An OALS/MRI Report. / "This report was prepared with the support of National Science Foundation Grant No. PRA 78-11632. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

This item was digitized as part of the Million Books Project led by Carnegie Mellon University and supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Cornell University coordinated the participation of land-grant and agricultural libraries in providing historical agricultural information for the digitization project; the University of Arizona Libraries, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Office of Arid Lands Studies collaborated in the selection and provision of material for the digitization project.

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Introduction: Globally, over forty million adults are infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), with twenty-five million people having already died of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) worldwide by 2007. To date, approximately twenty-eight million members of the labour force have been lost to AIDS. In terms of the settings approach to Health Promotion, the workplace presents as one of the most effective and significant settings in which to respond to the epidemic. This study formed part of The Workplace VCT/Treatment Uptake Project (WVUP), which is a longitudinal study located in a company in the South African mining sector. The broad aim of the WVUP was to provide new knowledge on the reasons for low and slow uptake of VCT and treatment services in workplace settings and to implement and evaluate interventions to improve uptake of these services. The specific aim of this phase of the study (a Situational Assessment) was to unravel the contextual influences on VCT and treatment participation rates at the selected site, as a precursor to succeeding phases of the WVUP. Method: This Situational Assessment comprised of an archival documentary analysis (aimed at developing a historical perspective of the company’s HIV/AIDS program) and interviews and focus groups with key organisational stakeholders (aimed at a contextual assessment of the program). A qualitative approach was used for this study, as it provided an in-depth and detailed understanding of the organizational and personal experiences, incidences and occurrences that make up the contextual milieu for the VCT and HIV/AIDS treatment services at the study site. Fourteen individual interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, followed by eight focus group interviews with these constituencies. Data was collected using audiotapes and were transcribed verbatim. A quality assurance check was conducted with random sections of the tape compared against the transcripts. A list of themes across all interviews and data was developed and then reduced and coded using Nvivo7, a qualitative datamanagement software programme. This tool enabled the researcher to store and code the data and search the data thematically. The results of the study were interpreted through the lens of two theoretical frameworks, viz., the Precede-Proceed model and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Results and Conclusions: The discussion of results incorporated the findings from the archival audit and documentary analysis as well as the various factors that emerged from the key stakeholder and focus group interviews. Even though the mine had high VCT uptake rates, significant concerns were apparent with regard to the VCT and treatment programmes. Some of these concerns centered around the levels of support from mine management and Head Office, support of employees for the HIV/AIDS programme, relational challenges with the union, confidentiality issues, treatment and treatment adherence issues, environmental influences, spousal VCT uptake, race, culture and sexism, and fear. Salient findings have been discussed using the selected theoretical frameworks and several theoretically and empirically derived recommendations were offered to inform the next phase of the WVUP study. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008

Cropping systems were: corn + atrazine + EPTC/dichlormid; corn + atrazine + metolachlor; corn + atrazine + bentazon; corn + EPTC/dichlormid intercropped with red clover as green manure or managed as forage crop in the following year; alfalfa + EPTC; soybean + metalachlor + metribuzin; sorghum as green manure followed by winter wheat; and spring barley + diclofop-methyl + bromoxynil. Control treatments were yellow nutsedge growing in a pure stand and complete yellow nutsedge control. After two growing seasons in experiment #1, the tuber population had decreased in all cropping systems. Yellow nutsedge was reduced to 9% of the initial population under perfect control while it tripled in the pure stand. After the first growing season in the second experiment, only corn intercropped with red clover significantly reduced yellow nutsedge population by 17%. When the systems were not treated with herbicides, the yellow nutsedge population increased between 41 to 180% in all cropping systems. There was a significant relation between yellow nutsedge, broadleaf weed and grass densities and yellow nutsedge tuber production. Corn was the most profitable cropping system. The least economically advantageous cropping system was barley.

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