Poaching of Encephalartos transvenosus, in the Limpopo Province, South Africa

There is an established link between deforestation and negative hydrological effects which may affect watersheds. The number of the cycads Encephalartos transvenosus Stapf & Burtt Davy in South Africa is drastically reducing, and they are nearly extinct. Additionally, poaching and reduction in the population of cycads in reserves may impact negatively on watersheds in protected and buffer areas since the regeneration of this plant occurs over a long period. This research aimed to study the distributions of poached cycads, evaluate the factors responsible for poaching activity and suggest possible solutions towards conservation of E. transvenosus Stapf & Burtt Davy in some of the nature reserves in Limpopo province. Field observation was used to ascertain and collect locations of poached cycads. Data was obtained through the use of a questionnaire. Questionnaires were administered to rangers for the collection of data on causes of poaching, parts poached, measures taken and challenges of rangers in the nature reserves. Processing of the collected data was done by simple statistical analysis. The total population of rangers available in the reserves was used for the determination of the sample size of rangers by Slovin’s formula. Unemployment (46%) is the leading cause for poaching in Mphaphuli Nature Reserve, while trade is a leading factor in Modjadji and Lekgalameetse (37% and 60%) respectively. Debarked cycads amount to 14 (54%) while 12 of the total (26 poached cycads) were completely removed (46%). The most effective way of stopping the poaching of cycads as perceived by the rangers is by patrolling the nature reserves. The observed poaching of Encephalartos transvenosus is alarming since this plant has a low population size which is currently confined to the Limpopo Province in South Africa only. If poaching continues in the nature reserves, all cycads have the tendency of being removed. Therefore, there is a need to continually develop strategies for the conservation of cycads. The peculiar nature and challenges of each reserve have been established and unique solutions for these nature reserves in Limpopo Province have been proposed. Better conservation of cycad species can positively impact the hydrological process of the concerned area and better help the watersheds.

A proposal of model for a quality management system in research testing laboratories

There is a broad consensus on the importance and advisability of testing laboratories adopting a Quality Management System (QMS) to support their work, no matter they are industrial or research oriented. However, laboratories involved in R&D have specific difficulties to implement a QMS due to the peculiar nature of their activity. This paper analyzes the main challenges and difficulties found by professionals when implementing a QMS in a research testing laboratory, based on the literature review and a questionnaire with 86 laboratories participating performed in collaboration with RedLab (Red de Laboratorios de la Comunidad de Madrid). After this analysis, a set of requirements for the competence of research testing laboratories based on ISO/IEC 17025 and UNE 166002 is defined, and an agile methodology for the fulfilment of these requirements is proposed.

About the nature of the supra-personal reality of spiritual culture

The article shows that the suprapersonal reality of spiritual culture is an autonomous complex, purposeful reflection, a self-contained cultural process, which in the process of its development over two and a half thousand years has acquired the most developed structure and form. Hegel and Hartmann sufficiently revealed its peculiar nature, complex structure, and cultural-historical significance. Their conceptual constructions can serve as a methodological basis for general cultural studies.The thematic culturological approach allows us to analize the genesis of world culture and individual cultures of different peoples. Thematic analysis of the written sources (up to the 6th century B.C.) convincingly shows the naturalistic-power character of the mental spaces of all cultures. This means that in one culture by the sixth century B.C. we can not find any representations of reason and goodness as purely spiritual, independent realities. The thematic approach allows us to investigate the revolutionary transformation of the Axial Age, when a revolutionary transition from the naturalistic-force to the mentally charitable and mental space of culture is carried out. The purpose and objectives of the article. The aim of the article is to show the features of suprapersonal reality and the productive significance of thematic culturological analysis. Research methodology. The research was based on the methodology of thematic culturological analysis, which allows to study cultural processes in individual cultures and cultural regions.Leading methodological settings were the principles of objectivity, systemicity, integrity, unity of historical and logical, interconnection, convergence from the abstract to the concrete. Conclusions. Thus, the suprapersonal reality is a complex, autonomous, purposeful, reflection, a self-contained cultural process, which as it developed over two and a half thousand years acquired the most developed structure and content. The thematic approach allows to successfully study the genesis of both world culture and individual cultures of peoples

Methods of Obtaining and Physicochemical Properties of Modified Carbonaceous Sorbents

The variety of practical problems solved in recent years with the help of sorption methods requires expanding the range of used adsorbents. Active carbons are very promising porous adsorbents. Due to a whole complex of valuable properties of a highly developed porous structure, a variety of the chemical nature of the surface, special electrophysical properties, as well as chemical, thermal and radiation resistance, various active carbons are widely used for the absorption of gaseous and dissolved substances. The peculiar nature of carbon adsorbents contributes to the fact that solutes on coal can be adsorbed by completely different; mechanisms, their sorption may be due to the different nature of the forces involved in the adsorption process. The purpose of the work is to obtain multipurpose sorbents; to study methods of modification of carbonaceous sorbents from ash waste, as well as their physicochemical properties

Motoric Understanding and Aesthetic Appreciation

Standard philosophical studies on picture perception usually investigated the peculiar nature of pictorial experience and the way aesthetic appreciation can be generated during this experience. Recently, however, the philosophical literature has also focused on a new aspect of picture perception: the possible involvement that the visual states related to action processing may actually play in pictorial experience. But this role has been studied only in relation to the understanding of the nature of pictorial experience, qua visual experience. This paper offers some preliminar speculation, which may guide future research, on the role of action in aesthetic appreciation of pictures.

