Separated from the mainland of Africa for 160 million years, Madagascar has evolved an incredible wealth of biodiversity, with thousands of species that can be found nowhere else on earth. For instance, of its estimated 12,000 plant species, nearly 10,000 are unique to Madagascar. Malagasy animals are just as spectacular, from its almost forty currently recognized species of lemursa primate group found only hereto the numerous species of tiny dwarf chameleons. With astounding frequency scientists discover a previously unknown species in Madagascarand at almost the same rate another natural area of habitat is degraded or destroyed, a combination that recently led conservation organizations to name Madagascar one of the most important and threatened conservation priorities on the planet. "The Natural History of Madagascar" provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date synthesis available of this island nation's priceless biological treasures. Contributions by nearly three hundred world-renowned experts cover the history of scientific exploration in Madagascar, its geology and soils, climate, forest ecology, human ecology, marine and coastal ecosystems, plants, invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Detailed discussions of conservation efforts in Madagascar highlight several successful park reserve programs that could serve as models for other areas. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book includes over one hundred color illustrations, with fifty color photos by nature photographer Harald Schutz, as well as more than three hundred black-and-white photographs and line drawings. "The Natural History of Madagascar" will be the invaluable reference for anyone interested in the Malagasy environment, from biologists and conservationists to policymakers and ecotourists."
Kausutua Tjikundi, Jackie Kleynhans, Stefano Tempia
et al.
Households play a crucial role in the propagation of infectious diseases due to the frequent and prolonged interactions that typically occur between their members. Recent studies have emphasized the need to include socioeconomic variables in epidemic models to account for the heterogeneity induced by human behavior. While sub-Saharan Africa suffers the highest burden of infectious disease diffusion, few studies have investigated the mixing patterns in the countries and their relation with social indicators. This work analyzes household contact matrices measured with wearable proximity sensors in a rural and an urban village in South Africa. Leveraging a rich data collection describing additional individual and household attributes, we investigate how the household contact matrix varies according to the household type (whether it is composed only of a familiar nucleus or by a larger group), the gender of its head (the primary decision-maker), the rural or urban context, and the season in which it was measured. We show the household type and the gender of its head induce differences in the interaction patterns between household members, particularly regarding child caregiving, suggesting they are relevant attributes to include in epidemic modeling.
I implement a procedure to isolate and interpret the sub-network (or "circuit") responsible for subject-verb agreement in GPT-2 Small. In this study, the model is given prompts where the subject is either singular (e.g. "Alice") or plural (e.g. "Alice and Bob"), and the task is to correctly predict the appropriate verb form ("walks" for singular subjects, "walk" for plural subjects). Using a series of techniques-including performance verification automatic circuit discovery via direct path patching, and direct logit attribution- I isolate a candidate circuit that contributes significantly to the model's correct verb conjugation. The results suggest that only a small fraction of the network's component-token pairs is needed to achieve near-model performance on the base task but substantially more for more complex settings.
The people of Africa were dragged to the New World, where they were enslaved and put to work and starved to death. The atrocities that African people witness are ongoing even today. This paper aims to take a journey through the history of African people. The article is divided into two parts: the first part is a concise history of the Atlantic Slave Trade and of its cultural and sociological aftermath in the New World, where the struggle between the South and the North exploited African Americans even after the Civil War. The second part focuses on the literary production of the African people, in order to connect these with experiences defined by pain, agony and nostalgia.
AbstractHow has historical scholarship fared in Africa? What is the state of decolonization and deconstruction historiography in the production of historical knowledge on the continent? What role does the state play in aiding or undermining historians’ access to official historical data and the production of historical knowledge in postcolonial Africa? This article engages these questions. It harps on the reconstruction of African intellectual history as a daunting postcolonial challenge, and argues that historians on Africa need to engage with and reexamine the development of the discipline of history in Africa in relation to the debates on decolonization and the enterprise of history-writing in the production of historical knowledge and historical scholarship across the continent. This illuminates the understanding of the history of contemporary Africa. It also throws fresh light on the continent’s remote past as a way of establishing its connections with the present. Complementary to the problems of writing the history of contemporary Africa, this work argues that to appreciate and understand the problems of history-writing on Africa, we need to focus on the development and limitations of the discipline across the institutional sites of the universities in postcolonial Africa.
