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For nearly a century, research on economic hardship has demonstrated its negative effects on family relations. However, with few exceptions, this work has focused on the consequences for marital quality and parenting behaviors in early stages of the life course. In contrast, in the present study, we examine how financial distress among adult children in midlife affects their relationships with their mothers in their 70s and early 80s. Specifically, we used quantitative and qualitative data collected from 387 mothers in 2001–2002 and 2008–2010 regarding their adult children’s recent financial problems and their levels of tension and closeness felt toward each child. Multilevel analyses revealed that both children’s financial problems within the past year and earlier problems that had been resolved predicted mothers’ reports of tension in their relationships with their adult children. Contrary to expectations, neither measure of children’s financial problems predicted mothers’ reports of closeness to their children. Examination of the qualitative data suggested that mothers attributed their children’s financial failures to personal failures of the adult children. In addition, the qualitative data revealed clear gender differences. Mothers disproportionately attributed their sons’ financial problems to lack of career success, whereas mothers were much more likely to express disappointment in daughters with financial problems because of marital dissolutions.

Recently, there has been increased attention to community- and neighborhood-level influences on rates and experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV). The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to geographically analyze these influences in order to enhance community-level understanding of and responses to IPV.

The authors review existing literature supporting the needs for this level of analysis, and then they present eight steps for researchers and practitioners to use when applying GIS to analyze IPV.

This is a conceptual paper.

This paper offers researchers and practitioners suggested strategies for using GIS analyses to examine community-level influences on IPV in future research.

The practical implications of using GIS analyses are discussed, including ways that the findings of these analyses can be used to enhance community-level resources to prevent and respond to IPV.

This innovative, interdisciplinary approach offers new insights into understanding and addressing IPV at a community level.

To date, there has been minimal research used to apply GIS analyses to the problem of IPV in communities. This paper presents a framework for future researchers and practitioners to apply this methodology to expand on community-level understanding of IPV.

This paper aims to provide an overview of South African perspectives on preventing, monitoring and combating hate victimisation, towards informing international understandings.

Using a general review approach, this paper provides a historical examination of measures proposed by the South African Government and civil society since 1994, to prevent, monitor and combat hate crime, hate speech and intentional unfair discrimination.

Regardless of a constitutional commitment to social inclusion, diversity and minority rights, significant progress remains lacking after almost three decades of related advocacy, lobbying and limited government intervention. Findings of the South African Hate Crimes Working Group (HCWG) longitudinal Monitoring Project emphasise the need for decisive legal responses to hate victimisation.

A Bill, recognising hate crime and hate speech as distinct criminal offences, has been in development for almost 15 years and will soon serve before Parliament. Enactment of this legislation will be ground-breaking in Africa.

This paper contributes to the field of hate studies by providing an overview of the journey towards current conceptual understandings of hate in (South) Africa. It sets the stage for evaluating the potential of the redesigned HCWG monitoring tool, which holds promise for early identification and intervention in hate hotspots and targeted sectors. This instrument can establish trends not only in South Africa but also across the African continent.

The performance of public sector institutions has always been contentious – this is as old as the system of government itself and its provision of collective goods, irrespective of whether they are tangible or intangible. In the context of South Africa, with its ever-increasing political competitiveness, this chapter assesses political leadership and the African philosophy of Ubuntu or humanism in improving public sector performance management in the country. It does so by addressing certain distinct questions: What is the state of public sector performance and leadership in South Africa? What have scholars contributed in linking public sector performance, and the politics and public administration dichotomy? Are the Batho Pele principles, underpinned by Ubuntu, a worthy notion on which to pillar African political leadership? By adopting an interpretivist, qualitative research design, the study reflects on the essence of a public administration that is effective in delivering political goods and managing the performance of bureaucracies and the political leadership therein. This chapter argues that the performance of public administrations remains a “wicked” problem in South Africa as political populism is on the rise in the country. However, the argument is made that with “good” political leadership – which naturally and effectively encompasses the philosophy of Ubuntu and which understands and mobilizes statecraft – great strides can be made beyond the current rhetoric.

This study aims to fabricate and manipulate ensemble spin of negative nitrogen-vacancy (NV⁻) centres optimally for future solid atomic magnetometers/gyroscope. Parameters for sample preparation most related to magnetometers/gyroscope are, in particular, the concentration and homogeneity of the NV⁻ centres, the parameters’ microwave antenna of resonance frequency and the strength of the microwave on NV⁻ centres. Besides, the abundance of other impurities such as neutral NV centres (NV⁰) and substitutional nitrogen in the lattice also plays a critical role in magnetic sensing.

The authors succeeded in fabricating the assembly of NV centres in diamond and they determined its concentration of (2-3) × 10¹⁶ cm⁻³ with irradiation followed by annealing under a high temperature condition. They explored a novel magnetic resonance approach to detect the weak magnetic fields that takes advantage of the solid-state electron ensemble spin of NV⁻ centres in diamond. In particular, the authors set up a magnetic sensor on the basis of the assembly of NV centres. They succeeded in fabricating the assembly of NV centres in diamond and determined its concentration. They also clarified the magnetic field intensity measured at different positions along the antenna with different lengths, and they found the optimal position where the signal of the magnetic field reaches the maximum.

The authors mainly reported preparation, initialization, manipulation and measurement of the ensemble spin of the NV centres in diamond using optical excitation and microwave radiation methods with variation of the external magnetic field. They determined the optimal parameters of irradiation and annealing to generate the ensemble NV centres, and a concentration of NV⁻ centres as high as 10¹⁶ cm⁻³ in diamond was obtained. In addition, they found that sensitivity of the magnetometer using this method can reach as low as 5.22 µT/Hz currently.

