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Due to an increasing demand, companies have started producing recycled products. However, little is known about the specific purchase behavior. Hence, this study analyses the factors influencing purchase intention for recycled products including differences related to different types of products and between Germany and South Africa. A quantitative study in Germany (n = 603) and South Africa (n = 692). shows that purchase intention is significantly higher in South Africa. The influencing factors (individual, product, and context related constructs) are the same in both countries, but they differ regarding their strength. Thus, the factor "attitude/environmental concern" has the strongest influence in South Africa, while it is "value/accessibility" in Germany. Furthermore, purchase intention for mobile phones is generally smaller than for t‐shirts and toilet paper. Purchase intention for recycled t‐shirts is significantly higher in South Africa than in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 8th of May 2019, South African citizens in all nine provinces were granted with the opportunity to elect their preferred political party into power. Over million people exercised their right through a ballot voting system for political parties of their choice. However, not every citizen was satisfied with how the election process was coordinated and facilitated particularly in certain areas. This is triggered by the fact that rumors were circulating in various social media platforms imparting that some of the eligible voters were accused of multiple voting while some of the ballot papers were found outside certain voting stations. The paper requests the South African government to introduce an e‐voting system as a means to prevent the above‐mentioned challenges that are associated with the manual voting system. Consequently, using the diffusion of innovation theory, this paper argues that e‐voting system has several pros that may strengthen the credibility of elections by reducing the risk of double voting and spoilt ballot papers and it also acknowledge the 4IR as an advanced system to complement and be integrated into the e‐voting system to be more effective. The aim of this paper was achieved through the use of desktop content analysis approach to reflect on the pros and cons with specific focus to both e‐voting and manual system. The paper examined the pitfalls associated with the ballot voting system. In conclusion, some of the challenges that emerged in the 2019 general elections could be resolved through the adoption of e‐voting system in the long‐run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) in the context of limited resources will require prioritising the most vulnerable and ensuring health policies and services are responsive to their needs. One way of addressing this is through the engagement of marginalised voices in the priority setting process. Public engagement approaches that enable group level deliberation as well as individual level preference capturing might be valuable in this regard, but there are limited examples of their practical application, and gaps in understanding their outcomes, especially with rural populations. Objective: To address this gap, we implemented a modified priority setting tool (Choosing All Together—CHAT) that enables individuals and groups to make trade‐offs to demonstrate the type of health services packages that may be acceptable to a rural population. The paper presents the findings from the individual choices as compared to the group choices, as well as the differences among the individual choices using this tool. Methods: Participants worked in groups and as individuals to allocate stickers representing the available budget to different health topics and interventions using the CHAT tool. The allocations were recorded at each stage of the study. We calculated the median and interquartile range across study participants for the topic totals. To examine differences in individual choices, we performed Wilcoxon rank sum tests. Results: The results show that individual interests were mostly aligned with societal ones, and there were no statistically significant differences between the individual and group choices. However, there were some statistically significant differences between individual priorities based on demographic characteristics like age. Discussion: The study demonstrates that giving individuals greater control and agency in designing health services packages can increase their participation in the priority setting process, align individual and community priorities, and potentially enhance the legitimacy and acceptability of priority setting. Methods that enable group level deliberation and individual level priority setting may be necessary to reconcile plurality. The paper also highlights the importance of capturing the details of public engagement processes and transparently reporting on these details to ensure valuable outcomes. Public Contribution: The facilitator of the CHAT groups was a member from the community and underwent training from the research team. The fieldworkers were also from the community and were trained and paid to capture the data. The participants were all members of the rural community‐ the study represents their priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time‐to‐detection (TTD) occupancy models are increasingly used to study site occupancy of organisms. Occupancy is a reduced representation of abundance (distinguishing only between 0 and >0 individuals), which is also often a quantity of interest. In this paper, we present a novel framework for TTD occupancy models that address limitations of existing approaches. Our approach incorporates factors that accommodate detection heterogeneity among sites/visits and inter‐visit dependency, allowing for the relaxation of some restrictive assumptions inherent in previous models. As a result, our framework offers a robust and versatile tool for analysing