SETI is not a usual point of departure for environmental humanities. However, this paper argues that theories originating in this field have direct implications for how we think about viable inhabitation of the Earth. To demonstrate SETI's impact on environmental humanities, this paper introduces Fermi paradox as a speculative tool to probe possible trajectories of planetary history, and especially the "Sustainability Solution" proposed by Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth Baum. This solution suggests that sustainable coupling between extraterrestrial intelligences and their planetary environments is the major factor in the possibility of their successful detection by remote observation. By positing that exponential growth is not a sustainable development pattern, this solution rules out space-faring civilizations colonizing solar systems or galaxies. This paper elaborates on Haqq-Misra's and Baum's arguments, and discusses speculative implications of the Sustainability Solution, thus rethinking three concepts in environmental humanities: technosphere, planetary history, and sustainability. The paper advocates that (1) technosphere is a transitory layer that shall fold back into biosphere; (2) planetary history must be understood in a generic perspective that abstracts from terrestrial particularities; and (3) sustainability is not sufficient vector of viable human inhabitation of the Earth, suggesting instead habitability and genesity as better candidates.
The study investigated the impact of healthcare system efficiency on the delivery of maternal, newborn, and child services in Africa. Data Envelopment Analysis and Tobit regression were employed to assess the efficiency of 46 healthcare systems across the continent, utilizing the Variable Returns to Scale model with Input orientation to evaluate technical efficiency. The Tobit method was utilized to explore factors contributing to inefficiency, with inputs variables including hospital, physician, and paramedical staff, and outputs variables encompassing maternal, newborn, and child admissions, cesarean interventions, functional competency, and hospitalization days. Results revealed that only 26% of countries exhibited efficiency, highlighting a significant proportion of 74% with inefficiencies. Financial determinants such as current health expenditures, comprehensive coverage index, and current health expenditure per capita were found to have a negative impact on the efficiency of maternal-child services. These findings underscore a marginal deficiency in technical efficiency within Africa's healthcare systems, emphasizing the necessity for policymakers to reassess the roles of both human resources and financial dimensions in enhancing healthcare system performance.
The Drum Magazine Project is a cross-institutional teaching and research project designed to explore a decolonial approach to teaching fashion theory and history. The project used the 1950s and 1960s archives of Drum magazine, found at Bailey's African History Archives (BAHA) in Johannesburg, South Africa. Fashion was considered by looking at South Africa's political, social, and cultural landscape during the 1950s and 1960s. Students wrote biographical essays based on individuals who, despite having been featured in Drum magazine, were not widely documented in South Africa. Essay writing was followed by developing magazine covers designed to capture themes related to these individuals. The text- and visual-based modes enabled students to deploy historical media archives using fashion and dress to communicate narratives of alternative fashion histories and imaginaries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to analyse students' impressions of the magazine, the individuals they researched and the overall project. In some instances, students expressed the view that incorporating this part of South African history into fashion curricula can be uncomfortable but that addressing history in its fullness is necessary to achieve decolonial imperatives and shifts. For these reasons, this study contributes to the decolonial fashion discourse by showing how infusing context-specific examples in teaching and learning offers options for renewing, stretching, and decentering the teaching of fashion theory and history.
Social sciences (General), Drawing. Design. Illustration
Abstract From 2014 to 2021, Tunisian government had a firm will to implement a progressive decentralization of welfare state governance, as outlined in its democratic Constitution. The Tunisian public healthcare system was selected as a pilot sector for experimenting with decentralization to reduce disparities in access to and quality of health services across different regions. This paper aimed to formulate an effective strategy for healthcare system decentralization in low- and middle-income countries, drawing on past experiences of its implementation. Country case study resulted the best methodology to achieve that goal. Top heath management, figured out by regional hospitals’ directors, was consulted to describe the technical, managerial and cultural “heritage” collected during the development process of the decentralization reform in public healthcare system in Tunisia. Findings revealed the Tunisian healthcare system decentralization should be, in first instance, the establishment of different decentralization paths according with regional pre-conditions, and then, of common protocols and procedures at national level for overcoming current differences between Tunisian territories. Decentralization process must be tailored to the specific needs of the regional Tunisian contexts to be effective but with a national control on that. Drawing from the Tunisian experience, proposed suggestions were valuable for the definition of an effective national healthcare system decentralization reform strategy more generally in low- and middle- income countries, especially in Middle East and North Africa region’s countries. Due to the common recent democratic history and welfare state approach, these countries could use this “heritage” to apply effective decentralizing reform strategies for reducing territorial inequalities, in this case territorial health inequalities.
