A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. April, 2013 / Recognising the mechanisms that led to the deposition of the Plio-Pleistocene caves of South Africa provide an irreplaceable window into the environment at the time. Differentiating between various accumulating agents based on the markings and accumulation variances has become an integral part of palaeontological research. Large birds of prey have been investigated for their connection to the Australopithecus africanus type specimen, commonly, the Taung Child. The verreaux’s eagle, Aquila verreauxii, was investigated in this study to establish whether it produced a taphonomic signature that would be distinguishable from other similarly sized raptors and small mammalian carnivores. Prey remains were collected from 11 nesting-sites in the Gauteng and Northwest Provinces as well as nesting-sites from across the Northern and Western Cape Provinces. The objective was to illustrate how prey selection was directly influenced by the immediate environmental stresses. Prey was analysed in terms of prey choice, skeletal part representation and the markings that the skeletal elements bore. Of the total of 886 specimens that were collected, rock hyrax (Procavia capensis), hares (Lepus sp.), Smith’s red rock rabbit (Pronolagus rupestris) and helmeted guineafowl (Numida meleagris) were the most common. The skeletal part representation directly mirrors the feeding behaviour of Verreaux’s eagles: body parts with larger muscle attachments and skeletal elements covering choice meat options were most often targeted and damaged. Finally, ten damage types were recorded as well as the combinations thereof, of which chewed and crenulated edges, V-nicks, removal of bone and punctures featured prominently. The results showed that verreaux’s eagles do leave a characteristic taphonomic signature in terms of the assemblage composition as well as the markings on bone surfaces.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Medicine University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Philosophy / Seven Y chromosome probes and thirteen restriction enzyme digests were used to examine a conservative estimate of 20000bp, and no new Y-specific polymorphisms were revealed by these systems. The Y chromosome probe 49a, which reveals a Y-specific haplotype with TaqI, was shown to reveal five new complex polymorphisms with Bglll, Hindlll, Pst I, PvuII and Sstl. The new polymorphisms exhibit great genetic diversity, and each enzyme reveals numerous haplotypes, which mostly occur infrequently and are population-specific. The haplotypes for a given enzyme do not correlate strictly with those revealed by the other enzymes, including TaqI, suggesting that each polymorphism results from a combination of restriction site mutations and rearrangement events. Association between the different 49a polymorphisms occurs only in individuals of recent common genetic origin. Y-specific 49a/TagI haplotypes were determined for 933 individuals drawn from 23 different African populations. A total of 31 new haplotypes were observed, some of which contained new alleles or allelic variants. Duplication, in addition to CpG mutation, is implicated in the generation of certain allelic variants. Cluster analysis of genetic distances between populations was calculated using the 49a/TagI haplotype frequencies. Y-specific 49a/TagI haplotype analysis of individual populations was not sufficiently sensitive to accurately distinguish between the different Bantu-speaking Negroid tribal groups. Cluster analysis of larger groupings was more stable, and with the exception of the Khoisan, resulted in a basic split between African and non-African populations. The linkage disequilibrium of the XY275 MspI Y-linked polymorphism was determined. The high allele was generally found in association with the Y chromosome, but the Y-associated low allele was found to occur in Bantu-speaking Negroids, Khoisan-speaking Negroids, the Khoisan, two groups of mixed ancestry, and the Caucasoid South African Asiatic Indian population. The discovery of Y-associated low alleles in non-African as well as African populations suggests that more than one Y chromosome gave rise to the present-day non-African population. The pDP31/EcoRI, p21Al/TagI and Y Alu polymorphisms were also studied in several southern African populations. The pDP31 duplication occurred at high frequencies in Caucasoids, and could be used to indicate Caucasoid male gene flow into hybrid populations. The p21Al/TagI point mutation showed no distinct trends in frequency in the different populations, and several Taql mutations are proposed to have occurred in the repeat unit recognized by this sequence. The Y Alu polymorphism occurred infrequently in Caucasoids, at intermediate frequency in the Khoisan, and at high frequency in Negroids. The presence of the Y Alu insertion in all three major population groups studied is interpreted to suggest that the insert predates the diversification of Homo sapiens. The relationship between the different Y-linked polymorphisms was determined in the populations studied. The Y Alu polymorphism is believed to have originated once from sequencing data, but such information is not available for the other Y polymorphisms studied. No absolute relationship was observed between the Y Alu polymorphism and the 49a/TagI, XY275 Mspl, pDP31/£coRI and p21Al/TagI polymorphisms. It is suggested that the latter polymorphisms have arisen more than once. / WHSLYP2017

