Homophobic Bullying in South African Schools

Homophobic bullying in schools is a global phenomenon. However, on the African continent, the phenomenon is rife because homosexuality is regarded to be un-African and is often linked to Western culture and colonial influence. These misconceptions about homosexuality have resulted in a culture of homophobia being inculcated into major structures of the society including schools. In this regard, this chapter aims to explore and describe the problem of homophobic bullying in South African schools. Particular attention is paid to cases of school-based homophobic bullying as primary sources of data as well as secondary sources of data from extant literature, textbooks, and journals articles. The chapter employs the Epstein Theory of Overlapping Spheres of Influence to proffer practical solutions and recommendations to address the problem of homophobic bullying in South African schools. These are school-, family-, and community-based solutions and recommendations based on the principles of social justice, inclusion, diversity, and equality.

An Electric Field–Based Approach for Quantifying Volumes and Radii of Chemically Affected Space

Chemical shape and size play a critical role in chemistry. The van der Waal (vdW) radii, a familiar manifold used to quantify size by assuming overlapping spheres, provides rapid estimates of size in atoms, molecules, and materials. However, the vdW method may be too rigid to describe highly polarized systems and chemical systems that stray from spherical atomistic environments. To deal with these exotic chemistries, numerous alternate methods based on electron density have been presented. While each boasts inherent generality, all define the size of a chemical system, in one way or another, by its electron density. Herein, we revisit the timeless problem of assessing sizes of atoms and molecules, instead through examination of the electric field produced by them. While conceptually different than nuclei-centered methods like that of van der Waal, the field assesses chemically affected volumes. This approac

Buffering by Transporters Can Spare Geometric Hindrance in Controlling Glutamate Escape

The surface of astrocyte processes that often surround excitatory synapses is packed with high-affinity glutamate transporters, largely preventing extrasynaptic glutamate escape. The shape and prevalence of perisynaptic astroglia vary among brain regions, in some cases providing a complete isolation of synaptic connections from the surrounding tissue. The perception has been that the geometry of perisynaptic environment is therefore essential to preventing extrasynaptic glutamate escape. To understand to what degree this notion holds, we modelled brain neuropil as a space filled with a scatter of randomly sized, overlapping spheres representing randomly shaped cellular elements and intercellular lumen. Simulating release and diffusion of glutamate molecules inside the interstitial gaps in this medium showed that high-affinity transporters would efficiently constrain extrasynaptic spread of glutamate even when diffusion passages are relatively open. We thus estimate that, in the hippocampal or cerebellar neuropil, the bulk of glutamate released by a synaptic vesicle is rapidly bound by transporters (or high-affinity target receptors) mainly in close proximity of the synaptic cleft, whether or not certain physiological or pathological events change local tissue geometry.

Lectio Praecursoria: Life and Abortion: The Post-Biopolitics of Reproductive Health in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

The lectio serves as an introduction to the thesis "Life and Abortion: The Post-Biopolitics of Reproductive Health in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia", an ethnographic study of the ways the insecurities and vulnerabilities of informal abortion are produced and maintained in a context where abortion is legal. Throughout the thesis I maintain that the answer to this question has to do with particular and gendered forms of governance rather than individual experiences of the general stigmatisation of abortion. To this effect, the thesis studies six relevant and overlapping spheres in Ulaanbaatar: the nation state and macropolitics; religion, medicine and kinship; care and motherhood; sexuality and knowledge; biomedicine; and the medication market. Keywords: reproductive health, abortion, gender, governance, Mongolia

Placing Contemporary Sovereign Debt

Since 2003, the battle between holdout creditors and the Argentine government in US courts has inspired a number of judicious studies on its legal underpinnings and repercussions. It has also prompted so-called ‘anti-vulture funds’ laws in countries like the UK, Belgium, and France. Despite these developments, the role of place in debt restructurings has remained relatively neglected. The paper analyses domestic laws protecting foreign debtors from minority holdout litigation and injunctive orders in federal courts that incite contractual changes as part of a fragmented landscape of local, and at times overlapping, spheres of sovereign debt governance, paradoxically embedded in a deeply integrated global financial system. A key finding of this analysis is that while contracts ground debt dynamics in specific jurisdictions (financial centres), they do not reduce uncertainty in the outcomes of sovereign debt restructurings. Moreover, financial centres have functioned not only as sites for private market-making, but also for public experimentation in international debt processes.

