The threat against man and the reaction of the Christian - An economic viewpoint*

I refer here to the study on trade boycotts that I undertook on behalf of the Institute for the Advancement of Calvinism and on which this paper is largely based. When I have to discuss the subject of threatened man as seen from an economic angle, this theme would have been somewhat negative, should one not look further than the threat alone. Therefore it is more positive to discuss the challenges of present-day man. This remains my viewpoint throughout: View the economic phenomena realistically and identify the threat therein, but do not allow the threats of today ever to become more than the challenges of tomorrow and never forget — not only are there threats, but so also are there many more opportunities which we ought to avail ourselves of through our abilities

Leaderships Role In Effective Implementation Of School Discipline Policies

Discipline is an important aspect of the life of any school. Learning and teaching can only take place effectively in a disciplined environment. In South Africa, discipline policies might not have been effectively implemented due to inadequate sources, lack of commitment and training of school leaders. A qualitative research design was utilized for the investigation on which this article is based. The research consisted of two phases. First, group interviews were conducted with 27 B Ed Honours students; thereafter, individual interviews were conducted with a total of six students selected by purposive sampling. The results seem to suggest that the broader school community should be taken on board to ensure effective discipline policy implementation. The correct legal sources should furthermore be employed in the process of developing school policies. School leaders need thorough training for the development and implementation of discipline policies. Several measures are suggested for the effective introduction of disciplinary policies, among others, that school leadership should play a (more) active role; specifically the principals of schools should be willing to share their knowledge on the implementation of school disciplinary policies with other members of the school leadership

From trauma debriefing to trauma support: a South African experience of responding to individuals and communities in the aftermath of traumatising events

This paper documents the approach and experience of Traumaclinic, a Cape Town based organisation offering a trauma support service. The controversy over single session debriefing interventions is examined and it is concluded that interventions that invite intense emotional expression should not be offered indiscriminately or forced on those who do not want them. When they do occur, they need to be carefully managed and take place over several sessions. A review of contemporary approaches to intervention following trauma highlights their comprehensive and flexible nature and the inclusion of multiple components that are introduced in a manner responsive to the needs of the situation. This is the basis of the current model used by Traumaclinic. The principles of that model are summarised and examples given of the application of the approach to specific cases

Context-aware support for cardiac health monitoring using federated machine learning

Context-awareness provides a platform for healthcare professionals to assess the health status of patients in their care using multiple relevant parameters such as heart rate, electrocardiogram (ECG) signals and activity data. It involves the use of digital technologies to monitor the health condition of a patient in an intelligent environment. Feedback gathered from relevant professionals at earlier stages of the project indicates that physical activity recognition is an essential part of cardiac condition monitoring. However, the traditional machine learning method f developing a model for activity recognition suffers two significant challenges; model overfitting and privacy infringements. This research proposes an intelligent and privacy-oriented context-aware decision support system for cardiac health monitoring using the physiological and the activity data of the patient. The system makes use of a federated machine learning approach to develop a model for physical activity recognition. Experimental analysis shows that the federated approach has advantages over the centralized approach in terms of model generalization whilst maintaining the privacy of the user

ADAPT: Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT

People with asthma have heterogeneous triggers and symptoms, which they need to be aware of in order to implement the strategies to manage their condition. Context-aware reasoning has the potential to provide the personalisation that is required to address the heterogeneity of asthma by helping people to define the information that is relevant considering the characteristics of their condition and delivering services based on this information. This research work proposes the Approach to Develop context-Aware solutions for Personalised asthma managemenT (ADAPT), whose aim is to facilitate the creation of solutions allowing the required customisation to address the heterogeneity of asthma. ADAPT is the result of the constant interaction with people affected by asthma throughout the research project, which was possible to achieve thanks to the collaboration formed with the Centre for Applied Research of Asthma UK. ADAPT context dimensions facilitate the development of preventive and reactive features that can be configured depending on the characteristics of the person with asthma. The approach also provides support to people not knowing their triggers through case-based reasoning and includes virtual assistant as a complementing technology supporting asthma management. ADAPT is validated by people with asthma, carers and experts in respiratory conditions, who evaluated a mobile application that was built based on the approach

Transition to subcritical turbulence in a tokamak plasma

Tokamak turbulence, driven by the ion-temperature gradient and occurring in the presence of flow shear, is investigated by means of local, ion-scale, electrostatic gyrokinetic simulations (with both kinetic ions and electrons) of the conditions in the outer core of the Mega-Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST). A parameter scan in the local values of the ion-temperature gradient and flow shear is performed. It is demonstrated that the experimentally observed state is near the stability threshold and that this stability threshold is nonlinear: sheared turbulence is subcritical, i.e. the system is formally stable to small perturbations, but, given a large enough initial perturbation, it transitions to a turbulent state. A scenario for such a transition is proposed and supported by numerical results: close to threshold, the nonlinear saturated state and the associated anomalous heat transport are dominated by long-lived coherent structures, which drift across the domain, have finite amplitudes, but are not volume filling; as the system is taken away from the threshold into the more unstable regime, the number of these structures increases until they overlap and a more conventional chaotic state emerges. Whereas this appears to represent a new scenario for transition to turbulence in tokamak plasmas, it is reminiscent of the behaviour of other subcritically turbulent systems, e.g. pipe flows and Keplerian magnetorotational accretion flows.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, accepted to Journal of Plasma Physic

Context-aware system for cardiac condition monitoring and management: a survey

Health monitoring assists physicians in the decision-making process, which in turn, improves quality of life. As technology advances, the usage and applications of context-aware systems continue to spread across different areas in patient monitoring and disease management. It provides a platform for healthcare professionals to assess the health status of patients in their care using multiple relevant parameters. In this survey, we consider context-aware systems proposed by researchers for health monitoring and management. More specifically, we investigate different technologies and techniques used for cardiac condition monitoring and management. This paper also propose "mCardiac", an enhanced context-aware decision support system for cardiac condition monitoring and management during rehabilitation

Context-aware approach for cardiac rehabilitation monitoring

As technology advances, the usage and applications of context-aware systems continue to spread across different areas in patient monitoring and disease management. It provides a platform for healthcare professionals to assess the health status of patients in their care using multiple relevant parameters. Existing technologies for cardiac patient monitoring are generally based on the physiological information, mostly the heart rate or Electrocardiogram(ECG) Signals. Other important factors such as physical activities and time of the day are usually ignored. We propose a context-aware solution for cardiac rehabilitation monitoring using multiple vital signs from the physiological and activity data of the patient. This research considers the activity of the patient alongside the time of the activity to facilitate physicians decision-making process. We provide a personalised physical activity recognition processing by generating a personalised model for each user. A prototype is presented to illustrate our proposed approach