Confronting uncertainty: Anthropology and zones of the extraordinary

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below, copyright @ 2013 the American Anthropological Association.Anthropological theory has privileged consideration of the regularities of everyday life and has paid far less attention to irregular events that disrupt the social order. In this article, I contribute to ongoing theoretical attempts to redress this imbalance. While I acknowledge the potential historical importance of irregular and extraordinary events, I do not see them as entirely free-floating. Here I concur with Marshall Sahlins, who convincingly shows how people order unusual events through mythopraxis and also how social structures facilitate individual agency. I contemplate a third possible relation between structure and event, namely, “framing.” Drawing on my fieldwork in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, I show how people located and framed unfortunate and destructive events in zones that stood apart from everyday life. This process provides insight into witchcraft and homicide, topics that can no longer be understood only in terms of systemic agency

In vivo Radiodetoxification of Salmonella minnesota Lipopolysaccharides with radio-labeled Leucine Enkephalin cures sensory polyneuropathy: A Case report.

Background: Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) which are part of the outer cell wall of Gram negative bacteria can cause generalized inflammation, sepsis and septic shock with multiorgan failure. Other short and long term nuerological sequelae of LPS include polyneuropathy, encephalopathy and parkinsonism. The neurotransmitter and delta-opioid receptor agonist leucine enkephalin (Leu-enk) which has neuro- and cytoprotective action has been shown to stimulate dopaminergic neurons and reduce anti-LPSantibody production of LPS-stimulated B-cells among other actions. This makes Leu-enk a potential agent for the treatment of LPS induced polyneuropathy and parkinsonism. This is the first case report of in vivo radiodetoxification of Salmonella minnesota lipopolysaccharides (LPS) in a patient with lipopolysaccharide-induced polyneuropathy, encephalopathy and parkinsonism 14 yrs after LPSinduced sepsis by a lab accident in 1995.Methods: The case records and experience of the patient and a Review of relevant literature was utilised.Results: The long-term neurological sequelae of sepsis was treated with 1 micromol doses once to two times a week of radio-labeled leucine enkephalin in a 37 years old female patient, with a 14 year history of lipopolysaccharideinduced polyneuropathy, encephalopathy and parkinsonism after LPS-induced sepsis by a lab accident in 1995. Electroneurography studies were performed before and after the treatment as well as positron emission tomographies of the cerebral cortex and of the striatum. Lipopolysaccharides were also measured via Limulus Lysate Assay of the cerebrospinal fluid and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis of the blood. The patient experienced remarkable improvement in both sensory and parkinsonian symptoms with the restoration of sustained sensory action potentials in the sensory nerves as shown by electroneurography studies indicative of cure of sensory polyneuropathy.Conclusion: Radio labelled leucine enkephalin (leu-enk), is effective in treating the acute and chronic polynueropathy and parkinsonsian features of gram negative sepsis as shown in this fisrt case report of its use. Lue-enk effects results from various mechanisms which lead to reduced nueroinflammtion and improved cerebral blood and lymphatic flow in  addition to other moloeular actions.Keywords: Radio-labeled Leucine Enkephalin; Lipopolysaccharides; Polyneuropathy;Parkinsonism

Marriage, Kinship and Childcare in the Aftermath AIDS: Rethinking Orphanhood in the South African Lowveld

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Anthropology Southern Africa on 2112/2016, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23323256.2016.1243449In this article I consider the significance of marriage from the vantage point of children’s affiliation to domestic units during the era of South Africa’s AIDS pandemic. Drawing on multi-temporal fieldwork in Impalahoek, a village in the Bushbuckridge municipality of the South African Lowveld, I suggest that AIDS-related diseases and deaths have led to the further erosion of marriage, and to the greater absence of fathers in the lives of children. However, these changes have not precipitated a crisis in childcare. A survey of 22 households shows that orphaned children are generally cared for by related adults, such as matrikin and older female siblings. These arrangements are a product of a long history of improvisations, necessitated by experiences of oscillating labour migration. Moreover, they are facilitated by a diffusion of parental obligations, which is a central tenet of Northern Sotho and Shangaan models of kinship. I argue that in an economy of high unemployment and dependence upon state instituted social security systems, marriage does not appear to be decisive to children’s welfare

Islamic Schools in South Africa

Over the last twenty years independent Islamic schools have emerged in many countries where Muslims are a minority, among them South Africa. Although these schools differ in religious and pedagogical orientation, they all aim to offer an excellent education and a space where the Islamic identity of Muslim children can develop. While the curricula of some of these schools hardly differ from those of public schools, other schools are Islamizing their teaching materials and methods

Savages Have No Crime!

