EXTENDED CURRICULUM PROGRAMME EVOLUTION: A ROAD MAP TO ACADEMIC SUCCESS?

Published ArticleThe extended curriculum programme (ECP) in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the Central University of Technology (CUT), Bloemfontein, South Africa, consists of six different instructional programmes. These programmes have been developed for Biomedical Technology, Clinical Technology, Emergency Medical Care, Environmental Health, Radiography and Somatology. This article provides an overview of the progress and development of the health sciences ECP at CUT as a proposed road map to academic success for a specific group of students. To obtain an objective picture of the health sciences ECP students’ success, the assessment results of all the students registered between 2007 and 2012 were retrieved and analysed retrospectively. An increase in articulation was noted from 2010 to 2012 (i.e., from 70% to 84.4%) and an average articulation percentage of 80 per cent was achieved from 2007 to 2012. These figures indicated a successful transition from the ECP to the mainstream programmes. Moreover, 58 per cent of ECP students who registered in 2007 successfully completed their national diplomas in the extended timeframe. This group also delivered three B-Tech candidates and one student registered for a master’s degree. The students’ emotional growth and personal development were also prominent, as observed by the mainstream lecturers. The support offered to students in the current ECP includes a mentorship programme with a qualified psychologist, supplemental instruction (SI) and the sponsorship of all textbooks and registration fees for the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and First Aid training

Drought tolerance, traditional crops and biotechnology: breeding towards sustainable development

Germplasm of traditional vegetable crops were screened for drought tolerance. Different physiological, morphological and biochemical traits of drought tolerance were investigated, including enzymes of the antioxidative pathway (SOD, AP and GR), turgor maintenance (LWP, RWC), membrane stability (CMS, TTC), osmoprotection (proline), productivity (photosynthesis), rooting (root architecture), early drought tolerance and leaf area. Different in vitro screening techniques were carried out. Useful traits of drought tolerance were identified in Amaranthus tricolor, A. hybridus, A. hypochondriacus, Vigna unguiculata and V. subterranea, and are currently being applied in a breeding programme in an attempt to develop tolerant genotypes of neglected vegetable and seed crops that might contribute to secure food production in rural areas in Africa

A Focused Analysis of Recruitment and Performance Management in the Import and Export Industry

While many studies have been conducted on recruitment and performance management, there is a paucity of research on these two functions within the industry. Recruitment and performance management are vital human capital and human resource (HR) functions that play a crucial role in guaranteeing an organisation’s ability to achieve its business strategy. Furthermore, studies have shown that in recent years, performance management has become intrinsic to most organisations. The research comprised five phases of data collection from 151 randomly selected respondents. A questionnaire was developed and distributed to gain insight into how these two functions were executed within the industry under investigation. Thereafter a performance management module was developed and implemented, and the questionnaire was redistributed after six months. The results support the view that the functions of recruitment and performance management are poorly managed within the industry. Furthermore, the intervention of the performance management module indicates that interaction with employees relating to individual performance enhances both their work performance and general awareness of inter-personal and organisational issues. The findings from this research suggest that recruitment and performance management are essential HR practices often overlooked in an environment that is extremely demanding. Disregard of these practices, especially performance management, has proved to have a negative impact on employee job performance. It is therefore recommended that organisations follow processes and invest in such programmes, not only to achieve their organisational goals, but also to develop and enhance employee performance. This study has specific and important implications for the import and export industry, substantiating the researcher’s premise that effective recruitment and performance management can improve and facilitate the management of the industry’s employees

LOOKING INSIDE VOTIVE CREATURES: COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY (CT) SCANNING OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MUMMIFIED ANIMALS IN IZIKO MUSEUMS OF SOUTH AFRICA: A PRELIMINARY REPORT

The ancient Egyptians mummified many more animals than humans. The study of ancient Egyptian animal mummies is varied and extensive. Currently new methodologies and modern technology are being used to unlock the secrets of animal mummies. Recently five animal mummies housed in the Egyptian collection of Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town were scanned using a state of the art computed tomography (CT) scanner at Stellenbosch University. Preliminary results revealed two complete bird skeletons, a claw, a fake and the partial skeleton of what appears to be a cat

A sequential intergrated sustainable organisation-stakeholder relationship (SISOSR) process for building organisation-stakeholder partnerships: a conceptual framework

Although the concept ‘organisation-stakeholder relationship (OSR)’ is not new and has been researched extensively in the literature, limited attempts have been made to critically analyse existing viewpoints and propose a unified conceptual framework. The main research problem of this paper is to address this lack of a commonly accepted conceptual framework for organisational stakeholder relationships. This is done through a critical analysis of the different perspectives and existing conceptual frameworks by using a qualitative method whereby strategic stakeholder identification, OSR development and OSR maintenance are integrated to propose a conceptual framework, subsequently termed SISOSR to build organisation-stakeholder partnerships (OSP) with strategic stakeholders. This article is structured as follows: Firstly, the key concepts are defined; secondly the building blocks of the framework is presented based on sound theoretical constructs; and thirdly the SISOSR framework is graphically presented and discussed to elaborate on the proposed process of OSR building; followed by concluding arguments.Communication Scienc

