Are females paying the price for being heavier children?
A recent study published in the Pediatric Obesity journal suggests that young girls who are either overweight or obese during childhood were more likely to remain obese as they progressed into young adulthood compared to boys.
The research study, led by Professor Shane Norris of the MRC Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand reported that boys that were overweight during childhood (between the ages of four and eight) were two times more likely to become obese by the time they attained late adolescence (16 -18 years).
According to findings – in the study titled, Sex differences in obesity incidence: 20-year prospective cohort in South Africa– from the Soweto-based research unit in Johannesburg, if the boys were already obese as children, they were 20 times more likely to become obese adolescents.
The likelihood of becoming obese adolescents was more profound in girls; the study reported overweight girls to be seven times and obese girls to be 42 times more likely to remain obese by the time they were adolescents. Equally importantly, the researchers suggest that timely interventions particularly in girls, may reduce the risk of overweight and obesity especially due to the persistence of obesity across the age groups in girls.
The study also highlighted that obesity incidence was higher in girls between the ages 11 - 12 and 13 – 15 (11.2 cases/1 000 person-years) compared to boys between the ages 4 – 8 and 11 – 12 (6.8 cases/1 000 person-years).
The researchers speculate that this gender difference may be attributed to various factors, which include the onset of puberty, a period when females acquire more body fat than males, who gain more amounts of muscle and bone in addition to becoming more physically active.
While the rates of overweight and obesity in boys do not represent a significant public health concern, the investigators stressed that the figures seen in girls, particularly during adolescence, were comparable to those of high-income countries and underscored the urgency to find effective interventions targeted at fighting obesity during childhood and puberty.
This research adds to the body of evidence resulting from data obtained from the Birth-to-Twenty Plus cohort, to describe the rise in obesity incidence from infancy through late adolescence and to encourage the promotion of healthy nutrition and weight among female south African children.
A world without bees would be disastrous
- Buhle Zuma
Declining bee colonies puts industry totaling R20-billion at risk, including Western Cape's fruit industry with its 77 800 hectares of fruit farms.
The majority of South Africans are not aware that the industrious bees that pollinate crops that give us some of our daily food like apples, mangos and onions are diminishing in numbers.
The Western Cape has reportedly lost more than 40% of its bees and there are simply not enough wild bees to render services to the numerous farms that produce food for domestic and international markets.
The decline in bee colonies is due to several factors such as climate change, the destruction of bee habitats by humans and, of course, the widely reported American foulbrood disease that until this year was thought to not affect African bees.
Given the importance of bees in the agricultural sector and business, academics and environmental accountants are putting the undervalued bee in the spotlight and calling for greater efforts to protect bees.
Jill Atkins, visiting Professor at the Wits School of Accountancy, and Professor Warren Maroun from Wits recently spoke about their research on businesses and bees.
The research forms part of an international projected led by Atkins and Maroun who authored the South African chapter that examined the disclosures on pollination services by local companies and the steps being taken to assist with conserving bees and other pollinating insects.
Atkins said the project was motivated by several developments including learning about areas in China where all the bees have disappeared and farmers have to pollinate by hand.
Bees are a financial factor for investors and through dialogues “investors are now engaging directly with big companies to see what they are doing to address bee decline”. Atkins said the global economic contribution of bees was estimated to be at US$217 billion in 2008 and the financial impact of bee decline in the United States is US$15 billion.
“If bees disappeared, The Economist estimates that it would cost US$90 billion to pollinate the crops by hand in a year in the US.”
As someone interested in sustainability issues in accounting and finance, Atkins has mobilised a team of international experts to take a serious look at bees.
“The significant role played by bees in South African agriculture is clearly evident when considering the Western Cape fruit industry is home to just over half of the country’s 77 800 hectares of deciduous fruit farms,” said Maroun.
An industry totaling R20-billion is at risk
“The pivotal role being played by honeybees begs the question: What are companies in the South African food and agriculture sectors reporting to their stakeholders?” asked Maroun who authored the South African chapter for the international project.
Analysing bee disclosures by South African companies, Maroun found that the corporates integrated or annual reports of these well established companies had limited disclosures dealing with pollination ecosystem services.
“If there is a financial issue relating to bees then companies should be reporting it and qualifying it and try to come up with some estimates for how it could potentially affect them. That’s where we start from an accounting point of view,” argued Atkins.
Integrated reports are an important indication of corporate governance and corporate responsibility.
“Integrated reporting is based on the notion of integrated thinking and the idea that companies have to look at all aspects of risk and strategy in an integrated manner.”
“Integrated thinking means that environmental issues and issues of biodiversity and bees for examples, and all other species, are part of an integrated approach,” argued Atkins who is permanently based at the Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK.
The full research findings will be published in a book titled: The Business of Bees: An integrated Approach to Bee Decline and Corporate Responsibility and is expected to hit the shelves in February 2016.
The book covers a range of scientific and financial aspect of bees including a chapter on the influence of bees on the political and cultural life of human society.
Folklore, religion, music, mythology is replete with accounts on the role of bees. Napoleon saw bees as a symbol of power and many songs have been written about bees.
The preservation of bees should be everyone’s business, imagine a world without the beautiful flowers and perfume!
Wits physicists contribute to new results from the Large Hadron Collider
- Wits University
New results from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN have scientists exploring the possibilities another new particle.
The tantalizing hints of a new particle beyond the known Standard Model of Particle Physics were reported independently by the ATLAS and CMS experiments and announced on Tuesday, 15 December 2015.
Wits University researchers are deeply involved at the European Organization of Nuclear Research (CERN) and also contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson three years ago.
The discovery of the Higgs boson, an elusive particle that is responsible for the generation of mass of known elementary particles, was announced on 4 July 2012 – almost five decades after it was postulated.
“With the discovery of the Higgs boson a new window of opportunity has opened to discover new particles and interactions in nature. These may help us understand many unresolved mysteries, such as where most of the matter in the Universe comes from, among others,” says Professor Bruce Mellado from the Wits School of Physics.
Now, following a two-year shutdown for re-commissioning, the Large Hadron Collider restarted earlier this year. It also provides an insight of what happened right after the Big Bang via the study of collisions of heavy ions at high energies.
In June 2015 it has resumed in providing proton-proton collisions for physics data at a record energy of 13 TeV (1012 eV). The Higgs boson was discovered with data collected at 7 TeV and 8 TeV.
Then on 25 November 2015, the first heavy ion collisions at a record energy of more than 1 PeV (1015 eV) were provided.
The results following the data analysis by the ATLAS and CMS experiments bears witness of the excellent readiness of the experiments to collect, distribute and analyze vast amounts of data in a short period of time.
"Getting these exciting results from LHC Run two depended on understanding the early measurements at this new center-of-mass energy, where the Wits group played a significant role,” says Dr Deepak Kar of the Wits School of Physics.
“The amount of data delivered in 2015 is a glimpse of what will be delivered next year. New data is expected to be delivered starting at the end of April 2016, leading to a data sample significantly bigger than obtained in 2015. This data set will give an invaluable insight on whether we will have new discoveries or not,” says Mellado.
