Deregulation of Lesotho's maize market

During the past year, there have been major policy reforms in Lesotho and South Africa with respect to maize pricing and marketing. In Lesotho the impact of deregulation on producers, consumers and government revenues was substantially lower than it should have been, and as a result Lesotho was not able to reap the full benefits of these changes. This is partly because information on the changes to the maize marketing system did not reach the potential beneficiaries of the new system. Free and easily accessible information is an essential element of a free market system. SACU countries must ensure the availability of information if they want to compete internationally.Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries,

Ideologie en die konstruksie van 'n landelike samelewing : 'n anthropologiese studie van die Hananwa van Blouberg

Text in AfrikaansDie verskillende pre-koloniale samelewings in suidelike-Afrika bet in die laat 18de en vroee 19de eeue reeds 'n herkenbaar moderne vorm begin aanneem, toe hulle identiteit deur koloniale intervensie 'gevries' is. Die verhouding wat met verloop van tyd tussen hierdie samelewings en die indringende koloniste ontwikkel het, is grotendeels gebaseer op persepsies en houdinge wat reeds sedert die 17de, 18de en veral die 19de eeu weens die kontak 'n definitiewe vorm begin aanneem het. Hierdie kan as 'n proses van historiese voorstelling ("historical imaging") beskryf word. In die proefskrif word die agtergrond van hierdie pre-koloniale samelewings geskets en die historiese ontstaan van een samelewing word as tersaaklike voorbeeld bespreek. Die verhoudinge wat plaaslik as gevolg van die proses van koloniale intervensie ontstaan bet, gee met verloop van tyd aanleiding tot die beleid van af sander like ontwikkeling, waarvan die toepassing oar 'n periode van nagenoeg 50 jaar in 'n groat mate bygedra het om die identiteit van hierdie besondere samelewing op 'n besonderse wyse te vorm. Om hierdie beleid van afsonderlike ontwikkeling suksesvol toe te pas, was daar vanaf die regering van die <lag vier mikpunte waaraan voldoen moes word. Dit is deur middel van wetgewing, oorreding en manipulering bewerkstellig. Die eerste mikpunt het die ontwikkeling van 'n afsonderlike politieke bestel vir die swartmense behels, sodat hulle op 'selfstandige' wyse beheer oar die 'state' wat vir hulle geskep sou word, kon uitoefen. Die tweede mikpunt was die daarstelling van 'n eie grondgebied waarbinne die iii mense saamgevoeg kon word en wat as basis sou dien vir die fisiese skeiding tussen swartmense en blankes. Die politieke mag wat vir hulle geskep is, sou net binne die grense van hierdie eie grondgebied uitgeleef kon word. Om die beleid suksesvol tot volvoering te kon bring, moes daar ook 'n strategie vir ekonomiese oorlewing gei'mplimenteer word. Die derde mikpunt was die ekonomiese self standigmaking van elk van die gebiede. Aangesien die grondgebied wat aan hierdie mense afgestaan is totaal onvoldoende was, moes daar verskillende strategiee ontwikkel word vir hul voortbestaan - enersyds deur die regering en andersyds deur die inwoners. Laastens sou al die mense binne 'n grondgebied tot 'n homogene eenheid saamgesnoer moes word. Daar is gevolglik gepoog om 'n eie identiteit vir die inwoners van elk van die gebiede te skep. Die strategie het grootliks op 'n etniese grondslag berus en was van sodanige aard dat dit die verskille tussen die groepe beklemtoon het. Die proses van die konstruksie van identiteit is aan die lig gebring deur navorsing wat onder die Hananwa, 'n Noord-Sotho-sprekende groep mense woonagtig in die weste van Noordelike Provinsie, gedoen is. Hierdie 'konstruksieproses' was egter nie eensydig nie en die Hananwa het, soos wat dit hulle gepas het, aktief daaraan deelgeneem. Die navorsingsproses het die toepassing van 'n multi-dissiplinere benadering behels, wat hoof saaklik van antropologiese, maar ook argeologiese en historiese metodologie gebruik gemaak het.The various pre-colonial societies of southern Africa emerged in a recognizable modern form during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when they were 'frozen' in their identities by colonial intervention. The relationships that developed with time between these societies and the colonial powers, were largely based upon perceptions and attitudes that developed since the 17th, 18th and especially the 19th centuries as a result of this contact. This latter process has been described as a process of historical imaging. In this thesis, the background to these pre-colonial societies is given and the historical development of one such society is discussed as a relevant example. The relationships that resulted locally because of this process of colonial intervention eventually gave rise to a policy of separate development, the implementation of which over a period of close to 50 years largely contributed to the creation of the identity of this particular society. As prerequisite for this policy to be successful, four aims that had to be successfully implemented were identified by the government of the day. This was done by means of legislation, persuasion and manipulation. The first aim was the development of a separate political system for black people, by which they could 'independently' govern themselves in the 'states' that were to be created for them. Secondly, for this political mechanism to work, it was necessary to establish a separate area or 'state', where the black people could live and govern themselves. The political power created for them could only be used within the v boundaries of these states. Furthermore, these states would also serve to separate whites and black people from each other. Thirdly, for this policy to work, it was necessary to develop a strategy for the economic survival of the people in these states. As the areas set aside for them were totally inadequate, a number of strategies were developed for their economic survival - on the one hand by the authorities and on the other hand by the inhabitants of these areas themselves. The last aim was to unite all the inhabitants within each of these states into one group. It was therefore tried to establish an identity or image for all the inhabitants of each of these areas. This strategy was largely based on ethnic principles, with particular emphasis on the differences between the various groups. This process of the construction of identity is discussed with reference to a specific society, known as the Hananwa, a Northern-Sotho-speaking people living in the west of the Northern Province. Amongst the Hananwa, this 'construction process' was not one-sided and they took an active part in it as it suited their particular need at a specific time. The research strategy was based on a multi-disciplinary approach that employed mainly anthropological methods, but also included archaeological and historical methodology.Anthropology and ArchaeologyD. Litt. et Phil. (Anthropology

Paraffin (kerosene) poisoning in childhood is prevention affordable in South Africa?

