Zhan Bashev, Diana Karcheva-Bahchevanska, Raina Ardasheva
et al.
<i>Mucuna pruriens</i> (L.) DC. (Fabaceae), commonly known as velvet bean, is an annual tropical legume widely distributed in India, Africa, and the Americas. It has a long history of use in traditional medicine for managing various health conditions. It is renowned for its anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, aphrodisiac, and anti-Parkinson effects. The entire plant is considered health-promoting, particularly the seeds. They have been used for their neuroprotective, fertility-enhancing, and antioxidant effects. This review aims to compile all available information regarding the chemical composition of all parts of this medicinal plant. For this purpose, the complete databases of Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science available to date were utilized. All studies reported the presence of a diverse range of secondary metabolites, including phenolic compounds, such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, and tannins, as well as saponins and alkaloids. Most studies concentrated on the chemical characterization of the seeds, whereas the leaves, roots, and pods have received comparatively limited scientific attention. The seeds of <i>M. pruriens</i> are renowned for their high concentration of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA), a metabolic precursor of dopamine. A large proportion of these studies originated from countries where <i>M. pruriens</i> naturally occurs. Few studies have been conducted on the chemical composition of velvet bean outside these regions. Despite the existing information on the chemical composition of <i>M. pruriens</i>. (seeds, leaves, and roots), further research beyond its natural habitat is required to gain a broader understanding of its chemical profile and pharmacological effects.
[Abridged] In the late nineteenth century, Mars emerged as one of the most intensively reported astronomical objects in the popular press, driven by favourable oppositions, improved telescopic capabilities and growing speculation regarding planetary habitability. I examine how Mars was interpreted in Australian newspapers between the 1870s and 1899, focusing on the ways in which astronomical knowledge was framed, contextualised and debated within a colonial media environment. Drawing on a large collection of digitised newspaper articles, I analyse how observational authority, instrumental credibility and individual expertise were harnessed in press reporting. The paper situates Australian Mars coverage within a global network of scientific communication dominated by metropolitan centres in Europe and North America, while highlighting the distinctive role played by southern-hemisphere visibility. Australian observatories and observers were frequently positioned as contributors of confirmatory observation rather than interpretive leadership, reinforcing a pattern of locally grounded but internationally oriented scientific engagement. The analysis traces a shift from early emphasis on disciplined observation and measurement to later periods characterised by contested interpretations, particularly surrounding the so-called Martian "canals" and the speculative claims advanced by personalities such as Percival Lowell in the USA. By examining how newspapers mediated between observational astronomy, engineering analogies and popular imagination, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how planetary science entered public discourse beyond metropolitan centres. In doing so, it underscores the active role of colonial newspapers in shaping scientific meaning and situates Australian Mars reporting within the wider history of nineteenth-century astronomical culture.
Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr (eds.), translated by Drew Burk. 2023. To Write the Africa World. Cambridge & Hoboken: Polity Press. 324 pp.
Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr (eds.), translated by Philip Gerard. 2023. The Politics of Time: Imagining African Becomings. Cambridge & Hoboken: Polity Press. 332 pp.
History of Africa, African languages and literature
The major powers are becoming more interested in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) due to its strategic location. They believe that increasing their presence in the area helps to achieve a number of national goals, particularly enhancing their influence in the Asia-Pacific region as a whole as well as in the countries of mainland Southeast Asia. The article examines the US and China’s approaches to the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) in light of their rivalry. This analysis additionally demonstrates that every power has a unique way for creating integration mechanisms in order to draw the GMS nations under its influence. The paper also focuses on the evaluation of Russia's capabilities. The author points out that given China's and the United States' long-standing presence in the area, Russia, which has a number of interests there, must take the proper measures to establish its place and role in the region.
South Asia. Southeast Asia. East Asia, Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
Faraan O Rahim, Francis M Sakita, Lauren A Coaxum
et al.