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Medicine, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy / Two classes of hypervariable loci, VNTRs and (CA)n repeats, represent a rich source of highly polymorphic markers in the human genome. The main objective of this study was to assess their usefulness in elucidating the relationships between 17 southern African populations and to assess the feasibility of paternity testing using these hypervariable markers in the local context. / WHSLYP2017

An accurate seismic hazard assessment can only be carried out if a homogeneous and sufficiently complete catalogue for the study area is available. Since the catalogue for southern Africa was last updated in the early 1990s for the Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP), it is necessary that a new updated, homogeneous and complete earthquake catalogue be compiled that includes data acquired during the last two decades. The process of compiling the new earthquake catalogue for southern Africa (South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, and Namibia) was done as part of the Global Earthquake Modelling (GEM) project. The data from published and unpublished sources, and databases from the South African National Seismograph Network (SANSN), Bulawayo (BUL), the Geological Survey of Botswana, the National Earthquake Information Centre (NEIC), the Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS), and the International Seismic Centre (ISC) were retrieved and evaluated. After the data from the different sources were merged, duplicates and induced earthquakes were removed. The catalogue was unified with all magnitude types converted to moment magnitude (MW). Unifying the southern African catalogue to one magnitude scale had multiple challenges, considering that the catalogue is mostly incomplete, and it was therefore not easy to derive relations between different magnitude scales. The question of which method and relations are most suitable for converting all magnitude scales to MW had to be addressed. To ensure that all the events are independent, several procedures were carried out to decluster the catalogue and most suitable method selected. The final catalogue includes all available events, i.e. historical, and instrumental events from 1690 to December 2011, excluding fore- and aftershocks and induced events. This catalogue has 920 events with MW ≥ 4 whereas GSHAP has only 100 events with MS ≥ 4 in the southern African region. The largest event in the final catalogue occurred in 1952 and is located in the Okavango Delta region in Botswana with magnitude MW = 6.7. The maximum likelihood method was used at each point on a grid covering the study area, to estimate the spatial distribution of the b-value and the activity rate. The maximum curvature method was used for estimating the spatial distribution of magnitude of completeness, which was also substantiated with the Gutenberg-Richter, time-scale and spatial-scale magnitude of completeness graphs.

Context: Despite the many initiatives implemented over the past decades as part of the global priority on child survival, there still exists high infant mortality in Southern Africa. Although studies have examined factors contributing to poor child health outcomes including the effect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, there is paucity of studies on the possible effect of infant feeding practices on infant mortality in the region. This study examines the association between infant feeding practices and infant mortality in Southern Africa. The need to reduce infant mortality is a global health concern hence the United Nations through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) declared the reduction of infant and child mortality as one of its major targets by the year 2015. Methods: A merged dataset from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys for Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe was analysed in this study. A total number of 13, 218 infants born in the last five years preceding the surveys whose information on infant feeding practices was available formed the analysis sample. The outcome variable was infant mortality and infant feeding practices which had the categories, no breastfeeding, partial breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding was the main explanatory variable of the study. Other explanatory variables used in the study pertained to maternal demographic and socioeconomic characteristics as well as the infants’ bio-demographic characteristics. The Cox Hazard Regression Model was employed to examine both the unadjusted and adjusted effect of infant feeding practices on infant mortality in Southern Africa. Results: Although, exclusive breastfeeding was quite low (12%), its mortality reduction effect was significant, and infants who were exclusively breastfed exhibited a 97% lower risk of dying during infancy compared to no breastfeeding in the region. Further, variations exist by country in the levels and patterns of both infant mortality and infant feeding practices. Country, highest educational level, marital status, sex of child, preceding birth interval and birth weight were the significant predictors of infant mortality in Southern Africa. Conclusions: Overall, the study found that any form of breastfeeding whether exclusive or partial breastfeeding greatly reduces the risk of infant mortality, with the mortality reduction effect being higher among exclusively breastfed infants in the Southern African region. Thus, in order to reduce the upsurge of infant mortality, there is need to step up the effectiveness of child nutrition programmes that promote breastfeeding and put emphasis on exclusive breastfeeding of infants in the region.