Copyright © The Author(s). During 1931, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown gave a popular talk at Columbia University in New York. He maintained that, unlike in the West, savage societies – a term commonly used at the time – had no criminal class and had succeeded in enforcing conformity to social norms. In this article, I suggest that, despite its defects, the talk highlights central themes in Radcliffe-Brown’s thinking about conformity, social sanctions and the law. Drawing on archival sources and on published material, I show how during fieldwork he observed the brutalities of colonial rule in the Andaman Islands, Western Australia and South Africa. I suggest that a critical awareness of how colonial law served as an ally of conquest forms an important sub-text in Radcliffe-Brown’s writing on the effective manner in which Andaman Islanders maintained social order, Indigenous Australians settled disputes and African courts operated. His comparative, sociological approach, which was implicitly critical of Western societies, was a vital influence in the emergence of law as a topic of anthropological enquiry

A new type of charged defect in amorphous chalcogenides

We report on density-functional-based tight-binding (DFTB) simulations of a series of amorphous arsenic sulfide models. In addition to the charged coordination defects previously proposed to exist in chalcogenide glasses, a novel defect pair, [As4]--[S3]+, consisting of a four-fold coordinated arsenic site in a seesaw configuration and a three-fold coordinated sulfur site in a planar trigonal configuration, was found in several models. The valence-alternation pairs S3+-S1- are converted into [As4]--[S3]+ pairs under HOMO-to-LUMO electronic excitation. This structural transformation is accompanied by a decrease in the size of the HOMO-LUMO band gap, which suggests that such transformations could contribute to photo-darkening in these materials.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Influence of copper on the electronic properties of amorphous chalcogenides

We have studied the influence of alloying copper with amorphous arsenic sulfide on the electronic properties of this material. In our computer-generated models, copper is found in two-fold near-linear and four-fold square-planar configurations, which apparently correspond to Cu(I) and Cu(II) oxidation states. The number of overcoordinated atoms, both arsenic and sulfur, grows with increasing concentration of copper. Overcoordinated sulfur is found in trigonal planar configuration, and overcoordinated (four-fold) arsenic is in tetrahedral configuration. Addition of copper suppresses the localization of lone-pair electrons on chalcogen atoms, and localized states at the top of the valence band are due to Cu 3d orbitals. Evidently, these additional Cu states, which are positioned at the same energies as the states due to ([As4]-)-([S_3]+) pairs, are responsible for masking photodarkening in Cu chalcogenides

Dynamical generalization of a solvable family of two-electron model atoms with general interparticle repulsion

Holas, Howard and March [Phys. Lett. A {\bf 310}, 451 (2003)] have obtained analytic solutions for ground-state properties of a whole family of two-electron spin-compensated harmonically confined model atoms whose different members are characterized by a specific interparticle potential energy u($r_{12}$). Here, we make a start on the dynamic generalization of the harmonic external potential, the motivation being the serious criticism levelled recently against the foundations of time-dependent density-functional theory (e.g. [J. Schirmer and A. Dreuw, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 75}, 022513 (2007)]). In this context, we derive a simplified expression for the time-dependent electron density for arbitrary interparticle interaction, which is fully determined by an one-dimensional non-interacting Hamiltonian. Moreover, a closed solution for the momentum space density in the Moshinsky model is obtained.Comment: 5 pages, submitted to J. Phys.

Neurological soft signs as an endophenotype in an African schizophrenia population – a pilot study

Objective: The use of endophenotypes, such as neurological soft signs (NSS), is advocated as one possible method to elucidate the heterogeneity of schizophrenia. Exploring the associations between NSS and specific illness symptoms has revealed some trends, although results have been conflicting. To date, such studies have been conducted largely on Caucasian populations and our pilot study represents the first attempt to gather such data in a homogenous African population. Method: Fifty-one patients, all of Xhosa ethnicity and participating in a larger schizophrenia genetic study were recruited. NSS were evaluated using a modified Neurological Evaluation Scale. Data were analysed using SPSS with the strength of the overall relationships between NES groups and SANS and SAPS components analyzed by means of canonical correlation analysis. Results: The canonical correlation of SANS domains (excluding asociality) with the NES conceptual groups was 0.53 (SE=0.11, p=0.024) and of the SAPS domains 0.38 (SE=0.13, p=0.943). Conclusion: Our results suggest a correlation between negative symptoms of schizophrenia and the presence of NSS, supporting the recruitment of a larger sample to more comprehensively evaluate a possible role for NSS as an endophenotype in the Xhosa schizophrenia population. Taking into account that NSS evaluations allow for inexpensive, relatively easy-to-do objective evaluations, this method presents us with a valuable research tool that can be used effectively within our under-resourced environment to help inform on the neurobiological substrate of schizophrenia.Keywords: Schizophrenia; Endophenotype; Neurological Soft Sign