Microbial diversity and community structure in Fynbos soil

The Fynbos biome in South Africa is renowned for its high plant diversity and the conservation of this area is particularly important for the region. This is especially true in the case of endangered vegetation types on the lowlands such as Sand Fynbos, of which only small fragments remain. The question is thus whether the diversity of the aboveground flora is mirrored in the below-ground microbial communities. In order to determine the relationship of the above- and below-ground communities, the soil community composition of both fungal and bacterial groups in Sand Fynbos was characterized over space and time. A molecular approach was used based on the isolation of total soil genomic DNA and automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis of bacterial and fungal communities. Soil from four different sites was compared to resolve the microbial diversity of eubacterial and fungal groups on a local (alpha diversity) scale as well as a landscape scale (beta diversity). The community structures from different sites were compared and found to exhibit strong spatial patterns which remained stable over time. The plant community data were compared with the fungal and the bacterial communities. We concluded that the microbial communities in the Sand Fynbos are highly diverse and closely linked to the above-ground floral communities.Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biolog

African leafy vegetables in South Africa

In this article the term ‘African leafy vegetables’ was adopted to refer to the collective of plant species which are used as leafy vegetables and which are referred to as morogo or imifino by African people in South Africa. Function is central in this indigenous concept, which is subject to spatial and temporal variability in terms of plant species that are included as a result of diversity in ecology, culinary repertoire and change over time. As a result, the concept embraces indigenous, indigenised and recently introduced leafy vegetable species but this article is concerned mainly with the indigenous and indigenisedspecies. In South Africa, the collection of these two types of leafy vegetables from the wild, or from cultivated fields where some of them grow as weeds, has a long history that has been intimately linked to women and their traditional livelihood tasks. Among poor people in remote rural areas the use of these types of leafy vegetables is still common but nationwide there is evidence of decline, particularly in urban areas. Cultivation of indigenous or indigenised leafy vegetables is restricted to a narrow group of primarily indigenised species in South Africa. Seven groups of indigenous or indigenised African leafyvegetables that are important in South Africa were given special attention and their local nomenclature, ecology, use and cultivation are discussed

African leafy vegetables in South Africa

In this article the term ‘African leafy vegetables’ was adopted to refer to the collective of plant species which are used as leafy vegetables and which are referred to as morogo or imifino by African people in South Africa. Function is central in this indigenous concept, which is subject to spatial and temporal variability in terms of plant species that are included as a result of diversity in ecology, culinary repertoire and change over time. As a result, the concept embraces indigenous, indigenised and recently introduced leafy vegetable species but this article is concerned mainly with the indigenous and indigenised species. In South Africa, the collection of these two types of leafy vegetables from the wild, or from cultivated fields where some of them grow as weeds, has a long history that has been intimately linked to women and their traditional livelihood tasks. Among poor people in remote rural areas the use of these types of leafy vegetables is still common but nationwide there is evidence of decline, particularly in urban areas. Cultivation of indigenous or indigenised leafy vegetables is restricted to a narrow group of primarily indigenised species in South Africa. Seven groups of indigenous or indigenised African leafy vegetables that are important in South Africa were given special attention and their local nomenclature, ecology, use and cultivation are discussed.Keywords: African leafy vegetables, morogo, imifino, history, ecology, gender, collection, cultivation, use, processing, storag

M-Sieve: a visualisation tool for supporting network security analysts

The Middlesex Spatial Interactive Visualisation Environment (M-Sieve) is a spatiotemporal visual analytics tool for exploring computer network activity. M-Sieve allows the user to filter and visualize data through facets to explore and find patterns. To help guide exploration, we developed a set of rules which are used to derive a variable we call the ‘Concern Level Assessment’ (CLA). The CLA is based on attributes of nodes on the network. The rules were developed by eliciting inferences from network security domain experts. The combination of M-Sieve and the CLA allowed us to address the problem presented by the VAST 2012 Competition - Mini Challenge 1

Transcriptome characterization of the South African abalone Haliotis midae using sequencing-by-synthesis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Worldwide, the genus <it>Haliotis </it>is represented by 56 extant species and several of these are commercially cultured. Among the six abalone species found in South Africa, <it>Haliotis midae </it>is the only aquacultured species. Despite its economic importance, genomic sequence resources for <it>H. midae</it>, and for abalone in general, are still scarce. Next generation sequencing technologies provide a fast and efficient tool to generate large sequence collections that can be used to characterize the transcriptome and identify expressed genes associated with economically important traits like growth and disease resistance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>More than 25 million short reads generated by the Illumina Genome Analyzer were <it>de novo </it>assembled in 22,761 contigs with an average size of 260 bp. With a stringent <it>E</it>-value threshold of 10^-10, 3,841 contigs (16.8%) had a BLAST homologous match against the Genbank non-redundant (NR) protein database. Most of these sequences were annotated using the gene ontology (GO) and eukaryotic orthologous groups of proteins (KOG) databases and assigned to various functional categories. According to annotation results, many gene families involved in immune response were identified. Thousands of simple sequence repeats (SSR) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) were detected. Setting stringent parameters to ensure a high probability of amplification, 420 primer pairs in 181 contigs containing SSR loci were designed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This data represents the most comprehensive genomic resource for the South African abalone <it>H. midae </it>to date. The amount of assembled sequences demonstrated the utility of the Illumina sequencing technology in the transcriptome characterization of a non-model species. It allowed the development of several markers and the identification of promising candidate genes for future studies on population and functional genomics in <it>H. midae </it>and in other abalone species.</p