ABSTRACT In the HIV/AIDS literature, a perspective that has not received a great amount of attention concerning blood donation per se and the duties and obligations of Blood Transfusion Services (BTS)i when held to the question of fairness raised by socially marginalised persons (or groups) who altruistically wish to donate blood in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is addressed in this research report. The represented marginalised group I use is Men who have Sex with Men (MSM)ii Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, commonly called AIDS first came to the attention of the public in the 1980s. From an unknown unnamed emerging infectious diseaseiii ,it has grown into a pandemic familiar to all. Primarily transmitted either sexually or via contaminated needles, the HIV infected individual is initially an asymptomatic carrier. Once an individual Once an individual is infected with the virus, he or she can pass it on to others by way of body fluids, e.g. blood and semen. HIV, whether treated or not, will eventually develop into AIDS for which there is currently no known cure. AIDS is uniformly mortal. i In this research report, I will refer to the industry as “Blood Transfusion Services” although in some countries it is referred to as “Blood Bank Services” ii Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) according to the London-based PANOS Institute include men who have sex with both men and women, men who have sex with only other men, men who have sex with boys and men, male sex workers and their clients, male transvestites and transsexuals, male street children and men in prison (McKenna 1999:1) iii As defined by Lashley, F, (2006) Emerging Infectious Diseases are ‘diseases of infectious origin whose incidence in humans has increased within the past two decades or threatens to increase in the near future’ The media abounds with literature concerning HIV/AIDS looking at it from various perspectives. iv Moreover, and correctly, in South Africa we are knowledgeable that what once was considered as a threat only to homosexualsv or IV drug users – individuals marginalised by their nonconformance to society’s norms – is now epidemiologically a disease spread in our society primarily by non-drug using heterosexuals. The tension between promoting the public good in the face of an pandemic while simultaneously protecting against unjust discrimination against individuals or groups represents an ethical dilemma faced by all public health organisations including BTS. Principally contextualised in iv e.g. clinical research in, guidelines pertaining to, ethical issues about, legal precedents concerning, duties of medial personnel towards, epidemiological analysis, psychological monitoring …and so on. v At the end of the 19th century, homosexuality was profiled as a mental illness by the German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing in his reference book Psychopathis Sexualis.v In the absence of scientific evidence to prove otherwise, this view became widely accepted . Eventually, many different societies perceived homosexuals including MSM as unstable and this reinforced discriminatory practices against them. v Even today, the harmful consequences of homophobia impact on MSM in many different ways. Meyers describes three negative conditions or practices common to the experience of MSM. They are: the internalisation of homophobia to the extent that they accept rejection from society; the experience of social stigmatisation; and overt discrimination and violence.v From some religious aspects, homosexuality is considered a “sin against nature” and is often seen as a link to AIDS, which is again seen as God’s punishment for a “life against nature”.v The Koran suggests punishment for those involved in homosexual acts on the basis of harm to society, and Sharia law admits no tolerance towards homosexuality.v. Predominantly Catholic Latin American countries enforce socio-cultural and legal restrictions to prohibit homosexuality. (Mckenna 1999:11) From Buddhist perspective, homosexuals are not permitted to become a monk and to practice through monk-hood the ultimate goal of attaining the highest level of enlightenment (Nirvana) (Ven Chanmyay Sayadaw Janakabhivamsa 1997:9 ). However, they are as equal as are others when following the paths taken that may lead them to attain Nirvana (Personal communication with Ven Ashin Manijoti, Theravada Buddhist Dhammodaya Monastery, Pietermaritzburg). the milieu of South Africa but practiced globally, the responsibility of BTS’s may broadly be grouped into two areas: 1) the provision of blood & its products to a given population based upon their estimated need; and 2) the assurance of blood and blood-product safety. While these may be considered only technical issues, they are not so clear-cut. Rather, they include conflicts of values and social-political agendas. Historically, BTSs have used discriminatory practices to exclude certain groups from blood donation. Independent of country or nation and in spite of advancements in blood screening science, the existent social-political order has influence on the policies and practices of BTSs such as the separation of groups into “high-risk” and ”low risk” blood donor categories. On the surface, such separations may appear to be straightforward scientific and prudential public health policy. However, when one considers the most common manner of HIV transmission - as occurring during intimate sexual acts which take place within society’s emphasis on private and individual rights but when such acts are considered by society to be ‘deviant ‘ - one might ask how the terms high- and low- risk are influenced by societal perceptions of the group in question. In other words, I suggest that societal (including political, religious, and economic) perceptions of a marginalised group’s private sexual acts influence public health policy; private acts have social consequences. Weighing the pros and cons of ethical arguments, this research report concludes that because of advanced blood transfusion science, it is morally justifiable to accept blood from all altruistic competent adult individuals volunteering to donate. Moreover, in this regard, it is the duty of BTS to safeguard the national blood supply by means other than excluding marginalised groups. To do otherwise is ethically unwarranted and constitutes unfair discrimination. In addition, through identifying that the act of blood donation is based on altruism or the “gift relationship,” the exclusion of marginalised groups from altruistic blood donation, serves only to further excludes them from an act, which is in essence humanitybinding. That being said, to achieve this end, all altruistic competent adults who wish to donate blood are obliged to understand the purpose, nature, and duties BTS’s have and adopt a renewed sense of social responsibility broadening our vision of the public good..

