Just between the two of us: clinical intuition as a non-conscious process.

Intuition is a phenomenon widely acknowledged within psychological therapy, and yet it remains poorly understood. Historically its subjective and nonrational nature has prevented it from entering into mainstream psychological research, and to date studies of the phenomenon have concentrated on; proving the existence of intuition, anecdotal or descriptive accounts, and the measurement of accuracy. Research attempting to provide a comprehensive understanding of the process of intuition within the therapeutic dyad, and a theory of how information arrives in the unconscious mind of the therapist, is sparse. An argument is put forward for the importance of pursuing research in this area. Using grounded theory and unstructured interviewing of experienced practitioners, this study explores the emergence and process of intuition in the therapeutic dyad. A case is made for the importance of recognising the contributions of the advances in the study of neuroscience and for considering the intersubjective nature of the therapeutic process in understanding the phenomenon. Using examples from participants it explores their subjective experiences and offers a theory of intuition as a non-conscious process, emerging between client and therapist, and experienced on a physiological, affective and cognitive level. Furthermore it suggests that intuition might be understood as a convergence of many systems and that this may be best explained through an application of complexity theory. The limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions are put forward for future research. Lastly the implications of this study are discussed from the viewpoint of clinical practice and the training of practitioners, and the importance of the acceptance of the process of intuition as a natural and integral process within the therapeutic relationship is explored

'n Eie Suid-Afrikaanse reg

Wanneer ons die eenvoudige vraag stel: wie is meerderjariges volgens die Suid-Afrikaanse reg, het ons met ’n algemene en ’n besondere probleem van regsvinding te doen

Evidence for an ancient whole genome duplication in the cycad lineage

Contrary to the many whole genome duplication events recorded for angiosperms (flowering plants), whole genome duplications in gymnosperms (non-flowering seed plants) seem to be much rarer. Although ancient whole genome duplications have been reported for most gymnosperm lineages as well, some are still contested and need to be confirmed. For instance, data for ginkgo, but particularly cycads have remained inconclusive so far, likely due to the quality of the data available and flaws in the analysis. We extracted and sequenced RNA from both the cycad Encephalartos natalensis and Ginkgo biloba. This was followed by transcriptome assembly, after which these data were used to build paralog age distributions. Based on these distributions, we identified remnants of an ancient whole genome duplication in both cycads and ginkgo. The most parsimonious explanation would be that this whole genome duplication event was shared between both species and had occurred prior to their divergence, about 300 million years ago

Adapting methodology used on captive subjects for estimating gut passage time in wild monkeys

Gut passage time of food has consequences for primate digestive strategies, which subsequently affect seed dispersal. Seed dispersal models are critical in understanding plant population and community dynamics through estimation of seed dispersal distances, combining movement data with gut passage times. Thus, developing methods to collect in-situ data on gut passage time are of great importance. Here we present a first attempt to develop an in-situ study of gut passage time in an arboreal forest guenon, samango monkey (Cercopithecus albogularis schwarzi) in the Soutpansberg Mountain, South Africa. Cercopithecus spp. consume large proportions of fruit and are important seed dispersers. However, previous studies on gut passage times have been conducted only on captive Cercopithecus spp. subjects, where movement is restricted, and diets are generally dissimilar to those observed in the wild. Using artificial digestive markers, we targeted provisioning of a male and a female samango monkey four times over three and four days respectively. We followed focal subjects from dawn until dusk following each feeding event, collecting faecal samples, and recording the date and time of deposition and the number of markers found in each faecal sample. We recovered 6.61% ± 4% and 13% ± 9% of markers from the male and the female respectively and were able to estimate a gut passage window of 16.63 – 25.12 hrs from three of the eight trials. We discuss methodological issues to help future researchers to develop in-situ studies on gut passage times

A study for the differentiation of Actinobacillus-seminis, A-Actinomycetem-comitans, Histophilus-ovis and Pasteurella-haemolytica

By using well-defined techniques under optimum conditions it is possible adequately to define the biochemical characteristics of typical A. seminis strains. A. seminis can be distinguished from Histophilus avis on the latter's distinctive colony morphology, but it cannot be distinguished from Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. These organisms, however, can be differentiated from Pasteurella haemolytica on serological grounds and the latter's greater pathogenicity for mice. It is appreciated, however, that intermediate forms occur which cannot as yet be satisfactorily allocated to any of the above-mentioned genera.The articles have been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 600dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-format.am201

An evaluation of the water and sanitation programme as implemented through the Mvula Trust by the Limpopo Department of Education

