Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a globally prevalent health concern associated with severe neurocognitive and cardiovascular implications. Despite affecting approximately 1 billion adults globally, the condition remains underdiagnosed, emphasising the need for accessible diagnostic methods and effective treatments. While there are multiple sites of airway obstruction during sleep, the tongue base is recognised as the key role player in the pathogenesis of OSA. The tongue base could be visualised as the gateway for airflow between the upper airway (pharynx) and the tracheo – bronchial airway (of the lungs). Various treatment modalities, such as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP), Mandibular Advancement Devices (MADs), Hypoglossal Nerve Stimulation (HNS), and Maxillomandibular Advancement (MMA) surgery, will ultimately have an effect on the anatomical position and function of the tongue and its extrinsic muscular foundation attachments. Thus, medical or surgical modulation of airflow through the upper pharyngeal airspace is entirely dependent upon the response of the tongue base to these interventions. The elimination of apnoea and improvements in its sequelae makes CPAP the gold standard for OSA. While CPAP effectively splints the tongue base in a forward direction, patient adherence remains a significant issue. This paper addresses the limitations and challenges associated with each method, advocating for sustainable and accessible solutions. Furthermore, the paper introduces a polypropylene tongue suspension device as a potential non-invasive alternative to orthognathic surgery, demonstrating promising results in reversing OSA by advancing the tongue base. This concept, currently under investigation, presents an exciting prospect for future OSA treatment options.

Anthropogenic land alterations in Maun village have transformed natural vegetation into urban infrastructure, including pavements, and residential and commercial areas, leading to elevated Land Surface Temperature (LST). This urban expansion resulted from economic growth driven by population increase and tourism-related development. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCCs) and LST. Utilising Landsat 5-TM and Landsat-8 data from 1990, 2000, and 2020, we employed a random forest algorithm for supervised classification, generating Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) maps. The mono-window algorithm was used to extract LST data from Landsat 5 and 8 images, alongside Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) maps. s regression analysis assessed the LST-NDVI correlation. Results indicate that urban LULCCs significantly contribute to rising LST. Minimum and maximum LST values for 1990, 2000, and 2020 were 18.6°C, 22.8°C, 22.6°C, and 26.7°C, 34.5°C, and 42.1°C, respectively. NDVI values ranged from −0.2 to 0.56 in 1990, −0.17 to 0.58 in 2000, and 0.07 to 0.46 in 2020. Roads, pavements, barren land, and built-up areas displayed the highest LST (44.6°C), while water bodies and healthy vegetation exhibited the lowest (16.1°C). Additionally, NDVI exhibited a negative correlation with LST. Our findings emphasise the role of human activities in exacerbating LST. They highlight the need for regulated urban growth patterns to ensure sustainable development. Moreover, quantifying spatiotemporal variations in LULC, LST, and NDVI holds importance for conserving land resources and enhancing land use planning policies. Policymakers and city planners can utilise this research to mitigate heat stress effects and promote sustainable urban environments by evaluating distribution maps of LULC, NDVI, and LST.

Due to their high vulnerability, mountain communities are adversely affected by climate change and variability causing significant challenges to their livelihood strategies. The objective of this paper is to examine the perceptions of local households in the Eastern Free State Region of South Africa regarding how climate change impacts their livelihoods. A multistage sampling procedure was used to select 400 respondents on whom a semi-structured household questionnaire survey was administered to gather information about the impacts of climate change on rural livelihoods. Sixty-seven percent of the agriculture-based mountain households reported declining water quality and quantity as the most significant impact, while 48%, 33%, 38% and 68% considered crop loss, reduced crop yields, animal diseases, and livestock mortality as the most significant impacts, respectively. Agriculture-based mountain households also cited climate-related socio-economic impacts- higher prices, farm and non-farm income loss, and increased labour as impacts of climate change. These findings reveal that the impacts of climate change effects on on-farm and off-farm activities can be contextualised according to households’ primary livelihood activities. The paper concludes that understanding the mountain communities’ perceptions about climate change impacts on their livelihoods could be useful for identifying context-specific adaptation strategies applicable to these communities.

Spider species distribution in the Cape Floristic Kingdom (CFK) was compiled as part of the South African National Survey of Arachnida (SANSA), whose main aim was to create a relational database for the country’s arachnid fauna. Data from the CFK was extracted from taxonomic and faunistic published papers, as well as unpublished faunistic survey data in national collections. A total of 11 500 records from 130 localities were recorded in the CFK until the end of 2023, representing 62 families, 334 genera and 960 species, with two further families (Synotaxidae and Theridiosomatidae) only known from undescribed species. This represents 42.4% of the total spider fauna of South Africa. For each species, the global and CFK distribution, as well as the level of endemicity and a conservation assessment using the IUCN Red List criteria, are provided. A total of 269 spp. (28.0%) are endemic to the CFK, 49 spp. (5.1%) are of special concern, and 229 spp. (23.9%) are Data Deficient. However, most of the species (682 spp., 71.0%) have a wide distribution with no known threats and are categorised as Least Concern. Salticidae is the most species-rich family (128 spp.), with 30 spp. endemic to the CFK, followed by the Gnaphosidae (107 spp.), Thomisidae (86 spp.) and Lycosidae (49 spp.), while six families are represented by a single species. The last decade has seen an exponential growth in the knowledge of spiders in South Africa, and there are certainly many more species that must still be discovered and described.

