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Applied rural development research requires new and innovative research methodologies which can yield results of benefit to both the researcher and the community in question. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) is advocated as a method which has the potential to help address socio-economic conditions in rural Africa. This paper details an applied PRA exercise which led to the improvement in the quality of water supply in a South African rural community. The case-study integrated expert and community knowledge in order to assist the community to identify potential opportunities and threats in relation to their domestic water supply. This has enabled the community to better manage their resource. The paper provides an insight into the potential of PRA to facilitate locally appropriate, pro-active development and, in so-doing, to help contribute to community well-being.

The rise to prominence of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is one of the greatest changes and challenges to the discipline of geography in recent years. This paper examines the conceptual and applied problems which have faced South African educational institutions in coming to terms with these advances. The role and place of GIS is outlined, a potential course is outlined, the need to take an applied approach is advocated and links with the business world are discussed.

BackgroundThe Health of the Nation Outcome Scales (HoNOS) were developed to assess the outcome of severe mental disorders in relation to the Health of the Nation Strategy for England.AimsTo validate the HoNOS.MethodOne hundred and fifteen patients were assessed by key workers using HoNOS, and by research workers using SCAN, SBS, and SRPS, and completing HoNOS in the light of this additional material. These assessments were repeated after 6 weeks.ResultsThe performance of HoNOS in the hands of key workers was generally poor, in relation both to the research workers' rating of HoNOS and to the criterion instruments. Performance was particularly poor when the change in scores was used as a measure of outcome.ConclusionsThere are serious problems in using HoNOS as a routine measure of clinical status in busy psychiatric services. Its performance is probably related to the training and experience of key workers. Sequential ratings are not a good method for assessing outcome. Managers and planners should be cautious in adopting HoNOS, but it is worthy of consideration in developing a suite of locally agreed outcome measures.

One of the objectives of the Rural Development Strategy is the acquisition of accurate and reliable information about rural areas to allow for the promotion of good planning within all levels of government. One of the most vital requirements for planning is to ascertain demographic trends such that facilities and infrastructure can be provided and development interventions adopted. In the case of small towns and rural districts of the Eastern Cape the patterns of demographic loss and gain, often contrary to conventional wisdom, are clear indications of where government development action and strategies are needed. This is particularly apparent in terms of the rapid growth of small, economically vulnerable towns and the corresponding isolation and marginalisation of many rural districts.

Top-down rural development strategies in Africa have generally not succeeded in raising living standards among the rural poor. It is argued that inappropriate development strategies have stemmed from methodologies that fail to appreciate the whole picture in rural communities, and in particular ignore local people's perceptions, needs and understanding. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) represents a significant step forward in the design of methodologies and a selection of these techniques is evaluated. Many PRA methods have much in common with the field research methods that have been used by geographers over many years to interpret people-environment relationships. A research investigation in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, suggests that geographers could have an important role to play in this area of applied research and, in particular, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa there is an urgent challenge to be met in promoting rural development in poor, former black Homeland areas.

The government's recently released rural development strategy identifies the important role which local economic development can play in the rural areas of South Africa. This article examines the key features of local economic development and the degree to which recent initiatives in the rural village of Hertzog conform with the basic principles of local economic development. The recent establishment of an agriculture cooperative and smallholder farming on irrigated one‐hectare plots forms the basis of the initiative. Community structures, strategies and achievements are outlined and assessed.

Geographical Information Systems or GIS has become one of the more prominent research and training tools in South African university departments in the 1990s. GIS developed in the 1970s in North America in response to the expanding capacity of computer systems and the need to integrate spatial and attribute data (Maguire et al, 1991). It was only in the mid‐1980s that the first systems were set up in South Africa, primarily at research institutions such as the Department of Water Affairs and the Institute for Natural Resources in Pietermaritzburg. Since then the use of the technology has grown exponentially and most of the country's major municipalities (Szecsei, 1990; Van Rensburg, 1992), government departments, town and regional planners (Zietsman, 1992; Venter, 1993), engineering concerns (Poolman, 1990) and universities have become regular users. At universities GIS is used more as a research tool than as a defined analytical procedure. This article reviews the development of GIS and its use in South ...

Thirteen vegetation communities in the montane region of the Natal Drakensberg, South Africa, an area noted for good palynological sites, were sampled to improve upon the knowledge of existing contemporary pollen-vegetation relationships and to determine modern pollen assemblage analogues. Sampling was by means of surface soil samples. A sampling strategy was determined to identify the number of samples to be collected and the size of the pollen counts per sample to be undertaken in order to obtain a good (95% confidence level) representation. Analysis of variance statistical tests were used to improve upon and make recommendations for a modern pollen sampling strategy. It is recommended that twenty surface soil samples would suffice and that a count of 250 pollen grains and spores was sufficient in all the studied vegetation communities except for the Highland Sourveld, Protea savanna and Leucosidea sericea scrubland. In these communities a count of 1,000 pollen grains is recommended. The conclu...

