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The University of the Free State - Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Unit, Bloemfontein, South Africa, hosted a data and bioinformatics workshop from 19 to 22 June 2018. The workshop was coordinated by the African Enteric Viruses Genome Initiative (AEVGI) with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The event introduced technologies in NGS and data analysis with focus on the rotavirus (RV) genome. The workshop fostered interactions and networking between professionals, scientific experts, technicians and students. The courses provided an overview of RV diarrhoea and its burden in Africa, while highlighting the key resources and methodologies in NGS and advanced bioinformatics in deciphering vaccine impact. It was concluded that, despite the reported significant decline in RV associated-diarrhoea mortality and morbidity in Africa due to RV vaccine impact, the need for continuous surveillance and genomic characterization to better understand the ever-changing dynamics of RV strains is imperative.

Orientation: The accommodation sector has been identified as the most competitive and innovative segment of the tourism offer. However, the uncertainty with regard to persistent fierce competition that often shrouds small accommodation businesses (SABs) from their large business counterparts necessitates the identification and understanding of sustainable drivers of innovation to ensure their survival. Research purpose: The main purpose of this study was to examine and compare the influence of selected drivers (market and learning orientations [LOs]) on innovation in SABs in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Motivation of the study: This study was motivated by the absence of empirical evidence in establishing and comparing the relationship between market and LOs and innovation in SABs in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Research design, approach and method: This study used a descriptive cross-sectional comparative research design. Using simple random sampling, two samples each of 139 from SABs in Manicaland in Zimbabwe and the Free State province in South Africa were analysed using one-way ANOVA, Pearson product-moment correlations and regression analysis. Main findings: The results demonstrate that market and LOs influence innovation in SABs in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Practical/managerial implications: In view of the strong association between market and LOs and innovation, owners or managers of SABs should embrace and invest more in these orientations to stimulate sustainable innovative behaviour. Contribution/value-add: This study adds richness to extant research by affirming market and LOs as drivers of innovation in SABs in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

The cryptic prophage CP-933P in Escherichia coli O157:H7 contains a parDE-like toxin–antitoxin module, the operator region of which is recognized by two flanking transcription regulators: PaaR2 (ParE associated Regulator), which forms part of the paaR2-paaA2-parE2 toxin–antitoxin operon and YdaS (COG4197), which is encoded in the opposite direction but shares the operator. Here we report the 1H, 15N and 13C backbone and side chain chemical shift assignments of YdaS from Escherichia coli O157:H7 in its free state. YdaS is a distinct relative to HigA antitoxins but behaves as a monomer in solution. The BMRB Accession Number is 27917., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Civilising Rural Ireland maps the influence of the cooperative movement on political, social, and economic developments in Ireland (and the Free State) from the 1890 s to the 1930 s. Principally Ci...

At the hydroelectric unit No. 11 of the Nizhnekamsk hydroelectric power plant, the filling wedges of a rotor were investigated by ultrasound in the free state, after “cold” tight shrinking, after “hot” tight shrinking, and after 3000 and 8000 hours of operation. The ability to evaluate the rim tightness of the rotor based on data on the redistribution of compression efforts in the wedges is demonstrated.

Objective: Obesity and anaemia remain global public health problems, holding major consequences for human health. The objective was to determine body composition, prevalence of anaemia and iron def...

The purpose of this article is to explore the religious responses within the Orange Free State republic to the environmental crises in the period c. 1896 to c. 1898. During this time the state was subjected to severe drought, flooding, and the outbreak of various diseases. The article examines the way in which these afflictions where interpreted by the Christian and wider community in terms of God’s wrath for unrepented sins. The persistence of synchronistic elements of folk religion was seen to have brought plagues like those found in Exodus which were visited upon the Pharaoh and his kingdom. This interruptive frame work led to calls for national repentance, but also a resistance to scientific and medical resolutions to the crises. It also reinforced racial divisions. Black Africans were perceived as the carriers of the disease so their movement was prohibited. The article goes on to show how the effect of this biblical frame of reference protected the concept of God as the ever-present active God in every aspect of life against the scientific rationalism of the age, while at the same time ironically hindering the work of mission and the life of the church.