various ecological data sets.We employ a maximum likelihood approach to estimate model parameters and conduct inference for the proposed TTD occupancy models. A key feature of these models is the introduction of a community parameter. This parameter characterizes the similarity of detectabilities, ranging from complete independence to complete identity, across multiple site visits. This framework disentangles the detection rate, abundance and occupancy, similar to the popular N‐mixture model. For situations where abundance estimation is not the primary goal, a family of mixed gamma exponential TTD models is developed, which generally exhibit more stable numerical properties compared to N‐mixture type TTD models.The performance of the proposed models and some reduced models is evaluated through simulation studies. The results indicate that the N‐mixture TTD model tends to considerably overestimate the occupancy probability when the community parameter is less than one, a condition necessary to satisfy the strict closure population assumption. On the other hand, the standard exponential TTD occupancy model underestimates the occupancy probability in the presence of unobserved detection heterogeneity and inter‐visit dependency. An analysis of 63 bird species in the Karoo region of South Africa demonstrates the enhanced flexibility of the proposed TTD occupancy models for data fitting.This paper demonstrates the importance of employing more flexible and general models to accurately capture the complexities of ecological systems or survey data. We provide R‐code to fit all considered models to data. The proposed TTD model framework contributes to enhancing our understanding of species occupancy distributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Settlement categorisation differs tremendously between countries making their cross‐comparison, globally, close to impossible. In 2012, the United Nations (UN) proposed a manner in which settlements within its member states could be classified. However, the proposed typology is rather broad and does not offer much on how settlements are classified. Consequently, this paper explored how settlements in South Africa (one of the UN member states) have been categorised, as it is believed that at the least settlements should be categorised consistently within a particular country. This paper conducted an explorative literature review in order to uncover how settlements have been classified in South Africa between 1993 and 2016 in order to draw deduction on the typology of settlements in South Africa. Findings were drawn through a comparative analysis of the literature in order to determine if there was consistency in the understanding of how settlements are classified within the country. The paper found that the categorisation of settlements within South Africa has been a rather contentious matter and the method of classification being fickle in its application. The paper calls for a more structured approach to categorising settlements within the country and pose spatial considerations for other countries dealing with similar issues. Future research in this regard should be considered in order to understand the application of settlement typologies in the quest of a uniform classification as envisioned by the UN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predatory publishers charge fees to authors for open access publishing but have limited peer review or other quality controls. In this paper, we use data from five of the most widely used predatory journals used by South African academics in Economic and Management sciences to show that predatory publications are widespread in Economics departments in South African universities. We also critique the Department of Higher Education and Training's research publication subsidy system and highlight that several journals on the DHET accredited journal list, that South African academic economists publish in, are probable predatory journals. In improving the data on predatory publications in South African Economic and Management Sciences used by de Jager et al (2017), we show that approximately 50% of predatory publications by South African academic economists are authored by professors or associate professors, a finding which corroborates international evidence on predatory publications in Economics. Our paper is also a source of information on the quality of research produced by South African economics departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa is a globally significant player in the titanium raw mineral production industry but does not play a large role in its downstream mineral processing. Since downstream activities generate much higher value added, the government has sought to support the end‐to‐end titanium value chain to capture more value from raw titanium before export through 'beneficiation'‐related policies. This paper applies the input–output product space methodology to generate an overview of those sub‐sectors within the titanium value chain that are likely to support long‐term economic growth in South Africa. We then evaluate whether the selected global value chain activities are supported by the current industrial policy and/or whether a focus on currently excluded global value chain activities is recommended. Our results confirm that although beneficiation appears to make sense in the titanium industry in South Africa, it should (from a product space perspective) be applied neither automatically nor sequentially moving down the value chain. The paper concludes with the shortcomings of the approach and various avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ways to increase the participation and penetration of renewable energy resources is to bring down the cost of these abundant resources for easy implementation and affordability. In this paper, a generalized reduced gradient (GRG) non‐linear optimization algorithm is implemented to solve a tri‐objective optimal design and sizing of a low‐cost hybrid mix consisting