Minerals in Afghanistan : gemstones of Afghanistan

Afghanistan and gemstones have been inextricably linked for 6500 years and the country remains rich in precious and semiprecious gemstone deposits (Figure 1). Lapis lazuli, mined in the Hindu Kush since the Neolithic Period, was transported along the ancient trade routes to Mesopotamia, Ur, Egypt and India. Precious gems including emeralds, ruby and sapphires (Figure 2) are mined in Afghanistan, and semi-precious lapis lazuli, tourmaline, aquamarine, kunzite, topaz, garnets, fluorite and varieties of quartz are also worked. Afghanistan is also a source of good quality mineral specimens sought by collectors. Gemstone mining in Afghanistan is typically an artisanal activity, carried out by people living in villages surrounding the mines. Tunnels are excavated and gems are extracted by hand using drills, dynamite and often high explosives recycled from ordnance. These techniques lead to much waste and damage to gems, and result in low yield. Most of the gemstones mined in Afghanistan leave the country illicitly, 90–95 % of them going to Peshawar in Pakistan where they are sorted for quality

Deciphering Solar Magnetic Activity: On Grand Minima in Solar Activity

The Sun provides the energy necessary to sustain our existence. While the Sun provides for us, it is also capable of taking away. The weather and climatic scales of solar evolution and the Sun-Earth connection are not well understood. There has been tremendous progress in the century since the discovery of solar magnetism - magnetism that ultimately drives the electromagnetic, particulate and eruptive forcing of our planetary system. There is contemporary evidence of a decrease in solar magnetism, perhaps even indicators of a significant downward trend, over recent decades. Are we entering a minimum in solar activity that is deeper and longer than a typical solar minimum, a "grand minimum"? How could we tell if we are? What is a grand minimum and how does the Sun recover? These are very pertinent questions for modern civilization. In this paper we present a hypothetical demonstration of entry and exit from grand minimum conditions based on a recent analysis of solar features over the past 20 years and their possible connection to the origins of the 11(-ish) year solar activity cycle.Comment: 9 pages - submitted to Frontiers in Solar and Stellar Physic

“Grotesque Faces and Figures”: Child Labourers and Coal Mining Technology in Victorian Nova Scotia

One consequence of the technological improvements in mining coal in the nineteenth century was the increased use of child labour in Canadian collieries. Focussing on the major coal-producing province of the period, Nova Scotia, this article outlines how techniques of mining introduced during Victoria's reign encouraged the employment of boys, and how subsequent innovations in mining technology reduced the demand for boy labour after the turn of the century.Une conséquence importante de l’innovation technologique dans les mines de charbon au 19e siècle a été l’usage accru des enfants comme source de travail productif dans les charbonnages canadiens. Fondé sur l’étude des mines de Nouvelle-Écosse, cet article montre comment les technologies introduites au cours de la période Victorienne ont encouragé l’emploi de jeunes garçons et comment cette demande a ensuite diminué avec l’arrivée, au tournant du siècle, de nouvelle technologies

Visions, ideals and elections: The struggle for political apartheid within the Nationalist alliance, 1948-1959

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 20 May 1996This paper accepts the major conclusions of Posel, Lazar and others that there did not exist prior to the Nationalists assuming power a plan sufficiently coherent to facilitate its execution by legislators and administrators in the sense of following a "blueprint", and that the Nationalists in government faced numerous political and practical difficulties in their endeavours to translate their aspirations for apartheid into a practical programme. For Lazar, the Nationalist alliance was comprised of factions and classes, "all of whom saw their interests in different ways". The new government sought to develop its policy of apartheid, against a background of the need to keep the alliance together, and to counter escalating African resistance. Lazar describes an ideological struggle between the "visionaries" in the South African Bureau of Racial Affairs (SABRA) and the government, especially in the person of Verwoerd. The struggle lasted throughout the 1950s, until Verwoerd, with the backing of the Broederbond, succeeded in purging SABRA, and capturing it for the, then, Verwoerd-led government. SABRA had endeavoured to invent an ideology for its grand plan, and one which represented a search for a consistent moral position for complete separation. The SABRA vision was dependent upon total separation, which could not be applied to an economic system which used cheap African labour to perpetuate white domination. Posel has argued that the class divisions within the Nationalist alliance generated different "blueprints" for apartheid. Total segregation was espoused by powerful factions comprising Afrikaner intellectuals, particularly among the membership of SABRA. Posel defined the SABRA intellectuals as "purists", as opposed to the members of the government who were pragmatic, and more conciliatory to the needs of industrial and commercial capital for a stable, urbanised labour force. The new government also had to contend with other problems; policy-making and implementation were shaped and constrained by the relations between the government and the largely UP-controlled municipal authorities, and the dominating ideological factions within the Native Affairs Department (NAD). Despite these largely class divisions, the Nationalist Alliance could unite behind a programme of the political disenfranchisement of Africans which was seen as essential to the maintenance of white supremacy