Background Based on our previous reports, stabilizing the surgeon's arm with an intraoperative armrest is linked to improved precision of microsurgical and endoscopic procedures. We developed the robotic intelligent surgeon's arm supporting system iArmS, which automatically follows the surgeon's arm and fixes it at an adequate position. Methods iArmS has 3 states—free, hold, and wait—which can be carefully chosen automatically as follows: In free state, the armholder follows the surgeon's arm. In hold state, iArmS supports the surgeon's arm weight by fixing the armholder. In wait state, the surgeon can move his or her arm away from the armholder. Also, the surgeon can change the armrest position while looking through the microscope and can continue the microsurgical procedure while holding surgical instruments. From February 2015 to January 2017, iArmS was used in 108 microsurgeries at 3 of the authors' institutions by 14 board-certified neurosurgeons, including the authors. After using iArmS, to quantify neurosurgeons' satisfaction, a scaling evaluation guide based on visual analog scales was designed to be completed by contributing neurosurgeons, including authors. Results iArmS decreased fatigue and reduced hand trembles experienced by surgeons. Continuous accurate motions of microinstruments were performed without any difficulties. There were no complications related to use of iArmS. Conclusions iArmS allows continuous precise manipulations that provide high-quality surgical results in neurosurgical techniques. Moreover, iArmS is a useful automatic tool for holding and following the surgeon's arm.

When the Italian army breached the Aurelian walls at Porta Pia in 1870 and Rome was seized from the pope, the city could not have been more unlike a contemporary European capital city. In the years after it became Italy’s capital, Rome underwent a process of radical urban renewal. This article, focusing on the creation of a new neighbourhood in Prati di Castello – the area north-east of the Vatican – frames Rome’s transformation as part of the ‘culture wars’ between the Church and the new Italian state. The decision to postpone the creation of the new district in Prati until the 1880s and the way it was then carried out reflect the wider shift of Italian politics from Cavour’s notion of ‘a free Church in a free State’ to the more combative anticlericalism of the Left after 1876. Against this background, Prati emerged as a political landscape in which competing powers articulated their aspirations and values, negotiated their respective authorities, and transmitted political ideas.

In this paper, a nonlinear vector-host model has been proposed and analyzed for the two dengue serotypes incorporating ADE effect. The model considers that the asymptomatic infected people are more responsible for secondary infection than that of symptomatic ones and differentiates between them. The existence and stability analysis have been performed for various equilibrium states. Basic reproduction number is found to be directly proportional to ADE parameter. This means that increasing ADE parameter increases the basic reproduction number which not only enhances the severity of serotype-1 free state but also destabilizes the disease-free state. Numerical simulation has been carried out for the stability of endemic state and found to be locally stable for choice of initial conditions in its neighborhood. The persistence of disease in periodic form is also obtained for a suitable choice of data. Sensitivity analysis has been performed with respect to transmission parameters involved in basic reproduction number.

The concept of food matrix has received much attention lately in reference to its effects on food processing, nutrition and health. However, the term matrix is used vaguely by food and nutrition scientists, often as synonymous of the food itself or its microstructure. This review analyses the concept of food matrix and proposes a classification for the major types of matrices found in foods. The food matrix may be viewed as a physical domain that contains and/or interacts with specific constituents of a food (e.g., a nutrient) providing functionalities and behaviors which are different from those exhibited by the components in isolation or a free state. The effect of the food matrix (FM-effect) is discussed in reference to food processing, oral processing and flavor perception, satiation and satiety, and digestion in the gastrointestinal tract. The FM-effect has also implications in nutrition, food allergies and food intolerances, and in the quality and relevance of results of analytical techniques. The role of the food matrix in the design of healthy foods is also discussed.

Site response analysis is conducted at 37 seismic stations located in the Gauteng, North West and Free State provinces in South Africa, using the Nakamura H/V spectral ratio technique on records of the Orkney 5 August 2014 earthquake. The earthquake, of magnitude ML = 5.5, led to the unfortunate death of one person and damage of more than 600 houses. Intensity data collected soon after the event showed that the effects of the earthquake appeared to vary significantly across the region. This motivated the authors to conduct a more detailed investigation of the effects of site conditions on seismic station records in the region. Resonance frequency values obtained from the H/V ratios were observed to vary strongly across the region and also within seismic station clusters. Similar behaviour was observed with the peak amplitude of the ratios at the resonance frequency, except for the Johannesburg area whose results showed a relatively simple shape of the ratios implying less complex velocity structure. All the H/V ratios exhibit dominant peaks at resonant frequencies that varied between 0.5 and 35 Hz. The average observed resonant frequency was f = 7.9 Hz. The amplitude of the dominant peaks also varied strongly from 1.66 to 11.69, with only two sites exhibiting maximum peaks with amplitude smaller than 2. These results serve as a strong motivation or justification for the on-going microzonation studies in South Africa, where a detailed study of the velocity structure will be used to obtain reliable information on site amplification and resonance.

