The Archives-Libraries Committee of the African Studies Association, in accordance with tradition, held its annual meeting in New York prior to the annual meeting of the Association, on November 1, 1967. This report reviews some of the most important points discussed at that meeting, and attempts to assess some of the achievements of the year 1967.

The Committee continues to enjoy a particularly happy relationship with the African Section of the Library of Congress. Dr. Julian W. Witherell, the present Head, was on tour in Africa in November, so that the Acting Head, Dr. Samir M. Zoghby, submitted a detailed report to the Committee in his place. Since the African Section of the Library of Congress was established as the result of representations made by the A.S.A., it seems appropriate to mention, and so to bring to the attention of the Board in this way, some of the most significant developments in the Section.

The program of compiling and publishing guides to official publications of African countries is being continued. Volumes dealing with French-speaking West Africa, and the overseas provinces of Portugal in Africa will be published very shortly. A similar volume for Ghana is in preparation, and plans are being formulated to provide guides to the official publications of the Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia, the former High Commission territories, and Spanish Africa. It is hoped in time to prepare a special volume dealing with United States official publications concerning Africa.

During the spring of 1962, the Africa Liaison Committee of the American Council on Education authorized me to secure information on the status of African studies and training in Germany. Toward this end, I visited on two occasions in the late summer and early fall of 1962 a number of German organizations, institutes, and universities. My work in Germany was facilitated by the cooperation of the German Foreign Office, which arranged for my itinerary while in the Bonn area, and by the encouragement of President Heinrich Luebke of the German Federal Republic. In this brief report, I list and describe the work of the most important agencies and organizations which were engaged in 1962 in research on Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, and in the training of Africans. Special consideration will be given to some of the developments and problems in the universities.

We use direct numerical simulations to examine the onset of stratified turbulence triggered by the zigzag instability recently identified in columnar Taylor–Green vortices (Guo et al. 2024, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 997, A34) and its role in layer formation within the flow. The study focuses on Froude numbers $0.125 \leqslant \textit{Fr} \leqslant 2.0$ and Reynolds numbers ${\textit{Re}}$ ranging from 800 to 3200. The breakdown of the freely evolving vortex array is driven by local density overturns, combining shear and convective mechanisms initiated by the primary zigzag instability. Our results show a linear relationship between the peak buoyancy Reynolds number ${{\textit{Re}}}_b^{\star }$, driven by the zigzag instability, and ${\textit{Re}}\, {\textit{Fr}}^2$. When the flow does not exhibit local shear or convective instability, the value of ${{\textit{Re}}}_b^{\star }$ falls below unity. Both density and momentum layers arise from the zigzag instability: horizontal velocity layers are strong and persistent, while density layers are weaker and more transient. The vertical scale of the mean shear layers increases with ${\textit{Fr}}$ for ${\textit{Fr}} \leqslant 1$, shows weak dependence on ${\textit{Re}}$, and agrees well with the length scale associated with the fastest-growing linear mode of the zigzag instability. Further analysis in the sorted buoyancy coordinate highlights the role of density overturns caused by the zigzag instability in forming buoyancy layers during the transition to turbulence.

This article takes up a philosophical examination of the Latter-day Saint theological conception of the eternal significance of sex. I first argue that the straightforward way of interpreting the theological claims about the eternal significance of sex appear to be incoherent. The main worry has to do with certain commitments Latter-day Saints take up with respect to the nature of disembodied spirits. Disembodied spirits don’t have bodies. As such they lack the characteristic features of embodied things. And sex is as bodily a feature as any we confront in the course of our lives. I will argue that these conceptual obstacles can be overcome by attending to distinctive aspects of the Latter-day Saint conception of divine creation. Doing so offers an interesting alternative way of conceptualizing the essences of premortal (disembodied) spirits. In particular, it motivates explicating their essences in terms of what Plantinga calls world-indexed properties. With the explication in hand, I show that not only are charges of incoherence avoided, but the new perspective gives a unified account of a variety of apparently disparate aspects of Latter-day Saint theology.

