Decolonial African feminism for white allies

Feminism is a word, a discourse and a political position that is frequently met with suspicion in African circles. There are various reasons for this distrust. Some (often those in disciplines that have proactively embraced decoloniality) hold that feminism is a western colonizing construct, which has been imposed on the country by imperialists. This response implicitly or explicitly accuses feminism of complicity with a colonizing agenda that desires the subordination of African epistemologies. Others equate a feminist political position with an uncritical anger and aggression towards men. They argue that, far from being antagonistic towards men, women need to make alliances with men in order to craft an inclusive and sustainable future for the African continent. In the light of these discursive and political contestations, this article argues that centring African feminisms is an important decolonial move. It brings to light the dangers of a universalizing view of African feminisms, noting that feminism in Africa, as in other contexts, is neither monolithic nor univocal. In this way, it aims to decolonize feminism in African contexts and to demonstrate that feminism has a significant role in contemporary African political and theoretical discourse. Finally, it suggests a response to African feminism – and African feminists – for white feminists based on solidarity, ally-hood and respect, arguing that such a response is important in the decolonial project

Collaborative Research: Agulhas-South Atlantic Thermohaline Transport Experiment (ASTTEX)

A field experiment is proposed, which will provide multi-year time series of salt, heat, and mass transports from the Agulhas retroflection region into the South Atlantic subtropical gyre. The program will deploy inverted echo sounders, both with and without pressure sensors and near-bottom current meters. The in situ data will be complemented with satellite data, both SST and altimetry. Historical data will also be included in the data analysis. The success of the program is based substantially on a new technique, GEM-ETTA, for analyzing IES (inverted echo sounder) and PIES (pressure and inverted echo sounder) data. Analysis of the field data in conjunction with reanalysis of historical data will provide the first long-term time series of these inter-basin fluxes on interannual scales

Social Perspectives on the Effective Management of Wastewater

The chapter discusses how adopting a holistic methodology that acknowledges sociological factors, including community participation, public involvement, social perception, attitudes, gender roles and public acceptance, would lead to improvements in wastewater management practice. It highlights the social dimension as a tool, a lens through which wastewater management and reuse can take on new dimensions. In this way, this chapter aims to shift the focus from perceiving wastewater as a nuisance that needs disposal, toward a resource not to be wasted, which can contribute to food security, human and environmental health, access to energy as well as water security

The effects of forest degradation on soil carbon dynamics in the tropics

Plant-soil interactions and soil carbon dynamics are an essential part of soil function. Land-use change can affect the soil’s ability to accumulate and store carbon. Deforestation and conversion to croplands has decreased tree species cover and diversity in the tropics resulting in degraded and secondary forests becoming the dominant forested habitat. Understanding the effects of forest degradation on soil carbon dynamics is vital if we are to remediate these ecosystems under climate change. The overarching aim of this thesis was understanding how changes in tree and plant species composition at different levels of degradation affect soil carbon dynamics and litter decomposition in the old and neo-tropics using litter transplant experiments in the field. Malaysia is one of the two biggest producers of palm oil in the world with Indonesia. Borneo is a biodiversity hotspot, but this ecosystem is decreasing at an alarming rate. Sabah, in norther Malaysian Borneo is converting its tropical forest to oil palm plantations resulting in vast expanses of oil palm monocultures containing secondary forest fragments at various degrees of degradation. In Central America, the tree cover is also dominated by secondary forests and timber plantations; in Panama, only 21 % of the tree cover classified as intact forest and there are remediation projects in place to encourage reforestation of degraded landscapes into plantations using native timber species. The level of degradation in the habitats changed the microclimate which affected soil properties, microbial activity and litter decomposition. Litter properties also had an effect on the rate of litter decomposition and microbial activity. The loss of tree cover in the deforested habitats and monocultures resulted in lower microbial activity and decomposition rates whereas the secondary forests has similar microbial activity and decomposition rates as the old growth forests. Overall, my results suggest that mixed litter inputs are crucial for maintaining soil function and that tropical forest soils might be more resilient to change than expected

Cost-outcome description of clinical pharmacist interventions in a university teaching hospital