<h4>Background</h4>Chronic myocardial injury is a condition defined by stably elevated cardiac biomarkers without acute myocardial ischemia. Although studies from high-income countries have reported that chronic myocardial injury predicts adverse prognosis, there are no published data about the condition in sub-Saharan Africa.<h4>Methods</h4>Between November 2020 and January 2023, adult patients with chest pain or shortness of breath were recruited from an emergency department in Moshi, Tanzania. Medical history and point-of-care troponin T (cTnT) assays were obtained from participants; those whose initial and three-hour repeat cTnT values were abnormally elevated but within 11% of each other were defined as having chronic myocardial injury. Mortality was assessed thirty days following enrollment.<h4>Results</h4>Of 568 enrolled participants, 81 (14.3%) had chronic myocardial injury, 73 (12.9%) had acute myocardial injury, and 412 (72.5%) had undetectable cTnT values. Of participants with chronic myocardial injury, the mean (± sd) age was 61.5 (± 17.2) years, and the most common comorbidities were CKD (n = 65, 80%) and hypertension (n = 60, 74%). After adjusting for CKD, thirty-day mortality rates (38% vs. 36%, aOR 1.03, 95% CI: 0.52-2.03, p = 0.931) were similar between participants with chronic myocardial injury and those with acute myocardial injury, but significantly greater (38% vs. 13.6%, aOR 3.63, 95% CI: 1.98-6.65, p<0.001) among participants with chronic myocardial injury than those with undetectable cTnT values.<h4>Conclusion</h4>In Tanzania, chronic myocardial injury is a poor prognostic indicator associated with high risk of short-term mortality. Clinicians practicing in this region should triage patients with stably elevated cTn levels in light of their increased risk.
Hagit Attiya, Michael A. Bender, Martin Farach-Colton
et al.
A data structure is called history independent if its internal memory representation does not reveal the history of operations applied to it, only its current state. In this paper we study history independence for concurrent data structures, and establish foundational possibility and impossibility results. We show that a large class of concurrent objects cannot be implemented from smaller base objects in a manner that is both wait-free and history independent; but if we settle for either lock-freedom instead of wait-freedom or for a weak notion of history independence, then at least one object in the class, multi-valued single-reader single-writer registers, can be implemented from smaller base objects, binary registers. On the other hand, using large base objects, we give a strong possibility result in the form of a universal construction: an object with $s$ possible states can be implemented in a wait-free, history-independent manner from compare-and-swap base objects that each have $O(s + 2^n)$ possible memory states, where $n$ is the number of processes in the system.
This study reevaluates the traditional understanding of the "political resource curse" by examining the unique impact of energy transition metals, specifically cobalt, on local-level conflicts in Africa. Contrary to previous studies that primarily focus on high-value minerals and their political outcomes resulted from substantial economic revenues, this study investigates cobalt's influence on local conflict. Despite its strategic importance, cobalt's limited commercial value presents a unique yet critical case for analysis. Different with the prevailing view that links mineral reserves with increased conflict, this research finds that regions rich in cobalt experience a reduction in conflict. This decrease is attributed to enhanced government security measures, which are implemented independently of the economic benefits derived from cobalt as a commodity. The study utilizes a combination of georeferenced data and a difference-in-difference design to analyze the causal relationship between cobalt deposits and regional conflict. The findings suggest that the presence of cobalt deposits leads to enhanced security interventions by governments, effectively reducing the likelihood of non-governmental actors taking control of these territories. This pattern offers a new perspective on the role of energy transition metals in shaping conflict and governance, highlighting the need to reassess theoretical frameworks related to the political implications of natural resources with the ongoing energy revolution.
This article analyzes the tribal aspirations of Sippis, traditionally a wool shearing caste closely associated with Gaddis. Sippis have different administrative classifications across three districts in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu. In most contexts, they self identify as part of the Gaddi tribe. In this regard, they are not alone; four other caste groups, partially integrated into Gaddi life, make similar claims of tribal belonging. They argue that Gaddis are a caste heterogeneous tribal community with entrenched forms of casteism and ritual exclusion. Some identify with the neologism “Scheduled Tribe Dalit” to reflect their intersectionality as both marginalized Dalits and tribal people. Sippis, however, demand tribal inclusion along different ideological lines, often de-emphasizing tribal casteism, and emphasizing status equivalence with Gaddi Rajputs and Brahmins. Sippis generally reject their subordination as landless peasants and unfree clients under patronage exploitation, a narrative central to many other self identifying Gaddi Dalits. In doing so, Sippis separate themselves from other Gaddi identifying caste groups as they appeal for Scheduled Tribe status in Kangra. Based on 22 months of fieldwork, I analyze the ideologies of Sippi exceptionalism in the domains of pilgrimage, ritual practice, vocational lifestyle, and belief. The widespread recognition of Sippis as the highest status group among Scheduled Caste Gaddis, both in terms of self stylization and tribal social acceptance, accounts for villages where lower status groups have legally changed their caste certificates to become Sippi. Attention to how reservation shapes spirituality has broader implications for the anthropology of affirmative action across South Asia.