Introduction: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a global health problem with high morbidity and mortality in patients who are mostly still economically active. The growing incidence and health imp...

As the formal Anglo-Irish union ended, Tim Healy, Irish nationalist politician turned Free State Governor-General, and Lord Beaverbrook, politician and press baron, entered their second decade of f...

The mineralogy of the ash and slag formed at typical UCG temperatures were investigated using a bituminous coal from the Theunissen UCG site in the Free State province of South Africa. The ash and slag samples were produced from the coal, and the surrounding roof and floor geological structures at 1000, 1100, 1200 and 1300°C. XRD results show an increase in crystalline phases, with a decrease in the amorphous content as the temperature increases, with mullite and quartz found to be the dominant minerals in the crystalline phase. FTIR spectroscopy results reveal the appearance of peaks related to the crystalline phase of mullite with increasing temperature. SEM results show the formation of spherical particles, with the appearance of cenospheres, as the temperature increases. The samples produced at 1000°C had significantly lower surface area and porosity values than the blended coal sample, but these values remain similar for the ash samples produced between 1000°C and 1300°C, where only slight decreases are observed with an increase in temperature. Results indicate that the higher the temperature in a UCG cavity, the less leaching of inorganic species should occur

This study explores women’s practice of acquiring, “growing” and multiplying a “home of one’s own” in the borderlands of the Free State province of South Africa and Lesotho. It shows how a home of ...

During the first years of the twentieth century Belgian King Leopold II and his bloody colonial regime in Congo became the subject of what is sometimes considered the first modern international hum...

The South African National Research Foundation (JC Grant nr. 96111, ML Grant nr. 95764, FPM Grant nr. 88594) and the Central Research Fund of the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein (JC) and the University of Pretoria (ML). The High Performance Computing facility of the UFS and the Norwegian Supercomputing Program (NOTUR Grant nr. NN4654K) (JC) are acknowledged for computer time.

Following the publication of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost in 1998, the history of the Congo Free State (1885–1908) has become global news. Far from being the preserve of a select coterie ...

This paper assesses the spatiotemporal characteristics of agricultural droughts and wet conditions in the Free State Province of South Africa for the period between 1960 and 2013. Since agriculturally, the Free State Province is considered the bread basket of the country, understanding the variability of drought and wet conditions becomes necessary. The Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) computed from gridded monthly precipitation data was used to assess the rainfall extreme conditions. Hot spot analysis was used to divide the province into five homogenous clusters where the spatiotemporal characteristics for each cluster were analysed. The results show a west to east increase in seasonal average total precipitation. However, the eastern part of the province demonstrates higher occurrences of droughts, with SPI ≤ − 1.282. This is despite the observation that the region shows a recent increase in droughts unlike the western region. It is also noted that significant differences in drought/wet intensities between clusters are more pronounced during the early compared to the late summer period.

This performative text is rooted in arts-based inquiry and expressed as the textual portraits of five educators working at the University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa. These portraits were created as part of a collaborative research project in which participants shared their experiential knowledge of working toward antioppressive practice in higher education at the UFS between 2014 and 2016. The textual portraits highlight the contradictions, uncertainty, and messiness of educator identity in this complex and volatile space. Furthermore, the performative text serves as a creative expression of different ways of knowing and different ways of becoming.

