University of South Africa

About: University of South Africa is a education organization based out in Pretoria, South Africa. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Population. The organization has 8478 authors who have published 19960 publications receiving 237688 citations. The organization is also known as: Unisa.

An efficient selective reduction of nitroarenes catalyzed by reusable silver-adsorbed waste nanocomposite

Abstract: Silver nanocomposites (AgNCs) were produced by adsorption onto an electron-rich polypyrrole-mercaptoacetic acid (PPy-MAA) composite, known to be a highly efficient adsorbent for the removal of Ag+ ions from aqueous media in the remediation of metal- contaminated water sources. In situ reduction of Ag+ cations to Ag0 nanoparticles (NPs) was achieved in the absence of an additional reducing agent, and the AgNCs formed were characterized by FE-SEM, EDAX, HR-TEM, STEM, XRD, ATR-FTIR, and XPS. An investigation into the potential application of these AgNCs, effectively a waste product for further processing, as a catalyst for the reduction of variously substituted nitroarenes in water was undertaken in an effort to beneficiate the materials and determine the reaction's specificity. One composite having 11.14 ± 0.05 wt% Ag content was particularly active in these reductions, with aniline derivatives being prepared in 71–94% yields. The kinetics of the reaction was examined using 4- nitrophenol, a common water-soluble pollutant; pseudo-first-order kinetics was observed with predicted activation energy of 68.3 kJ/mol for this system. Furthermore, this AgNC displayed superior stability over 10 reaction cycles without loss of catalytic activity. A mechanism was elucidated based on these findings. The mild, economical, and efficient reduction method using a reusable “waste” material may prove a promising alternative for further industrial application.

Finite-State Computational Morphology: An Analyzer Prototype For Zulu

Abstract: As one of the largest of the 11 official languages of South Africa, Zulu is spoken by approximately 9 million people. It forms part of a language family which is characterized by rich agglutinating morphological structures. This paper discusses a prototype of a computational morphological analyzer for Zulu, built by means of the Xerox finite state tools, in particular lexc and xfst. In addition to considering both the morphotactics and the morphophonological alternation rules that apply, the focus is on implementation and other issues that need to be resolved in order to produce a useful software artefact for automated morphological analysis. The current status of the prototype is alluded to by providing morphological scope, that is the various word categories (parts of speech) that may be handled, and the lexical coverage in terms of the number of different Zulu roots that are included in the embedded lexicon of the analyzer. Preliminary testing and validation procedures are briefly discussed.

Fractional Lie group method of the time-fractional Boussinesq equation

Abstract: Finding the symmetries of the nonlinear fractional differential equations is a topic which has many applications in various fields of science and engineering. In this manuscript, firstly, we are interested in finding the Lie point symmetries of the time-fractional Boussinesq equation. After that, by using the infinitesimal generators, we determine their corresponding invariant solutions.

Special Needs Education In-Service Teacher Trainees’ Views on Inclusive Education in Zimbabwe

Abstract: The study investigated special needs education (SNE) in-service teacher trainees' views on inclusive education in Zimbabwe. Participants were 76 SNE in-service teacher trainees (37 male, 39 female) from Great Zimbabwe University' s Faculty of Education. A questionnaire was used for data collection. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data. There were no significant differences between male and female SNE in-service teacher trainees' views on inclusive education. The trainees believed that the present Zimbabwean curriculum did not meet the needs of SNE children, inclusive education affected the teaching methods used, only specialist teachers could handle included children and that regular class teachers could not easily adapt their teaching programmes to accommodate included children. The trainees also believed that Zimbabwe was not ready for inclusive education and that parents of children without disabilities resented inclusion. Recommendations on the improvement of inclusive education in Zimbabwe especially in teacher training were made.