Ambiguities after Asad

The announcement of Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad's death on Saturday, 10 June 2000, prompted panegyrics to his greatness and public displays of grief. Syrians Ð those who genuinely admired him and even those who feared him Ð may have experienced sadness at his passing. Death has a way of generating mournful feelings, or at least of inducing apprehension about the future. Yet the political rituals praising his rule, likening his brilliance to the sun's and stressing his role as a 'man of the people', were not new to Syrians. Asad's image was omnipresent for much of his rule (1970-2000), and the rhetoric of flattery was commonplace. In newspapers, on television and during orchestrated events, Asad was repeatedly lauded as the 'father' and the 'gallant knight'. If only by dint of its repetition, all were fluent in this symbolic language of the Syrian state, which had become a hallmark of Asad's rule

Brain connectivity using geodesics in HARDI

International audienceWe develop an algorithm for brain connectivity assessment using geodesics in HARDI (high angular resolution diffusion imaging). We propose to recast the problem of finding fibers bundles and connectivity maps to the calculation of shortest paths on a Riemannian manifold defined from fiber ODFs computed from HARDI measurements. Several experiments on real data show that out method is able to segment fibers bundles that are not easily recovered by other existing methods

Construction, Concentration, and (Dis)Continuities in Social Valuations

I review and integrate recent sociological research that makes progress on three interrelated questions pertaining to social valuation: (a) the degree of social construction relative to objective constraints; (b) the degree of concentration in social valuations at a single point in time; and (c) the conditions that govern two broad forms of temporal discontinuity—(i) fashion cycles, especially in cultural expression and in managerial practices, and (ii) bubble/crash dynamics, as witnessed in such domains as authoritarian regimes and financial markets. In the course of the review, I argue for the importance of identifying how objective conditions constrain social construction and suggest two contrarian mechanisms by which this is accomplished—valuation opportunism and valuation entrepreneurship—and the conditions under which they are more or less effective

Lead exposure in adult males in urban Transvaal Province, South Africa during the apartheid era

Human exposure to lead is a substantial public health hazard worldwide and is particularly problematic in the Republic of South Africa given the country’s late cessation of leaded petrol. Lead exposure is associated with a number of serious health issues and diseases including developmental and cognitive deficiency, hypertension and heart disease. Understanding the distribution of lifetime lead burden within a given population is critical for reducing exposure rates. Femoral bone from 101 deceased adult males living in urban Transvaal Province (now Gauteng Province), South Africa between 1960 and 1998 were analyzed for lead concentration by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Of the 72 black and 29 white individuals sampled, chronic lead exposure was apparent in nearly all individuals. White males showed significantly higher median bone lead concentration (ME = 10.04 µg·g−1), than black males (ME = 3.80 µg·g−1) despite higher socioeconomic status. Bone lead concentration covaries significantly, though weakly, with individual age. There was no significant temporal trend in bone lead concentration. These results indicate that long-term low to moderate lead exposure is the historical norm among South African males. Unexpectedly, this research indicates that white males in the sample population were more highly exposed to lead

Everyday peace and conflict:(un)privileged interactions in Kirkuk, Iraq

Taking as a starting point the conviction that everyday interactions carry the potential to be either conflictual or peaceful, this article examines people’s everyday behaviour in the deeply divided city of Kirkuk, Iraq. Using the historic bazaar in Kirkuk city as a site of analysis, and through a research survey of 511 people, it focuses on interactions between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. The article draws on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital and takes an intersectional approach to analyse the everyday interactions in the bazaar to create a better understanding of the role of space and privilege. The results demonstrate that for the most part, at the everyday level people carry out acts of everyday peace rather than conflict. However, when everyday conflict does occur, those with the highest symbolic capital are the most likely actors. Additionally, although gender does influence people’s actions, ethnosectarian identity has greater influence in many areas related to everyday peace and conflict. On a practical level, the article argues that such an understanding can connect better to policymaking and peacebuilding as it can point to where and how peacebuilders should focus their attention in order to promote and enhance peace within people’s everyday lives.</p