South Africa’s water resources are limited and unevenly distributed. To overcome the uneven spread of water resources and to manage floods and drought, more than two thirds of the country’s mean annual rainfall is currently stored in dams. The paper reviews the current water storage capacity of the country at national and provincial levels. Data from a list of registered dams in the country were used to analyse the water storage capacity of the country. Water storage capacity is highest in Free State Province and lowest in Gauteng Province. The results also show that, while it is clear that the country has invested a lot in developing water storage infrastructure, there is potential for the development of additional infrastructure. However, since most of the major rivers are transboundary, the country needs to develop additional storage with full consideration of its ecological requirements and international obligations.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the actions of belligerents were constrained by the Hague Convention of 1899 and the Geneva Convention of 1864. The Hague Convention differentiated between combatants and non-combatants, but both the British implementation of a scorched earth policy and the Boer execution of blacks violated this convention. The Geneva Convention centred on medical immunity, which presupposes medical neutrality. The British opposed the voluntarism fundamental to the Red Cross movement and all British medical personnel in the field were subservient to the military establishment. Imperial patriotism, the shortcomings of the army and the insistent claims of military necessity subverted best medical practice, producing dilemmas that doctors had to negotiate. On the Boer side too, there was the moral complexity of doctors who were not only medical professionals but also social agents with personal commitments. This article considers the dilemmas that confronted doctors involved in the South African War in the Free State and concludes that trends in dealing with ethical challenges in this war became normative in subsequent conflicts. Teen die einde van die neëntiende eeu is die gedrag van oorlogvoerendes in bedwang gehou deur die Haagse Konvensie van 1899 en die Geneefse Konvensie van 1864. Die Haagse Konvensie het tussen vegtendes en nie-vegtendes onderskei, maar beide die Britse toepassing van 'n verskroeide aardebeleid en die Boere se teregstelling van swartes was skendings van dié konvensie. Die Geneefse Konvensie het gesentreer op mediese immuniteit, wat neutraliteit veronderstel. Die Britse owerhede was gekant teen die volutarisme wat grondliggend aan die Rooikruisbeweging was en al hul mediese personeel te velde was ondergeskik aan die militêre gesag. Imperiale patriotisme, die tekortkominge van die leër en die volgehoue aandrang op militêre noodsaaklikheid het optimale mediese sorg belemmer. Ook aan Boerekant was daar die morele kompleksiteit dat dokters nie net professionele praktisyns was nie maar ook sosiale betrokkenes met persoonlike verbintenisse. In hierdie artikel word die dilemmas in oënskou geneem waardeur dokters betrokke in die Suid-Afrikaanse Oorlog in die Vrystaat gekonfronteer is en word daar tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat tendense waarneembaar in hierdie oorlog waardeur morele uitdagings die hoof gebied is in latere konflikte normatief geword het.

In this article, the concept of legal clinics created on the pillars of higher education institutions in various organizational and legal forms is examined to implement a training program for lawyers with practical skills. These clinics are created as independent legal entities or structural subdivisions at higher educational institutions and perform two functions - educational and enlightening. The essence of legal clinics is revealed in its functions, one of the tasks of which, as participants in the free state legal aid system, is the improvement of the quality of professional legal education and at the same time the provision of a free legal aid to the poor. The paper takes a brief analysis of the regulatory framework that regulates the issues of legal clinics, the study of organizational, legal and financial issues. In conclusion, some suggestions for their improvement are indicated.

This article analyses how Micheál macLíammóir’s Diarmuid and Gráinne (1928) and An Philibín’s Tristram and Iseult (1929) reimagine the function of mythology in the Free State by infusing their dramatic representations of these legendary marriages with Irish revolutionary discourse of a much later period. In both plays, mythological tropes are retroactively imbued with anachronistic cultural memories of the Easter Rising to provide the newly independent nation with a redemptive teleology.

Peptibodies represent a new class of biological therapeutics with combination of peptide activity and antibody-like properties. Previously, we discovered a novel peptide HRH that exhibited a dose-dependent angiogenesis-suppressing effect by targeting vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs). Here, we computationally designed an antiangiogenic peptibody, termed as PbHRH, by fusing the HRH peptide to human IgG1 Fc fragment using the first approved peptibody drug Romiplostim as template. The biologically active peptide of Romiplostim is similar with HRH peptide; both of them have close sequence lengths and can fold into a α-helical conformation in free state. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed that the HRH functional domain is highly flexible, which is functionally independent of Fc fragment in the designed PbHRH peptibody. Subsequently, the intermolecular interactions between VEGFR-1 domain 2 (D2) and PbHRH were predicted, clustered and refined into three representatives. Conformational analysis and energetic evaluation unraveled that the PbHRH can adopt multiple binding modes to block the native VEGF-A binding site of VEGFR-1 D2 with its HRH functional domain, although the binding effectiveness of HRH segments in peptibody context seems to be moderately decreased relative to that of free HRH peptide. Overall, it is suggested that integrating HRH peptide into PbHRH peptibody does not promote the direct intermolecular interaction between VEGFR-1 D2 and HRH. Instead, the peptibody may indirectly help to improve the pharmacokinetic profile and bioavailability of HRH.