MODELING OF PACKING DENSITY OF THE SIMPLEST HEXAGONAL LATTICE. I

The article deals with the primitive and conventional unit cells of the cubic and densely packed hexagonal crystal lattices. The author analyzes the methods used for determining the spatial packing density and the distance between particles in a crystal. The spherical and cubic models of packing of equal-sized non-overlapping spheres are also considered. A comparative assess-ment of their effectiveness based on practical calculations is presented.

The Adolescent at the Center of Activity Systems in the Context of COVID-19: Redefining Routines and Relationships at the Heart of Learning

In March 2020, teenagers in Quebec, Canada suddenly faced with a challenge related to the way their learning activity was mediated following the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies reporting the effects of human disasters and confinement in young people are limited. This study identifies the tensions experienced by 1057 adolescents as they redefine their relationship to family life, learning and school: mediation tools to their learning activities, spatiotemporal redefinition of their activities, modification of relationships with significant adults for them. Two theoretical frameworks are combined: the overlapping spheres of influence model and cultural historical activity theory. A questionnaire was sent online on an opensource survey software. The results present the demographic characteristics of the adolescents’ participants and their family, their general state of mind and daily routines adjustments at school and at home, and their perceptions with regards to their relations to their peers, teachers and their parents’ support. Findings pinpoint the tensions related to loss in the activity systems of adolescents as their school activity is challenged by the pandemic and proposes avenues to put in place a boundary zone to support the adolescent.

Relationship between thermodynamic perturbation and scaled particle theories for fused dimers fluids

Various approaches are reviewed that use scaled particle theories to describe dumbbell fluids made of tangent or overlapped hard spheres. Expressions encountered in the literature are written in a form similar to that presented in the thermodynamic perturbation theory introduced by Wertheim for chains and developed in statistical associating fluid theory (SAFT). Analogies and differences observed in these two types of theoretical descriptions allow one to propose alternative theoretical expressions to describe dumbbell fluids with overlapping spheres.

Local elastic moduli of simple random composites computed at different length scales

Techniques like nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy can estimate the local elastic moduli in a region surrounding the probe used. For composites with phase regions much larger than the size of the probe, these procedures can identify the phases via their different elastic moduli but identifying phase regions that are on the same size scale as the indent is more problematic. This paper looks at three random 3D 8003 voxel composite models, each consisting of a matrix and spherical inclusions. One model has non-overlapping spheres and two models have overlapping spheres, with two and three distinct phases. The linear elastic problem is solved for each microstructure, and histograms are made of the local Young’s moduli over a number of sub-volumes (SVs), averaged over progressively larger SVs. The number and shape of histogram peaks change from N delta functions, where N is the number of elastically distinct phases, at the 1 voxel SV limit, to a single delta function located at the value of the effective global Young’s modulus, when the SV equals the unit cell volume. The phase volume fractions are also tracked for each bin in the Young’s modulus histograms, showing the phase make-up of bin in the histogram. There are clear differences seen between the non-overlapping and three-phase overlapping models and the two-phase overlapping sphere model, because of different size microstructural features, characterized by the average value of size as computed by the W(q) function. In the three-phase model, a peak that is originally all phase 3 persists at its same location, but as the size of the SVs increase, it is made up of a mixture of phases, so that it cannot be identified with a single phase even though it remains a clear peak. These results give some guidance as to what probe size might be useful in distinguishing different phases by local elastic moduli measurements, and how the length scales of the probe and the microstructure interact.