The scope and scale of the informal food economy of South African urban residential townships: Results of a small-area micro-enterprise census

Growing urbanisation in South Africa is reflected in burgeoning Working class and informal township settlements on the fringes of its major towns and cities. Paired with this is an increasing reliance on cash as the primary means of economic transaction, which has in turn stimulated the growth of micro-enterprise business activities within the township context. This article discusses the findings of an eight-township small-area census which occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Durban townships representing 250 000 residents. The researchers were able to establish the scope and scale of informal food and drink retailing in these localities. Of the 10 049 micro-enterprises located in the study, some 3966 (or 39% of the total) trade in food. These include enterprises in primary production, fresh produce retailing, grocery retailing from house and spaza shops, and informal foodservice enterprises. Food is the basis for much township informal business and plays an important role in making food increasingly affordable and locally accessible, and in creating cash employment. The article builds on the knowledge base of the township informal economy role in bolstering food security needs for the marginalised.     

Entry into force of the UN Watercourses Convention: why should it matter?

The United Nations Watercourses Convention entered into force on 17 August 2014, following a long and complex journey that dates back to 1970 when the UN referred the matter to its legal arm, the International Law Commission. This article follows the Convention through that long and turbulent road, examines its main provisions and analyses the reasons for the delay of its entry into force. It concludes by answering the question of why entry into force of the Convention should indeed matter.     

Psychometric validation of anti-clot treatment scale and treatment satisfaction questionnaire for medication version II in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation

Aims: The Anti-Clot Treatment Scale (ACTS) and Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medication version II (TSQM-II) are validated treatment satisfaction patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments. The ACTS includes two domains: Burdens and Benefits; the TSQM-II includes four: Effectiveness, Side Effects, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction. Japanese-language versions of the ACTS and TSQM-II have been developed and linguistically validated. This study aimed to assess their psychometric properties in Japanese patients with atrial fibrillation (AF).

Materials and methods: ACTS and TSQM-II data from 534 patients with AF were collected in a Japanese post-marketing surveillance study of a direct oral-anticoagulant, rivaroxaban. Four key psychometric properties, in line with best practice guidelines from the US Food and Drug Administration, were examined using traditional psychometric methods: acceptability, scaling assumptions, reliability (i.e. internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability), and construct validity (i.e. convergent validity and known groups).

Results: ACTS Burdens and Benefits and TSQM-II Effectiveness, Convenience, and Global Satisfaction scales were found to be acceptable (e.g. item-level missing data at baseline <4%), with all scales having good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.80). test-retest reproducibility intraclass correlation coefficients for the ACTS Burdens and Benefits were 0.59 and 0.65, respectively, and between 0.54–0.61 for the TSQM-II scales. Known-groups validity for the ACTS and TSQM-II was supported by differences in scale scores by positive and negative impact (p?<?0.05). Correlations between the ACTS and TSQM-II (convergent validity) were lower than expected (range r?=?0.09–0.48), but in line with the original ACTS development study.

Limitations: Evaluation of test-retest reproducibility was limited by assessment period, which was longer (3 months) than recommended guidelines (usually up to 2 weeks).

Conclusions: Overall, Japanese versions of ACTS and TSQM-II scales satisfied internal consistency reliability and traditional validity criteria. Our study supports the ACTS and TSQM-II as appropriate PRO instruments to measure satisfaction with anticoagulant treatment in Japanese patients with AF.

Trial registration: NCT01598051, clinicaltrials.gov; registered April 20, 2012.     

The Great Recession,Austerity and Inequality: Lessons from Ireland

The advent of the Great Recession and the widespread adoption of fiscal austerity policies have heightened concern about inequality and its effects. We examine how the distribution of income in Ireland—a country which experienced one of the most severe economic contractions—has evolved over the years 2008 to 2013. Standard cross‐sectional analysis of the income distribution shows broad stability in the Gini coefficient and in decile shares, with one main exception: the share of the bottom decile fell sharply, with the largest fall in average incomes being for that group. Longitudinal analysis shows that the falls in the average income for the bottom decile were not due to decreasing income for those remaining in the bottom decile, but to falls in income from those initially located in higher deciles. The extent of redistribution through taxes and transfers increased strongly, as measured by the Reynolds‐Smolensky index, which rose from 0.20 before the onset of the crisis to 0.27 in 2013. Analysis indicates that about three‐quarters of this increased redistribution is due to automatic stabilisers and one‐quarter to discretionary policy changes.     