A brief history of the development of surface detectors for the study of the high-energy cosmic rays is presented. The paper is based on an invited talk given at UHECR2022 held in LAquila, October 2022. In a complementary talk, P Sokolsky discussed the development of the fluorescence technique for air-shower detection.
Hannah Kerner, Catherine Nakalembe, Adam Yang
et al.
Satellite Earth observations (EO) can provide affordable and timely information for assessing crop conditions and food production. Such monitoring systems are essential in Africa, where there is high food insecurity and sparse agricultural statistics. EO-based monitoring systems require accurate cropland maps to provide information about croplands, but there is a lack of data to determine which of the many available land cover maps most accurately identify cropland in African countries. This study provides a quantitative evaluation and intercomparison of 11 publicly available land cover maps to assess their suitability for cropland classification and EO-based agriculture monitoring in Africa using statistically rigorous reference datasets from 8 countries. We hope the results of this study will help users determine the most suitable map for their needs and encourage future work to focus on resolving inconsistencies between maps and improving accuracy in low-accuracy regions.
Pentecostalism in Africa has many expressions, types, and shadows contributing to the challenge of categorisations in the movement. There are some forms of Pentecostalism in Africa that resemble the American context in terms of theology and practice. However, the literature review also demonstrates that other forms are uniquely indigenous, meaning, non-American. In this article, the indigenous force of Pentecostalism was studied through the indigenous knowledge system approach. This was done by making links between indigenous Pentecostalism in Africa and the early indigenous forces. The indigenous Pentecostal liturgy characterized by a song, prayer, and sermon was discussed in detail. The article also demonstrated how the indigenisation of the gospel of Jesus Christ within the Pentecostal movement in Africa has made the movement relevant to Africans. The aim was to demonstrate that the indigenous force of Pentecostalism is relevant to the decolonisation of Westernized Christianity. The article proposes the acknowledgement of the indigenous knowledge system in the Pentecostal tradition which is relevant to the decolonization of the religious sphere in the African context.
Rainfall is an important variable to be able to monitor and forecast across Africa, due to its impact on agriculture, food security, climate related diseases and public health. Numerical Weather Models (NWM) are an important component of this work, due to their complete spatial coverage, high resolution, and ability to forecast into the future. In this study, we seek to evaluate the spatiotemporal skill of short-term rainfall forecasts of rainfall across Africa. Specifically, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-Global Forecast System (NCEP-GFS) forecast models are verified by Rainfall Estimates 2.0 (RFE2) and African Rainfall Climatology Version 2 (ARC2), which are fused products of satellite and in-situ observations and are commonly used in analysis of African rainfall. We found that the model rainfall forecasts show good consistency with the satellite rainfall observations in spatial distribution over Africa on the seasonal timescale. Evaluation metrics show high spatial and seasonal variations over the African continent, including a strong link to the location of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) and topographically enhanced precipitation. The rainfall forecasts at one week aggregation time are improved against daily forecasts.
Prediction of ``anyons'', often attributed exclusively to Wilczek, came first from Leinaas & Myrheim in 1977, and independently from Goldin, Menikoff, & Sharp in 1980-81. In 2020, experimentalists successfully created anyonic excitations. This paper discusses why the possibility of quantum particles in two-dimensional space with intermediate exchange statistics eluded physicists for so long after bosons and fermions were understood. The history suggests ideas for the preparation of future researchers. I conclude by addressing failures to attribute scientific achievements accurately. Such practices disproportionately hurt women and minorities in physics, and are harmful to science.
