The Sabah Oral Literature Project

George N. Appell, M.B.A., A.M. (Harvard), Ph.D. (Australian National University) is a social anthropologist. He has done fieldwork, assisted by his wife Laura W.R. Appell, among the Dogrib Indians of the Northwest Territories of Canada, the Rungus of Sabah, Malaysia, and the Bulusu’ of Indonesian Borneo. They began working with the Rungus in 1959 to record their social organization, language, religion and cultural ecology. They continue to work with the Rungus and are compiling ‘The Rungus Cultural Dictionary’ as well as managing the Sabah Oral Literature Project. This project continues to collect the oral literature of the Rungus and other peoples of the Kudat Peninsula. Dr Appell is cofounder and president of the Borneo Research Council, founder and president of the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, founder of the Anthropologists’ Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research, and is Senior Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University. He is currently finishing a monograph on culture-free methods to determine rights over resource tenure and other property interests that are faithful to the local distinctions. Other information on the publications of the Appells can be found at: www.gnappell.orgGeorge and Laura Appell were prevented by the Sabah government from continuing their research among the Rungus, which had begun in 1959-1963. But in 1986 they were permitted to return to the Rungus and visit their friends. By then little of the traditional Rungus social organization and culture remained unchanged, except for their oral literature. Consequently, George and Laura Appell formed the Sabah Oral Literature Project to collect the various genre from the Rungus and related ethnic groups. The project was so constructed as to be run by the Rungus for the Rungus, with the Appells providing equipment, direction and training. It was hoped that this project would form a model for ethnic groups in other areas of Sabah and in other regions of the world to begin collecting their own oral literature. This article covers the various genre of Rungus oral literature from the extensive religious poems performed by priestesses to cure illness and promote fertility, to the prayers for the rice spirits, to historical narratives, songs, and word play. It discusses the selection of personnel to collect texts, their training, the equipment used, the payment of performers, the transcription of texts, the archiving of the recordings and problems in translating the texts. Translation and exegesis requires a detailed knowledge of the culture, which may necessitate study and analysis by scholars outside the society.World Oral Literature Project and the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research

Self-Diffusion and Collective Diffusion of Charged colloids Studied by Dynamic Light Scattering

A microemulsion of decane droplets stabilized by a non-ionic surfactant film is progressively charged by substitution of a non-ionic surfactant molecule by a cationic surfactant. We check that the microemulsion droplets remain identical within the explored range of volume fraction (0.02 to 0.18) and of the number of charge per droplets (0 to 40) . We probe the dynamics of these microemulsions by dynamic light scattering. Despite the similar structure of the uncharged and charged microemulsions the dynamics are very different . In the neutral microemulsion the fluctuations of polarization relax, as is well known, via the collective diffusion of the droplets. In the charged microemulsions, two modes of relaxation are observed. The fast one is ascribed classically to the collective diffusion of the charged droplets coupled to the diffusion of the counterions. The slow one has, to our knowledge, not been observed previously neither in similar microemulsions nor in charged spherical colloids. We show that the slow mode is also diffusive and suggest that its possible origine is the relaxation of local charge fluctuations via local exchange of droplets bearing different number of charges . The diffusion coefficient associated with this mode is then the self diffusion coefficient of the droplets

Analysis by the Two-Fluids Model of the Dynamical Behavior of a Viscoelastic Fluid Probed by Dynamic Light Scattering

The dynamic properties of a model transient network have been studied by dynamic light scattering. The network is formed by microemulsion droplets linked by telechelic polymers (modified hydrophilic polymers with two grafted hydrophobic stickers). We compare the properties of two networks that are similar but for the residence time of the hydrophobic stickers in the droplets. The results are interpreted according to the so-called two-fluids model, which was initially developed for semidilute polymer solutions and which we extend here to any Maxwellian viscoelastic medium characterized by its elastic modulus and terminal time as measured by rheology. This model is found to describe consistently and quantitatively the experimental observations.Comment: novembre 200

Swollen Micelles Plus Hydrophobically Modified Hydrosoluble Polymers in Aqueous Solutions: Decoration Versus Bridging. a Small Angle Neutron Scattering Study

In this paper we examine the effective interactions introduced between the droplets of an oil in water microemulsion upon progressive addition of hydrophobically modified water soluble poly(ethylene oxide)-PEO using essentially small angle neutron scattering. To discuss the relative importance of decoration and bridging of the droplets we compare analogous samples with addition of a PEO grafted at both extremities with hydrophobic C12H 25 chains (PEO-2m) or addition of a PEO grafted at one extremity only with a C12H 25 chain (PEO-m). PEO-m or PEO-2m adsorb onto the droplets via their hydrophobic extremities and the droplets are found to retain their form and size upon addition of up to 40 hydrophobic C12H 25 chains per droplet. When the volume fraction of droplets is less than about 10%, the effective interactions introduced by PEO-m or PEO-2m are found to be very different: PEO-m introduces a repulsive interaction while PEO-2m introduces an effective attractive interaction. This attractive interaction leads to an associative phase separation in the range of low volume fraction when a sufficient amount of PEO-2m is added