Trend Analysis and Spatial Prediction of Groundwater Levels Using Time Series Forecasting and a Novel Spatio-Temporal Method

Water Resources Management - Overexploitation of groundwater in the Malayer Plain has resulted in a continuous decline of groundwater levels over recent years with associated risks to water...     

Assessment of Dam Overtopping Reliability using SUFI Based Overtopping Threshold Curve

Estimation of earth-fill dam height and dimension of spillway are strongly depend on accurate evaluation of dam overtopping reliability. Ideally, whole random and effective variables on overtopping should be considered for dam overtopping reliability assessment. However, taking into account all affecting random variables as well as overtopping reliability assessment using algorithms such as Monte Carlo (MC) could be excessively time consuming and impossible in some cases. In this study, new approach has been introduced as conditional reliability method and it has been tried to reduce the simulations time significantly by using combination of rainfall threshold theory, SUFI (Sequential Uncertainty Fitting) and MC methods. According two defined indexes, the obtain results shown, the relative error of new approach in computation of Jamishan dam overtopping reliability is less than 0.23%. Also, time saving in new method against to regular MC method is more than 87%. So, the new introduced method has more efficiency with acceptable accuracy for assessment of dam overtopping reliability. In addition, among hydrological and hydraulic uncertainties, hydrological uncertainties have more effect on overtopping reliability.     

Demonstration of a tool for automatic learning and re-use of knowledge in the activated sludge process.

Wastewater treatment plant operators encounter complex operational problems related to the activated sludge process and usually respond to these by applying their own intuition and by taking advantage of what they have learnt from past experiences of similar problems. However, previous process experiences are not easy to integrate in numerical control, and new tools must be developed to enable re-use of plant operating experience. The aim of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to apply learning and re-use of knowledge gained during past incidents to confront actual complex problems through the IWA/COST Benchmark protocol. A case study shows that the proposed CBR system achieves a significant improvement of the benchmark plant performance when facing a high-flow event disturbance.     

Enhancing urban infrastructure investment planning practices for a changing climate.

Climate change raises many concerns for urban water management because of the effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. Urban water infrastructure has traditionally been designed using historical observations and assuming stationary climatic conditions. The capability of this infrastructure, whether for storm-water drainage, or water supply, may be over- or under-designed for future climatic conditions. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events will have the most acute effect on storm-water drainage systems. Therefore, it is necessary to take future climatic conditions into consideration in engineering designs in order to enhance water infrastructure investment planning practices in a long time horizon. This paper provides the initial results of a study that is examining ways to enhance urban infrastructure investment planning practices against changes in hydrologic regimes for a changing climate. Design storms and intensity-duration-frequency curves that are used in the engineering design of storm-water drainage systems are developed under future climatic conditions by empirically adjusting the general circulation model output, and using the Gumbel distribution and the Chicago method. Simulations are then performed on an existing storm-water drainage system from NE Calgary to investigate the resiliency of the system under climate change.     

Ecophysiology and niche differentiation of Nitrospira-like bacteria, the key nitrite oxidizers in wastewater treatment plants.

Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria of the genus Nitrospira are key nitrifiers in wastewater treatment plants. Pure cultures of these organisms are unavailable, but cultivation-independent molecular methods make it possible to detect Nitrospira-like bacteria in environmental samples and to investigate their ecophysiology. Comprehensive screening of natural and engineered habitats and of public databases for 16S rRNA sequences of Nitrospira-like bacteria revealed a surprisingly high biodiversity in the genus Nitrospira, which comprises at least four phylogenetic sublineages. All Nitrospira-like bacteria detected in wastewater treatment plants belonged to the sublineages I and II. Subsequently, the population dynamics of different Nitrospira-like bacteria were monitored, by quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization with rRNA-targeted probes, confocal laser scanning microscopy and digital image analysis, during incubation of nitrifying activated sludge in media containing different nitrite concentrations. These experiments showed that Nitrospira-like bacteria, which were affiliated with the phylogenetic sublineages I or II of the genus Nitrospira, responded differently to nitrite concentration shifts. Previously unknown properties of Nitrospira-like bacteria were discovered in the course of an environmental genomics project. Implications of the obtained results for fundamental understanding of the microbial ecology of nitrite oxidizers as well as for future improvement of nutrient removal in wastewater treatment plants are discussed.