Die aanspreeklikheid van die lede van ’n bestuursraad en die administrateurs van aftreefondse

The liability for the non-compliance with fiduciary and statutory duties towards a retirement fund and the members or beneficiaries of such a fund is in many ways not clear for the members of the board or the third party administrator. The question that must be answered is under which circumstances the members of the board or the third party administrator will be held liable? This question is discussed in this article with reference to the duties prescribed by law as well as the determinations made by the adjudicator. The determinations of the adjudicator, although they do not constitute binding precedent, provide clear guidelines for the circumstances under which the different parties may be held liable

The cholera epidemic in South Africa, 1980 - 1987 Epidemiological features

During the cholera epidemic in South Africa, 1980-1987, 25251 cases of cholera were bacteriologically proven. The case-fatality rate was 1,4%. Outbreaks occurred in the summer rainfall season. Age-specific aUack rates followed the pattern typically found during the 'epidemic phase' of the disease in most years. The vast majority of patients were black South Africans living in rural areas with an average annual rainfall in excess of 600 mm. The containment strategy employed is summarised. Despite the apparent eradication of the disease, it is strongly recommended that vigilance should be maintained and investigations of all possible sources of infection and all human contacts of any new proven case should be carried out speedily and thoroughly

Die predikant: dienaar van Godof net \'n gewone werknemer?

This article examines the nature of the relationship between the minister and his/her congregation in the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. Is the minister in the service of God, or is he/she in the service of the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Synod of the relevant province concerned, or the Presbytery within which the congregation falls, or is he/she merely an employee of his congregation? The church ordinance is examined against the background of three relatively recent directional judgements of the courts, and a comparison is drawn between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Anglican Church. It is concluded that the minister is not only a servant of God, but also an employee in the service of the congregation.Acta Theologica Vol. 2 2007: pp. 63-9

Incorporating structured text retrieval into the extended Boolean model

Conventional information retrieval models are inappropriate for use in databases containing semi-structured biographical data. A hybrid algorithm that effectively addresses many of the problems in searching biographical databases is presented in this article. An overview of applicable structured text retrieval algorithms is given, with focus specifically on the tree matching model. Small adaptations to the Extended Boolean Model, to make it more applicable to biographical databases, are described. The adaptation of tree matching models to the hierarchical nature of data in a person record is described and a distance function between query and record is defined. A hybrid model between the Extended Boolean Model and the adapted Tree Matching Model is then presented. A fast ranking algorithm appropriate for general searches and a more effective (but more resource intensive) algorithm for more advanced searches is given. It is shown how dates can be incorporated in the hybrid model to create a more powerful search algorithm. The hybrid algorithm can be used to rank records in descending order of relevance to a user's query

Baseline chest radiographic features of HIV-infected children eligible for antiretroviral therapy

Background. South Africa’s HIV mortality is primarily due to pulmonary disease. No evidence exists regarding a correlation between specific chest radiographic patterns and CD4 levels of immunity in HIV-infected children.Objectives. We aimed to determine the prevalence of specific radiographic features in HIV-infected children initiating antiretroviral therapy (ART) to develop a guideline of expected baseline radiographic appearances, and the radiographic features that predominate at specific levels of immune suppression (defined by CD4 percentage ranges), which would narrow the radiological differential diagnosis.Method. Retrospective review of the baseline chest radiographs of 92 consecutive paediatric outpatients initiating ART.Results. Normal radiographs were reported in 54% of patients. Those with radiographic abnormalities had parenchymal disease (34%), mediastinal disease (22%) and pleural disease (1%). Parenchymal disease was predominantly air space (28%), and mediastinal disease was predominantly cardiomegaly (21%); lymphadenopathy was rare (1%). Radiological appearances of TB were seen in 9% of patients. A statistically significant association was shown between immune suppression and air space disease (p=0.049) with a relative risk of 0.46 (95% CI 0.24 - 0.88) for air space disease in immune-suppressed children. This association was independent of age.Conclusion. Baseline chest radiographs in paediatric outpatients presenting for initiation of ART are predominantly normal, but also demonstrate a significant number of pathological radiological features – primarily air space disease and cardiomegaly. The only statistically significant association between radiographic features and immune suppression was air space disease, which correlated with a higher level of immunity.S Afr Med J 2011;101:829-834

