Reach out and be healed : constitutional rights to traditional African healing

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The introduction of the Traditional Health Practitioners Act 22 of 2007 has made lawful the practice of traditional healing. As everyone has the right of access to health care services, the question of whether the state bears a duty to reasonably provide access to traditional healing as an element of its public health care service, is raised. In a democratic society, law must be responsive to the needs of the populace. Ethnographic fieldwork demonstrates that traditional healing is used not in opposition to, but as a complementary twin of, biomedicine. Considering this, it shall be argued that economically, socially and medically, the incorporation of traditional healing into the public health care service is neither appropriate nor required by the Constitution

Development and analysis of a verstile, reusable, high speed, DMA controller for custom embedded applications using the PCI bus

This thesis investigates the plausibility of designing and developing a versatile, reusable, high speed interface for custom computing applications, based on the Peripheral Component Interface (PCI) Bus. A PCI I/O board was developed, utilizing mainly Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLD\u27s), which included a custom Direct Memory Access (DMA) Controller to take advantage of the unique feature set of the PCI bus. The arbitration mechanisms and performance characteristics of the PCI bus are taken advantage of in order to achieve a maximum burst throughput rate of 66 Megabytes per second. Performance characteristics of the I/O board are analyzed for two separate PCI host systems. In the faster of the two systems, a 166MHz Pentium PC, a maximum aggregate throughput rate of 54 Megabytes per second for PCI burst writes was achieved. In all cases throughput increased as a function of transfer size. Due to buffering implementations in the host systems write performance was always superior to read performance. In addition to exceptional throughput capability, this implementation provides a design engineer with a versatile interface which can be mated to a number of high performance applications. The PCI I/O board\u27s external interface is implemented with a CPLD which can be quickly and easily modified to meet the needs of practically any custom interface without decreasing PCI bus performance. Using the on-board latency timer and programmable FIFO\u27s the board can be fine tuned to meet a variety of application requirements. The two main design goals were to provide unlimited bursting capability and to transfer 32-bits of data on every clock. The first was achieved through the implementation of a 32-bit burst Transfer Count register. The second goal had to be reduced by 50% due to a timing margin violation discovered during board debug

Elementary Public School Teachers’ Coping Mechanisms Used During the COVID-19 Pandemic in North Texas: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe elementary public school teachers’ experiences coping with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional model of stress and coping theory, the study answered the central research question: How do elementary public school teachers describe their experiences coping with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic? The sub-questions addressed: What psychological, physical, and emotional mechanisms are elementary public school teachers using to cope with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic? Purposeful sampling and maximum variation sampling were used to select 14 elementary public school teachers’ who experienced teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The setting of the study was North Texas Independent School District. The data collection methods used included participant journaling, semi-structured interviews, and a focus group. The data was analyzed using Moustakas’s data analysis which began with epoché, then transcendental-phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation, and synthesis of composite textural and composite descriptions. Two themes were identified through data analysis which included teacher stress and teacher coping mechanisms. Findings indicated that teachers had faced much adversity during the COVID-19 pandemic in ways such as students, technology, and instruction; however, they have been resilient throughout the pandemic. Psychological, physical, and emotional coping mechanisms have helped teachers cope with their stress. Implications for research suggested that helping teachers find adequate outlets to cope with their stress could be effective. Recommendations for future research are provided

A New Digital Image Compression Algorithm Based on Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

In this paper we discuss the formulation of, and show the results for, a new compression/decompression algorithm called DYNAMAC, that has its basis in nonlinear systems theory. We show that we are able to achieve significant compression of RGB image data while maintaining good image quality. We discuss the implementation of this algorithm in hardware, show that the same process is applicable to other digital forms of data, demonstrate that the decompression process is ideal for streaming applications, and show that the algorithm has an exploitable aspect of encryption useful for digital rights management and secure transmission. We discuss our methodology for the improvement of the performance of this codec

