Accompaniment Through Carceral Geographies: Abolitionist Research Partnerships with Indigenous Communities

This article approaches “ea”—a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) concept meaning life, breath, and sovereignty—as a vital mode of abolition ecologies, and proposes accompaniment as a methodology for mutual collaboration toward this endeavour. Research draws from ethnographic fieldwork on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu in Hawai‘i, a predominantly Native Hawaiian community, and reflects upon the author’s positionality on Wai‘anae’s insider–outsider borderlands. The argument is multifold: Carceral geographies inscribe racism by cleaving humans from the environment and each other, depriving life‐giving resources from populations deemed a threat to a dominant socioenvironmental order. At the same time, abolition ecologies entail worldmaking predicated on the interdependence of all life forces, employing syncretic practices that join disparate struggles, people, and places to generate possibilities greater than the sum of its parts. Accompaniment works against racism’s practices of criminalisation and containment while contributing to radical, syncretic placemaking as part of an expansive liberatory practice.     

Socio-cultural aspects of the high masculinity ratio in India

The paper aims to explicate those factors accountable for the continuing imbalance in the sex ratio and its further masculinization over the whole of the 20th century. Here it is contended that the traditional practice of female infanticide and the current practice of female foeticide in the contemporary period, especially in the north-west and Hindi-speaking states, have significantly contributed to the high masculinity ratio in India. In addition, increasingly higher survival ratios of male children, particularly from the 1951 census onward, have been the prime reason for a declining proportion of females in the Indian population. As the Indian value system has been imbued with a relatively higher preference for sons, improvements in health facilities have benefited males more than females, giving rise to a highly imbalanced sex ratio in the country. This scenario, however, has steadily tended to alter in favour of greater balance in sex ratio.     

Historical perspective: The British contribution to the understanding of neurocysticercosis

Neurocysticercosis, or brain infestation with the larval stage of Taenia solium, is the most common risk factor for epilepsy in many endemic regions of the world. Hardly any cases are seen in Western developed countries, including Britain. However, a sizeable number (n = 450) was seen among British soldiers returning from deputation to India, then a British colony, first reported by Col. MacArthur at the Queen Alexandria Military Hospital in 1931. Here, we review the influence of the perceptive observations of British Army medics on the understanding of the parasitic disorder. The majority of these people presented with epilepsy. Among the contributions of the army medics were establishing the diagnosis, initially by histological examination of subcutaneous and muscular infestation, and later by radiography, clarifying the prognosis and the role of medical and surgical treatments and uncovering the close relationship between the larval (cysticercosis) and adult (intestinal tapeworm) stages of T. solium.     

The Dimensions of Politics and Voter Behaviour in Preferential Systems: The Case of Australia

This project examines the dimensions of politics and voter preferences in Australia. Evidence from an empirical spatial analysis provides that Australian parties and voters are organised along a unidimensional socioeconomic continuum. Numerous individual-level factors, including party identification, ideology and a host of demographic and opinion variables, predict voters' positions along the continuum. Moreover, voter locations are shown to relate strongly to vote choice, demonstrating the importance of socioeconomic positions to voter behaviour in Australia. Finally, because this approach allows for a full examination of voter preference orderings, it is important to the study of voting behaviour and representation under preferential electoral institutions in Australia and elsewhere.     

Best practices for measuring community resources across Canada: A comparison of coding classifications

Social scientists, geographers, criminologists, and health scientists are often tasked with finding data to best capture the impact of “community context” on individual outcomes, including residential services, physical resources, and social institutions. One outlet for such data in Canada is Digital Map Technologies Inc. (DMTI) Spatial, which offers a national repository of over one million businesses and recreational points of interest. The database is generated through CanMap Streetfiles, which includes geocodes of each point's precise location. These data are available to researchers from their university data library and Esri Canada, but primarily available to private sector and government markets. That said, the goal of the current paper is to encourage researchers to access this rich yet under-utilized data source. Each service, business, or resource in the DMTI Spatial database is assigned to a respective category using Standard Industrial Classification codes and North American Industrial Classification System codes. It is not clear, however, which is the more reliable coding criteria. We provide an overview of our review of DMTI Spatial data and take-away suggestions for using this valuable resource for future research on meso-level residential markers.     

Ancient copper and lead pollution records from a raised bog complex in Central Wales,UK

This paper presents records of metal deposition as preserved by a peatland which has accumulated in the lowland coastal zone at Borth, near Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, mid-Wales, U.K. The research objective was to explore the origins and history of metal mining and (or) metallurgy by reconstructing a geochemical record of copper, lead and zinc pollution for the last four millennia. Two cores were extracted from Borth Bog, one from the raised ombrotrophic part of the bog and another from a minerotrophic part of Borth Bog close to the ancient copper workings at Llancynfelin. Although peat stratigraphy and nutrient status have influenced the geochemical record, the results suggest that an early phase of copper and lead pollution occurred at Llancynfelin whilst lead enrichment occurred in the peat core taken close to the centre of Borth Bog during the Bronze Age and the Roman occupation. Therefore the origins of copper and lead mining and metallurgy possibly extend back to the Bronze Age in central Wales. No record of historical pollution exists at either site. The results of this study also provide further evidence that lead and copper are immobile in ombrotrophic peat and that pollution records can be elucidated from minerotrophic peat. Zinc, however, may have suffered from post-depositional mobility.     

First ancient bovine DNA evidence from India: difficult but not impossible

Ancient DNA isolation from the tropical countries has been shown to be very difficult in the past. Here for the first time we have been successful in isolating ancient DNA from Indian cattle samples. We were able to obtain DNA and sequence the partial mitochondrial D-loop in 3 of the 15 bovine fossil samples ranging in age from 2000 BC to 1000 AD, and were able to further identify the most recent sample as being of Bos indicus origin. Our results on ancient DNA extraction from India will encourage other researchers in this field to carry out further studies of ancient DNA from Indian bovine samples. Our results represent the first successful extraction and amplification of bovine ancient DNA from India, and thus may pave the road for a better understanding of demographic and historical processes of cattle domestication that has taken place in this region.     

Identification of Modal Parameters of a Multistoried RC Building Using Ambient Vibration and Strong Vibration Records of Bhuj Earthquake, 2001

Modal parameters of an instrumented multi-storied reinforced concrete building (G +9) have been studied using strong motion records of Bhuj Earthquake, 2001. The Ambient Vibration Testing (AVT) is also conducted to measure the modal parameters of the same building under ambient environmental forces. Frequency Domain Decomposition (FDD) or Peak Picking (PP) in frequency domain and Stochastic Subspace Identification (SSI) technique in time domain is used for extracting the modal parameters. The observed natural frequencies during strong motion are smaller than the ambient vibration testing. The difference in the frequencies may be caused by interaction between structure and soil due to high level of strain during strong motion earthquake. The modal pattern of first five modes obtained from strong motion records and ambient vibration records are identical.