Cette recherche entend examiner les régions de l’Italie méridionale actuelle, exception faite des Pouilles, de la Sicile et des îles. L’objectif de ce travail est d’analyser le contexte des grandes nécropoles afin d’en déduire le plus d’informations possibles concernant l’imaginaire, à savoir l’ensemble des croyances et représentations, relatif aux classes d’âges inférieures parmi les différentes cultures et sociétés, autochtones et coloniales, présentes en Italie méridionale péninsulaire. Afin de mobiliser un échantillon ample et significatif sur lequel fonder notre étude, nous avons donc choisi d’analyser de manière approfondie les contextes funéraires qui présentaient au moins 100 sépultures pouvant être rattachées à la période étudiée ; des éventuels noyaux plus petits et relatifs au même contexte culturel ont tout de même étés pris en compte dans le cadre des comparaisons concernant la culture matérielle, les typologies funéraires et le traitement des corps, de même que pour la représentativité des enfants et adolescents dans la base de données archéologique. De la même manière, bien qu’ils ne soient pas pris en compte dans le catalogage qui constitue le corpus de cette étude, différents contextes et sépultures jugés significatifs ont été examinés et insérés dans l’analyse globale, afin de replacer les données de la sélection analytique dans un contexte historique et socio-culturel plus vaste. En ce qui concerne la base documentaire, cette recherche s’appuie sur l’analyse d’environ 3000 sépultures connues des publications exhaustives, ainsi que sur le catalogage de 969 contextes rattachables à des individus immatures, de l’âge périnatal à l’adolescence incluse. À ce corpus, il convient d’ajouter l’étude d’un lot inédit de nécropoles, constitué de 109 sépultures découvertes dans les années 1980 dans la propriété De Marco à Chiaromonte (Potenza), dans lequel ont été identifiées 26 tombes pour un total de 28 individus, auxquelles il faut ajouter 6 possibles inhumations en vase. Pour cette recherche, il a fallu analyser la documentation publiée sur un autre lot de la même nécropole, composé de 44 sépultures. / The archaeology of childhood developed from 1980s feminist studies trying to enlight the role of women in the reconstruction of the past: even if immature individuals made up between 40 and 65% of ancient communities, for a long time they have been neglected in the archaeological analyses and, as well as women, researchers contributed to the invisibility of children relegating them to the stereotype of passivity. In the last decennies, many archaeological studies focusing on gendered cultural constructions of childhood, mortuary treatments and evidence of social status proved the importance of these individuals in the cultural maintenance, inter- and intragenerational transmission, and cultural change of past communities. This research analyses almost 1000 tombs of children and adolescents in the necropoleis of Southern Italy between the Iron Age and the archaic period (in terms of absolute chronology, from the end of the 11th century to the first half of the Vth century B.C.). The study of the grave goods and tombs typology, the rituals performed out on the burials, the representativity within the necropolis and the mode of aggregation of the burials allowed to highlight a great variability of the funeral treatment of immature individuals, depending on the different cultural components active in this area during the period under review.

No description available.

This dissertation analyzes the dilemmas of governance that confronted the Chinese state under the Ming dynasty. These dilemmas, I argue, arose from the Ming's dual existence as an empire (a state that ruled over a large territory) and a bureaucracy (a state that ruled through written documents and hierarchically-structured offices). As a bureaucratic empire, the Ming pursued several distinct objectives simultaneously, the resulting complications of which form the focus of my investigations. Chapter 1 describes the Ming state's methods for authenticating and synchronizing information, and shows how the needs of bureaucratic communication necessitated a seemingly redundant style of administrative writing. Chapter 2 explains why the postal system, despite its creators' best intentions, turned out to be much slower than non-postal methods of communication. Chapter 3 discusses how territorial officials made regular trips to the capital to participate in state rituals and to undergo personnel evaluations, even though the trips generated great costs and undermined local security. Chapter 4 examines the long time it took for officials to transfer from one province to another and the bureaucratic needs that slowed down their movement. Ultimately, the Ming state maintained a delicate equilibrium between four conflicting objectives: speed, cost-saving, administrative certainty, and propriety. Given the constrains of premodern communication, it was logistically impossible to meet all four objectives simultaneously. Any attempt to advance one objective necessarily undermined one or more of the other objectives, and no amount of investment in transportation or communication infrastructure could have resolved this basic tension.

