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

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

Institutionalizing diversity and inclusion engaged marketing (DIEM) for multicultural marketplace wellbeing

Within an institutional theory framework, this paper identifies three interconnected fields of the marketing institution – research, education, and practice – that contribute to advancing the diversity and inclusion discourse in promoting multicultural marketplace wellbeing. Conducting three studies, one in each field and across contexts in three continents, we identify barriers that inhibit effective implementation of diversity and inclusion initiatives in today’s multicultural marketplaces. These barriers exist within and across fields and pertain to cultural-cognitive (shared meanings), normative (normative factors), and regulatory (rules and systems) pillars supporting the existence or transformation of institutions. From our research findings, we provide specific guidance for institutional work within marketing’s fields and policy developments needed to advance diversity and inclusion engaged marketing (DIEM) for enhancing multicultural marketplace wellbeing

Triangle-Free Penny Graphs: Degeneracy, Choosability, and Edge Count

We show that triangle-free penny graphs have degeneracy at most two, list coloring number (choosability) at most three, diameter $D=\Omega(\sqrt n)$, and at most $\min\bigl(2n-\Omega(\sqrt n),2n-D-2\bigr)$ edges.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. To appear at the 25th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017

Ethical and practical issues to consider in the governance of genomic and human research data and data sharing in South Africa: a meeting report

Genomic research and biobanking has undergone exponential growth in Africa and at the heart of this research is the sharing of biospecimens and associated clinical data amongst researchers in Africa and across the world. While this move towards open science is progressing, there has been a strengthening internationally of data protection regulations that seek to safeguard the rights of data subjects while promoting the movement of data for the benefit of research. In line with this global shift, many jurisdictions in Africa are introducing data protection regulations, but there has been limited consideration of the regulation of data sharing for genomic research and biobanking in Africa. South Africa (SA) is one country that has sought to regulate the international sharing of data and has enacted the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) 2013 that will change the governance and regulation of data in SA, including health research data, once it is in force. To identify and discuss challenges and opportunities in the governance of data sharing for genomic and health research data in SA, a two-day meeting was convened in February 2019 in Cape Town, SA with over 30 participants with expertise in law, ethics, genomics and biobanking science, drawn from academia, industry, and government. This report sets out some of the key challenges identified during the workshop and the opportunities and limitations of the current regulatory framework in SA

Experimental inoculation of plants and animals with Ebola virus.

Thirty-three varieties of 24 species of plants and 19 species of vertebrates and invertebrates were experimentally inoculated with Ebola Zaire virus. Fruit and insectivorous bats supported replication and circulation of high titers of virus without necessarily becoming ill; deaths occurred only among bats that had not adapted to the diet fed in the laboratory

Similarities between lions and sympatric carnivores in diel activity, size and morphology

Temporal separation in diel activity between species can be caused either by different realized niches or by competition avoidance. Morphologically similar species tend to have similar ecological niches. Therefore, morphological similarities among sympatric species may be related to both overlap in diel activity and possibilities for competition. In carnivores, competition is often strong and asymmetric. Africa contains one of the most species rich carnivore assemblages in the world, where the African lion (Panthera leo) is dominant wherever it is present. Using camera trap data on South African carnivores, we evaluated how overlap with lions in diel activity related to similarities to lions in body mass, skull and long bone morphology. We found a positive association between overlap in diel activity with lions and similarities in log body mass, but we only observed this association using dry season activity data. We found no associations between overlap in diel activity with lions and similarities in either long bone or skull morphology, nor did we find associations between differences in overlap in diel activity within species between one reserve with and one without lions and morphological similarity with lions. Our results suggest that niche utilization rather than avoidance of lions dictated carnivore diel activity, although we acknowledge that lion avoidance could have been manifested in spatial rather than temporal separation. Our study supports recent suggestions of context dependencies in the effects of apex predator presences

Bounding Helly numbers via Betti numbers

We show that very weak topological assumptions are enough to ensure the existence of a Helly-type theorem. More precisely, we show that for any non-negative integers $b$ and $d$ there exists an integer $h(b,d)$ such that the following holds. If $\mathcal F$ is a finite family of subsets of $\mathbb R^d$ such that $\tilde\beta_i\left(\bigcap\mathcal G\right) \le b$ for any $\mathcal G \subsetneq \mathcal F$ and every $0 \le i \le \lceil d/2 \rceil-1$ then $\mathcal F$ has Helly number at most $h(b,d)$. Here $\tilde\beta_i$ denotes the reduced $\mathbb Z_2$-Betti numbers (with singular homology). These topological conditions are sharp: not controlling any of these $\lceil d/2 \rceil$ first Betti numbers allow for families with unbounded Helly number. Our proofs combine homological non-embeddability results with a Ramsey-based approach to build, given an arbitrary simplicial complex $K$, some well-behaved chain map $C_*(K) \to C_*(\mathbb R^d)$.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

On the multiple Borsuk numbers of sets

The Borsuk number of a set S of diameter d >0 in Euclidean n-space is the smallest value of m such that S can be partitioned into m sets of diameters less than d. Our aim is to generalize this notion in the following way: The k-fold Borsuk number of such a set S is the smallest value of m such that there is a k-fold cover of S with m sets of diameters less than d. In this paper we characterize the k-fold Borsuk numbers of sets in the Euclidean plane, give bounds for those of centrally symmetric sets, smooth bodies and convex bodies of constant width, and examine them for finite point sets in the Euclidean 3-space.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure