The Omani-Zanzibari Family

Through a multi-sited ethnological lens, this article highlights the influences of political and economic dynamics on the Omani-Zanzibari family construction. It explores the fluid nature of the Omani-Swahili identity, the role of the family institution in regulating morality and sexuality, and the impacts of political events and forces on the development of multiple family configurations. It further analyzes key societal concepts such as marriage, legitimacy, succession, post-forced-displacement adaptation, and evolutionary identity. Through a qualitative study, the author uses fieldwork in Oman and Zanzibar, a range of primary archival sources, dialogues with prominent Omani-Zanzibari personalities, and published and private personal memoirs reflecting key historical periods in the development of Omani-Zanzibari identities to speak to the themes of the Omani polity that are unique to the Gulf.

Directional biases for blink adaptation in voluntary and reflexive eye blinks

The oculomotor system is subject to noise, and adaptive processes compensate for consistent errors in gaze targeting. Recent evidence suggests that positional errors induced by eye blinks are also corrected by an adaptive process: When a fixation target is displaced during repeated blinks, subsequent blinks are accompanied by an automatic compensating eye movement anticipating the updated target location after the blink. Here, we further tested the extent of this “blink adaptation”. Participants were tasked to look at a white target dot on a black screen and encouraged to blink voluntarily, or air-puffs were used to elicit reflexive blinks. In separate runs, the target was displaced by 0.7° in either of the four cardinal directions during blinks. Participants adapted to positional changes during blinks, i.e., the post-blink gaze position was biased in the direction of the dot displacement. Adaptation occurred for both voluntary and reflexive blinks. However, adaptation was unequal across different adaptation directions: horizontally, temporal displacements experienced larger adaptation than nasal displacements; vertically, downward displacements were greater than upward displacements. Results paralleled anisotropies commonly found for saccade amplitudes, and thus it is likely that gaze corrections across eye blinks share general constraints of the oculomotor system with saccades.

Riverbank erosion displacees in Bangladesh: need for institutional response and policy intervention

Environmental refugees are one of the most burning issues at this time throughout the world. Bangladesh, a riverine country, is suffering from acquit riverbank erosion which compels millions of her population to be displaced from their place of origin. As such, 283 locations, 85 towns and growth centers, along with 2400 kilometers of riverbank line in Bangladesh are vulnerable to erosion. The major rivers e.g., the Padma, the Jamuna, and the Meghna, erode several thousand hectares of floodplain making thousands of people landless and homeless every year. Along with the floodplain, Bangladesh loses several kilometers of roads, railways, and flood-control embankments annually. No other disaster is as disastrous as riverbank erosion and ‘Internally Displaced Populations’ (IDP) face many unavoidable problems at different stages of displacement. Displacement marginalized them in respect of livelihood patterns and psycho-physical troubles. Such forty million homeless people in Bangladesh are compelled to lead a floating life. Riverbank erosion plays a major role in socio-environmental changes. The displaced people of riverbank erosion experience substantial socio-economic impoverishment and marginalization as a consequence of involuntary displacement from their original residence. Findings of a social survey carried out in 2008 on the erosion-hit displaced people in Chapai Nawabganj and Rajshahi districts are discussed in this paper. Newly settled people along with the native inhabitants have been interviewed to reveal the problems associated with making rearrangements for the displaced people. Besides these problems of displacement, adaptation strategies and relationships with the local people, their socioeconomic losses, sufferings, perception of natural disaster and psycho-physical problems, environmental ruins etc. have been revealed in this paper. There are no specific policies to rehabilitate the erosion-hit people. Thus, it is time to formulate policies to address prevention of riverbank erosion as well as to rehabilitate the river-erosion refugees.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bioethics.v2i2.9540 Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2011; 2(2): 4-19