Women’s political representation in small island developing states : a comparative analysis of Mauritius and Seychelles

A notable feature of the island studies literature is the gap at the level of research and data on gender issues. This paper look at the gender dimensions of political representation in two Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indian Ocean: Mauritius and Seychelles. The paper discusses the gendered aspects of scale, boundedness, isolation and fragmentation that are characteristic of island states in the contexts of Mauritius and Seychelles. Mauritius and Seychelles both inherited British colonial structures and became independent in 1968 and 1976. Smallness is a salient feature of both islands, but women’s political trajectories and success differ substantially. Drawing from published sources, this paper attempts to explain the different trends in gendered political presence in Mauritius and Seychelles. The paper also discusses the implications for women’s political empowerment in SIDS.peer-reviewe

Columnar order and Ashkin-Teller criticality in mixtures of hard-squares and dimers

We show that critical exponents of the transition to columnar order in a {\em mixture} of $2 \times 1$ dimers and $2 \times 2$ hard-squares on the square lattice {\em depends on the composition of the mixture} in exactly the manner predicted by the theory of Ashkin-Teller criticality, including in the hard-square limit. This result settles the question regarding the nature of the transition in the hard-square lattice gas. It also provides the first example of a polydisperse system whose critical properties depend on composition. Our ideas also lead to some interesting predictions for a class of frustrated quantum magnets that exhibit columnar ordering of the bond-energies at low temperature.Comment: 4pages, 2-column format + supplementary material; v2: published version including supplemental materia

Branching Brownian Motion Conditioned on Particle Numbers

We study analytically the order and gap statistics of particles at time $t$ for the one dimensional branching Brownian motion, conditioned to have a fixed number of particles at $t$. The dynamics of the process proceeds in continuous time where at each time step, every particle in the system either diffuses (with diffusion constant $D$), dies (with rate $d$) or splits into two independent particles (with rate $b$). We derive exact results for the probability distribution function of $g_k(t) = x_k(t) - x_{k+1}(t)$, the distance between successive particles, conditioned on the event that there are exactly $n$ particles in the system at a given time $t$. We show that at large times these conditional distributions become stationary $P(g_k, t \to \infty|n) = p(g_k|n)$. We show that they are characterised by an exponential tail $p(g_k|n) \sim \exp[-\sqrt{\frac{|b - d|}{2 D}} ~g_k]$ for large gaps in the subcritical ($b d$) phases, and a power law tail $p(g_k) \sim 8\left(\frac{D}{b}\right){g_k}^{-3}$ at the critical point ($b = d$), independently of $n$ and $k$. Some of these results for the critical case were announced in a recent letter [K. Ramola, S. N. Majumdar and G. Schehr, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 210602 (2014)].Comment: 19 pages, 5 figure

Spin-1 Kitaev model in one dimension

We study a one-dimensional version of the Kitaev model on a ring of size N, in which there is a spin S > 1/2 on each site and the Hamiltonian is J \sum_i S^x_i S^y_{i+1}. The cases where S is integer and half-odd-integer are qualitatively different. We show that there is a Z_2 valued conserved quantity W_n for each bond (n,n+1) of the system. For integer S, the Hilbert space can be decomposed into 2^N sectors, of unequal sizes. The number of states in most of the sectors grows as d^N, where d depends on the sector. The largest sector contains the ground state, and for this sector, for S=1, d =(\sqrt{5}+1)/2. We carry out exact diagonalization for small systems. The extrapolation of our results to large N indicates that the energy gap remains finite in this limit. In the ground state sector, the system can be mapped to a spin-1/2 model. We develop variational wave functions to study the lowest energy states in the ground state and other sectors. The first excited state of the system is the lowest energy state of a different sector and we estimate its excitation energy. We consider a more general Hamiltonian, adding a term \lambda \sum_n W_n, and show that this has gapless excitations in the range \lambda^c_1 \leq \lambda \leq \lambda^c_2. We use the variational wave functions to study how the ground state energy and the defect density vary near the two critical points \lambda^c_1 and \lambda^c_2.Comment: 12 pages including 3 figures; added some discussion and references; this is the published versio

