The pursuit of prosperity and blessing : social life and symbolic action on Buru Island, Eastern Indonesia

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis based on fieldwork among the 'mountain people' of the interior of Burn, an island located in the present-day province of Maluku in the Republic of Indonesia. Interested in 'metaphors for living' I found important Burn metaphors refer to botanic 'roots’ and 'tips'. The conceptualization of botanic growth as the consequence of life being transmitted from roots to new leaf-tips also applies to the Burn social world. This study details the Burn 'quest for life', a quest concerned with maintaining proper relationships with sources of life to ensure the transmission of 'prosperity and blessing' (berkona tu berkate). After the Introduction, Part One provides the setting. Chapter Two examines the history of Bum's relations with the outside world. Chapter Three describes the island as a culturally constructed inside world. Part Two concerns Bum social life. Chapter Four focuses on the noro, exogamous groups (clans) defined in terms of common origins. When they marry, women leave their natal noro and their children subsequently belong to the noro of their husband. Yet Bum concerns about the source of life connect children to their mother's brothers in a relationship between 'source uncles' and 'life children'. To maintain 'connections' between noro, ideally men return to their 'source uncle' to marry their emdaa (MBD). Chapter Five provides the details of marriage and the regeneration of human life. While the Bum kinship terminology is asymmetric, marriages are symmetric, involving simultaneous sister exchange and other bidirectional marriages. Sister exchange allows an immediate substitution for the bride, but, alternatively, there can be bridewealth, or the return of a child to replace its mother. Whenever a noro loses a person through the agency of another noro, Bum people are strict accountants. There must be a replacement for sisters lost in marriage as well as for members lost through death at the hands of another noro. Chapter Six describes the effort that goes into maintaining equality between noro, an effort that falls largely to 'entitled men' and warriors. Through their negotiating skills, 'entitled men' obtain a replacement for any life taken, while warriors guard the balance between noro through their fighting skills and the possibility of 'revenge killing' (kalungan). Part Three focuses on symbolic action. Chapter Seven examines the Bum symbols intertwined with the concept of 'prosperity and blessing'. The dyadic categories of Bum symbolism are used to transform the state of things in the world. Chapter Eight describes a variety of taboos, constmcted in terms of symbolic action intended to create distinction and to avoid undesired consequences. Chapter Nine details various rituals and the role of symbolic actions in transforming experience as people seek to restore prosperity when they encounter difficulty. The conclusion consider the implications of this study for the comparative effort. In reference to hierarchy, alliance, exchange, gender, the cultural construction of the body, illness, and childbirth, Burn presents a useful vantage point for the comparison of societies in eastern Indonesia and Melanesia

Affiliation and alliance on Buru

On the island of Burn in the Indonesian province of Maluku certain social groups, called noro, play a very prominent role in society as do similar groups in many other societies of eastern Indonesia.1 Every individual in Buru society belongs to a noro and at any given point in time he or she can only belong to one noro. The noro an individual belongs to is the primary source of his or her social identity and prescribes relationships and interaction with other individuals and groups in society. Because of the significance of these social groups I began inquiring more about them and soon came to the question which eventually led to this study and provided a key which opened up a broader understanding of Buru society: "How is it determined to which noro an individual belongs?

Drilling constraints on lithospheric accretion and evolution at Atlantis Massif, Mid-Atlantic Ridge 30°N

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): B07103, doi:10.1029/2010JB007931.Expeditions 304 and 305 of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program cored and logged a 1.4 km section of the domal core of Atlantis Massif. Postdrilling research results summarized here constrain the structure and lithology of the Central Dome of this oceanic core complex. The dominantly gabbroic sequence recovered contrasts with predrilling predictions; application of the ground truth in subsequent geophysical processing has produced self-consistent models for the Central Dome. The presence of many thin interfingered petrologic units indicates that the intrusions forming the domal core were emplaced over a minimum of 100–220 kyr, and not as a single magma pulse. Isotopic and mineralogical alteration is intense in the upper 100 m but decreases in intensity with depth. Below 800 m, alteration is restricted to narrow zones surrounding faults, veins, igneous contacts, and to an interval of locally intense serpentinization in olivine-rich troctolite. Hydration of the lithosphere occurred over the complete range of temperature conditions from granulite to zeolite facies, but was predominantly in the amphibolite and greenschist range. Deformation of the sequence was remarkably localized, despite paleomagnetic indications that the dome has undergone at least 45° rotation, presumably during unroofing via detachment faulting. Both the deformation pattern and the lithology contrast with what is known from seafloor studies on the adjacent Southern Ridge of the massif. There, the detachment capping the domal core deformed a 100 m thick zone and serpentinized peridotite comprises ∼70% of recovered samples. We develop a working model of the evolution of Atlantis Massif over the past 2 Myr, outlining several stages that could explain the observed similarities and differences between the Central Dome and the Southern Ridge

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19.

Host-mediated lung inflammation is present1, and drives mortality2, in the critical illness caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development3. Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study in 2,244 critically ill patients with COVID-19 from 208 UK intensive care units. We have identified and replicated the following new genome-wide significant associations: on chromosome 12q24.13 (rs10735079, P = 1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster that encodes antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2 and OAS3); on chromosome 19p13.2 (rs74956615, P = 2.3 × 10-8) near the gene that encodes tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2); on chromosome 19p13.3 (rs2109069, P = 3.98 ×  10-12) within the gene that encodes dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9); and on chromosome 21q22.1 (rs2236757, P = 4.99 × 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identified potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomization, we found evidence that low expression of IFNAR2, or high expression of TYK2, are associated with life-threatening disease; and transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte-macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe COVID-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in COVID-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. However, large-scale randomized clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good