This review examines pollen rain-vegetation studies that have been conducted in South Africa and Namibia. Many fossil pollen studies conducted now include a contemporary pollen analysis using either surface soil samples and/or passive pollen samplers. Statistical analyses, including multiple discriminant analysis, have been undertaken to determine any possible contemporary pollen-vegetation relationships and to enable modern analogue vegetation communities to be identified in the fossil pollen spectra and hence strengthen the conclusions of the fossil analysis. Such studies in South Africa have extended the limited understanding of the contemporary pollen rain-vegetation relationship and enables the interpretation of fossil pollen spectra to be carried out with greater confidence. This in turn lends greater credibility to Quaternary environmental change models required to help understand present and possible future environmental change.

Hydrogen gas clouds dispersed throughout our own galaxy, the Milky Way, emit radio waves at a frequency of 1420 MHz. This article details a system incorporating mainly amateur radio communication equipment to observe and profile these galactic hydrogen radio emissions. Subsequent analysis of hydrogen line profiles can reveal the spiral structure of our galaxy.

Abstract Many aspects of the design and operability of a system to gather and conveyunprocessed hydrocarbons depend on the output from thermo-hydraulic modeling—todefine the physical system, to guide the assessment and reduction of risk, andto establish the operating constraints within which the system can be safelyand reliably operated. Thermo-hydraulic modeling is typically undertaken usingcommercially available and widely used software tools for steady state andtransient modeling. These tools reflect a significant Research and Developmentinvestment by the industry over 20 years. Uncertainties in the accuracy of the results still remain, particularly asparameters are used outside of the range for which validation has beenundertaken. It is also vital to note that the validity of the results alsodepends on the competency and skill of the user to define a range ofappropriate cases, to interpret the results with due regard for the capabilityand limitations of the tools, and to communicate those results to relateddisciplines. Introduction For many aspects of engineering there are well-established industry codes andstandards. Operators may define the requirements for the way their engineeringis to be conducted by reference to these documents. However, there is a lack ofsuch standards in the area of flow assurance, the discipline encompassingmultiphase flow and aspects of production chemistry in the transportation ofunprocessed reservoir fluids. The purpose of this paper is to describe key parts of the requirements in thearea of modeling multiphase flow, and to illustrate, through examples, areaswhere the modeling process may need to be improved. The Value of Reliable Modeling A significant contribution to the success of the oil industry in recent decadeshas been derived from the increased use of multiphase flow transportationsystems, typically to gather production from remote wellhead locations into acentral processing facility. In the case of several currently operatingmulti-field deep-water developments the projects would not have been economicon the basis of having processing facilities over each reservoir, and the useof multiphase gathering systems is therefore a key enabler. The answers which are derived from modeling the multiphase flow through suchsystems therefore matter both at the level of individual design decisions andalso, potentially, at the level of justifying the viability of a majordevelopment. Multiphase flow is complex - typically three ‘phases’ (gas, oil and water)flowing together in the production system which itself will typically includepipelines with changes in orientation (uphill, downhill, and horizontalsections, luted sections at spools, risers), and subject to an overall declinein pressure with length and typically a reduction in temperature with length. The changes in pressure and temperature cause the phase properties (density, viscosity) to change, and the relative quantities of the phases to change asgas expands and liquid evaporates or condenses.

Background Assertive community treatment for the severely mentally ill is being implemented increasingly internationally. It is unclear whether recommended characteristics of assertive outreach (AO) teams influence care and outcomes. We hypothesised that recommended characteristics of AO teams such as joint health and social care management would predict reduced hospitalisation in the first year of an AO client programme and related outcomes throughout England. Methods A two-stage design was used: a stratified sample of 100 of the 186 'stand-alone' AO teams in England and a systematic sample of clients from each team with stratification for black and ethnic minority patients. Team characteristics, treatment and outcomes were collected from teams. Analyses took account of patients' histories, clustering and ethnic minority over-sampling. Results Under AO the proportion of time spent in hospital following admission decreased. Only 3/1,096 patients went missing in 9 months. Although patient' histories significantly predicted outcomes almost no team characteristics predicted re-admission or other patient outcomes after 1 and 3 years. Ethnic minority clients were more likely to be on compulsory orders only on jointly managed teams (P = 0.030). Multidisciplinary teams and teams not working out of hours significantly predicted that patients received psychological interventions, but only 17% of sampled patients received such treatments. Conclusions Characteristics of AO teams do not explain long-term patient outcomes. Since recommended team characteristics are not effective new models of care should be developed and the process of care tested. Managing teams to implement evidence-based psychological interventions might improve outcomes. © Springer-Verlag 2011.

