Why Select and Remain in my University: Re-examining Higher Education in South Africa

Tertiary institutions have a major role in providing relevant education that best meets the needs of the various constituencies served. To meet these needs an assessment of factors that influence their choices becomes imperative. As a result of the governments' policy to transform higher education in South Africa and the challenges brought about by globalisation and internationalisation, tertiary institutions are facing new challenges. Attracting quality students in a highly competitive education environment is crucial as the numbers of students' dropping out especially call attention to wastage in government funding. This paper examines some of the criteria used by South-African students, when choosing or evaluating a tertiary institution. The main findings include a significant positive link among trust in management, satisfaction with transport, perception of readiness for change and overall satisfaction with the university. These variables have indirect relationship with satisfaction with transport and living arrangement of students. Practical implications, limitations and suggestions for future studies were articulated

Measuring Service Quality in South Africa Higher Education: Developing a Multidimensional Scale

Increased competition in the educational environment has contributed to the growing importance of service quality measurement at higher education institutions. This paper investigates aspects of service quality in higher education as a step towards developing a standardised scale for its measurement. Using structured questionnaires, survey data was collected from students (n = 391) from two South African universities. Findings indicate that the service quality in higher education scale is a multidimensional construct loading on 13 factors with reasonable reliability coefficient and some construct validity. Significant relationships were found among a number of study variables. Some further research directions were suggested and policy implications discussed

HESS J1825-137: A pulsar wind nebula associated with PSR B1823-13?

HESS J1825-137 was detected with a significance of 8.1 $\sigma$ in the Galactic Plane survey conducted with the H.E.S.S. instrument in 2004. Both HESS J1825-137 and the X-ray pulsar wind nebula G18.0--0.7 (associated with the Vela-like pulsar PSR B1823-13) are offset south of the pulsar, which may be the result of the SNR expanding into an inhomogeneous medium. The TeV size ($\sim 35$ pc, for a distance of 4 kpc) is $\sim 6$ times larger than the X-ray size, which may be the result of propagation effects as a result of the longer lifetime of TeV emitting electrons, compared to the relatively short lifetime of keV synchrotron emitting electrons. The TeV photon spectral index of $\sim 2.4$ can also be related to the extended PWN X-ray synchrotron photon index of $\sim 2.3$, if this spectrum is dominated by synchrotron cooling. The anomalously large size of the pulsar wind nebula can be explained if the pulsar was born with a relatively large initial spindown power and braking index $n\sim 2$, provided that the SNR expanded into the hot ISM with relatively low density ($\sim 0.003$ cm$^{-3}$).Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the Proc. of the 29th International Cosmic Ray Conference, OG Sessio

A Model of the Spectral Evolution of Pulsar Wind Nebulae

Recent observations suggest that many old pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) are bright TeV gamma-ray sources without a strong X-ray counterpart. In this paper, we study the spectral evolution of PWNe taking into account the energy which was injected when they were young for old PWNe. We model the evolution of the magnetic field and solve for the particle distribution inside a uniformly expanding PWN. The model is calibrated by fitting the calculated spectrum to the observations of the Crab Nebula at an age of a thousand years. We find that only a small fraction of the injected energy from the Crab Pulsar goes to the magnetic field, consistent with previous studies. The spectral evolution model of the Crab Nebula shows that the flux ratio of TeV gamma-rays to X-rays increases with time, which implies that old PWNe are faint at X-rays, but not at TeV gamma-rays. The increase of this ratio is primarily because the magnetic field decreases with time and is not because the X-ray emitting particles are cooled more rapidly than the TeV gamma-ray emitting particles. Our spectral evolution model matches the observed rate of the radio flux decrease of the Crab Nebula.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Proc. of the 2009 Fermi Symposium, Washington, DC, Nov 2-5; eConf Proceedings C09112

Development of Drum-Buffer-Rope scheduling software to support a “what if” approach to scheduling job shops

Thesis (MScEng (Industrial Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006.The Theory of Constraints is a management philosophy based on the underlying assumption that only a few constraining factors limit the throughput of the entire system. Drum-Buffer-Rope is the production logistical solution of the Theory of Constraints. It is the implementation of Constraints Management on the manufacturing shop floor, to manage physical resource constraints. Drum-Buffer-Rope was designed with the purpose of increasing Throughput, while simultaneously decreasing Inventory, and minimising Operating Expense. It aims to accomplish these goals by focusing on simplifying and therefore reducing variability in the production process, and ultimately protecting order due dates against disruptions. The dynamic conditions under which typical job shops operate can make Constraints Management of the resource constraints a cumbersome task. By following a “What If” approach to the scheduling process, the scheduler can play an interactive role in developing practical shop floor schedules. In this way the scheduler can see the results of his/her ideas on the shop floor situation quickly as immediate feedback is provided. The Drum-Buffer-Rope methodology only finite schedules certain points in the manufacturing process therefore scheduling calculations can be performed quickly if done in software. This makes it possible for the scheduler to analyse various scenarios in a short period of time and allowing the development of near optimal shop floor schedules by following a “What If” approach to scheduling. In this project, new developments in the field of Drum-Buffer-Rope were investigated, and the newly developed Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope methodology was researched. The methodologies were incorporated in a fully developed software package that uses Drum-Buffer- Rope or Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope to marry the intrinsic knowledge of the shop-floor worker with modern day computer technology to create production schedules that can be released to the shop floor. Schedules are created rapidly enough by the software to enable the scheduler to follow a “What If” approach to create near optimal shop floor schedules. The developed software was used with live data from a South African job shop to illustrate the “What If” approach to Simplified Drum-Buffer-Rope scheduling. The results show that throughput can be increased and operating expense decreased, therefore increasing bottom line results, by analysing various scenarios

