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This article argues that we have lost the plot in South African reading education. To find it, we need to move beyond the predominant mode of reading as oral performance, where the emphasis is on accuracy and pronunciation, to reading as comprehension of meaning in text. While reading research in South Africa has been conducted mainly in school contexts, this case study is of a school and Adult Basic Education and Training Centre in a rural KwaZulu-Natal community near Pietermaritzburg. It found that an oratorical approach to reading dominated in both settings. It suggests that developing the way in which teachers understand the teaching of reading and transforming the teaching practices of those who teach as they were taught in the education system of the apartheid era are key to improving the teaching of reading.

Automaticity, or instant recognition of combinations of letters as units of language, is essential for proficient reading in any language. The article explores automaticity amongst competent adult first-language readers of isiZulu, and the factors associated with it or its opposite - active decoding. Whilst the transparent spelling patterns of isiZulu aid learner readers, some of its orthographical features may militate against their gaining automaticity. These features are agglutination; a conjoined writing system; comparatively long, complex words; and a high rate of recurring strings of particular letters. This implies that optimal strategies for teaching reading in orthographically opaque languages such as English should not be assumed to apply to languages with dissimilar orthographies. Keywords: Orthography; Eye movement; Reading; isiZulu

Nursing and Midwifery organizations have been building capacity to utilize virtual electronic communications systems to support collaborative projects since 2005 when the Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery became a reality. The Nursing and Midwifery Community of Practice for Making Pregnancy Safer has grown from 55 members in 18 countries at the end of the first year to 382 members from 79 countries by the end of 2009. The Spanish-language community created in 2007 has 187 members from 32 countries. We will present background information on developing communities of practice, strategies for building capacity and lessons learned over the past four years. We will present our findings from a simultaneous discussion held in Spanish and English on traditional midwifery and active management of the third stage of labor-applying the evidence, discussing the challenges and rewards of a bilingual discussion. Additionally, findings from an on-line survey to elicit feedback on the discussions and recommendations for future direction will be discussed.

Abstract Estimation of mortality rates and mortality rate ratios (MRR) of diseased and non-diseased individuals is a core metric of disease impact used in chronic disease epidemiology. Estimation of mortality rates is often conducted through retrospective linkage of information from nationwide surveys such as the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and death registries. These surveys usually collect information on disease status during only one study visit. This infrequency leads to missing disease information (with right censored survival times) for deceased individuals who were disease-free at study participation, and a possibly biased estimation of the MRR because of possible undetected disease onset after study participation. This occurrence is called “misclassification of disease status at death (MicDaD)” and it is a potentially common source of bias in epidemiologic studies. In this study, we conducted a simulation analysis with a high and a low incidence setting to assess the extent of MicDaD-bias in the estimated mortality. For the simulated populations, MRR for diseased and non-diseased individuals with and without MicDaD were calculated and compared. Magnitude of MicDaD-bias depends on and is driven by the incidence of the chronic disease under consideration; our analysis revealed a noticeable shift towards underestimation for high incidences when MicDaD is present. Impact of MicDaD was smaller for lower incidence (but associated with greater uncertainty in the estimation of MRR in general). Further research can consider the amount of missing information and potential influencers such as duration and risk factors of the disease.

Background: Volatile compounds are considered as an important quality factor, as their aroma influences consumer acceptability. The type and concentration of volatile compound varies with genotype, pre- and postharvest factors. However, there is a paucity of information on volatiles from mango cultivars endemic to Sri Lanka (Willard, Karutha Colomban and Malgova). Therefore, volatile compounds were extracted from ripe fresh peel and pulp and analysed using gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID). Results: Ocimene was the major volatile organic compound (VOC) of cv. Karutha Colomban whilst terpinolene was dominant for mango cv. Willard in addition to α-pinene, 3-carene and β-caryophyllene. Myrcene, ocimene, β-caryophyllene, α-pinene and α-humulene contributed to cv. Malgova. Conclusion: The variation of VOC concentration in mango fruit was significantly influenced by the ripening temperature. In general, mango peel contained higher amounts of VOCs than pulp.

According to the UN Conventions on the Rights of the Child all children have a right to participation. This UN Convention has influenced professionals and policy-makers worldwide. Thereby participation in kindergarten refers to children’s possibilities to exercise influence on a range of topics from the rules that are applied in the nursery’s course of a day, the daily program, the interior design of the facility, etc. Which possibilities for participation children actually have in their everyday lives and how they perceive these possibilities has not been sufficiently answered in the international discourse. Based on a standardized survey with 4 and 5 year old children on their experiences with various aspects of participation in pre-school institutions the paper contributes to international childhood and participation research. The empirical findings are related to the democracy-theoretical inspired figures of early childhood institutions as “nurseries of democracy” and broader reflections on social inequalities in early childhood.

The functionality of the plasma membrane is essential for all organisms. Adaption to high growth temperatures imposes challenges and Bacteria, Eukarya, and Archaea have developed several mechanisms to cope with these. Hyperthermophilic archaea have earlier been shown to synthesize tetraether membrane lipids with an increased number of cyclopentane moieties at higher growth temperatures. Here we used shotgun lipidomics to study this effect as well as the influence of growth phase on the lipidomes of Sulfolobus islandicus and Sulfolobus tokodaii for the first time. Both species were cultivated at three different temperatures, with samples withdrawn during lag, exponential, and stationary phases. Three abundant tetraether lipid classes and one diether lipid class were monitored. Beside the expected increase in the number of cyclopentane moieties with higher temperature in both archaea, we observed previously unreported changes in the average cyclization of the membrane lipids throughout growth. The average number of cyclopentane moieties showed a significant dip in exponential phase, an observation that might help to resolve the currently debated biosynthesis pathway of tetraether lipids.