In countries like South Africa, sports have the power to transcend invisible lanes of politics and race and thus inspire citizens to come together. Sport, including athletics, has been demonstrated as an instrument of solidarity of fragmented cultures. However, while sport is of such significance, it is still minimally represented in public archival holdings in South Africa. Despite the mandate to transform the archival system, evidence suggests that much of the memories of sports heroes, especially that of athletes, have not been recorded. This qualitative study utilised oral history as a research method to explore the feasibility of building inclusive archives through the collection of sports memories. Athlete participants were identified through snowball sampling and data were collected using both oral testimony interviews from athletes with first-hand information and oral tradition augmented through document analysis. The results of the study indicated that there are stories and memories of many great South African distance runners that must be told and included in the archive repositories. Sadly, these stories have not been recorded in written words, as there is a tendency to perpetuate elitism by documenting mostly oral history of prominent members of society with political power. The study revealed that most of athletes’ memories from their running careers include certificates, trophies, medals, Springbok jerseys, newspaper clippings and pictures in their possession. It is concluded that until these sports archives and objects are considered as an important and unique element of South African history, they will forever be lost.
Contribution: This study makes a contribution to the ongoing discourse of building inclusive archives in South Africa through the collection of athletics memories. The study is linked to the scope of the journal through propagating the inclusion of marginalised voices of athletics sports memories in mainstream archives.
Marco Fedele, Roberto Piersanti, Francesco Regazzoni
et al.
While ventricular electromechanics is extensively studied, four-chamber heart models have only been addressed recently; most of these works however neglect atrial contraction. Indeed, as atria are characterized by a complex physiology influenced by the ventricular function, developing computational models able to capture the physiological atrial function and atrioventricular interaction is very challenging. In this paper, we propose a biophysically detailed electromechanical model of the whole human heart that considers both atrial and ventricular contraction. Our model includes: i) an anatomically accurate whole-heart geometry; ii) a comprehensive myocardial fiber architecture; iii) a biophysically detailed microscale model for the active force generation; iv) a 0D closed-loop model of the circulatory system; v) the fundamental interactions among the different core models; vi) specific constitutive laws and model parameters for each cardiac region. Concerning the numerical discretization, we propose an efficient segregated-intergrid-staggered scheme and we employ recently developed stabilization techniques that are crucial to obtain a stable formulation in a four-chamber scenario. We are able to reproduce the healthy cardiac function for all the heart chambers, in terms of pressure-volume loops, time evolution of pressures, volumes and fluxes, and three-dimensional cardiac deformation, with unprecedented matching (to the best of our knowledge) with the expected physiology. We also show the importance of considering atrial contraction, fibers-stretch-rate feedback and suitable stabilization techniques, by comparing the results obtained with and without these features in the model. The proposed model represents the state-of-the-art electromechanical model of the iHEART ERC project and is a fundamental step toward the building of physics-based digital twins of the human heart.
This paper examined the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using the historical approach and analysing the policy responses of the region to past crises and their economic consequences. The study employed the manufacturing-value-added share of GDP as a performance indicator. The analysis shows that the wrong policy interventions to past crises led the sub-Saharan African sub-region into its deplorable economic situation. The study observed that the region leapfrogged prematurely to import substitution, export promotion, and global value chains. Based on these experiences, the region should adopt a gradual approach in responding to the COVID-19 economic consequences. The sub-region should first address relevant areas of sustainability, including proactive investment in research and development to develop homegrown technology, upgrade essential infrastructural facilities, develop security infrastructure, and strengthen the financial sector.
Sandy Ritchie, You-Chi Cheng, Mingqing Chen
et al.
Almost none of the 2,000+ languages spoken in Africa have widely available automatic speech recognition systems, and the required data is also only available for a few languages. We have experimented with two techniques which may provide pathways to large vocabulary speech recognition for African languages: multilingual modeling and self-supervised learning. We gathered available open source data and collected data for 15 languages, and trained experimental models using these techniques. Our results show that pooling the small amounts of data available in multilingual end-to-end models, and pre-training on unsupervised data can help improve speech recognition quality for many African languages.
This article looks at the play, Dipina tsa Monyanyako, which was made with a group of domestic workers in South Africa. The article explores how song is used as a strategy to locate ways of creating and making in South Africa. Song therefore registers a historical way of imagining and how marginalised groups; women have written themselves into history.
The production is a creative conversation where song is used to express care and anger in everyday life. Current approaches to knowledge production are inadequate in capturing song, poetics, and interpreting the forms of performances black women engage. The article makes a case for song as a form of black feminist theatre-making aesthetic. Using Dipina tsa Monyanyako, I argue that songs, silence, sighs have important methodological implications for arts-based processes and research.
