THE USE OF CHILD'S AND WOMEN'S LABOR AS A SOURCE OF REPLENISHMENT OF LABOR IN THE MINING PLANTS OF THE URALS AT AN EARLY STAGE OF THE GENESIS OF CAPITALISM

The article deals with the issue of the use of children and women there, their number in metallurgical plants, mines and gold mines of the Urals at an early stage of the emergence of capitalism. The methods of both economic and non-economic coercion of young children and women are investigated. The study examines working conditions, working hours, wages, food, housing conditions, and the state of medical care.

Vague data analysis using neutrosophic Jarque–Bera test

In decision-making problems, the researchers’ application of parametric tests is the first choice due to their wide applicability, reliability, and validity. The common parametric tests require the validation of the normality assumption even for large sample sizes in some cases. Jarque-Bera test is among one of the methods available in the literature used to serve the purpose. One of the Jarque-Bera test restrictions is the computational limitations available only for the data in exact form. The operational procedure of the test is helpless for the interval-valued data. The interval-valued data generally occurs in situations under fuzzy logic or indeterminate state of the outcome variable and is often called neutrosophic form. The present research modifies the existing statistic of the Jarque-Bera test for the interval-valued data. The modified design and operational procedure of the newly proposed Jarque-Bera test will be useful to assess the normality of a data set under the neutrosophic environment. The proposed neutrosophic Jarque-Bera test is applied and compared with its existing form with the help of a numerical example of real gold mines data generated under the fuzzy environment. The study’s findings suggested that the proposed test is effective, informative, and suitable to be applied in indeterminacy compared to the existing Jarque–Bera test.

Designing of engineering solutions to enhance efficiency of high-copper gold-bearing ore processing

The modern metals industry is characterised by a downward trend in the quality of ores involved in processing, and conventional methods of extracting useful components are inefficient for raw materials with complex composition. To maintain the growing level of metal production it is required to introduce new efficient technologies for processing of low-grade and refractory ores as well as man-made deposits. The article describes processing methods of refractory raw materials with high cyanide content using copper-gold ores as an example, where gold is the primary commodity, and copper is the accompanying useful component. The most common method of processing copper-gold ores is preconcentration followed by selective leaching of copper and gold. In some cases, technologies involving copper by-products and cyanide recovery from the cyanide leaching solutions offer equally effective options for processing of the copper-gold ores and concentrates. Copper-gold ores are processed at gold mines using the cyanide procedures, supplemented if required by gravity and flotation concentration. In all variations of the cyanide treatment, most of copper minerals actively react with cyanides of alkali metals, binding the CN– ions into the copper complex of [Cu(CN3)]2–. This reaction results in an increased solvent consumption, as well as in number of challenges related to cleaning tailings and slurries from highly toxic cyanide compounds and dissolved copper. In addition to technological complications associated with the need to meet strict requirements for the maximum permissible concentrations, copper accumulated in the cycling solutions also causes a decrease in gold extraction from the processed ores.

Estimating the mortality burden of large scale mining projects—Evidence from a prospective mortality surveillance study in Tanzania

We set up a mortality surveillance system around two of the largest gold mines in Tanzania between February 2019 and February 2020 to estimate the mortality impact of gold mines. Death circumstances were collected using a standardized verbal autopsy tool, and causes of death were assigned using the InSilicoVA algorithm. We compared cause-specific mortality fractions in mining communities with other subnational data as well as national estimates. Within mining communities, we estimated mortality risks of mining workers relative to other not working at mines. At the population level, mining communities had higher road-traffic injuries (RTI) (risk difference (RD): 3.1%, Confidence Interval (CI): 0.4%, 5.9%) and non-HIV infectious disease mortality (RD: 5.6%, CI: 0.8%, 10.3%), but lower burden of HIV mortality (RD: -5.9%, CI: -10.2%, -1.6%). Relative to non-miners living in the same communities, mining workers had over twice the mortality risk (relative risk (RR): 2.09, CI: 1.57, 2.79), with particularly large increases for death due to RTIs (RR: 14.26, CI: 4.95, 41.10) and other injuries (RR:10.10, CI: 3.40, 30.02). Our results shows that gold mines continue to be associated with a large mortality burden despite major efforts to ensure the safety in mining communities. Given that most of the additional mortality risk appears to be related to injuries programs targeting these specific risks seem most desirable.

