The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the establishment of the five academic library consortia in South Africa, their status quo, and a summary of their successes and plans for the future. Although useful information can be found from the consortia Web sites, much of it is no longer current. Similarly, there is limited published literature on the academic library consortia in South Africa. Apart from the sources referenced, the authors therefore relied heavily on an unpublished conference paper by Thomas[reference 1], which included findings gathered during a short survey among the five academic library consortia. In addition, Rowley and Slack[reference 2] and Sekabembe[reference 3] provide useful overviews of the library consortia in South Africa at the time of publication. Further information is available in published and unpublished sources.

Properties of luminescence lifetimes in quartz related to annealing between 500 and 900ºC have been investigated. The luminescence was pulse-stimulated at 470 nm from sets of granular quartz annealed at 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900ºC. The lifetimes decrease with annealing temperature from about 42 to 33 µѕ when the annealing temperature is increased from 500 to 900ºC. Luminescence lifetimes are most sensitive to duration of annealing at 600ºC, decreasing from 40.2 ± 0.7 µѕ by as much as 7 µѕ when the duration of annealing is changed from 10 to 60 min. However, at 800–900ºC lifetimes are essentially independent of annealing temperature at about 33 µѕ. Increasing the exciting beta dose causes an increase in the lifetimes of the stimulated luminescence in the sample annealed at 800ºC but not in those annealed at either 500 or 600ºC. The temperature-resolved distribution of luminescence lifetimes is affected by thermal quenching of luminescence. These features may be accounted for with reference to two principal luminescence centres involved in the luminescence emission process.

The Thicket Biome is the second smallest biome in South Africa, and is renowned for its high biodiversity. Yet, less than 5% of the biome is in formal conservation areas. Much of the currently intact thicket outside protected areas is threatened by land transformation to commercial agriculture or heavy use by rural communities. There is limited understanding of the ecological structure and function of thicket communities and their response to these human pressures. This paper reports on a study to characterize the woody communities in Valley Thicket and Thornveld surrounding a rural village. We also examined the demand and selection for specific woody species. There was a marked selection for key species for different uses, including fuelwood, construction timber, and cultural stacks. There was also strong selection for specific size classes of stem, especially those between 16–45 cm circumference. The density, biomass and species richness of woody species was reduced close to the village, and increased with distance away from human settlement. A similar trend was found for the basal area of preferred species, but not for the basal area of all species. The strong selectivity for both species and size class means that the anthropogenic impacts are not uniform within the woody strata, leading to marked changes in community structure and floristics at a local scale.

Production and development in the savanna regions of southern Africa are primarily determined by interactions between the limitations imposed by ecological determinants (such as rainfall and soil quality) and the management strategies of the specific region. Good planning, focussing on both the short and long-term effects of water use, is needed in water management strategies. Botswana is already experiencing so-called 'water stress' which is related to a number of factors such as rapidly increasing population leading to a sharp increase in water demand, low and variable rainfall, high rates of evaporation, and the high cost of exploiting existing water resources. At the current rates of abstraction, the lifetime of surface and groundwater resources is limited to decades. Botswana shares four river basins with its neighbouring countries. This results in a situation where 94% of the fresh water resources which Botswana can theoretically access originates outside its borders, making water resource management highly complex. Transnational sharing and management of water resources, therefore, plays a major role in securing sustainability of this precious resource.

This is a review of Article 19's publication entitled 'Broadcasting pluralism and diversity: training manual for African regulators'. It analyses the key issues raised in the manual, and problematises them in terms of media theory. It concludes that the Article 19 manual is a useful training resource, regardless of some of its theoretical and presentational shortcomings.

DSC, TG and TG-FT-IR, and XRPD have been used to examine the effects of supposedly inert atmospheres of argon and nitrogen on the mechanism of the thermal decomposition of copper(II) oxalate. The DSC curves in pure argon at 10 °C min[superscript −1] show a broad endotherm with onset at about 280 °C and maximum at about 295 °C. In mixtures of argon and nitrogen, as the proportion of argon gas is decreased, the endothermic character of the decomposition decreases until, when nitrogen is the main component, the decomposition exhibits a complex broad exothermic character. XRPD studies showed that, regardless of the proportions of nitrogen and argon, the DSC residues consisted of mainly copper metal with small amounts of copper(I) oxide (cuprite) and, under some conditions, traces of copper(II) oxide (tenorite). Various explanations for this behaviour are discussed and a possible answer lies in the disproportionation of CO[subscript 2](g) to form small quantities of O[subscript 2](g) or monatomic oxygen. The possibility exists that the exothermicity in nitrogen could be explained by reaction of the nitrogen with atomic oxygen to form N[subscript 2]O(g), but this product could not be detected using TG-FT-IR.

The development of cobalt(II) phthalocyanine–cobalt(II) tetra(5-phenoxy-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin), (CoPc–(CoTPP)[subscript 4]) pentamer as a novel redox mediator for amperometric enzyme electrode sensitive to glucose is described. A glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was first modified with the pentamer, then followed by the immobilization onto the GCE–CoPc–(CoTPP)[subscript 4] with glucose oxidase (GOx) through cross-linking with glutaraldehyde in the presence of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and Nafion® cation-exchange polymer. The proposed biosensor displayed good amperometric respose charateristics to glucose in pH 7.0 PBS solution; such as low overpotentials (+400 mV versus Ag|AgCl), very fast amperometric response time (~5 s), linear concentration range extended up to 11 mM, with 10 μM detection limit. The biosensor exhibited electrochemical Michaelis–Menten kinetics and showed an average apparent Michaelis–Menten constant (K′M) of 14.91 ± 0.46 mM over a storage period of 2 weeks.

The paper describes a new software package for automated estimation, display and analyses of various drought indices – continuous functions of precipitation that allow quantitative assessment of meteorological drought events to be made. The software at present allows up to five different drought indices to be estimated. They include the Decile Index (DI), the Effective Drought Index (EDI), the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and deviations from the long-term mean and median value. Each index can be estimated from point and spatially averaged rainfall data and a number of options are provided for months' selection and the type of the analysis, including a running mean, single value or multiple annual values. The software also allows spell/run analysis to be performed and maps of a specific index to be constructed. The software forms part of the comprehensive computer package, developed earlier and designed to perform the multitude of water resources analyses and hydro-meteorological data processing. The 7-step procedure of setting up and running a typical drought assessment application is described in detail. The examples of applications are given primarily in the specific context of South Asia where the software has been used.

In composting, organic matter is degraded by cellulases and ligninolytic enzymes at temperatures typically above 50 °C. This study isolated thermophilic microorganisms from a compost system that were then screened for cellulase and polyphenol oxidase activity. Temperature optima for the cellulases and polyphenol oxidases were determined as 70 and 40 °C, respectively. Maximal cellulase activity was determined as 1.333 mg glucose released ml[superscript −1] min[superscript −1]. Maximal polyphenol oxidase activity attained was 5.111 nmol phenol ml[superscript −1] min[superscript −1]. Cellulases were found to be stable over a period of 1 h. The isolated compost microorganisms were identified as strains of Bacillus using 16S ribosomal DNA sequence analysis.

Recent political transformation in South Africa has laid the basis for significant socioeconomic change. One area in which the greatest socioeconomic disparities are discernable is the agricultural sector and rural development in general. Through the medium of a case study of the Eastern Cape province, the obstacles and opportunities facing the two predominant farming groups —emerging black small-scale farmers and white commercial farmers — are examined. The paper concludes with an examination of the economic potential of the former ‘white' areas to sustain the resettlement of people previously excluded from that land market on racial grounds.