The Impact of Phenotypic and Genotypic G6PD Deficiency on Risk of Plasmodium vivax Infection: A Case-Control Study amongst Afghan Refugees in Pakistan

Analyses of a case-control study among Afghan refugees in Pakistan find that a G6PD (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase) “Mediterranean” type deficiency confers substantial protection against Plasmodium vivax malaria

Sufism and Liberation across the Indo-Afghan Border: 1880-1928

How do we understand links between sufism and pro-egalitarian revolutionary activism in the early twentieth century; and how did upland compositions of self and community help constitute revolutionary activism in South Asia more broadly? Using Pashto poetry as my archive I integrate a history of radical egalitarian thought and political practice to a holistic study of self-making; of imperial spatiality; and of shifting gradients of power in the regions between Kabul and Punjab. Amid a chaotic rise of new practices of imperial and monarchic hegemony around the turn of the twentieth century, I argue, older sedimentations of ‘devotee selfhood’ in the high valleys of eastern Afghanistan gave rise, in social spaces preserved by self-reflexive poetic practice and circulation, to conscious desires for avoidance of all forms of hierarchy or sovereignty, in favour of a horizontal politics of reciprocity. Such inchoate drives for freedom later played a role in constituting anti-statist revolutionary subjectivities across great geographical and social distance. From upland sufi roots they rippled outward to intersect with the work of transnational socialist and anti-imperialist militants in Indian nationalist circles too; and even influenced scholars at the heart of the nascent Afghan nation-state

Interspecific gene flow shaped the evolution of the genus Canis

The evolutionary history of the wolf-like canids of the genus Canis has been heavily debated, especially regarding the number of distinct species and their relationships at the population and species level [16]. We assembled a dataset of 48 resequenced genomes spanning all members of the genus Canis except the black-backed and side-striped jackals, encompassing the global diversity of seven extant canid lineages. This includes eight new genomes, including the first resequenced Ethiopian wolf (Canis simensis), one dhole (Cuon alpinus), two East African hunting dogs (Lycaon pictus), two Eurasian golden jackals (Canis aureus), and two Middle Eastern gray wolves (Canis lupus). The relationships between the Ethiopian wolf, African golden wolf, and golden jackal were resolved. We highlight the role of inter- specific hybridization in the evolution of this charismatic group. Specifically, we find gene flow between the ancestors of the dhole and African hunting dog and admixture between the gray wolf, coyote (Canis latrans), golden jackal, and African golden wolf. Additionally, we report gene flow from gray and Ethiopian wolves to the African golden wolf, suggesting that the African golden wolf originated through hybridization between these species. Finally, we hypothesize that coyotes and gray wolves carry genetic material derived from a "ghost" basal canid lineage

Landscape, race, and power on the Indo-Afghan frontier, c.1840-c.1880

Landscape defined a problem of colonial rule on the nineteenth-century Indo-Afghan frontier, connected, as it was, to contemporary ideas about difference, novelly articulated in racial terms. This connection was the product of numerous developments, drawing on Enlightenment ideas about race and development and on historical analogy with the late eighteenth-century Scottish Highlands, as well as the nineteenth-century ethnographic inquiry linking geographic isolation with racial preservation or descent. These ‘noble savages’ were also more likely to fall under the spell of charismatic Sufi leaders, spurring them to fierce resistance of political authority and acts of violence, and earning them a reputation for ‘fanaticism’. Landscape also presented a problem for the expression of colonial power; for the ruggedness and remoteness of the frontier made the expatriate population vulnerable in an area where the colonial presence remained thin and where criminal prosecution could be easily evaded. The consequence was the Frontier Crimes Regulation, which devolved authority for the prosecution of crime and execution of justice to the heads of tribal societies according to local custom, and the Murderous Outrages Act, which empowered colonial officers to suspend due judicial process and order anachronistic and morally abhorrent forms of punishment. Just as ideas about race were ambivalent and contradictory, so, too, was colonial law