This editorial explores dual harm – the co-occurrence of self-harm and aggression – particularly among forensic populations. Historically approached as two separate and even opposing behaviours, emerging evidence shows that those who engage in self-harm and aggression experience greater adversity and poorer outcomes. This underscores the importance of enhancing our understanding of dual harm. We review key developments within the field, including how dual harm may be best conceptualised and managed, and identify critical gaps in the literature. In order to improve the care and outcomes of those who engage in self-harm and aggression, emphasis is placed on adopting more integrated approaches that consider the duality of these behaviours, as well as the complex needs of this high-risk group, within research and practice.

This article offers the first systematic analysis of the role that violence played in the management of apprentices, and the gendered dynamics of violence in English apprenticeship more broadly. It does so through an examination of 195 petitions that apprentices or their supporters submitted to the Middlesex and Westminster Sessions, which sought the cancellation of their indentures on grounds of ‘immoderate correction’. It offers a quantitative overview of the surviving petitions, examining the proportion that featured allegations of violence, the terms and level of detail in which violence was described, and its relationship to apprentices’ other stated grievances. It moves on to reconstruct the factors that could prompt masters and mistresses to mete out correction (as well as their commentaries on their perceived right to do so) and the tactics that petitioners used in crafting their complaints to legal authorities. Although female apprentices complained about violence at a disproportionate rate to their male peers, the material considered here suggests that their petitions did so in comparatively formulaic and restricted terms. The final section considers what implications this might have for our understandings of violence, gender and apprenticeship, and a genre of document – the petition – that provides access to these issues.

Poor iron status is one of the most prevalent problems facing infants worldwide, in both developing and developed countries(1). A complex interplay of both dietary and non-dietary factors affects iron intake, absorption, and requirements, and subsequently iron status(2). We aimed to describe iron status in an ethnically diverse cohort of urban-dwelling infants. Data were collected from 364 infants aged 7.0 to 10.0 months living in two main urban centres in New Zealand (Auckland and Dunedin) between July 2020 and February 2022. Participants were grouped by total ethnicity, with any participants who did not identify as either Māori or Pacific categorised into a single ‘others’ group. Haemoglobin, plasma ferritin, soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR), C-Reactive protein, and alpha-1-acid-glycoprotein were obtained from a non-fasting venous blood sample. Inflammation was adjusted for using the Biomarkers Reflecting Inflammation and Nutritional Determinants of Anaemia (BRINDA) method(3). Body iron concentration (mg/kg body weight) was calculated using the ratio of sTfR and ferritin. A total of 96.3% of Pacific infants were iron sufficient, defined as body iron ≥0 mg/kg body weight and haemoglobin (Hb) ≥105 g/L, compared to 82.3% of Māori and 76.0% of ‘other’ (i.e. neither Māori nor Pacific) infants. ‘Other’ infants had the highest prevalence of iron deficiency overall, with 2.8% categorised with iron-deficiency anaemia (IDA) (body iron <0 mg/kg, haemoglobin <105 g/L), 11.8% with early ‘functional’ iron deficiency (body iron <0 mg/kg, haemoglobin ≥105 g/L), and 9.4% with iron depletion (ferritin <15 µg/L, in the absence of early ‘functional’ iron deficiency and iron deficiency anaemia). For Māori infants, 3.2% and 6.5% had IDA and early ‘functional’ iron deficiency respectively, and 8.1% were iron depleted. One (3.7%) Pacific infant was iron depleted, and the remainder were iron sufficient. Plasma ferritin and body iron concentration were, on average, higher in Pacific compared to non-Pacific infants. These findings give an up-to-date and robust understanding of the iron status of infants by ethnicity, highlighting an unexpected finding that infants who are neither Māori nor Pacific may be at higher risk of poor iron status in NZ.

