Scholarly communication: The quest for Pasteur's Quadrant

The scholarly communication system is sustained by its functions of a) registration, b) certification or legitimization, c) dissemination and awareness d) archiving or curation and e) reward. These functions have remained stable during the development of scholarly communication but the means through which they are achieved have not. It has been a long journey from the days when scientists communicated primarily through correspondence. The impact of modern-day technological changes is significant and has destabilized the scholarly communication system to some extent because many more options have become available to communicate scholarly information with. Pasteur's Quadrant was articulated by Donald E Stokes in his book Pasteur's Quadrant Basic Science and Technological Innovation. It is the idea that basic science (as practiced by Niels Bohr) and applied science (as exemplified by Thomas Edison) can be brought together to create a synergy that will produce results of significant benefit, as Louis Pasteur did. Given the theory (fundamental understanding) we have of scholarly communication and given how modern-day technological advances can be applied, a case can be made that use-inspired basic research (Pasteur's Quadrant) should be the focus for current research in scholarly communication. In doing so the different types of digital scholarly resources and their characteristics must be investigated to determine how the fundamentals of scholarly communication are being supported. How libraries could advocate for and contribute to the improvement of scholarly communication is also noted. These resources could include: e-journals, repositories, reviews, annotated content, data, pre -print and working papers servers, blogs, discussion forums, professional and academic hubs

Extremal Problems in Minkowski Space related to Minimal Networks

We solve the following problem of Z. F\"uredi, J. C. Lagarias and F. Morgan [FLM]: Is there an upper bound polynomial in $n$ for the largest cardinality of a set S of unit vectors in an n-dimensional Minkowski space (or Banach space) such that the sum of any subset has norm less than 1? We prove that |S|\leq 2n and that equality holds iff the space is linearly isometric to \ell^n_\infty, the space with an n-cube as unit ball. We also remark on similar questions raised in [FLM] that arose out of the study of singularities in length-minimizing networks in Minkowski spaces.Comment: 6 pages. 11-year old paper. Implicit question in the last sentence has been answered in Discrete & Computational Geometry 21 (1999) 437-44

Health Care Provider Choice

In order to achieve an ‘optimal health system’ health policies should not only be focused on the supply of health care, but also take cognisance of the demand for health care. Studies of health care demand in South Africa are scarce due to considerable data limitations. This analysis attempts to fill this gap by combining two data sets (specifically, the GHS 2004 and IES/LFS 2000) in order to be able to utilize the wealth of information regarding health care utilization in the General Household Survey. The aim is to inform and encourage debate on how to incorporate demand side considerations in order to arrive at improved public health care in South Africa.health care, demand for health, combining data sets, South Africa

Have pro-poor health policies improved the targeting of spending and the effective delivery of health care in South Africa?

Since 1994 there have been a number of radical changes in the public health care system in South Africa. Budgets have been reallocated, decision making was decentralised, the clinic network was expanded and user fees for primary health care were abolished. The paper examines how these recent changes have affected the incidence of spending and the accessibility and quality of health care. The paper finds that between 1995 and 2003 there have been advances in the pro-poor spending incidence of both clinics and hospitals. The increased share of the health budget allocated to the more pro-poor clinic services has contributed further to the improvement in the targeting of overall health spending. Also, it appears that the elimination of user fees for clinics and the expansion of the clinic network have helped to make health services more affordable and geographically accessible to the poor and were associated with a notable rise in health service utilisation for individuals in the bottom two expenditure quintiles. South Africa’s spending on clinics and hospitals is well targeted and more progressive than other developing country public health systems. Unfortunately, it appears that to a considerable extent this result is driven by perceptions that services offered in public hospitals and clinics are of a low and variable quality. These perceptions seem to be encouraging most of those who can afford to pay more for health services to opt out of the public health system, thereby increasing the pro-poor incidence of public health spending. Complaints by users of public health facilities include long waiting times, staff rudeness and problems with drug availability. Dissatisfaction with health services is significantly higher in the public sector than in the private sector and the gap has expanded slightly over time. It is consequently not surprising that a substantial and increasing share of individuals – also including the very poorest – prefer to consult private providers.fiscal incidence, South Africa, health

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