Basic services have improved in many urban areas of South Africa, which should improve health and well-being. However, poverty and ill-health persist and are unequally distributed by race, class and place. This paper explores conditions of the most marginalized group, female-headed households, in a case study of Msunduzi Municipality (formerly Pietermaritzburg). Data from two household surveys conducted in 2006 show important patterns regarding the incidences of and coping strategies around, illnesses and deaths. While some positive environmental health outcomes are apparent, considerable stresses face households in relation to HIV/AIDS related deaths, poverty, and lack of health services. The insights of both urban environmental health and feminist geography assist in explaining the gendered and spatialized patterns of health in post-apartheid urban South Africa.

Brachystegia spiciformis Benth. is the dominant component of miombo, the sub-tropical woodlands which cover 2.7 million km2 of south-central Africa and which is coincident with the largest regional centre of endemism in Africa. However, pollen records from the genus Brachystegia suggest that miombo has experienced rapid range retraction (~450 km) from its southernmost distributional limit over the past 6000 years. This abrupt biological response created an isolated (by ~200 km) and incomparable relict at the trailing population edge in northeast South Africa. These changes in miombo population dynamics may have been triggered by minor natural shifts in temperature and moisture regimes. If so, B. spiciformis is likely to be especially responsive to present and future anthropogenic climate change. This rare situation offers a unique opportunity to investigate climatic determinants of range shift at the trailing edge of a savannah species. A niche modelling approach was used to produce present-day and select future B. spiciformis woodland ecological niche models. In keeping with recent historical range shifts, further ecological niche retraction of between 30.6% and 47.3% of the continuous miombo woodland in Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique is predicted by 2050. Persistence of the existing relict under future climate change is plausible, but range expansion to fragmented refugia in northeast South Africa is unlikely. As Brachystegia woodland and associated biota form crucial socio-economic and biodiversity components of savannas in southern Africa, their predicted further range retraction is of concern.

This paper describes and comments on the successful implementation of a donor-public-community initiative from the south-central reaches of Malawi. The region mirrors the desperate levels of rural poverty and environmental degradation of the rest of the country. Rural communities are often 'locked' into traditional subsistence farming, which is becoming less sustainable and able to provide an income to the people. Through a case study approach the paper describes an initiative from a local agricultural college that is providing an alternative. Using local technology and available resources a number of communities are attempting to propagate mushrooms for both household consumption and to generate an income. The results are encouraging and demonstrate how, through partnerships, rural communities have been able to successfully shift approaches to livelihoods. The paper argues that, under these conditions, development depends, to a very large extent, on community-based local economic development interventions that qualitatively seek to improve local conditions through collective action.

Chronically high poverty levels prevailing in the Ingwe municipality have helped to galvanise the local municipality to embark on an ambitious pro-poordevelopment intervention. Anchored on a pro-poortourism drive, the initiative seeks to encourage sustainable development for impoverished people in the municipality in terms of its developmental local government mandate. The paper details the steps which are currently being engaged in to achieve this objective and also outlines other Local Economic Development interventions. While success cannot be guaranteed, the case indicates the potential that exists, even in small marginal rural municipalities, to embark on innovative pro-poor development interventions.

This paper explains how the Photographic Department at The Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, has transformed its clinical photography service through the use of digital technology. The Department now plays a more proactive role in patient care, and its intranet‐based digital imaging system has been recognized as an area of best practice by The Department of Health Information Policy Unit and by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Africa Insight Vol.33(4) 2003: 40-46

Taunton School is a school for boys and girls aged three to eighteen in Somerset in the southwest of England. The school has a reputation for original work in scientific research with records of pupil involvement in scientific endeavours going back seventy-five years.

A survey of 13 vegetation communities which span the major topographic and successional differences in the KwaZulu-Natal Drakensberg was undertaken. A basic description of species present and their abundance was recorded. Furthermore, an analysis was performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of classification and ordination to delimit the representativeness of samples within particular vegetation communities and the relationship between chosen dominant communilies based on homogeneity with regard to species composition and abundance. The analysis was performed using two-way indicator species analysis (TWINSPAN) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) to describe the distinctiveness or, in the case of the grassland communities, the close association between the various communities. Results are a record of the dominant vegetation communities within a region displaying a steep altitudinal, and hence environmental, gradient, the homogeneity of samples taken within a community and the distinctiveness and/or similarity between these communities.