In post-apartheid South Africa, performances are characterized by constant aesthetic reinvention. From precolonial expressions of life to protest theatre, performance aesthetics have been a way of revealing everyday life and struggles. For black women, theatre becomes the meeting place of the expression of their lives and a space of reflection and analysis of those lives, even though, historically, the presence of black women in theatre has been minimal. The creation of Dipina tsa Monyanyako allowed for the emergence of women as empowered subjects, and song became a portal for collective transformation.
This entry discusses various naturally occurring water resources in northeastern Africa: the Nile, the oases of Egypt's Western Desert, surface and subsurface water in Egypt's Eastern Desert, and irregular rainwater capture in Libya.
Santanu Saha, Simone Di Cataldo, Maximilian Amsler
et al.
In this work we probe the possibility of high-temperature conventional superconductivity in the boron-carbon system, using ab-initio screening. A database of 320 metastable structures with fixed composition (50$\%$/50$\%$) is generated with the Minima-Hopping method, and characterized with electronic and vibrational descriptors. Full electron-phonon calculations on sixteen representative structures allow to identify general trends in $T_{\textrm{c}}$ across and within the four families in the energy landscape, and to construct an approximate $T_{\textrm{c}}$ predictor, based on transparently interpretable and easily computable electronic and vibrational descriptors. Based on these, we estimate that around 10$\%$ of all metallic structures should exhibit $T_{\textrm{c}}$'s above 30 $K$. This work is a first step towards ab-initio design of new high-$T_{\textrm{c}}$ superconductors.
Clustering is frequently used in the energy domain to identify dominant electricity consumption patterns of households, which can be used to construct customer archetypes for long term energy planning. Selecting a useful set of clusters however requires extensive experimentation and domain knowledge. While internal clustering validation measures are well established in the electricity domain, they are limited for selecting useful clusters. Based on an application case study in South Africa, we present an approach for formalising implicit expert knowledge as external evaluation measures to create customer archetypes that capture variability in residential electricity consumption behaviour. By combining internal and external validation measures in a structured manner, we were able to evaluate clustering structures based on the utility they present for our application. We validate the selected clusters in a use case where we successfully reconstruct customer archetypes previously developed by experts. Our approach shows promise for transparent and repeatable cluster ranking and selection by data scientists, even if they have limited domain knowledge.
Kimberley Miner, Laura Meyerson, . Climate Change Institute
et al.
Mediterranean ecosystems such as those found in California, Central Chile, Southern Europe, and Southwest Australia host numerous, diverse, fire-adapted micro-ecosystems. These micro-ecosystems are as diverse as mountainous conifer to desert-like chaparral communities. Over the last few centuries, human intervention, invasive species, and climate warming have drastically affected the composition and health of Mediterranean ecosystems on almost every continent. Increased fuel load from fire suppression policies and the continued range expansion of non-native insects and plants, some driven by long-term drought, produced the deadliest wildfire season on record in 2018. As a consequence of these fires, a large number of structures are destroyed, releasing household chemicals into the environment as uncontrolled toxins. The mobilization of these materials can lead to health risks and disruption in both human and natural systems. This article identifies drivers that led to a structural weakening of the mosaic of fire-adapted ecosystems in California, and subsequently increased the risk of destructive and explosive wildfires throughout the state. Under a new climate regime, managing the impacts on systems moving out-of-phase with natural processes may protect lives and ensure the stability of ecosystem services.
The 4th century CE was definitive for Early Christianity as there emerged an imperial orthodoxy establishment. This was the inception of an era of a Christian polity characterised by symbiotic ties between the imperial establishment and a developing charismatic political Christianity. The established narrative is one overshadowed by the Byzantine influence even in Africa through Alexandria and Carthage. There were, however, dynamics that conceived an African Christian polity, by extension Ethiopian Christianity posed relevance as a complexly diverse Christian political entity. The investigation reviewed 4th-century CE Christianity with regard to the influence of an African Christian polity and, additionally, how it was implied upon relations with the imperial orthodox establishment. Ethiopia became the case in consideration. This was established through descriptive research using document analysis to formulate literature reviews. The development of a Christian political matrix was a dominant feature of Early Christianity, especially after the emergence of a mutual enterprise under imperial orthodoxy. The formative manner of the political characteristic of ecclesiastical leadership was composite to the council resolutions and expansion policy. Inadvertently, the thin line between imperial geopolitical policy and custody of Christendom diminished. Ethiopia intrinsically saw the development of its own Christian political entity, one that curtailed the challenges of ethnic enculturation and schism between charisma and hierarchy. Perceivably, the complexity of the religious political matrix of Ethiopia as derived from its interaction with Byzantine Rome, Alexandria and the Arabian Peninsula was the source for its prolonged existence, thereby establishing basis for further investigation.