Addressing food and nutrition security in South Africa: A review of policy responses since 2002

Since 2002, a range of South African policies have attempted to address the disproportionate burden of food and nutrition insecurity on the population. Yet malnutrition among the poor has worsened. This study reviewed policies to examine their implications for food security and the treatment of malnutrition. Policies enacted between 2002 and 2017 were retrieved from government departments and the data were thematically analysed. A preliminary analysis shows that policy has aided production through input provision and capacity building. Taxation, school nutrition programmes and social grants are some of the food access initiatives, whilst micronutrient supplementation, breastfeeding campaigns and food fortification are policies specifically focused on nutrition. However, despite these interventions, food insecurity has remained due to gaps in and contradictions among policies and the lack of coordination in policy development and implementation, especially across sectors. To improve food and nutrition security, government must better engage with ideas about how to address food and nutrition security systemically, and develop the appropriate coordination mechanisms for a more holistic approach to this challenge

A new approach on the stability analysis in ELKO cosmology

In this work it has been developed a new approach to study the stability of a system composed by an ELKO field interacting with dark matter, which could give some contribution in order to alleviate the cosmic coincidence problem. It is assumed that the potential which characterizes the ELKO field is not specified, but it is related to a constant parameter $\delta$. The strength of the interaction between matter and ELKO field is characterized by a constant parameter $\beta$ and it is also assumed that both ELKO field as matter energy density are related to their pressures by equations of state parameters $\omega_\phi$ and $\omega_m$, respectively. The system of equations is analysed by a dynamical system approach. It has been found the conditions of stability between the parameters $\delta$ and $\beta$ in order to have stable fixed points for the system for different values of the equation of state parameters $\omega_\phi$ and $\omega_m$, and the results are presented in form of tables. The possibility of decay of ELKO field into dark matter or vice versa can be read directly from the tables, since the parameters $\delta$ and $\beta$ satisfy some inequalities. It allows us to constrain the potential assuming that we have a stable system for different interactions terms between the ELKO field and dark matter. The cosmic coincidence problem can be alleviated for some specific relations between the parameters of the model.Comment: 16 pages, some new comments in the Introduction and at the begining of Section I

Isotropization of the universe during inflation

A primordial inflationary phase allows one to erase any possible anisotropic expansion thanks to the cosmic no-hair theorem. If there is no global anisotropic stress, then the anisotropic expansion rate tends to decrease. What are the observational consequences of a possible early anisotropic phase? We first review the dynamics of anisotropic universes and report analytic approximations. We then discuss the structure of dynamical equations for perturbations and the statistical properties of observables, as well as the implication of a primordial anisotropy on the quantization of these perturbations during inflation. Finally we briefly review models based on primordial vector field which evade the cosmic no-hair theorem.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures. Invited review article for the French Academy of Scienc

A nonlinear elliptic problem with terms concentrating in the boundary

In this paper we investigate the behavior of a family of steady state solutions of a nonlinear reaction diffusion equation when some reaction and potential terms are concentrated in a $\epsilon$-neighborhood of a portion $\Gamma$ of the boundary. We assume that this $\epsilon$-neighborhood shrinks to $\Gamma$ as the small parameter $\epsilon$ goes to zero. Also, we suppose the upper boundary of this $\epsilon$-strip presents a highly oscillatory behavior. Our main goal here is to show that this family of solutions converges to the solutions of a limit problem, a nonlinear elliptic equation that captures the oscillatory behavior. Indeed, the reaction term and concentrating potential are transformed into a flux condition and a potential on $\Gamma$, which depends on the oscillating neighborhood