In a post-apartheid South Africa, the value of reflective memories and their impact on community history gives credibility to their relationship with personal struggles such as disability, be it physical or political. Shaped by South African Indian heritage, an isolated individualised case of a second-generation descendant’s ability–disability experience is researched and narrated in this article. The respondent, Dr Kasturi Varley is a woman of the South African Indian community, who was born almost 101 years after the first shipload of Indian indentured labourers arrived in the then Colony of Natal. Her memories shed light on a unique Indo-African-European experience. Her indentured paternal grandfather arrived in the African continent in August 1900. Her reflective memories and shared experiences of various episodes of the ability–disability paradigm add to the body of knowledge of the Indian indentured labour system that already exists and partially fills up the prevalent gaps in the research on this topic. Her story is unique in that she worked wheelchair-bound at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria and subsequently settled in the United Kingdom. This study applied a qualitative research methodology.
Contribution: This article provides insight on reflective memories within the domain of social memory and contributes to an understanding of the historiography of the descendants of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa. In 2020, this community commemorated the 160th anniversary of the arrival of the labourers to the Colony of Natal.
Background: Postpartum acute kidney injury is a critical condition that can pose a great challenge to the health of pregnant women and can have fatal consequences (Patel, Rekha Sachan, Radheshyam, and Pushpalata Sachan, 2013) Objective: The main objective is to find out the prevalence of acute kidney injury among patient undergoing hemodialysis treatment at EFSTH. Methodology: The research is a retrospective cross-sectional study in which the data was collected from the main register of the hemodialysis unit. The sample includes patients diagnosed with postpartum acute kidney injury from January 2018 to December 2019. A checklist was used as a guide for the data collection on the age, gravida, parity causes and outcomes of hemodialysis treatment. SPSS version 20 was used to analyze the data and the results. Ethical approval was sought from the EFSTH research and ethical committee. Results: The main finding of the study has shown that the prevalence rate of postpartum acute kidney injury is 23 (21.3%). The mean age of the patients diagnosed with postpartum related acute kidney injury was 29.22 while the mean parity was 3.3. The youngest patient was 15 years old and the oldest patient was 40 years of age. The majority of the patients are multigravida 18 (78.3%). Pre-eclampsia, as a cause was found, to constitute more than half of the postpartum acute kidney injury constituting about 12 (52.2). Maternal mortality among the group was 5(21.7%). The rest of the patients 11(47%) successfully regain renal function and were discharged. There was no a significant relationship between the causes of acute kidney injury and the outcomes as well as the gravidas and outcomes with p values more than 0.05. Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of postpartum acute kidney injury among patient undergoing hemodialysis treatment in EFSTH.
Ibrahim Salihu Yusuf, Kale-ab Tessera, Thomas Tumiel
et al.
Desert locust outbreaks threaten the food security of a large part of Africa and have affected the livelihoods of millions of people over the years. Machine learning (ML) has been demonstrated as an effective approach to locust distribution modelling which could assist in early warning. ML requires a significant amount of labelled data to train. Most publicly available labelled data on locusts are presence-only data, where only the sightings of locusts being present at a location are recorded. Therefore, prior work using ML have resorted to pseudo-absence generation methods as a way to circumvent this issue. The most commonly used approach is to randomly sample points in a region of interest while ensuring that these sampled pseudo-absence points are at least a specific distance away from true presence points. In this paper, we compare this random sampling approach to more advanced pseudo-absence generation methods, such as environmental profiling and optimal background extent limitation, specifically for predicting desert locust breeding grounds in Africa. Interestingly, we find that for the algorithms we tested, namely logistic regression, gradient boosting, random forests and maximum entropy, all popular in prior work, the logistic model performed significantly better than the more sophisticated ensemble methods, both in terms of prediction accuracy and F1 score. Although background extent limitation combined with random sampling boosted performance for ensemble methods, for LR this was not the case, and instead, a significant improvement was obtained when using environmental profiling. In light of this, we conclude that a simpler ML approach such as logistic regression combined with more advanced pseudo-absence generation, specifically environmental profiling, can be a sensible and effective approach to predicting locust breeding grounds across Africa.