With elevated temperatures on the rise due to climate change, can lessons be learnt from Kalahari melon seeds (KMS) that grow and contribute to the food security of communities in the arid Kalahari desert? Specifically, what are the hydration kinetics of climate-smart KMS that naturally grow in an arid environment? This study investigated, for the first time, the water hydration kinetics of differently (grey, black, white) coloured KMS at 25, 35 and 45°C. No lag behaviour was observed. The Peleg model fit suitably (R 2 > 0.99) to the empirical water uptake data, characterised by a time-linear water absorption, and then a slower rate occurred after the initial 15 min of hydration. The K 1 Peleg constants were statistically the same for the grey and black KMS. Besides being useful in process design, these data can be used as baseline information for the identification of candidate nutrient-rich future climate-smart crops that can thrive in elevated temperature situations to mitigate the effects of climate change on food security.

Aquatic species show different sensitivities and responses to chronic thermal stress, resulting in varying degrees of resistance to the negative impacts of climate change, which are ultimately expressed as range expansions or contractions. The choice of species appropriate for assessing climate change impacts in aquatic ecosystems should be guided by the robustness of the relationship between a chosen chronic stress thermal threshold and associated habitat contraction. Twelve aquatic species were evaluated as potential climate change indicators, from which six were selected for testing a conceptual framework for predicting the degree of utility of a species as a climate change indicator. Results indicate that species with a chronic biological thermal threshold below 20°C are likely to experience in excess of 50% loss of thermally suitable environment. Cooler thermal thresholds could inform the choice of suitable sentinel species for use as early indicators of chronic thermal stress, while thresholds above this reflect increasingly thermally resistant species within aquatic communities.

Protected areas and their peripheries harbour biodiverse ecosystems which underpin ecosystem service provision to local communities. Understanding the relationship between the species contained within these ecosystems and the utilitarian services they provide is important. However, there is a shortage of quantitative methods for assessing species’ utilitarian roles. We used a dendrogram-based method to quantify utilitarian diversity and an ordination method to determine co-occurrences in three sites at the periphery of Gonarezhou National Park, in Zimbabwe. The use categories for the plants were determined using household questionnaire surveys, and vegetation data was collected via standard plotless sampling techniques. There was higher plant diversity in the sites adjacent to the protected area, i.e. Malipati communal area (S = 45; Simpson’s index = 0.7271) and Gonakudzingwa farms (S = 50; Simpson’s index = 0.9351), with the lowest diversity recorded at the site far from the park, i.e. Chomupani communal area (S = 25; Simpson’s index = 0.6305). Utilitarian diversity was also highest in the areas adjacent to the protected area, with Malipati and Gonakudzingwa having values of 22.2 and 21.4, respectively, while Chomupani attained 20.6. A principal component analysis ordination indicated which utilitarian species occurred in the same areas. Our results contribute to plant conservation by highlighting the utilitarian relationships of species at protected area peripheries. This allows planners and conservationists to set conservation priorities to avoid losing species that contribute the most to ecosystem service provision.

This review provides an overview of the progress made in remote sensing application for soil moisture, vegetation and inundation mapping in wetland environments. The main objective of the paper was to assess the link between soil moisture variations and vegetation characteristics in wetland remote sensing studies. To achieve this objective, relevant literature was gathered from established search engines, e.g. Science Direct and Web of Science, along with specific search strategies and key phrases. Three hundred and ninety-three journal articles on wetland remote sensing published between 1980 and 2023 were collected and subjected to a comprehensive analysis. The findings indicate that remote sensing of wetland moisture, vegetation and inundation has been increasing, from three published work in the 1980s to 22 in the 1990s, to 88 between 2001 and 2010, and to 278 between 2011 and 2023. Results showed that there has been an improvement in the application of remote sensing in mapping of wetland moisture, inundation and vegetation in Africa between 2015 and 2023. Despite wide application of remote sensing to map these aspects, very few studies (2.1%) have focused on establishing the relationship between them. The analysis indicated that the launch of new Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 optical sensors in addition to the Landsat series, along with a variety of analytical methods, provided a great opportunity for derivation of soil moisture and vegetation data which can be used to establish the soil moisture–vegetation nexus.