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MSc (Dent) / A comparison of radiation doses to selected vital organs in the maxillo-facial region at three different settings on the Galileos cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) machine in the Wits Dental Hospital, was conducted with the courtesy of the Department of Medical Physics of the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital. The study made use of the RANDO phantom and TLD- 100 detector chips, which provided detailed mapping of the dose distribution from the Galileos CBCT machine. Sixty-two Sanford® lithium fluoride dosimeters- (TLD- 100) were irradiated using a calibrated known x-ray source after having undergone a recommended annealing cycle. The data showed great consistency in the results. Association between the different imaging modalities was further investigated using Kruskal-Wallis equality-of-populations rank test and Chi-squared test. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Since there do not appear to be major differences between the radiation doses for the different settings of the Galileos CBCT machine, the author recommends the use of the combined setting at all times for optimum image quality.

Degree of Master of Science in Dentistry by coursework and dissertation A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Health Sciences. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Dentistry Johannesburg, 2014 / Introduction: Dental Cone beam CT has encountered great success in diagnostics and treatment planning in dentistry. However, it makes use of ionizing radiation. Lots of concern on the effects of x-rays on vital organs of the head and neck region has been raised. Clarity on the amount of radiation received on these specific organs will be a contribution to a better use of the emergent technology. Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the potential dose of radiation received on the eye and thyroid and to quantify the amount of potential scatter on the gonads during CBCT examinations. Material and Methods: Calibrated Lithium- Fluoride thermoluminescent dosimeters were inserted inside an anthropomorphic phantom, on sites of the eye, thyroid and the gonads. After its submission to a CBCT examination, using the high and standard resolution for a similar scanning protocol, the dose of radiation received on each organ was calculated according to the ICRP guidelines. Results: An equivalent dose of 0.059 mGy was calculated for the eye. Compared to the threshold dose of 0.5 Gy fixed by the ICRP 2007, this can be considered as relatively low. The thyroid with an effective dose of 23.5 μSv represented 20% of the full body effective dose existing in literature. The gonads absorbed an effective dose of 0.05 μSv, which was considered as negligible. Conclusion: The doses calculated were considered as relatively low. However, dentists must be aware of risks of cumulative exposure. Therefore adherence to the ALARA principle and consideration of clinical indication for CBCT remain a priority.