Complete moduli of cubic threefolds and their intermediate Jacobians

The intermediate Jacobian map, which associates to a smooth cubic threefold its intermediate Jacobian, does not extend to the GIT compactification of the space of cubic threefolds, not even as a map to the Satake compactification of the moduli space of principally polarized abelian fivefolds. A much better "wonderful" compactification of the space of cubic threefolds was constructed by the first and fourth authors --- it has a modular interpretation, and divisorial normal crossing boundary. We prove that the intermediate Jacobian map extends to a morphism from the wonderful compactification to the second Voronoi toroidal compactification of the moduli of principally polarized abelian fivefolds --- the first and fourth author previously showed that it extends to the Satake compactification. Since the second Voronoi compactification has a modular interpretation, our extended intermediate Jacobian map encodes all of the geometric information about the degenerations of intermediate Jacobians, and allows for the study of the geometry of cubic threefolds via degeneration techniques. As one application we give a complete classification of all degenerations of intermediate Jacobians of cubic threefolds of torus rank 1 and 2.Comment: 56 pages; v2: multiple updates and clarification in response to detailed referee's comment

Seksuele teistering in die werkplek: ’n Suid-Afrikaanse perspektief

Sexual harassment in the workplace is a grave problem and it significantly impedes on a person’s entrance into many sectors of the wage labour market. The number of sexual harassment complaints increases dramatically every year, although researchers estimate that 80 to 90% of sexual harassment cases go unreported. Despite the high figures, few South African court cases and legal literature deal with sexual harassment. The reason for this is that few persons who are harassed report a case for fear that they will lose their jobs or that they will become sources of ridicule.Sexual harassment is an infringement upon a person’s personality and thus an iniurandi. The South African Constitution determines that there shall not be discriminated against any person and that includes a person’s right to work without harassment and discrimination. It is therefore necessary that all employers ensure a safe environment without discrimination for all employees. Employers must adopt a policy on sexual harassment, communicate it to all employees and ensure that the policy be adhered to. If harassment does take place, the procedure and disciplinary process prescribed in the policy must be enforced

An evaluation of substring algorithms that determine similarity between surnames

The problem investigated in this study is, given a surname, determine similar surnames in a genealogical database. There exist a number of algorithms to determine the similarity between two strings based on their common substrings. The surnames in an existing genealogical database were used in an evaluation process to determine the relative success of these algorithms. The methods used to evaluate the performance of the algorithms and the algorithms are discussed briefly

Alkali ratio control for lead-free piezoelectric thin films utilizing elemental diffusivities in RF plasma

High performance piezoelectric thin films are generally lead-based, and find applications in sensing, actuation and transduction in the realms of biology, nanometrology, acoustics and energy harvesting. Potassium sodium niobate (KNN) is considered to be the most promising lead-free alternative, but it is hindered by the inability to control and attain perfect stoichiometry materials in the thin film form while using practical large area deposition techniques. In this work, we identify the contribution of the elemental diffusivities in the radio frequency (RF) plasma in determining the alkali loss in the KNN thin films. We have also examined the effect of the substrate temperature during the RF magnetron sputtering deposition on the crystal structure of the substrate and KNN thin films, as well as the effect of the postannealing treatments. These results indicate the need for well-designed source materials and the potential to use the deposition partial pressure to alter the dopant concentrations

Density functional study of the actinide nitrides

The full potential all electron linearized augmented plane wave plus local orbitals (FP-LAPW + lo) method, as implemented in the suite of software WIEN2K, has been used to systematically investigate the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the actinide compounds AnN (An = Ac, Th, Pa, U, Np, Pu, Am). The theoretical formalism used is the generalized gradient approximation to density functional theory (GGA-DFT) with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange-correlation functional. Each compound has been studied at six levels of theory: non-magnetic (NM), non-magnetic with spin-orbit coupling (NM+SOC), ferromagnetic (FM), ferromagnetic with spin-orbit coupling (FM+SOC), anti-ferromagnetic (AFM), and anti-ferromagnetic with spin-orbit coupling (AFM+SOC). The structural parameters, bulk moduli, densities of states, and charge distributions have been computed and compared to available experimental data and other theoretical calculations published in the literature. The total energy calculations indicate that the lowest energy structures of AcN, ThN, and PaN are degenerate at the NM+SOC, FM+SOC, and AFM+SOC levels of theory with vanishing total magnetic moments in the FM+SOC and AFM+SOC cases, making the ground states essentially non-magnetic with spin-orbit interaction. The ground states of UN, NpN, PuN, and AmN are found to be FM+SOC at the level of theory used in the present computations. The nature of the interactions between the actinide metals and nitrogen atom, and the implications on 5f electron delocalization and localization are discussed in detail.Comment: 5 tables, 12 figure