Tam, Su San. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-147). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; includes Chinese characters. / ABSTRACT --- p.I / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.IV / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.VI / Chapter CHAPTER 1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background of the Problem and Purpose of the Study --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Research Questions and Significance of the Study --- p.3 / Chapter 1.3 --- Scope of the Study --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Thesis Organization --- p.4 / Chapter CHAPTER 2 --- DATA OF FOUR SOUTHERN MIN DIALECTS --- p.1 / Chapter 2.1 --- Preamble --- p.1 / Chapter 2.2 --- Basic Data of the four sub-dialects --- p.2 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Xiamen Dialect --- p.2 / Chapter 2.2.1.1 --- Xiamen Onsets --- p.3 / Chapter 2.2.1.2 --- Xiamen Rimes --- p.4 / Chapter 2.2.1.3 --- Xiamen Tones --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2.1.4 --- Xiamen Syllables --- p.7 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Quanzhou Dialect --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2.2.1 --- Quanzhou Onsets --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2.2.2 --- Quanzhou Rimes --- p.9 / Chapter 2.2.2.3 --- Quanzhou Tones --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2.2.4 --- Quanzhou Syllables --- p.12 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Zhangping Dialect --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.3.1 --- Zhangping Onsets --- p.13 / Chapter 2.2.3.2 --- Zhangping Rimes --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.3.3 --- Zhangping Tones --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2.3.4 --- Zhangping Syllables --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Shantou Dialect --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2.4.1 --- Shantou Onsets --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2.4.2 --- Shantou Rimes --- p.19 / Chapter 2.2.4.3 --- Shantou Tones --- p.21 / Chapter 2.2.4.4 --- Shantou Syllables --- p.21 / Chapter 2.3 --- Co-occurrence Patterns --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- On Labial Co-occurrence --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3.1.1 --- Xiamen Labial Co-occurrence --- p.23 / Chapter 2.3.1.2 --- Quanzhou Labial Co-occurrence --- p.24 / Chapter 2.3.1.3 --- Zhangping Labial Co-occurrence --- p.26 / Chapter 2.3.1.4 --- Shantou Labial Co-occurrence --- p.27 / Chapter 2.3.1.5 --- Southern Min Labial Co-occurrence: A Summary --- p.28 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- On nasalization --- p.29 / Chapter 2.3.2.1 --- Xiamen Nasalization --- p.30 / Chapter 2.3.2.2 --- Quanzhou Nasalization --- p.32 / Chapter 2.3.2.3 --- Zhangping Nasalization --- p.35 / Chapter 2.3.2.4 --- Shantou Nasalization --- p.37 / Chapter 2.3.2.5 --- Southern Min Nasality: A Summary --- p.40 / Chapter 2.4 --- Generalizing the Southern Min Phonotactic Observations --- p.41 / Chapter CHAPTER 3 --- PREVIOUS STUDIES ON CHINESE/MIN PHONOTACTICS --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1 --- Autosegmental Phonology --- p.44 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) --- p.46 / Chapter 3.1.1.2 --- OCP and Labial Co-Occurrence in Chinese Syllables --- p.49 / Chapter 3.1.1.3 --- Application of OCP in Southern Min Dialects --- p.54 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Syllable Theory in Chinese and Southern Min --- p.58 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Nasality in Southern Min --- p.65 / Chapter 3.1.3.1 --- Nasal Consonants --- p.65 / Chapter 3.1.3.2 --- Nasalized Vowels --- p.67 / Chapter 3.1.3.3 --- Derivation of Nasality in Southern Min --- p.68 / Chapter 3.1.4 --- Inadequacies of Autosegmental Framework --- p.76 / Chapter 3.2 --- Optimality Theory (OT) --- p.79 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Revisiting OCP in OT --- p.83 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Nasalization in OT --- p.89 / Chapter CHAPTER 4 --- AN OPTIMALITY ANALYSIS OF THE SOUTHERN MIN PHONOTACTICS --- p.93 / Chapter 4.1 --- On labial co-occurrence --- p.93 / Chapter 4.2 --- On nasalization --- p.103 / Chapter 4.3 --- Summary: a Southern Min 'Typology' --- p.116 / Chapter CHAPTER 5 --- CONCLUSION --- p.118 / Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusion --- p.118 / Chapter 5.2 --- Residual Issues and Future Research --- p.119 / APPENDICES --- p.121 / Appendix A ´ؤ Xiamen Syllable Chart --- p.122 / Appendix B - Quanzhou Syllable Chart --- p.128 / Appendix C 一 Zhangping Syllable Chart --- p.134 / Appendix D - Shantou Syllable Chart --- p.138 / REFERENCES --- p.144

Thesis (Ph.D.(Literature)) -- University of the North, 1973 / Refer to the document