The yellow hypergiants HR 8752 and rho Cassiopeiae near the evolutionary border of instability

High-resolution near-ultraviolet spectra of the yellow hypergiants HR 8752 and rho Cassiopeiae indicate high effective temperatures placing both stars near the T_eff border of the ``yellow evolutionary void''. At present, the temperature of HR 8752 is higher than ever. For this star we found Teff=7900+-200 K, whereas rho Cassiopeiae has Teff=7300+-200 K. Both, HR 8752 and rho Cassiopeiae have developed strong stellar winds with Vinf ~ 120 km/s and Vinf ~ 100 km/s, respectively. For HR 8752 we estimate an upper limit for the spherically symmetric mass-loss of 6.7X10^{-6}M_solar/yr. Over the past decades two yellow hypergiants appear to have approached an evolutionary phase, which has never been observed before. We present the first spectroscopic evidence of the blueward motion of a cool super/hypergiant on the HR diagram.Comment: 13 pages including 3 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Inclusive Quasi-Elastic Charged-Current Neutrino-Nucleus Reactions

The Quasi-Elastic (QE) contribution of the nuclear inclusive electron scattering model developed in Nucl. Phys. A627 (1997) 543 is extended to the study of electroweak Charged Current (CC) induced nuclear reactions, at intermediate energies of interest for future neutrino oscillation experiments. The model accounts for, among other nuclear effects, long range nuclear (RPA) correlations, Final State Interaction (FSI) and Coulomb corrections. Predictions for the inclusive muon capture in $^{12}$C and the reaction $^{12}$C $(\nu_\mu,\mu^-)X$ near threshold are also given. RPA correlations are shown to play a crucial role and their inclusion leads to one of the best existing simultaneous description of both processes, with accuracies of the order of 10-15% per cent for the muon capture rate and even better for the LSND measurement.Comment: 31 pages and 14 figures, accepted for publication as a regular article in Physical Review

Reputation and information drivers in student recruitment: comparing South African, Singaporean and Malaysian tertiary education

Higher education across the globe is facing various changes, including commercialisation, globalisation, funding restrictions and declining enrolment numbers; all translating in a higher level of competition. Attracting quality students in this highly competitive education environment is crucial as poor retention ratios is a reason for concern and government funding is consequently influenced adversely. This paper examined and compared criteria related to the importance of reputation and information to attract students in three different countries. Al three countries are in a sense, centres of education where education is recognised as a crucial driving force and the accessibility of education is politically important. The main findings amongst others are that the most important attributes for the South African sample was the academic reputation of the institution, while the Malaysian sample preferred the reputation of the study program. The Singaporean sample rated the marketing activities as priority. Significant differences with regard to these outcomes were measured between all three sample groups

Does emergency medicine training improve ECG interpretation skills in South Africa?

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 35-37).The aim of this study is to assess whether ECG interpretation improves with advancing years of Emergency Medicine training in South Africa, and to compare the results with similar international studies. A prospective cross-sectional study of Emergency Medicine registrars and recently qualified emergency physicians was conducted between August 2008 and February 2009 during training sessions at various universities through South Africa. Subjects completed a survey about level of training and experience, previous ECG training and their impression of the current training program and how it could be improved. They were then asked to interpret 10 clinically important ECGs. The trainees in their first and second years of emergency medicine training were compared to their more senior counterparts (third to fifth years)

Determination of the Night Sky Background around the Crab pulsar using its optical pulsation

The poor angular resolution of imaging gamma-ray telescopes is offset by the large reflector areas of next generation telescopes such as MAGIC (17~m diameter), which makes the study of optical emission associated with some gamma-ray sources feasible. Furthermore, the extremely fast time response of photomultipliers (PMs) makes them ideal detectors for fast (subsecond) optical transients and periodic sources like pulsars. The optical pulse of the Crab pulsar was detected with the HEGRA CT1 central pixel using a modified PM, similar to the future MAGIC camera PMs. The purpose of these periodic observations was to determine the light of the night sky (LONS) for the galactic anticenter Crab region.Our results are between 2.5 and 3 times larger than the previously measured LONS (outside the galactic plane), as expected since the Crab pulsar is in the galactic plane, which implies a slightly higher energy threshold for Crab observations, if the higher value of CT1 measured LONS rate for galactic sources is used.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, accepted by Astroparticle Physic