Paraffin (known in some Western countries as kerosene) ingestion is the most common form of acute childhood poisoning in most developing countries. South African black communities reflect a similar pattern, yet the true size and cost of the problem are not known. Without such baseline data the effect of interventions cannot be evaluated.The aim of the study was to determine the incidence and treatment cost of paraffin poisoning in the Cape Peninsula, to identify high-risk areas and to discuss which measures offered the most economical and best preventive potential for this paediatric hazard.A 12-month retrospective study was undertaken in 1990. Relevant patient data were extracted from the files of 6 major Cape Peninsula hospitals. Treatment costs were calculated based on differential hospital costs per inpatient per day, with outpatient costs at one-third of the costs per day. Age-specific rates for affected residential areas were calculated to identify high-risk areas. A total of 436 children (62,5% male), mostly between the ages of 12 and 36 months, were treated at an estimated cost of R111 673. This amount would have been sufficient to provide 95% of households in the 8 identified high-risk areas with child-resistant paraffin containers. In these areas age-specific paraffin poisoning rates ranged from 1,8/1 000 to 7,7/1 000. Strategically planned interventions can be cost-effective when weighed against the treatment cost of cases of paraffin poisoning

Ecological suitability modeling for anthrax in the Kruger National Park, South Africa

The spores of the soil-borne bacterium, Bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax are highly resistant to adverse environmental conditions. Under ideal conditions, anthrax spores can survive for many years in the soil. Anthrax is known to be endemic in the northern part of Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa (SA), with occasional epidemics spreading southward. The aim of this study was to identify and map areas that are ecologically suitable for the harboring of B. anthracis spores within the KNP. Anthrax surveillance data and selected environmental variables were used as inputs to the maximum entropy (Maxent) species distribution modeling method. Anthrax positive carcasses from 1988±2011 in KNP (n = 597) and a total of 40 environmental variables were used to predict and evaluate their relative contribution to suitability for anthrax occurrence in KNP. The environmental variables that contributed the most to the occurrence of anthrax were soil type, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and precipitation. Apart from the endemic Pafuri region, several other areas within KNP were classified as ecologically suitable. The outputs of this study could guide future surveillance efforts to focus on predicted suitable areas for anthrax, since the KNP currently uses passive surveillance to detect anthrax outbreaks.S1 Table. Worldclim variables used in Maxent model.S2 Table. Overview of environmental data used in Maxent indicating the variables, type of data and source.S1 Fig. Spatially unique cases of Bacillus anthracis and the predicted suitability for B. anthracis occurrence.S2 Fig. Twelve environmental variables used in the final Maxent model.http://www.plosone.orgam2018Production Animal StudiesVeterinary Tropical Disease

Google USM: Scaling Automatic Speech Recognition Beyond 100 Languages

We introduce the Universal Speech Model (USM), a single large model that performs automatic speech recognition (ASR) across 100+ languages. This is achieved by pre-training the encoder of the model on a large unlabeled multilingual dataset of 12 million (M) hours spanning over 300 languages, and fine-tuning on a smaller labeled dataset. We use multilingual pre-training with random-projection quantization and speech-text modality matching to achieve state-of-the-art performance on downstream multilingual ASR and speech-to-text translation tasks. We also demonstrate that despite using a labeled training set 1/7-th the size of that used for the Whisper model, our model exhibits comparable or better performance on both in-domain and out-of-domain speech recognition tasks across many languages.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 8 table

AudioPaLM: A Large Language Model That Can Speak and Listen

We introduce AudioPaLM, a large language model for speech understanding and generation. AudioPaLM fuses text-based and speech-based language models, PaLM-2 [Anil et al., 2023] and AudioLM [Borsos et al., 2022], into a unified multimodal architecture that can process and generate text and speech with applications including speech recognition and speech-to-speech translation. AudioPaLM inherits the capability to preserve paralinguistic information such as speaker identity and intonation from AudioLM and the linguistic knowledge present only in text large language models such as PaLM-2. We demonstrate that initializing AudioPaLM with the weights of a text-only large language model improves speech processing, successfully leveraging the larger quantity of text training data used in pretraining to assist with the speech tasks. The resulting model significantly outperforms existing systems for speech translation tasks and has the ability to perform zero-shot speech-to-text translation for many languages for which input/target language combinations were not seen in training. AudioPaLM also demonstrates features of audio language models, such as transferring a voice across languages based on a short spoken prompt. We release examples of our method at https://google-research.github.io/seanet/audiopalm/examplesComment: Technical repor

Controlling complexity: the clinical relevance of mouse complex genetics.

Experimental animal models are essential to obtain basic knowledge of the underlying biological mechanisms in human diseases. Here, we review major contributions to biomedical research and discoveries that were obtained in the mouse model by using forward genetics approaches and that provided key insights into the biology of human diseases and paved the way for the development of novel therapeutic approaches

Die betekenissfeer van die selfstandige naamwoord 'kneg' in die Psalms

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 1970.Full text to be digitised and attached to bibliographic record

The contacts of the Philistines and the Israelites in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C. : an archaeological and historical study

Thesis (D. Phil.) -- University of Stellenbosch, 1974.Full text to be digitised and attached to bibliographic record