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BackgroundPostoperative patients’ risk for developing venous thromboembolism (VTE) can be predicted using the adapted Caprini risk assessment model which informs administration of postoperative VTE prophylaxis. The study aimed to assess the appropriateness of postoperative VTE prophylaxis of patients according to the adapted Caprini scores and investigate whether a patient’s HIV status influenced postoperative VTE prophylaxis administration.MethodsThis cohort study included patients who had elective or urgent surgery at a tertiary hospital, Bloemfontein. Data from patient files were captured on datasheets that comprised the adapted Caprini risk assessment model. The type of prophylaxis received was noted. The appropriateness of the prophylaxis prescribed was compared with the patient’s score.ResultsDetails of 147 patients were included. Three of the 16 patients who did not qualify for prophylaxis, were on VTE prophylaxis on day-one post-surgery. Only 24 (18.3%) of the 131 patients who qualified for prophylaxis were on prophylaxis one day post-surgery. Of the prophylaxis prescribed, 88.5% was enoxaparin, and 11.5% \"other\", mainly aspirin. Twenty-three (17.6%) patients who qualified for prophylaxis were discharged on prophylaxis. Of the 147 patients, 24 patients were HIV positive, and eight of these patients received postoperative VTE prophylaxis.ConclusionThe majority of postoperative patients at the various surgical departments of the hospital did not receive appropriate postoperative VTE prophylaxis compared to the adapted Caprini scores obtained from their medical information. A patient’s HIV status alone did not influence the decision of administering postoperative VTE prophylaxis.

This article aims to enhance technology foresight by contributing to technological awareness and wisdom. It is based on an understanding of the fundamental nature of technology, and requires an overarching view. This needs at least three constituents: (1) a universal definition of technology; (2) a central organising framework; and (3) a methodology for measuring technological advance at the national level. The article then addresses these constituents. It examines the status of each and projects what needs to be done.

The profound dynamic changes that the South African business environment is going through and the low level of business development in the country begs for entrepreneurial innovation. This paper is an investigation into the relationship of corporate entrepreneurship with the organizational variables of marketing, flexibility and job satisfaction. These relationships are investigated in a sample of 333 managers in three different industries in South Africa. The relationships between corporate entrepreneurship and biographic variables were examined by means of Spearman correlation. Pearson-product moment correlation explored the association between corporate entrepreneurship and the organizational variables. The empirical results show significant relationships with different market orientation, flexibility, and job satisfaction factors. We suggest that organizations should nurture their corporate entrepreneurial strategies by fostering its orientation towards marketing, flexibility and job satisfaction.

In the first quarter of 2013, the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch launched a new academic course, Strategic Technology Analysis (STA), as an elective in its M.Sc. in Engineering Management and M.Eng. Industrial Engineering degrees. STA views technology as a knowledge area in its own right, focuses on the inherent characteristics of technology, and explores its natural order. The purpose was to ascertain whether a course of this nature, which offered the outline for a new academic discipline, would be of benefit to a technology-conversant management programme. The course was well-received. It encouraged a greater awareness of technological positioning - i.e., aligning overall corporate strategy with new opportunities across the entire technological frontier. This article describes the background to this initiative, the history of STA, its inherent structure, and its role in professional practice. It then looks ahead at the possible dissemination of this knowledge into different settings where technology-conversant management is taught.

Background: South Africa has the world's fastest growing AIDS epidemic. There is an urgent need for effective HIV risk reduction interventions in South Africa. Objective: The objective of this study was to develop and test the potential efficacy of a brief theory-based HIV prevention counseling intervention for sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinic patients in South Africa. Method: STI clinic patients in Cape Town (N = 228) were assessed at baseline and randomized to receive either: 1) a single 60-minute session motivational/skills-building HIV risk reduction counseling intervention or 2) a 20-minute HIV information/education session. Participants completed 1- and 3-month follow ups with 80% retention. Results: The 60-minute motivational/skills risk reduction counseling demonstrated significantly greater risk reduction practices, lower rates of unprotected intercourse, and greater likelihood of receiving HIV testing after the intervention. Conclusions: Brief theory-based HIV prevention counseling may significantly reduce HIV risk behaviors for STI clinic patients in South Africa.

