Pattern of hiv-infection in Hurungwe District, Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe

A journal article on the pattern of HIV infection in a rural Zimbabwe district.After the first case of HIV-infection had been diagnosed in 1986 in a Northern district of Zimbabwe, a local hospital based surveillance system, was introduced. In order to monitor the spread of the epidemic in the district, residence, age, sex and clinical presentation of all newly diagnosed HIV-paticnts were recorded. After three years, the data were compiled and analysed with the following results. Altogether 887 symptomatic HIV-patients (0,5 pc of the district population) were diagnosed. The most common HIV-associated signs and symptoms were PGL (47 pc), chest infection (29 pc), herpes zoster (24 pc) and chronic STDs (15 pc). The fcmalc-to-malc ratio in adults was 1,4. The average age on diagnosis in women was 26,0±6,7 years and in men 30,7±8,6 years. The three years’ cumulative incidence of HIV-cases was 27,2/1 000 in the urban area and 3/1 000 in the rural areas of the district

'Kids sold, desperate moms need cash': Media representations of Zimbabwean women migrants

The article draws on 575 randomly selected articles from the South African Media database to explore the representation of Zimbabwean women migrants. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article shows that some of the dominant construction types depict a picture of caricatured, stereotypical and stigmatised Zimbabwean migrant women without voice and individuality. In turn, the diversity of their actualities is not captured in the process of constructing the twin images of Zimbabwean women as victims and as purveyors of decadent and other negative social ills in society. We conclude that Zimbabwean women migrants appear in the SA media primarily in three negative images: suppliers of sexual services, as un-motherly, and as victims. We also conclude that there is need for media to capture the voices of migrant women recounting their everyday lived experiences in different political and socio-economic contexts in order to account for the migrant women's voices of resilience, defiance and victimhood and of agency, against the normalising and marginalising influences of political institutions and national border controls. This would also help capture the transformative nature of migration to the women, the 'home' in Zimbabwe and the 'home' in South Africa.IS

Influence of environmental factors on endo-beta-1,4-glucanase production by Bacillus HR68, isolated from a Zimbabwean hot spring

The production of endo-beta-1,4-glucanase by a Bacillus strain isolated from a hot spring in Zimbabwe was studied in batch culture, chemostat culture, and carbon dioxide-regulated auxostat (CO2-auxostat). The bacteria produced the enzyme in the presence of excess glucose or sucrose, but not under carbon-limited conditions in a chemostat using mineral medium. There was a specific growth rate dependent linear increase in enzyme production in glucose excess, nitrogen-limited chemostat cultures. A high specific growth rate of 2.2 h-1 and a high rate of enzyme production of 362 nkat (mg dry mass.h)-1 were attained under nutrient rich conditions in the CO2-auxostat. The bacteria had the highest specific growth rate and endo-beta-1,4-glucanase enzyme production at 50 degrees C. The maximum specific growth rate and the rate of enzyme production increased when yeast extract and tryptone were added in increasing amounts to the mineral medium used for cultivation in separate experiments. Increasing the glucose concentration in the CO2-auxostat cultures increased the rate of enzyme production but did not affect the specific growth rate

A novel Candida glycerinogenes mutant with high glycerol productivity in high phosphate concentration medium

A novel Candida glycerinogenes mutant, which possesses high glycerol productivity in a high phosphate concentration medium, was obtained by mutagenesis of an industrial glycerol producer. The mutant accumulated a total biomass of 11.5 g l-1, which is less than the 15 g l-1of the wild-type strain, but it consumed glucose faster than the wild-type strain did. The mutant reached its maximal glycerol concentration of 129 g l -1 in 84 h compared to 96 h for the wild-type strain. High cytoplasmic glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase activity of the mutant in the early glycerol formation phase, leading to a rapid glycerol synthesis and accumulation, may be the main reason for the short fermentation process. © Springer 2005.Articl

Nitrogen Fixation and Hydrogen Metabolism in Relation to the Dissolved Oxygen Tension in Chemostat Cultures of the Wild Type and a Hydrogenase-Negative Mutant of Azorhizobium caulinodans

Both the wild type and an isogenic hydrogenase-negative mutant of Azorhizobium caulinodans growing ex planta on N(2) as the N source were studied in succinate-limited steady-state chemostat cultures under 0.2 to 3.0% dissolved O(2) tension. Production or consumption of O(2), H(2), and CO(2) was measured with an on-line-connected mass spectrometer. In the range of 0.2 to 3.0%, growth of both the wild type and the mutant was equally dependent on the dissolved O(2) tension: the growth yield decreased, and the specific O(2) consumption and CO(2) production increased. A similar dependency on the dissolved O(2) tension was found for the mutant with 2.5% H(2) in the influent gas. The H(2)/N(2) ratio (moles of H(2) evolved per mole of N(2) consumed via nitrogenase) of the mutant, growing with or without 2.5% H(2), increased with increasing dissolved O(2) tensions. This increase in the H(2)/N(2) ratio was small but significant. The dependencies of the ATP/N(2) ratio (moles of ATP consumed per mole of N(2) fixed) and the ATP/2e(-) ratio [moles of ATP consumed per mole of electron pairs transferred from NAD(P)H to nitrogenase] on the dissolved O(2) tension were estimated. These dependencies were interpreted in terms of the physiological concepts of respiratory protection and autoprotection

Securitisation from Below: The Relationship between immigration and foreign policy in South Africa's Approach to the Zimbabwe Crisis

The political and economic debacle in Zimbabwe has led to a large-scale influx of Zimbabweans into neighbouring South Africa. This article argues that there is a complex and significant link between the domestic response to this immigration influx and South Africa’s foreign policy towards Zimbabwe. South Africa’s foreign and security policy elite preferred to use an immigration approach of benign neglect as a tool to promote its ‘quiet diplomacy’ approach towards the Zimbabwean regime, treating the influx as a ‘non-problem’. But increased xenophobic violence, vigilantism and protests in townships and informal settlements against Zimbabwean and other African immigrants, culminating in widespread riots across the country in 2008, contributed to a change not only in immigration policy but also in the mediation efforts towards the Zimbabwean parties. I argue that this foreign policy change was pushed by a process of ‘securitisation from below’, where the understanding of Zimbabwean immigrants as a security threat were promoted not by traditional security elites but by South Africa’s marginalised urban poor