Making Sense of “Senseless Violence”: Thoughts on Agrarian Elites and Collective Violence during “Reconstruction” in South Africa and the American South

Key moments of the American Civil War and the 1899–1902 South African War and their tragic immediate aftermaths remain powerful features of national memory in both countries. Over the past century, vengeful politicians and ideologues in both have transformed them into formidable stock-in-trade. Second-, third-, and fourth-hand accounts of the alleged churlish manner of the victorious armies, especially soldiers of African descent, were made into combustible timber for reactionary political campaigns. The perceived cruel turns of fate have made their way into literature, stage, and screen. The two wars afforded people of various races and social conditions opportunity to act upon their conceptions of a just society, albeit amid terrible carnage and loss. They also underscored the permanence of the industrial transformation of both countries. In the decades following these two wars most of the black and white agrarian populations discovered that state and agrarian elites had cynically manipulated and then extinguished their aspirations. Most often, for black agrarians, violence was the preferred instrument to pursue desired outcomes. Reconstruction in the American South was a paradox. The Civil War emancipated the slaves but left the entire South, especially upland cotton regions, economically backward. In Louisiana, especially, politicized violence to coerce black labor was pervasive. After the South African War, white violence against rural black people was widespread. Lord Milner’s Reconstruction Administration was more concerned to bring South Africa’s gold mines back into production than to stem the violence. The low-intensity violence of the postwar countryside became the backland route to apartheid.

Labour power, materiality and protests in Ghana’s petroleum and gold mines

We examine the role of resource materiality in extractive labour protests in Ghana. Focusing on petroleum and gold mining, we centre contestations as part of the resources’ socio-natural constituents. Research data was obtained from social conflict databases, newspapers and field interviews. The analysis focused on themes and discourses on protest emergence, mobilisation, negotiation and impacts. Findings show how petroleum labour protesters use passivity and chokepoints to impede gas supply to households. Ghana petroleum workers attempt to garner structural power through workplace power, albeit unsuccessfully. Conversely, gold mineworkers protest by actively reappropriating machinery and extraction spaces. They centre protests in mining towns to emphasise their work as lifeblood. The ‘landedness’ of gold and the introduction of surface mining reshaped such protest tactics. Thus, materiality can help excavate the relational and comparative logic, tactics and potentialities of labour power in resource extracting countries. We suggest extractive labour to forge stronger cross-class coalitions to align workplace exploitation with broader issues of accumulation by dispossession.

A Fuzzy MADM Approach for Selecting the Best Cyanide Removal Method from a Gold Mine Wastewater

The cyanidation process is the most common method applied for the extraction of gold and silver in the hydrometallurgy industry, in which, sodium cyanide is used as a leaching agent. Therefore, the wastewater of gold mines contains a wide variety of cyanide ions needing to be removed before these wastewaters can be discharged to the receiving environments. In this study, a fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making approach (Fuzzy Delphi AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS) was used for selecting the best cyanide removal method from the wastewater of Muteh gold mine. According to the experts' opinion, three methods including calcium hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite were selected as alternatives. Then, by introducing the criteria influencing decision making, including cyanide removal ability, cost of process, amount of material consumed, time, pH, ease of performance and safety, and performing separated experiments, the criteria for each of three methods were determined. Finally, sodium hypochlorite was proposed as the best method for eliminating cyanide from wastewater. It was found that the rank of methods was as sodium hypochlorite (0.517) > calcium hypochlorite (0.474) > hydrogen peroxide (0.463).