The paper presents the main characteristics of search strategies used for automated pre-assembly engagement. The handling of such operations is described through an experimental set-up. Finally, experimental results are used to facilitate the decision-making process for correct automated engagement prior to the assembly insertion stage. The multi peg-hole system for preassembly engagement as a more complex system is discussed.

New radio (MeerKAT and Parkes) and X-ray (XMM-Newton, Swift, Chandra, and NuSTAR) observations of PSR J1622-4950 indicate that the magnetar, in a quiescent state since at least early 2015, reactivated between 2017 March 19 and April 5. The radio flux density, while variable, is approximately 100x larger than during its dormant state. The X-ray flux one month after reactivation was at least 800x larger than during quiescence, and has been decaying exponentially on a 111+/-19 day timescale. This high-flux state, together with a radio-derived rotational ephemeris, enabled for the first time the detection of X-ray pulsations for this magnetar. At 5%, the 0.3-6 keV pulsed fraction is comparable to the smallest observed for magnetars. The overall pulsar geometry inferred from polarized radio emission appears to be broadly consistent with that determined 6-8 years earlier. However, rotating vector model fits suggest that we are now seeing radio emission from a different location in the magnetosphere than previously. This indicates a novel way in which radio emission from magnetars can differ from that of ordinary pulsars. The torque on the neutron star is varying rapidly and unsteadily, as is common for magnetars following outburst, having changed by a factor of 7 within six months of reactivation.

This article is a tribute to Michael White, co-founder of narrative therapy, who passed away on 5 April 2008. Michael White and David Epston founded a substantial and ground-breaking psychological movement based on narrative therapy. Michael touched with dignity and changed for the better the lives of thousands. Michael White was an extraordinary person: philosopher, scientist and psychologist, who has opened alternative opportunities of hope to individuals through narrative therapy. Michael will be mourned by many; his teachings will be celebrated by many more. May the richness of his legacy flourish. A discussion follows concerning the theory of narrative therapy. This is illustrated by picture, depicting the main constructs of narrative therapy (figure 1), representing a metaphor of narrative therapy. This picture is in line with the therapeutic method of drawing pictures of metaphors in the counselling process, as propagated by White and Epston, and illustrated on DVD by David Epston: Narrative therapy with a young boy (Epston, 2002). The aim of the paper is not to give a linear representation of what narrative therapy should be, but rather to illustrate the main facets of narrative therapy.

The post-secular event within which we live is occasioned as the limit of the secular project. The secular project meets its limit in attempting to separate a religious private sphere from a public sphere while at the same time repeating as a demand a religious subjectivation of the public sphere: demanding conformity to a simple subjectivity, producing a world of simple subjects through a theologically determined metaphysics of conversion. In this latter demand secularism enforces a simplicity of its subjects and its world. Yet this simplicity cannot be taken up into or as life. To genuinely live and think the post-secular requires, then, not simply a resistance to the secular but a resistance to simplicity, developing ways of becoming otherwise than simply and of producing a world other than that which conforms to a metaphysics of conversion. This dissertation proposes to meet the requirements of the post-secular event by developing a post-secular political ontology drawn from the work of Judith Butler and Alfred North Whitehead. Read through and out of these two philosophers of becoming is a post-secular political ontology that is embedded within a metaphysics of creativity, a metaphysic that is itself already infected by the political. At the intersection of the work of Butler and Whitehead a metaphysic arises that is a systematic discourse of the political. From this metaphysic a political ontology is developed. This political ontology begins with a suspicion of grammar as a suspicion of a subject-predicate form of thought that grounds ontologies of substance. With this suspicion, being is allowed to unfold as its becoming, particularly as a becoming material, so that actuality is a becoming materiality. This is also a relational becoming of feeling, becoming as a process of intensive feeling that can never be finalized for itself, always suffering its own continual downfall. Finally, but without finality, actuality is a becoming of creativity, opened by a divine violence that ruptures history by the possible, leading to a post-secular political ontology of the future.