that in addition to the established positive relationship between the level and duration of hyperthermia and tissue damage, a third component,namely the rate of rise in body temperature, nay constitute an important factor in the ultirrate pathology. In this regard, i.e. sub-lethal stress, creatine kinase proved to be the most sensitive and, therefore, the most useful parameter of tissue damage

Sex Differences in Step Count-Blood Pressure Association: A Preliminary Study in Type 2 Diabetes

BACKGROUND: Walking and cardiovascular mortality are inversely associated in type 2 diabetes, but few studies have objectively measured associations of walking with individual cardiovascular risk factors. Such information would be useful for "dosing" daily steps in clinical practice. This study aimed to quantify decrements in blood pressure and glycated hemoglobin (A1C) per 1,000 daily step increments. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Two hundred and one subjects with type 2 diabetes underwent assessments of step counts (pedometer-measured), blood pressure, A1C and anthropometric parameters. Due to missing data, the final analysis was conducted on 83 women and 102 men, with a mean age of 60 years. Associations of daily steps with blood pressure and A1C were evaluated using sex-specific multivariate linear regression models (adjusted for age, ethnicity, and BMI). Potential sex differences were confirmed in a combined model (women and men) with interaction terms. Mean values for daily steps, blood pressure, A1C and BMI were 5,357 steps/day; 137/80 mm Hg; 7.7% and 30.4 kg/m(2) respectively. A 1,000 daily step increment among women was associated with a -2.6 (95% CI: -4.1 to -1.1) mm Hg change in systolic and a -1.4 (95% CI: -2.2 to -0.6) mm Hg change in diastolic blood pressure. Among men, corresponding changes were -0.7 (95% CI: -2.1 to 0.7) and -0.6 (95% CI: -1.4 to 0.3) mm Hg, respectively. Sex differences were confirmed in combined models. Step counts and A1C did not demonstrate clinically important associations. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: A 1,000 steps/day increment is associated with important blood pressure decrements among women with type 2 diabetes but the data were inconclusive among men. Targeted "dose increments" of 1,000 steps/day in women may lead to measurable blood pressure reductions. This information may be of potential use in the titration or "dosing" of daily steps. No associations were found between step count increments and A1C

Developing a Mobile Application‐Based Particle Image Velocimetry Tool for Enhanced Teaching and Learning in Fluid Mechanics: A Design‐Based Research Approach

A robust and intuitive understanding of fluid mechanics—the applied science of fluid motion—is foundational within many engineering disciplines, including aerospace, chemical, civil, mechanical, naval, and ocean engineering. In‐depth knowledge of fluid mechanics is critical to safe and economical design of engineering applications employed globally everyday, such as automobiles, aircraft, and sea craft, and to meeting global 21st century engineering challenges, such as developing renewable energy sources, providing access to clean water, managing the environmental nitrogen cycle, and improving urban infrastructure. Despite the fundamental nature of fluid mechanics within the broader undergraduate engineering curriculum, students often characterize courses in fluid mechanics as mathematically onerous, conceptually difficult, and aesthetically uninteresting; anecdotally, undergraduates may choose to opt‐out of fluids engineering‐related careers based on their early experiences in fluids courses. Therefore, the continued development of new frameworks for engineering instruction in fluid mechanics is needed. Toward that end, this paper introduces mobile instructional particle image velocimetry (mI‐PIV), a low‐cost, open‐source, mobile application‐based educational tool under development for smartphones and tablets running Android. The mobile application provides learners with both technological capability and guided instruction that enables them to visualize and experiment with authentic flow fields in real time. The mI‐PIV tool is designed to generate interest in and intuition about fluid flow and to improve understanding of mathematical concepts as they relate to fluid mechanics by providing opportunities for fluids‐related active engagement and discovery in both formal and informal learning contexts

Response to the Draft of the ‘Global Code of Conduct for Investigating and Documenting Conflict-Related Sexual Violence’

Submission, The Murad Code Project, Institute for International Criminal Investigations and Foreign and Commonwealth Offic

Modelling representative population mobility for COVID-19 spatial transmission in South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic starting in the first half of 2020 has changed the lives of everyone across the world. Reduced mobility was essential due to it being the largest impact possible against the spread of the little understood SARS-CoV-2 virus. To understand the spread, a comprehension of human mobility patterns is needed. The use of mobility data in modelling is thus essential to capture the intrinsic spread through the population. It is necessary to determine to what extent mobility data sources convey the same message of mobility within a region. This paper compares different mobility data sources by constructing spatial weight matrices at a variety of spatial resolutions and further compares the results through hierarchical clustering. We consider four methods for constructing spatial weight matrices representing mobility between spatial units, taking into account distance between spatial units as well as spatial covariates. This provides insight for the user into which data provides what type of information and in what situations a particular data source is most useful.The National Research Foundation (NRF) and Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/big-dataam2022Statistic