Numerical Model Sensitivity to Heterogeneous Satellite Derived Vegetation Roughness

The sensitivity of a mesoscale weather prediction model to a 1 km satellite-based vegetation roughness initialization is investigated for a domain within the south central United States. Three different roughness databases are employed: i) a control or standard lookup table roughness that is a function only of land cover type, ii) a spatially heterogeneous roughness database, specific to the domain, that was previously derived using a physically based procedure and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) imagery, and iii) a MODIS climatologic roughness database that like (i) is a function only of land cover type, but possesses domain specific mean values from (ii). The model used is the Weather Research and Forecast Model (WRF) coupled to the Community Land Model within the Land Information System (LIS). For each simulation, a statistical comparison is made between modeled results and ground observations within a domain including Oklahoma, Eastern Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana during a 4-day period within IHOP 2002. Sensitivity analysis compares the impact the three roughness initializations on time-series temperature, precipitation probability of detection (POD), average wind speed, boundary layer height, and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE). Overall, the results indicate that, for the current investigation, replacement of the standard look-up table values with the satellite-derived values statistically improves model performance for most observed variables. Such natural roughness heterogeneity enhances the surface wind speed, PBL height and TKE production up to 10 percent, with a lesser effect over grassland, and greater effect over mixed land cover domains

Freshman Orientation Activity

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experience and positive results in this year’s freshmen orientation at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Before classes started in the fall freshman in Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering Technology (ECTET) programs were asked to work with faculty as they programmed an inexpensive robot and built maps of the RIT campus for the robots to navigate. The paper discusses these activities in detail, provides the tutorials that were developed and discusses the student survey completed after the orientation. The goals met in the orientation were: faculty-student interaction, student-student interaction, increased student knowledge of the campus, team participation by all, students meeting the office staff, and students working with their advisors to review their schedule before classes began

Problem-Based Learning: A Tale of Three Courses

Courses in engineering and science are typically taught deductively, through transmission of information from instructor to student, followed by practice problems to reinforce what was covered in readings and lectures. Yet in our personal and professional lives, we learn experientially – by facing a real situation and attempting to address it, and from our related successes and failures. Experiential education emphasizes a mixture of content and experiences, connection of learning to meaning and to the world outside of the classroom, and reflection on this for higher order learning and development of new skills and capabilities. Problem-based Learning (PBL) is an inductive, active learning approach that connects learning to real world problems, and provides a context in which students can tether their knowledge and internalize course concepts. Students are thus motivated to seek out a deeper understanding of the concepts they need to address the problems presented in a course. This research focuses on going beyond the technical lecture to enhance the student experience through PBL and experiential education techniques, based on implementation in the Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) College of Engineering Technology, in courses in telecommunications engineering and environmental sustainability. PBL content was developed and implemented with a goal of motivating and exciting students, and enabling them to internalize the knowledge for deeper understanding. This included enhancing students’ ability to think critically about real-world challenges in engineering and sustainability, as well as their ability to address these challenges through an inductive, experiential approach that mirrors the way they will need to approach problem solving in professional practice. Assessments suggest initial challenges for students in self-directed research and working outside of their comfort zone, but ultimately there is evidence of tangible value for student learning, skill development, and ability to succeed and thrive in the field

Characterization of Hypertension Risk Factors at the Committee on Temporary Shelter

Introduction: The health of homeless populations is at risk due to a high prevalence of undiagnosed hypertension (HTN) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). The interaction of housing and socioeconomic status with the risk factors for HTN and CVD remains unclear. Prevention of HTN through a healthy diet, exercise, adequate sleep, and avoidance of tobacco has been well described, but financial limitations and competing priorities for shelter and food make blood pressure (BP) control difficult for this population. By characterizing the risk factors and awareness of hypertension within the homeless population at the Committee on Temporary Shelter Daystation (COTS) in Burlington, Vermont, we may be able to identify promising avenues for therapeutic intervention.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1226/thumbnail.jp