Making strange: Race science and ethnopsychiatric discourse

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October 1984Discourse about Europe's Others, about "primitive races", about "Orientals", about Jews, Africans and so-called Negroes is omni present even in such momentous intellectual undertakings as psychoanalysis and Marxism. What one encounters are a series of significant tendencies all amounting to the verbal device through which something familiar is made to appear strange - 'making strange' as Volosinov would put it

Impact de la Réduction des Déchets Industriels sur le Développement Durable

peer reviewe

Removal of tetracycline by electrocoagulation: Kinetic and isotherm modeling through adsorption

International audienceThe use of antibiotics and growth hormones in human and veterinary medicine has a significant effect on the quality of surface and groundwater. The relevance of an electrocoagulation (EC) process for the removal of an antibiotic selected because of its wide application, high solubility in water, high residual toxicity and an absence of biodegradability, was examined in this study. Metal hydroxides generated during EC were used to remove tetracycline (TC) from aqueous solution. The knowledge regarding the removal mechanism of this substance has not been investigated up to now. Experiments were carried out in a batch electrochemical reactor using aluminum electrodes. The removal of TC was relatively fast and equilibrium was reached within 15 min. The effects of the main operating parameters were examined and showed that irrespective of the initial concentration and for pH ranging from 3 to 10, maximum removal efficiency remained close to 99%; while a sharp decrease was recorded at pH 2 (10% removal). The results of this study also showed that the removal of TC from water was strongly affected by the current intensity. The mechanism of electrocoagulation was modeled using isotherm models and showed that the Sips isotherm matched satisfactorily experimental data, suggesting monolayer coverage of adsorbed molecules and assumed a quasi-Gaussian distribution energy owing to the high correlation also found for the Toth model. In addition, adsorption kinetic studies showed that the EC process followed a pseudo-second-order kinetic model at the various current densities, pH and initial antibiotic concentrations considered

Making strange: Race science and ethnopsychiatric discourse

The inscription of racial difference – or what I refer to as the discursive practice of making strange - is to be found in many of the most revered texts of Western modernity. The irreducible recognition and constitution of otherness is evident in Hegel, Marx and indeed Freud, whose preoccupation with the primal horde, primitive man, the cannibalistic savage and the unruly child show the extent to which psychoanalysis, and thereby early psychology, has been a crucial link in the chain of colonial discourse. The discursive practice of making strange is evident in ethnopsychiatry – particularly in the colonial discourse on Africa and Africans – and it continues through the history of psychology where the inscription of blackness is perhaps best epitomized in notions of intellectual inferiority or – turning to the Southern African context – in the domain of “African psychological research”

Reading the South African transition

Maré, Gerhard (2014) Declassified: Moving beyond the dead end of race in South Africa. Auckland Park (Johannesburg): Jacana. ISBN 978-1-4314-2020-9 pbk. Pages 200. One of the most important temptations whilst reading an interesting and important text for the first time is imagining other ways in which the narrative could have been weaved together. Yet in a review, signals of outstanding themes and narrative brilliance such as those which I was happy to encounter in Gerhard Maré’s, Declassified: Moving beyond the dead end of race in South Africa, are always a welcome reward in the course of a review such as the present one. This is my second review of an important book after several decades. Consequently, I am mindful of the fact that I should not play at reimagining a version of a text conceived and written by someone else. Undoubtedly, given the range and complexity of Maré’s text, I would circumstances permitting, have preferred a second opportunity to study the text once more

THE VIOLENT REVERIE: THE UNCONSCIOUS IN LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

If we substitute Erikson's nomination of the notions of relativity and the unconscious as two insights which provided “disturbing extensions of human consciousness in our time” with tyranny and militant terrorism we introduce an immediate shift from the realm of ideas to that of raw everyday experience.1 Militant terrorism and institutionalised tyranny constitute some of the raw experience of man in contemporary societies

Enhancing visuospatial processing skills in children

Growing evidence highlights the importance of visual-spatial processing skills (VSPS) but teaching and training of these skills at early age in schools remain understudied. To this end, we have developed a computerized application called TangSolver that aim to move one step toward assessment and training of VSPS of school age children. First, we compared the effectiveness of an experimental computerized VSPS-enhancing approach, a conventional face-to-face training regime, and a non-training control group in improving performance in a tangram game among typical children. Second, we investigated how training-resistant possible visuospatial processing differences between children with and without ASD are. We studied the effect of computerized vs. face-to-face visuospatial training in a group of normally intelligent children with ASD and typically developing children as control. Findings show that (a) children with and without ASD do not differ much in visuospatial processing (as assessed by a tangram-like task) and the few differences we observed were all eliminated by training; (b) training can improve visuospatial processing (equally) in both children with ASD and normally developing children; and (c) computer-based and face-to-face training was equally effective.NWOUBL - phd migration 201

Étude comparative des stratégies de contrôle pour le Générateur Asynchrone à Double Alimentation dans les systèmes de conversion éolienne

Le mémoire porte sur une étude comparative des stratégies de commande pour le générateur à induction à double alimentation dans les systèmes de conversion d’énergie éolienne. L’objectif de ce mémoire est d’analyser et de comparer les performances des trois stratégies de commande, à savoir la commande PI classique, la commande PI fractionnaire et le mode glissant. Le chapitre 1 présente une introduction générale sur le sujet, tandis que le chapitre 2 se concentre sur la commande PI classique. Le chapitre 3, quant à lui, aborde la commande PI fractionnaire et le mode glissant, en plus de proposer une comparaison entre les trois stratégies de commande. La machine utilisée pour cette étude est le générateur à induction à double alimentation, qui est largement utilisé dans les systèmes de conversion d’énergie éolienne. En résumé, ce mémoire vise à évaluer les performances des différentes stratégies de commande pour cette machine spécifique, afin de contribuer à l’amélioration des systèmes de conversion d’énergie éolienne

Contribution to the Control of Doubly Fed Induction Machine DFIM

-IIAbstract Currently, doubly fed induction generators (DFIGs) are widely used for wind turbines. Compared to other variable-speed generators; the main advantage of the DFIG is that the power electronic devices must deal with only about a third of the generator power, compared to full power converters used in synchronous generators . This difference reduces the costs and losses in the power electronic components, rather than other solutions, such as fully converting systems; finally, the overall efficiency is improved. Furthermore, among all the induction generator configurations for generation systems the use of (DFIG) configuration with back to back pulse width modulated voltage source converters (VSC) is one of the best topologies available and it is suitable for both grid connected systems as well as standalone systems. Here only stand-alone application of DFIG is considered. In this thesis, mathematical modelling of doubly fed induction machine is presented. Two control approaches are proposed to improve the control of the rotor side converter which give the best solution to overcome the drawbacks of the recent control methods and provide a high performance stator- voltage magnitude and frequency regulation for all possible operation scenarios (voltage magnitude, load, and rotor speed variations). Various aspects of standalone DFIG generation system such as stator-voltage magnitude and frequency regulation, computational requirement minimization, sensors number reduction, from rotor side converter control is carried out. All proposed control methods have been verified in both simulation and 3 kW DFIG laboratory experimental bench