Bowel injury: a rare but dreaded complication of unsafe abortion

Unsafe abortions represent a preventable yet major cause of maternal mortality and morbidity in India. Intestinal perforation is a rare dreaded complication of unsafe abortion. It is commonly seen in countries in which abortions are performed by people without proper training and proper instruments. Bowel perforation occurs when the posterior vaginal wall or the uterine wall is perforated. The ileum and the sigmoid colon are the most commonly injured portion of the bowel. Here, we report a case of ileal perforation following induced unsafe abortion which was managed successfully

A study of filamentous viruses in maize and smallgrains

Bibliography: pages 175-184.The occurrence of maize dwarf mosaic virus (MDMV) in field grown maize was investigated. For this purpose, maize showing mosiac symptoms was collected from different maize growing areas in South Africa by Prof. M.B. von Wechmar. These samples from Transvaal, Orange Free State and Natal were then investigated for the presence of MDMV and possible strains of this virus. Three virus isolates were purified and partially characterised. These isolates were serologically compared together with a fourth isolate SCMV 4975, obtained from the U.S., to establish strain relationships

Globalisation, Internationalisation and Higher Education in Mauritius: The Compromise of Quality

This article discusses the implications, risks and benefits of globalisation and  internationalisation of higher education in Mauritius. Mauritius is one of Africa’s success stories in terms of political stability, democracy, peace and development.  Being a resource-poor country and because of the remoteness and small size of the island, diversity of the population and lack of indigenous culture, Mauritius has  always been closely connected to the global economy and society. Given the  absence of high-value natural resources, a key resource the csuntry has had to rely  on is human capital and Mauritius has invested heavily in education through the  welfare state which provides free education at all levels. In order to widen access to  higher education, the Mauritian government has opened up the sector to foreign  higher education institutions. A growing number of Western and Indian foreign  accreditation bodies offer courses in the country in parallel with the local tertiary  institutions. The article shows that while Mauritius has been open to   internationalisation to enable the higher education sector to grow, this is taking  place at a substantial financial cost, which is to the detriment of the quality of  education and also to local higher education and examination bodies. The sector has become riddled with corruption as politicians bypass regulations and quality for  financial gain. Moreover, the form and direction that internationalisation is taking is highly imbued with a Western bias which is more expensive, does not encourage the development of local knowledge and also portrays an image that western academic certificates carry a higher value. Mauritius is also not linking up sufficiently with  African higher education institutions, apart from a few South African universities. l’île Maurice. L’île Maurice est l’une des réussites de l’Afrique en matière de stabilité politique, de démocratie, de paix et de développement. Etant un pays à faibles ressources et en raison de l’éloignement et de la petite taille de l’île, de la diversité de sa population et du manque de culture autochtone, Maurice a toujours été étroitement liée à l’économie et à la société mondiales. Face à l’absence de ressources naturelles de grande valeur, le pays a dû s’appuyer sur le capital humain, une ressource clé, et investi massivement dans l’éducation par l’intermédiaire de l’Etat providence qui offre une éducation gratuite à tous les niveaux. Afin d’élargir l’accès à l’enseignement supérieur, le gouvernement mauricien a ouvert le secteur aux établissements d’enseignement supérieur étrangers. Un nombre croissant d’organismes d’accréditation étrangers occidentaux et indiens offrent des cours dans le pays parallèlement aux institutions locales d’enseignement supérieur. Le présent article montre que l’ouverture de l’Ile Maurice à l’internationalisation pour permettre au secteur de l’enseignement supérieur de se développer s’est faite à un coût financier substantiel, qui est au détriment de la qualité de l’éducation, mais aussi de l’enseignement supérieur et des organismes examinateurs locaux. Le secteur est maintenant gangréné par la corruption puisque les politiciens contournent les règlements et la qualité pour le gain financier. De plus, la forme et la direction que prend l’internationalisation sont fortement imprégnées d’un parti pris pour l’Occident qui est plus couteux, ne favorise pas le développement du savoir local et donne aussi l’image que les diplômes universitaires occidentaux ont plus de valeur. En outre, l’île Maurice ne s’associe pas suffisamment avec les  établissements d’enseignement supérieur africains, à l’exception de quelques universités sud-africaines