The significance of human milk in an infant’s diet is well-established, yet accurately measuring human milk intake remains challenging. Current methods are either unsuitable for large-scale studies, such as the dose-to-mother stable isotope technique, or rely on set amounts of human milk, regardless of known variability in individual intake(1). There is a paucity of data on how much infants consume, particularly in later infancy (>6 months) when complementary foods have been introduced. This research aimed to estimate human milk intakes and total infant milk intakes (including infant formula) in New Zealand infants aged 7-10 months, explore factors that predict these intakes, and develop and validate equations to predict human milk intake using simple measures. Human milk intake data were obtained using the dose-to-mother stable isotope technique in infants aged 7-10 months and their mothers as part of the First Foods New Zealand study (FFNZ)(2). Predictive equations were developed using questionnaire and anthropometric data (Model 1) and additional dietary data from diet recalls (Model 2)(3). The validity of existing methods to estimate human milk intake (NHANES and ALSPAC studies) was compared against the dose-to-mother results. FFNZ included 625 infants, with 157 mother-infant dyads providing complete data for determining human milk volume. Using the dose-to-mother data, the measured mean (SD) human milk intake was 785 (264) g/day. Older infants had lower human milk and total milk intakes, male infants consumed more total milk. The strongest predictors of human milk intake were infant age, infant body mass index, number of breastfeeds a day, infant formula consumption, and energy from complementary food intake. When the predictive equations were tested, mean (95% CI) differences in predicted versus measured human milk intake (mean, [SD]: 762 [257] mL/day) were 0.0 mL/day (-26, 26) for Model 1 and 0.5 mL/day (-21, 22) for Model 2. In contrast, the NHANES and ALSPAC methods underestimated intake by 197 mL/day (-233, -161) and 175 mL/day (-216, -134), respectively. The predictive equations are presented as the Human Milk Intake Level Calculations (HuMILC) tool, designed for use in large-scale studies to more accurately estimate human milk intakes of infants. The use of objective quantifiable assessment methods enhances our understanding of infant human milk intakes, improving our ability to accurately assess nutritional adequacy in infants.

Research demonstrates that English- and French-speaking Canadians differ in a wide range of attitudes, including their political preferences, their vision of the Canadian federation and their national identity. In this article, we ask whether individual bilingualism is associated with a decrease in the attitudinal differences between anglophones and francophones. Using survey data collected in the summer of 2023, we attempt to determine whether knowledge of the French language is related to an increase in the responsiveness of English-speaking citizens toward issues that typically preoccupy French-speaking Canadians. Our analyses suggest that knowledge of French as a second language is strongly linked to the political preferences of Canadian citizens but does not bridge the attitudinal gap between Canada’s two main language groups. These results highlight the relevance of considering the different languages that people speak—and not just their mother tongue—to understand their political attitudes.

Volcanic fissure eruptions typically start with the opening of a linear fissure that erupts along its entire length, following which, activity localises to one or more isolated vents within a few hours or days. Localisation is important because it influences the spatiotemporal evolution of the hazard posed by the eruption. Previous work has proposed that localisation can arise through a thermoviscous fingering instability driven by the strongly temperature dependent viscosity of the rising magma. Here, we explore how thermoviscous localisation is influenced by the irregular geometry of natural volcanic fissures. We model the pressure-driven flow of a viscous fluid with temperature-dependent viscosity through a narrow fissure with either sinusoidal or randomised deviations from a uniform width. We identify steady states, determine their stability and quantify the degree of flow enhancement associated with localised flow. We find that, even for relatively modest variations of the fissure width (${\lt } 10$ %), the non-planar geometry supports strongly localised steady states, in which the wider parts of the fissure host faster, hotter flow, and the narrower parts of the fissure host slower, cooler flow. This geometrically driven localisation differs from the spontaneous thermoviscous fingering observed in planar geometries and can strongly impact the localisation process. We delineate the regions of parameter space under which geometrically driven localisation is significant, showing that it is a viable mechanism for the observed localisation under conditions typical of basaltic eruptions, and that it has the potential to dominate the effects of spontaneous thermoviscous fingering in these cases.