The intimate affliction of vicarious racialization: Afro-Chinese couples in South China

Racial prejudice and discrimination towards Africans in Guangzhou have been widely documented and are systemic. Nonetheless, conjugal unions and family formation between Chinese citizens and members of the African diaspora have become more prevalent in recent years. Together, Afro-Chinese couples confront quotidian threats of violence, arrest, and deportation of the African partners, which threats affect their families and livelihoods. Studies thus far have neglected the complex dynamics and negotiations of racism that manifest in the interracial domestic sphere. Through reflexive observational fieldwork and qualitative interviews, this study provides a contemporary analysis of negotiating racism in intimate family life, especially from the unique standpoint of the Chinese spouse in an Afro-Chinese marriage. Drawing upon empirical data and the Althusserian notion of interpellation, we develop the concept of the intimate affliction of vicarious racialization to analyze how multiple inequities intersect and condition the couples’ overlapping lived experiences. Vicarious racialization particularly emphasizes processes by which Chinese women become interpellated but also resist anti-Black racism. This intimate affliction destabilizes the prevailing discourse on racism, which focuses on targeted (racialized) minorities, and the dichotomy of direct/indirect discrimination against them. This study highlights the often-overlooked role of women’s agency across multiple borderlands with their partners as they negotiate gendered, racialized, and classed subjections in familial and social spaces

Collective edge modes in fractional quantum Hall systems

Over the past few years one of us (Murthy) in collaboration with R. Shankar has developed an extended Hamiltonian formalism capable of describing the ground state and low energy excitations in the fractional quantum Hall regime. The Hamiltonian, expressed in terms of Composite Fermion operators, incorporates all the nonperturbative features of the fractional Hall regime, so that conventional many-body approximations such as Hartree-Fock and time-dependent Hartree-Fock are applicable. We apply this formalism to develop a microscopic theory of the collective edge modes in fractional quantum Hall regime. We present the results for edge mode dispersions at principal filling factors $\nu=1/3,1/5$ and $\nu=2/5$ for systems with unreconstructed edges. The primary advantage of the method is that one works in the thermodynamic limit right from the beginning, thus avoiding the finite-size effects which ultimately limit exact diagonalization studies.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, See cond-mat/0303359 for related result

Analysis of the vector and axialvector BcB_c mesons with QCD sum rules

In this article, we study the vector and axialvector $B_c$ mesons with the QCD sum rules, and make reasonable predictions for the masses and decay constants, then calculate the leptonic decay widths. The present predictions for the masses and decay constants can be confronted with the experimental data in the future. We can also take the masses and decay constants as basic input parameters and study other phenomenological quantities with the three-point vacuum correlation functions via the QCD sum rules.Comment: 14 pages, 16 figure

Properties of heavy quarkonia and B_c mesons in the relativistic quark model

The mass spectra and electromagnetic decay rates of charmonium, bottomonium and B_c mesons are comprehensively investigated in the relativistic quark model. The presence of only heavy quarks allows the expansion in powers of their velocities. All relativistic corrections of order v^2/c^2, including retardation effects and one-loop radiative corrections, are systematically taken into account in the computations of the mass spectra. The obtained wave functions are used for the calculation of radiative magnetic dipole (M1) and electric dipole (E1) transitions. It is found that relativistic effects play a substantial role. Their account and the proper choice of the Lorentz structure of the quark-antiquark interaction in a meson is crucial for bringing theoretical predictions in accord with experimental data. A detailed comparison of the calculated decay rates and branching fractions with available experimental data for radiative decays of charmonium and bottomonium is presented. The possibilities to observe the currently missing spin-singlet S and P states as well as D states in bottomonium are discussed. The results for B_c masses and decays are compared with other quark model predictions.Comment: 31 pages, 2 figures, minor correction

Epidemiology of facial fractures: Incidence, prevalence and years lived with disability estimates from the Global Burden of Disease 2017 study

Background: The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) has historically produced estimates of causes of injury such as falls but not the resulting types of injuries that occur. The objective of this study was to estimate the global incidence, prevalence and years lived with disability (YLDs) due to facial fractures and to estimate the leading injurious causes of facial fracture. Methods: We obtained results from GBD 2017. First, the study estimated the incidence from each injury cause (eg, falls), and then the proportion of each cause that would result in facial fracture being the most disabling injury. Incidence, prevalence and YLDs of facial fractures are then calculated across causes. Results: Globally, in 2017, there were 7 538 663 (95% uncertainty interval 6 116 489 to 9 4

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Use of sequence analysis of the VP4 gene to classify recent Vietnamese rotavirus isolates

AbstractTwenty-eight strains of P(8), four of P(4) and one of P(19) rotavirus, isolated in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, during 2002–2003, were investigated by sequence analysis of the VP4 gene. Seven of the 28 P(8) rotavirus VP4 sequences clustered in the P(8)-3 lineage, or the rare, so-called OP354-like lineage. Amino-acid sequence comparison revealed that Vietnamese P(8)-3 rotaviruses were generally very similar to Malawian strains, including the prototype OP354 strain. The numerical severity scores of diarrhoeal disease caused by the Vietnamese P(8)-3 rotaviruses were statistically higher than those of diarrhoeal disease caused by rotaviruses in the more common P(8)-2 lineage. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis of the VP4 gene of a Vietnamese G9P(19) rotavirus isolate showed a high degree of homology with the cognate genes of other human and porcine rotaviruses, including the prototype 4F strain

Enzyme-linked immunoassay for dengue virus IgM and IgG antibodies in serum and filter paper blood

Background: The reproducibilty of dengue IgM and IgG ELISA was studied in serum and filter paper blood spots from Vietnamese febrile patients. Methods: 781 pairs of acute (t0) and convalescent sera, obtained after three weeks (t3) and 161 corresponding pairs of filter paper blood spots were tested with ELISA for dengue IgG and IgM. 74 serum pairs were tested again in another laboratory with similar methods, after a mean of 252 days. Results: Cases were classified as no dengue (10%), past dengue (55%) acute primary (7%) or secondary (28%) dengue. Significant differences between the two laboratories' results were found leading to different diagnostic classification (kappa 0.46, p < 0.001). Filter paper results correlated poorly to serum values, being more variable and lower with a mean (95% CI) difference of 0.82 (0.36 to 1.28) for IgMt3, 0.94 (0.51 to 1.37) for IgGt0 and 0.26 (-0.20 to 0.71) for IgGt3. This also led to differences in diagnostic classification (kappa value 0.44, p < 0.001) The duration of storage of frozen serum and dried filter papers, sealed in nylon bags in an air-conditioned room, had no significant effect on the ELISA results. Conclusion: Dengue virus IgG antibodies in serum and filter papers was not affected by duration of storage, but was subject to inter-laboratory variability. Dengue virus IgM antibodies measured in serum reconstituted from blood spots on filter papers were lower than in serum, in particular in the acute phase of disease. Therefore this method limits its value for diagnostic confirmation of individual patients with dengue virus infections. However the detection of dengue virus IgG antibodies eluted from filter paper can be used for sero-prevalence cross sectional studie