This research can shed light on the development of an atomic magnetometer and a gyroscope on the basis of the ensemble spin of NV centres in diamond.

High concentration spin of NV⁻ in diamond is one of the advantages compared with that of the atomic vapor cells, because it can obtain a higher concentration. When increasing the spin concentration, the spin signal is easy to detect, and macro-atomic spin magnetometer become possible. This research is the first step for solid atomic magnetometers with high spin density and high sensitivity potentially with further optimization. It has a wide range of applications from fundamental physics tests, sensor applications and navigation to detection of NMR signals.

As has been pointed out, in this research, the authors mainly worked on fabricating NV⁻ centres with high concentration (10¹⁵-10¹⁶ cm⁻³) in diamond by using optimal irradiation and annealing processes, and they quantitatively defined the NV⁻ concentration, which is important for the design of higher concentration processes in the magnetometer and gyroscope. Until now, few groups can directly define the NV⁻ concentration. Besides, the authors optimized the microwave antenna parameters experimentally and explored the dependence between the splitting of the magnetic resonance and the magnetic fields, which dictated the minimum detectable magnetic field.

The purpose of this study to explore the teacher’s perception about family aggression and domestic abuse that can cause students psychotic trauma. Also, this article will further highlight the mitigating strategies for teachers to overcome those challenges which they faced while dealing with such female students.

In this exploratory study, a qualitative data collection tool semi-structured interviews were used. This research interviews were conducted from public school teachers of Pakistan. For data analysis thematic analysis approach was used to answer the targeted research questions.

The findings of the study reveal that the family aggression and domestic abuse have severe negative effect on female students’ mental health which cause them trauma and also negatively impact of their educational progress and overall growth. Also, several challenges have been identified from the findings such as difficulty in identification of such female students, lack of support and counselling skills and social constraints. Similarly, this study also suggests some interventional and mitigating strategies to overcome these challenges faced by teachers such as, awareness sessions for parents and society, teachers training for such skills, including such contents in curriculum etc.

The results of the current study are beneficial for the teacher and school administration to handle such female students they are affected due to abuse and domestic violence and improve their mental well-being and growth.

This is a unique study because there is very limited research done in the context of Pakistan which addresses this burning social issue, particularly adding the voices of teacher’s about identifying and dealing such female students they are victim of family aggression and domestic abuse.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore social risk management strategies amongst Fulani in the subhumid zone of Nigeria; and second, to determine current status and nature of reciprocal exchange networks, risk pooling and social support for pastoral livelihoods in North-Central Nigeria.

Surveys of cattle productivity and pastoral livelihoods were carried out amongst Fulani pastoralists on the Jos Plateau: between 2008 and 2013 using participatory epidemiology methods and the sustainable livelihoods framework. Qualitative and quantitative data on livelihood activities, knowledge, attitudes and practices of animal husbandry and disease control, wealth grouping, herd entries and exits was gathered to determine the current state of cattle productivity and pastoral livelihoods in the study area.

Results show that reciprocal exchange networks for risk management have mostly disintegrated and patron-client relationships have become an important social risk management strategy.

This research has significant implications for sustainability of Fulani livelihoods and communities: decreased social risk-management strategies and increased self-reliance means that the most vulnerable households will find it more difficult to withstand shocks and climb out of poverty. Wealthier households may cope better with high incidence/low severity shocks like but are more vulnerable to low incidence/high severity shocks. Likewise, decreased social cohesion reduces the ability of communities to mobilise and act collectively in the face of community-level shocks. This is very important for engagement with the state – a crucial process, given current levels of acrimony and conflict.

Given the high levels of farmer-herder conflict and civil unrest in this region over the past 15 years this research is valuable in providing insights into economic drivers of conflict, current dynamics of pastoral livelihoods and social cohesion within and between communities.

We develop a model to relate the mechanical properties of individual fibers and how they are arranged in a fibrous assembly to the bulk properties of the fibrous assembly. The model allows the prediction of the bulk properties of the fibrous assembly during compression from the physical properties of its component individual fibers, considering both static and kinetic friction at contacts between fibers. Computer simulations are run for several cases with specific friction conditions applied in order to compare predictions of this model with experimental results and with van Wyk's theory of the uniaxial compression of an initially random fibrous assembly. These computer simulations demonstrate a reasonable ability to predict the undetermined constant K in van Wyk's theory. The computer simulations also show a significantly greater number of fiber‐fiber contacts being formed than theories based only on the diameter and arrangement of fibers have predicted. The predicted contacts have a wide range of contact forces, while only a small percentage of them do not slip. The model may be used to investigate phenomena associated with the compression of fibrous assemblies, such as fiber crimp, hysteresis, and orientation effects.

The purpose of this article is to assess the state of financial reporting in provincial government departments in South Africa. One of the obstacles in transforming financial reporting in South Africa is changing from cash accounting to accrual accounting. The survey in this study revealed that, while most public sector accounting guidelines and legislation are in place, government departments are still using cash accounting. The current accounting information system seems to be unsuitable for accrual accounting. Respondents assigned a poor rating to the effectiveness of public sector financial reporting, and the slow rate at which this system is being transformed.

There is increasing academic pressure on Departments of Accounting in South Africa whose academic programmes are accredited with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA). The reason for this that the academic training of potential chartered accountants has long been their main academic focus, and they often fail to do justice to their real academic mission of scholarly activity in accounting (the pursuit of science as an endeavour), which is central to the essence of a university. The quality of such departments’ research is not yet an important criterion for their prestige. However, only Departments of Accounting that develop Accounting as a social science in scholarly activity in accounting deserve international recognition. This empirical study attempts to convince Departments of Accounting, particularly those whose academic programmes are accredited by SAICA, to embark on scholarly activity in accounting as soon as possible.