Thesis advisor: Vincent Cho / The purpose of this study was to understand the role of school leaders in supporting teachers as they build relationships with and between students in the classroom. These two important aspects of creating a positive classroom learning environment are necessary for Social Emotional Learning to be successful. This qualitative case study drew upon data from interviews with school leaders, teacher focus group interviews, and redacted teacher evaluations in one school district in Massachusetts. While the role of school leaders in the academic success of students has been explored in the literature, there is less research on the specific actions school leaders take to support teachers struggling with classroom environment issues. This study will explore the actions of school leaders through the lens of three leadership practices: setting direction, developing people, and redesigning the organization (Leithwood, Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004). The findings highlighted the difference in school leaders’ perception of the capacity of adults versus students to learn relationship building skills. In some cases school leaders were not confident that building these skills was possible and consequently they struggled to provide clear and specific strategies to teachers. The findings also reflect the reactive versus proactive nature of the support teachers received for building relationships with and between students. Recommendations include re-organizing resources to allow for more teacher collaboration, targeted professional development in relationship building and exploration regarding the difference in how student peer relationships were viewed compared to teacher student relationships. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

In text mining, being able to recognize and extract named entities, e.g. Locations, Persons, Organizations, is very useful in many applications. This is usually referred to named entity recognition (NER). This thesis presents a cascaded framework for extracting named entities from text documents. We automatically derive features on a set of documents from different feature templates. To avoid high computational cost incurred by a single-phase approach, we divide the named entity extraction task into a segmentation task and a classification task, reducing the computational cost by an order of magnitude. / To handle cascaded errors that often occur in a sequence of tasks, we investigate and develop three models: maximum-entropy margin-based (MEMB) model, isomeric conditional random field (ICRF) model, and online cascaded reranking (OCR) model. MEMB model makes use of the concept of margin in maximizing log-likelihood. Parameters are trained in a way that they can maximize the "margin" between the decision boundary and the nearest training data points. ICRF model makes use of the concept of joint training. Instead of training each model independently, we design the segmentation and classification models in a way that they can be efficiently trained together under a soft constraint. OCR model is developed by using an online training method to maximize a margin without considering any probability measures, which greatly reduces the training time. It reranks all of the possible outputs from a previous stage based on a total output score. The best output with the highest total score is the final output. / We report experimental evaluations on the GENIA Corpus available from the BioNLP/NLPBA (2004) shared task and the Reuters Corpus available from the CoNLL-2003 shared tasks, which demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance achieved by the proposed models. / Chan, Shing Kit. / Advisers: Wai Lam; Kai Pui Lam. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-06, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-133). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

This thesis examines an aspect of embodied relationship that is recognised in colloquial figures of speech but is not theorised, nor even much acknowledged in the psychotherapeutic literature. It argues that when we experience subtle sensations of extending towards another person, as we might when our "heart goes out" to them, and of pulling away, as we might when we "draw back", this seemingly internal experience is snesed by the other. Using a phenomenological-hermeneutic methodology underpinning by Merleau-Ponty, van Manen and Todres, exercised were used to bring such experiences to the awareness of several cohorts of experienced and inexperienced therapists attending a training course. Verbal and written accounts of what was felt during the exercised, and of similar experiences from more naturalistic settings, were collected along with the researchers' own accounts. These accounts are discussed within the framework of a Gadamerian Conversation with a view to making explicit the implication for Person-centred therapy with regard to practice, supervision and training. The conversation speaks of the the impact of these experiences upon whether or not clients perceive therapists as authentic, unconditionally accepting and empathic. Assumptions are uncovered and challenged and an alternative narrative emerges from a consideration of multiple contexts. The conversation also speaks of an unseen dance of closeness and distance that arises as each moves towards and away from the other. Conversation (and silence) is inevitably accompanied and impacted by this dance, which happens in the background of every interaction. The unseen dance impacts not only the relationship, but also each person's organismic state.

"As artificially intelligent agents become more advanced, they will require corresponding advances in social capability. In particular, they will require an understanding of the development of relationships. This work is intended to aid in addressing this need. We have developed a model of the development of relationships, designed and implemented a planning module based on this model, and performed an evaluation study verifying the functionality of the model and implementation. This should provide a foundation for future work in developing artificially intelligent agents capable of appropriately dealing with the development of social relationships."

