BackgroundMany of the 15 million premature babies born worldwide every year survive because of advanced medical interventions. Their parents have intense experiences when their babies are in the intensive care unit (ICU), and these have an impact on their thoughts, feelings and relationships, including their relationships with their premature babies.ObjectivesThe aim of the study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of parents of premature babies in an ICU.MethodResearch design was qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual. A purposive sample of parents with premature babies in an ICU in a private hospital in Johannesburg Gauteng in South Africa was used. Eight parents, four mothers and four fathers, married and either Afrikaans or English-speaking, were included in the study. Data were collected by conducting in-depth phenomenological interviews with them and making use of field notes. Trustworthiness was ensured by implementing the strategies of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability. Ethical principles such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice were adhered to throughout the research process.ResultsThematic analyses were utilised to analyse the data. Two themes in the experiences of parents with premature babies in ICU became apparent. Parents experienced thoughts, emotions and hope while their premature babies were in the ICU as well as challenges in their relationships and these challenges influenced their experiences.RecommendationsMindfulness of intensive care nurses should be facilitated so that intensive care nurses can promote the mental health of parents with premature babies in the ICU.ConclusionParents with premature babies in the ICU have thoughts and emotional experiences which include hope and they affect parents’ relationships.

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A tagging study was undertaken on Blood Reef off Durban, South Africa, to investigate movement patterns of Panulirus homarus rubellus as well as inshore/offshore population differences. Lobsters were collected by SCUBA divers and baited traps. Traps caught larger lobsters than divers and trap catches were somewhat male-dominated (40% female:60% male). Lobsters were predominately resident with only 3% of recaptured lobsters moving over 500 m. Long shore movements were probably related to foraging behaviour and sanding and scouring of reefs. Larger lobsters were caught on offshore reefs (!10 m depth) than on inshore reefs (B10 m depth). The absence of large lobsters (!100 mm carapace length, CL) on inshore reefs may be related to fishing mortality. Low juvenile numbers (B50 mm CL) on offshore reefs suggest that post-larval lobsters settle on inshore reefs. An exponential decay model indicated that a small percentage of the population (males: 1.3%; females: 2.5%) move offshore with females mainly moving at 3 years of age and males between 1 and 3 years of age.

IntroductionEast coast rock lobsters Panulirus homarus are collected by the indigenous people of the Wild Coast, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and are sold to coastal hotels and holidaymakers. The South African government has proposed a small-scale commercial fishery based on P. homarus to improve socio-economic conditions in that region. Catch data and information on fishery operations were collected for the artisanal fishery from Coffee Bay, Presley Bay, Port St Johns and Mbotyi, as well as from a commercial buying station near the Mdumbi Estuary, between March 2003 and October 2005. The catch per unit effort of rock lobster poling varied from 13.5 ± 7.7 fisher -1 outing -1 at Port St Johns to 5.9 ± 3.1 fisher -1 outing -1 at Coffee Bay, but the number of fishers or fishing frequency could not be verified. About two-thirds of the lobsters caught (69%) were smaller than the minimum legal size. Hotels and the buying station complied with size limits, but cottages and campers often bought undersized lobsters. Smaller lobsters (females) are caught by poling than by diving. Geographical variations in poling effort and lobster mean sizes could be indicators of heavy fishing pressure on shallow, inshore reefs. The implications of commercialising the fishery and its associated management are discussed.

Current practices on rail machining show large variations in strategies and amount of grinding and milling. To identify reasons for this and suggest strategies to further optimise rail machining, objectives of machining are scrutinised and consequences of not fulfilling objectives are investigated. This leads to a discussion on potentially detrimental effects of rail machining and how to minimise these. With this background, general aspects of rail machining optimisation are discussed. The study shows several means to improve rail machining, but also how the potential is restricted by the current lack of knowledge and predictive models. This prevents quantifying benefits of innovative solutions, and complicates transfer of knowledge between different operational conditions and translations of (scaled and controlled) test results to (full-scale, uncontrolled) operational conditions.

The brown mussel Perna perna is the dominant indigenous mussel along the east coast of South Africa, where it is harvested by recreational and subsistence fishers. High fishing pressure near metropolitan areas has led to declining abundance, and closure of some reefs to fishing in 1998. We estimated trends in mussel population dynamics at exploited and unexploited sites over a 27-year period (1993-2019) along fixed transects. Trends in recreational fishing effort were inferred from yearly permit sales and existing catch statistics.At high fishing effort, short-term trends in mussel cover and densities were inversely related to fishing effort at three of four sites, while a fourth site was influenced by intermittent breaching of a nearby estuary. Mussel size was inversely related to densities. The effects of longer term harvesting bans were partially obscured by sharp declines in fishing effort across the entire recreational fishery. Seasonal and interannual patterns in cover and density were partially synchronised among sites, indicating environmental forcing at similar time-scales. The longterm dataset was invaluable in disentangling the relative effects of fishing and environmental factors on mussel population dynamics and should be continued as a baseline for assessing future climate-induced effects on rocky shore biota.