One of the main problems in attempts to predict the binding constants of molecules (or free energies of their binding) is the correct evaluation of configurational binding entropy. This evaluation is possible by methods of molecular dynamics simulation, but these simulations require a lot of computational time. Earlier, we have developed an alternative approach which allows the fast calculation of the binding entropy from summarizing the available data on sublimation of crystals. Our method is based on evaluating the mean amplitude of the movements that are restricted in the bound molecule, e.g., in a crystal, but are not restricted in the free state, e.g., in vapor. In this work, it is shown that the standard entropy of binding of molecules by crystals under standard conditions (1 atm, 25°C) can be assessed rather accurately from geometric and physical parameters of the molecule and the average amplitude of the molecule motions in crystals estimated in our previous work.

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Recognizing that, over the last several years, extreme rainfall has led to hazardous stress in humans, animals, plants, and even infrastructure, in the present study, we aimed to investigate the characteristics of droughts over the Free State (FS) Province of South Africa in order to determine the future likelihood of reoccurrences of precipitation extremes using the generalized extreme value distribution (GEV) and extreme frequency analysis (EFA). In this regard, daily rainfall datasets from nine South African weather service homogenous climatic districts, spanning from 1980 to 2019, were used to compute: (a) the total annual rainfall, (b) the Effective Drought Index (EDI), and (c) the Standard Precipitation Index (SPI). The SPI was calculated for 3, 6, and 12 month accumulation periods (hereafter SPI-3, SPI-6, and SPI-12, respectively). The trend analysis results of the EDI and SPI-3, -6, and -12 showed that the Free State Province is generally negative, illustrating persistent drought. An analysis of the GEV parameters across the EDI and SPI-3, -6, and -12 values illustrated that the location, scale, and shape parameters exhibited a noticeable spatial variability across the Free State Province with the location parameter largely negative, the scale parameter largely positive, while the shape parameter pointed to an inherent Type III (Weibull) GEV distribution. In addition, the return levels for the drought/wet duration and severity of the EDI and SPI-3, -6, and -12 values generally showed increasing patterns across the corresponding return periods, the spatial contrasts were only noticeable in the return levels derived from the wet/drought duration and severity derived from SPI-3, -6, and -12 values (and not in the EDI). Further, the EFA results pointed to a noticeable spatial contrast in the return periods derived from the EDI and SPI-3, -6, and -12 values for each of the extreme precipitation categories: moderately wet, severely wet, extremely wet to moderately dry, and severely dry. Over four decades, the FS Province has generally experienced a suite of extreme precipitation categories ranging from moderately wet, severely wet, extremely wet to moderately dry, severely dry, and extremely dry conditions. Overall, the present study contributes towards implementation of effective drought early warning systems and can be used to enhance drought related policy and decision making in support of water resource management and planning in the FS Province.

Struvite (MgNH4PO4·6H2O) recovered from livestock wastewater may impose a pharmacological threat to the environment, due to the extensive existence of antibiotics in the wastewater. In this study, tetracyclines (TCs) were selected as the typical antibiotics, and the individual processes of dissolved organic matters (DOM) evolution and their effects on TCs migration in struvite recovery from swine wastewater were discriminated and quantified. Results revealed that TCs transport was contributed by the adsorption of pure struvite crystals, struvite adsorbing DOM-TCs complex and DOM aggregation, which occupied 2.29–6.53%, 23.53–34.66%, and 59.09–74.19% of the total TCs migration amounts, respectively. A tangential flow filtration system was employed to divide DOM into five fractional parts on the basis of molecular weight cut-offs. Experimental results indicated that under alkaline conditions of struvite crystallization, DOMs with larger molecular weights, hydrolyzed to DOMs with smaller molecular weights, which consequently promoted TCs re-distribution in DOMs from higher molecular weights to those with lower molecular weights. Furthermore, a distribution model was developed to characterize TCs transport in struvite recovery by describing TCs distribution among various phases, including struvite adsorption, DOM-TCs complexing, DOM aggregation, and free state in the solution, respectively. These outcomes provided new understanding on DOM evolution and effects on antibiotics transport in phosphate recovery from wastewater.