Citrobacter rodentium is a gut pathogen, which infects the distal colon of mice. It has many similarities to human Enteropathogenic and Enterohemorrhagic E.coli in terms of mechanisms of pathogenicity and methods of transmission. Like many other gram negative bacteria, C. rodentium has developed a complex and highly specialised protein secretion system, known as type three (T3SS), to deliver bacterial proteins into eukaryotic cells. By injecting effector proteins into host cell cytoplasm, the pathogens are able to modulate host cellular functions to facilitate their own survival and replication. There is growing evidence that Attaching Effacing (AE) pathogens can inject effector proteins into gut epithelial cells, which dampen pro-inflammatory responses. There is also evidence that EPEC, Yersinia and Shigella can inject effectors into immune cells and also modulate their function. The objective of this work was to visualise and identify the host cells targeted for type III secretion by C. rodentium, and consequently determine the effect on host immune responses. The method chosen to detect cells targeted for effector protein delivery was the β-lactamase reporter system, where cells loaded with the fluorogenic substrate CCF2-AM emit a green FRET signal upon excitation by UV light, but emit a blue signal when cleaved by β-lactamase. By creating reporter strain of C.rodentium expressing fusion proteins between NleD effector and β-lactamase, I was able to show that C.rodentium is capable of injecting NleD in a wide variety of murine cell lines including Swiss 3T3 fibroblasts, J774 macrophages, CMT93 epithelial cells and BW715 T cells in a dose and time dependent manner in vitro. In addition, I found that C.rodentium has the ability to inject proteins into the cytoplasm of immune cells isolated from mouse lymphoid tissues including the spleen, mesenteric lymph nodes and Peyer's patches. Detailed analysis of the types of cells injected with effectors in vitro showed that NleD- injected cells represented B cells, dendritic cells and T cells. After inoculation of mice with the reporter strain of CitropACYCnleD, the plasmid encoded reporter fusion remained stable throughout infection and was able to inject cells in vitro after passage through the mouse gut. Unfortunately under the conditions described in this study, we were unable to visualise any gut cells targeted for protein delivery by C. rodentium in vivo, thus highlighting the complex nature of the host pathogen relationships in the gut. Although there is a need to develop better strategies to visualise effector translocation in vivo, our study has demonstrated, for the first time, the ability of C. rodentium to target immune cells for effector injection in vitro.

Magister Artium - MA (Psychology) / The state of postgraduate studies in South Africa has come under renewed enquiry in recent years as concern is placed on the inconsistency between postgraduate enrolment and graduation rates. The discrepancy between the enrolment and completion rates is attributable to a range of factors. Literature identified the supervisory relationship as an important and significant factor in predicting completion. The establishment of a good working alliance in the beginning of the thesis process has been identified as a crucial task. As a result, it is useful to gain insight into how students set about establishing working relationships with new supervisors and how they rate the quality thereof. The present study was conducted with Psychology Masters students who were in their first semester of the first enrolment in the Community and Health Sciences faculty at the University of the Western Cape. Attachment theory provided the theoretical framework for the study as it posits that the quality of current relationships are a function of early relationship experiences. Thus students were thought to draw on earlier experiences when setting about establishing new relationships such as the supervisory relationship. The study was exploratory and descriptive in nature. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven eligible participants who have been selected purposively. Transcriptions have been subjected to a Thematic Analysis. Ethics clearance has been requested from and granted by the Senate Research Committee and all relevant ethics principles such as, confidentiality, anonymity, voluntary participation and informed consent, have been adhered to. Findings indicated that supervision was a central component for graduate completion, underscoring the importance of early supervisory sessions to form a strong working alliance. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the supervisor's role in providing the expertise and support largely contributed to the success of establishing strong and productive supervisory relationships. Participants perceived strong supervisory relationships as necessary to foster completion of higher degree requirements. The development of a new supervisory relationship activated relational patterns for students that underscored the importance of recognizing the supervisory relationship as a relationship.

This study investigates the dynamic and challenging affluent market of the South African banking sector. An evolution in client demands has created a need for a more exclusive banking solution known as private banking. The research project takes place in the ABSA Private Bank Gauteng Division, the population of which are private bankers and financial planners involved in the actual client facing engagements. Through a questionnaire sampling 40 client facing staff, responses were gathered followed by deeper investigation into the objectives through interviews of both the direct reporting lines in each of the suites in the province, including the provincial executive.