of a photovoltaic (PV) power plant, biomass power plant (BPP), and battery energy system for water pumping load applications in the University of Johannesburg, South Africa considering four different hybrids of biomass‐battery, PV‐battery, PV‐biomass, and PV‐biomass‐battery. The optimization model considers available energy and battery state of charge while minimizing least cost of energy (LCOE), carbon dioxide emission (tCO2eq), and loss of power supply probability (LPSP) including carbon tax incentive and penalty. The results when compared against particle swarm optimization (PSO) show the superiority of GRG over PSO with an optimal combination of PV‐biomass‐battery mix with optimal size of the PV power plant as 360.50 kW, the BPP 181.08 kW, and the battery size of 6,553.60 kWh giving a minimal optimal LCOE, CO2 emission and LPSP of 0.018 $/kWhr (with carbon tax), and 0.016 $/kWhr (without carbon tax), 28,067.73tCO2eq tCO2eq, and 1.7%, respectively. These values give a competitive advantage compared to the unit cost and values of CO2 emission and LPSP currently in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: COVID‐19 necessitated emergency telepractice for student‐led speech‐language therapy clinical practicals in training institutions, with limited preparation and evidence‐based guidelines. Beyond the pandemic, practitioners and university training sites are likely to continue to offer telepractice necessitating thorough preparation for telepractice services underpinned by a comprehensive understanding of the complexities involved in online therapy. Aims: Adopting realist evaluation principles, our aim in this paper was to explore broadly what works and does not work in a set of student‐led telepractice sessions in a diverse, resource‐limited context. The broader goal of this project was to provide evidence‐based support to enhance the efficiency and success of telepractice sessions in student clinical training contexts. Methods & Procedures: We used qualitative observational methods with reflexive thematic analysis to analyse 28 video recordings and 61 observation notes of student‐led paediatric telepractice sessions from a South African university clinic as part of a pilot study. Outcomes & Results: We identified four overarching considerations for student‐led telepractice: (1) additional, specific preparation is required, (2) with greater management of technology and adaptation of tasks, especially during times of poor connectivity; (3) telepractice relies heavily on caregiver input and collaboration; and (4) promoting engagement online, holding a client's attention, building rapport and offering reinforcement are critical skills that are complicated by the lack of face‐to‐face contact. Conclusions & Implications: Our findings indicate that telepractice pedagogy needs to be explicitly taught and students require practical assistance as they learn how to use this service delivery approach effectively. There are some aspects peculiar to telepractice that require unique consideration and planning, especially in contexts where service providers and users may be unfamiliar with this form of service provision. The findings of this pilot study can be used by clinical educators and student clinicians to enhance clinical training opportunities involving telepractice. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject: Many speech‐language therapy (SLT) student clinicians had to transition quickly to telepractice service provision during COVID‐19 with limited existing guidelines and support, especially in contexts where teletherapy is typically non‐existent or difficult to access. Although there is some literature available on experiences of telepractice, there is very little evidence‐based research which explores the mechanics of such sessions in real‐time and which offers practical support to student clinicians and clinical educators engaging in this mode of service delivery. What this study adds: This pilot study examined video‐recorded, student‐led, paediatric, speech‐language teletherapy sessions to understand challenges and considerations involved in using telepractice as a clinical training tool. Findings show that additional preparation for telepractice sessions is required, particularly in contexts of poor digital literacy; students must learn to manage technology, especially when connectivity poses a challenge, and adapt therapy tasks for online work with clients; telepractice relies heavily on caregiver input and collaboration, more so than in in‐person consultations, and this relationship requires careful management; and promoting engagement online, holding a client's attention, building rapport and offering reinforcement are critical yet challenging skills in telepractice. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: Our findings highlight a need to teach telepractice pedagogy explicitly and support students practically in learning how to provide therapy effectively via this mode of service delivery. Observational methods for studying practices in recorded telepractice sessions can be used as part of a reflective approach to clinical training. Using already available data allowed us to unpack the 'messy reality' of clinical training using telepractice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by new feminist materialism, this paper seeks to reimagine existing knowledge of girls, sexuality and playgrounds by considering how the socio‐material reality may unlock girls' capacities for what is possible through play. Focusing on semi‐structured interviews of girls (aged 12–13), the paper draws attention to the playground as an 'assemblage' of human and non‐human matter that connect to illuminate other ways of being, feeling and doing. We argue that the assemblage not only creates spaces for girls to disrupt hetero‐patriarchal ideologies but simultaneously serves to reinforce them. Interventions require attention to the oppressive materialities that underpin play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]