The study evaluates the water and sanitation programme as implemented through The Mvula Trust by the Limpopo Department of Education (LDoE) in terms of the agency agreement between the two parties, thereby providing: • A precedent of public services and infrastructure delivery through co-production • A precedent of sustainability innovation in the midst of resource scarcity through the large-scale decentralisation of basic services with off-grid water and sanitation systems. The study looks into the context in which the formal arrangement between The Mvula Trust and the LDoE came into place and which continues to be implemented as an alternative means of public service delivery by the state. It further looks into the extent of the deliverables of the programme, which consists of more than 1 843 projects, and on which more than a billion rand has been spent. The scope of works for most of the projects implemented by The Mvula Trust consist mainly of the provisioning and upgrading of water and sanitation services at public schools in the province, including the construction of the dry waste sanitation facilities and the drilling of boreholes. This decentralised form of basic service delivery, unconnected to municipal water supply or sewer systems, was borne mostly out of necessity, but is an improvement on the unsustainable and unaffordable centralised water supply and sewer systems that have been found to be both unsustainable and unaffordable in the long run. The scale and consistency of the roll-out of decentralised water and sanitation systems by the LDoE is commendable and has made it the norm, rather than the exception at schools in the province. The expenditure on a portion of the programme, that is mostly completed, is evaluated to determine the success or failures of the programme as measured against the cost parameter, and finds that The Mvula Trust managed to complete the overall programme within budget. However, when the data for each addendum is compared, it becomes evident that only three of the eight addendums were completed within budget, four was less than 20% over the budget and one was more than 20% over the budget. When the expenditure data per project is evaluated, it reveals that only 62% of the projects can be deemed to be successful in terms of the cost parameter of projects that finished within the allocated project cost. However, the trendline suggests that The Mvula Trust is increasingly improving in keeping their expenditure within the allocated budget. The study reveals that The Mvula Trust is remunerated 10% of the project cost as an implementing agent management fee, with an additional 2% for disbursements. This management fee percentage is fairly high when compared to other implementing agents, especially when the fees for Professional Service Providers are added, which combined with the management fee result in more than 30% of the construction cost. An evaluation of this capital expenditure at these facilities reveals that there is a substantial difference between the average expenditure per learner depending on the size of the school as measured by the school enrolment in 2017. For primary schools the capital expenditure amounts to R6,818 per learner at micro primary schools, with enrolments of less than 135 learners; as opposed to R1,230 per learner at mega primary schools, with enrolments of more than 931 learners. Similarly, for secondary schools the capital expenditure amounts to R6,242 per learner at micro secondary schools, with enrolments of less than 200 learners; as opposed to R1,387 per learner at mega secondary schools, with enrolments of more than 1 000 learners. With the substantial infrastructure needs that exist at schools in Limpopo, coupled with limited funding to address these challenges, it would be prudent for expenditure to be channelled to where it would have the greatest impact. The data would suggest that the greatest impact would be achieved if priority is given to the implementation of infrastructure projects at larger sized schools

The Fermat-Torricelli problem in normed planes and spaces

We investigate the Fermat-Torricelli problem in d-dimensional real normed spaces or Minkowski spaces, mainly for d=2. Our approach is to study the Fermat-Torricelli locus in a geometric way. We present many new results, as well as give an exposition of known results that are scattered in various sources, with proofs for some of them. Together, these results can be considered to be a minitheory of the Fermat-Torricelli problem in Minkowski spaces and especially in Minkowski planes. This demonstrates that substantial results about locational problems valid for all norms can be found using a geometric approach

Chandra and RXTE studies of the X-ray/gamma-ray millisecond pulsar PSR J0218+4232

We report on high-resolution spatial and timing observations of the millisecond pulsar PSR J0218+4232 performed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) and the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). With these observations we were able to study a) the possible spatial extent at X-ray energies of the DC source coincident with PSR J0218+4232 in detail (CXO), b) the relative phasing between the X-ray, radio and gamma-ray profiles (CXO and RXTE) and c) the spectral properties at energies beyond 10 keV (RXTE). We found no indications for extended emission at X-ray energies down to ~ 1 arcsec scales and confirmed the presence of a point-like DC-component. The 2 non-thermal pulses in the X-ray profile are found to be aligned with 2 of the 3 pulses visible at radio-frequencies and more importantly with the two gamma-ray pulses seen in the EGRET 100-1000 MeV pulse profile. The latter reduces now the random occurrence probability for the detected gamma-ray signal to ~ 1.E-6, which corresponds to a 4.9 sigma detection significance.Comment: 8 pages,7 figures, accepted for publication in Adv Sp Res: Proceedings of the 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly held in Housto

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