The Magic of Immigration Enforcement: Discretion, Order and Policing

This chapter examines the peculiar nature of immigration decision-making. Removal and deportation are state coercive acts that require the acquiescence of another sovereign state and often involve complex bilateral negotiations by parties in asymmetrical relations of power. As such they are truly international acts that demand careful coordination and interdependence between various actors and institutions. They place immigration officers at the receiving end of a long chain that connects various institutional actors across public and private domains spanning the local, the national, and the global. The peculiarity of immigration enforcement relates to the framework in which officers exercise discretion: a framework structured around a combination of variables over which they have little or no control, a game of chance or a lottery. Officers figuratively gesture at the magical powers of immigration enforcement to solve policing problems. The notion of magic attests to the attractions of immigration powers for everyday policing, as well as the random, capricious, informal, and arbitrary ways in which state power operates. The fragile, ever-changing grounds on which immigration staff make decisions reflects the challenges of state power to spatialize its authority in a transnational world order. By examining the imbrications of state power and magic, this chapter argues that immigration enforcement casts doubt on the presumed rationality of state bureaucracy and authority, exposing its arbitrariness as well as its limits.

DIY Policing: Crafting the New Contours of Policing in a Globalized World

This chapter explores the experimentation within British policing resulting from the impetus to identify, fix individual identities, and make people legible in recent decades. Concerns over people’s identification and the crave for information has taken a new shift becoming a prime driver of police innovation and partnership work. The quest to know who is who reinvigorated institutional and operational connections with the inland immigration police, Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement (IE), including Operation Nexus. Operation Nexus (Nexus) is an initiative to bring the operational and intelligence capacities of IE and the police together to identify and manage foreign national suspects. While Nexus has been an important catalyst of fragmented and piecemeal practices in the policing of foreign nationals, the chapter focuses on the bespoke, informal nature of much (migration) policing which relies less on formal structures than in ever fragile and contingent relations, termed as ‘DIY policing’. The peculiar nature of such policing points to the intractable challenges of doing policing in contemporary conditions. At least in the UK, the analysis presented here points to a less coherent strategy and less assertive stance towards migration than that sometimes depicted by policy papers and academic literature on ‘crimmigration’, and provides an important empirical corrective to the dystopian diagnosis of penal power in criminology.

Bone Marrow Environment in Metastatic Neuroblastoma

The study of the interactions occurring in the BM environment has been facilitated by the peculiar nature of metastatic NB. In fact: (i) metastases are present at diagnosis; (ii) metastases are confined in a very specific tissue, the BM, suggestive of a strong attraction and possibility of survival; (iii) differently from adult cancers, NB metastases are available because the diagnostic procedures require morphological examination of BM; (iv) NB metastatic cells express surface antigens that allow enrichment of NB metastatic cells by immune–magnetic separation; and (v) patients with localized disease represent an internal control to discriminate specific alterations occurring in the metastatic niche from generic alterations determined by the neoplastic growth at the primary site. Here, we first review the information regarding the features of BM-infiltrating NB cells. Then, we focus on the alterations found in the BM of children with metastatic NB as compared to healthy children and children with localized NB. Specifically, information regarding all the BM cell populations and their sub-sets will be first examined in the context of BM microenvironment in metastatic NB. In the last part, the information regarding the soluble factors will be presented.

The Peculiar Nature of the Duty to Help During a Pandemic

Duties of beneficence are said to allow for leeway to discharge them. By distinguishing between two different types of leeway, Mejia (2020) identified three structurally different duties of beneficence. In this Commentary I deploy those distinctions to clarify the nature of a fourth type of duty of beneficence, one prompted by a global pandemic, a duty with a peculiar, and seldom recognized, conceptual logic. I provide some guidelines that should orient managers when they take themselves to be fulfilling such a duty on behalf of shareholders.

Bandoneon!

Bandoneon! (a combine), performed in October 1966 as part of the 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, has been regarded as Tudor’s first work as a composer. However, the conception of this piece was not only directly influenced by two other amplified bandoneon pieces he realized in the same year, Gordon Mumma’s Mesa and Lowell Cross’s Musica Instrumentalis, but had also started off as a realization of a “Mobius-Strip” composition by Mauricio Kagel. Moreover, most of the modular electronics in his setup were also used in other realizations around the same period. The true difference lies in how these common materials were used and to what ends. What the self-proclaimed effort to make a “giant white noise generator” from scratch brings to the fore is a synecdochical relationship between the modular instruments used and the larger instrumental complex they compose. The investigation of this coordination between the parts and the whole reveals a strange disappearance of an entire group of instruments considered central to the performance, a mystery that highlights the peculiar nature of Tudor’s “composition.”