Potatoes represent an important staple food crop across the planet. Yet, to maintain tuber quality and extend availability, there is a necessity to store tubers for long periods often using industrial-scale facilities. In this context, preserving potato quality is pivotal for the seed, fresh and processing sectors. The industry has always innovated and invested in improved post-harvest storage. However, the pace of technological change has and will continue to increase. For instance, more stringent legislation and changing consumer attitudes have driven renewed interest in creating alternative or complementary post-harvest treatments to traditional chemically reliant sprout suppression and disease control. Herein, the current knowledge on biochemical factors governing dormancy, the use of chlorpropham (CIPC) as well as existing and chemical alternatives, and the effects of pre- and post-harvest factors to assure potato tuber quality is reviewed. Additionally, the role of genomics as a future approach to potato quality improvement is discussed. Critically, and through a more industry targeted research, a better mechanistic understanding of how the pre-harvest environment influences tuber quality and the factors which govern dormancy transition should lead to a paradigm shift in how sustainable storage can be achieved.

We propose two new methods to estimate secular trends in the incidence of a chronic disease from a series of prevalence studies and mortality data. One method is a direct inversion formula, the second method is a least squares estimation. Both methods are validated in a simulation study based on data from a diabetes register. The results of the validation show that the proposed methods may be useful in epidemiological settings with sparse resources, where running a register or a series of follow-up studies is difficult or impossible.

A common modelling approach in public health and epidemiology divides the population under study into compartments containing persons that share the same status. Here we consider a three-state model with the compartments: A, B and Dead. States A and B may be the states of any dichotomous variable, for example, Healthy and Ill, respectively. The transitions between the states are described by change rates, which depend on calendar time and on age. So far, a rigorous mathematical calculation of the prevalence of property B has been difficult, which has limited the use of the model in epidemiology and public health. We develop a partial differential equation (PDE) that simplifies the use of the three-state model. To demonstrate the validity of the PDE, it is applied to two simulation studies, one about a hypothetical chronic disease and one about dementia in Germany. In two further applications, the PDE may provide insights into smoking behaviour of males in Germany and the knowledge about the ovulatory cycle in Egyptian women.

Against the background of a European-wide strategy of governance aimed at improving support for parents and families, the following report details the conceptualization and evaluation of a federal state program4 in Baden-Württemberg (Germany) which was launched in 2008 to encourage family and parent education. Two program components, a voucher system for parents with a new-born child and an element that emphasizes educational offers for families with special needs in particular living situations, were started to increase requests for educational courses. The aim was to establish and deepen cooperation between different public and private professional services that are in contact with parents and their children. The results show that main goals of the program were reached.

Chronic diseases impose a tremendous global health problem of the 21st century. Epidemiological and public health models help to gain insight into the distribution and burden of chronic diseases. Moreover, the models may help to plan appropriate interventions against risk factors. To provide accurate results, models often need to take into account three different time-scales: calendar time, age, and duration since the onset of the disease. Incidence and mortality often change with age and calendar time. In many diseases such as, for example, diabetes and dementia, the mortality of the diseased persons additionally depends on the duration of the disease. The aim of this work is to describe an algorithm and a flexible software framework for the simulation of populations moving in an illness-death model that describes the epidemiology of a chronic disease in the face of the different times-scales. We set up a discrete event simulation in continuous time involving competing risks using the freely available statistical software R. Relevant events are birth, the onset (or diagnosis) of the disease and death with or without the disease. The Lexis diagram keeps track of the different time-scales. Input data are birth rates, incidence and mortality rates, which can be given as numerical values on a grid. The algorithm manages the complex interplay between the rates and the different time-scales. As a result, for each subject in the simulated population, the algorithm provides the calendar time of birth, the age of onset of the disease (if the subject contracts the disease) and the age at death. By this means, the impact of interventions may be estimated and compared.

In the broadest sense social capital reflects the idea of resources rooting in relations between individuals resp. in the embeddings of people in groups, associations, communities and even societies. A central assumption is that social capital - as a resource - is emerging from the quality of these relationships. This quality may be described in a more materialistic sense because these relations open up access to specific resources or assets. But it may also be imbued with valuated connotations, in particular referring to the essential contribution of networks and trust in promoting well-being, a sense of belonging and decency as individuals in entities blessed with social capital are pretended to engage in mutually beneficial collective actions. Therefore social capital applies to peoples’ shared expectations, norms, values, and beliefs, their commitments to each other and eventually their associative capacities to knit the ‘social fabric’.

The feature of this paper is a critical assessment of the current discourses about quality of life (QoL) and their implications for Social Work. At first it pictures some major historical backgrounds of the discussion on the improvement of life quality as an aim of societal development. In particular three crucial shifts in the politics of QoL - its 'individualisation', its 'informalisation' and its 'culturalisation' - and their implications for Social Work are critically examined theoretically and empirically referring to the results of an own community-study. The paper concludes with an alternative suggestion reflecting the idea of an 'autonomy-based' approach of democratic equality.