Background: Pharmacist interventions are one of the pivotal parts of a clinical pharmacy service within a hospital. This study estimates the cost avoidance generated by pharmacist interventions due to the prevention of adverse drug events (ADE). The types of interventions identified are also analysed. Methods: Interventions recorded by a team of hospital pharmacists over a one year time period were included in the study. Interventions were assigned a rating score, determined by the probability that an ADE would have occurred in the absence of an intervention. These scores were then used to calculate cost avoidance. Net cost benefit and cost benefit ratio were the primary outcomes. Categories of interventions were also analysed. Results: A total cost avoidance of €708,221 was generated. Input costs were calculated at €81,942. This resulted in a net cost benefit of €626,279 and a cost benefit ratio of 8.64: 1. The most common type of intervention was the identification of medication omissions, followed by dosage adjustments and requests to review therapies. Conclusion: This study provides further evidence that pharmacist interventions provide substantial cost avoidance to the healthcare payer. There is a serious issue of patient’s regular medication being omitted on transfer to an inpatient setting in Irish hospitals

‘Queer Villainy’: Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House as Testimony to Lesbian Abuse and Love

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) are popularly believed to be the exclusive preserve of the heterosexual population. This assumption underpins the fact that policy and interventions aimed at reducing DVA often focus on remediating men’s behaviour so that they become less violent towards women. Such views exclude the fact that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) people also experience DVA. This lack of knowledge is partly due to the lack of legitimacy afforded to non-heterosexual relationships. This extends to literary-cultural representations, and there is a particular dearth of texts representing lesbian partnerships. Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir, In the Dream House (2019), fills a gap in literary representations of lesbian relationships, as well as in representations of DVA between same-sex partners. In this article, we read the work as literary scholars, but we do not interpret it as a hermetically sealed work of art with no reference to the world. Instead, we argue that it makes an important contribution, in literary form, to the emerging scholarship on DVA amongst LGBTQ people. We explore how its literary strategies create rich connections with popular culture and give it a place in the queer archive

Selves and others : the politics of difference in the writings of Ursula Kroeber le Guin

Selves and Others: The Politics of Difference in the Writings of Ursula Kroeber Le Guin has two founding premises. One is that Le Guin's writing addresses the political issues of the late twentieth century in a number of ways, even although speculative fiction is not generally considered a political genre. Questions of self and O/other, which shape political (that is, powerinflected) responses to difference, infuse Le Guin's writing. My thesis sets out to investigate the mechanisms of representation by which these concerns are realized. My chapters reflect aspects of the relationship between self and O/other as I perceive it in Le Guin's work. Thus my first chapter deals with the representations of imperialism and colonialism in five novels, three of which were written near the beginning of her literary career. My second chapter considers Le Guin's best-known novels, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974), in the context of the alienation from American society recorded by thinkers in the 1960s. In my third chapter, the emphasis shifts to intrapsychic questions and splits, as I explore themes of sexuality and identity in Le Guin's novels for and about adolescents. I move to more public matters in my fourth and fifth chapters, which deal, respectively, with the politicized interface between public and private histories and with disempowerment. In my final chapter, I explore the representation of difference and politics in Le Guin's intricate but critically neglected poetry. My second founding premise is that traditional modes of literary criticism, which aim to arrive at comprehensive and final interpretations, are not appropriate for Le Guin's mode of writing, which consistently refuses to locate meaning definitely. My thesis seeks and explores aporias in the meaning-making process; it is concerned with asking productive questions, rather than with final answers. I have, consequently, adopted a sceptical approach to the process of interpretation, preferring to foreground the provisional and partial status of all interpretations. I have found that postmodern and poststructuralist literary theory, which focuses on textual gaps and discontinuities, has served me better than more traditional ways of readingEnglish StudiesD. Litt. et Phil. (English

Campylobacter ureolyticus: an emerging gastrointestinal pathogen?

A total of 7194 faecal samples collected over a 1-year period from patients presenting with diarrhoea were screened for Campylobacter spp. using EntericBios, a multiplex-PCR system. Of 349 Campylobacter-positive samples, 23.8% were shown to be Campylobacter ureolyticus, using a combination of 16S rRNA gene analysis and highly specific primers targeting the HSP60 gene of this organism. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report of C. ureolyticus in the faeces of patients presenting with gastroenteritis and may suggest a role for this organism as an emerging enteric pathogen

Feminist Encounters with Situated Knowledges of Gender and Love

Editorial: Feminist Encounters with Situated Knowledges of Gender and Lov