The Challenge of Antibiotic-Resistant Staphylococcus: Lessons from Hospital Nurseries in the mid-20th Century

In the late 1940s, epidemics of antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus began to plague postpartum nurseries in hospitals across the United States. Exacerbated by overcrowding and nursing shortages, resistant S. aureus outbreaks posed a novel challenge to physicians and nurses heavily reliant on antibiotics as both prophylaxis and treatment. This paper explores the investigation of the reservoir, mode of transmission, and virulence of S. aureus during major hospital outbreaks and the subsequent implementation of novel infection control measures from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. The exploration of these measures reveals a shift in infection control policy as hospitals, faced with the failure of antibiotics to slow S. aureus outbreaks, implemented laboratory culture routines, modified nursery structure and layout, and altered nursing staff procedures to counter various forms of S. aureus transmission. Showcasing the need for widespread epidemiologic surveillance, ultimately manifesting itself in specialized “hospital epidemiology” training promoted in the 1970s, the challenges faced by hospital nurses in the 1950s prove highly relevant to the continued struggle with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other resistant nosocomial infections.     

Scientific Theory and Agricultural Practice: Plant Breeding in Germany from the Late 19th to the Early 20th Century

The paper deals with the transformation of plant breeding from an agricultural practice into an applied academic science in the late 19th and early 20th centuries Germany. The aim is to contribute to the ongoing debate about the relationship between science and technology. After a brief discussion of this debate the first part of the paper examines how pioneers of plant breeding developed their breeding methods and commercially successful varieties. The focus here is on the role of scientific concepts and theories in the agricultural innovation process. The second part turns towards the strategies by which agronomists tried to establish plant breeding as an academic discipline and themselves as the new experts for breeding research and varietal development. Again, the focus is on the interplay of scientific theory and agricultural practice. It is argued that in order to better understand the transformation of plant breeding into an applied academic science we have to take different levels into account, i.e. the levels of organizations, individuals and objects, at which science and technology interact.     

Missing Links: A Commentary on Ward H. Goodenough's Moving Article "Anthropology in the 20th Century and Beyond"

Ward H. Goodenough's optimistic summary of anthropological knowledge during the 20th century leaves missing links around the inevitable political and processual nature of the discipline. Conflict within the discipline and response to public events also are part of the story. Effects of the Cold War highlight the relations of knowledge and power in anthropological practice. Common humanity remains the focal point of anthropology. [Keywords: U.S. anthropology, 20th century, complexity, world events, reflexivity]     

Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early 20th Century.

Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early 20th Century. Jurgen Heideking. Genevieve Fabre. and Kai Dreisbach. eds. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. 316 pp.     

A Brief History of the Changing Occupations and Demographics of Coleopterists from the 18th Through the 20th Century

Systematic entomology flourished as a branch of Natural History from the 1750s to the end of the nineteenth century. During this interval, the “era of Heroic Entomology,” the majority of workers in the field were dedicated amateurs. This article traces the demographic and occupational shifts in entomology through this 150-year interval and into the early twentieth century. The survey is based on entomologists who studied beetles (Coleoptera), and who named sufficient numbers of species to have their own names abbreviated by subsequent taxonomists. In the eighteenth century, 27 entomologists achieved this level of prominence, of whom 37% were academics, 19% were doctors, 11% had private incomes, 19% were clergymen, and 8% were government officials. Many of those with private incomes were members of the European aristocracy, and all but one were European men. The nineteenth century list included 192 entomologists, of whom 17% were academics, 16% were museum curators, 2% were school teachers, 15% were doctors, 6% were military men, 7% were merchants, 2% were government entomologists, 6% had private incomes, 5% were clergymen, 5% were government officials, and 4% were lawyers. The demographics of entomology shifted dramatically in the nineteenth century. Whereas many of the noteworthy entomologists of the eighteenth century were German, Swedish, or French, in the nineteenth century, many more European countries are represented, and almost one-fifth of the noteworthy entomologists were from the United States. The nineteenth century list, like the eighteenth century list, contains no women. By the twentieth century, 63% of 178 noteworthy systematic entomologists were paid professionals, teaching entomology courses in universities, or studying insect taxonomy in museums and government-sponsored laboratories. Only one person on the twentieth century list had a private income, but women (ten individuals) were included on the list for the first time.     

The Case of Paul Kammerer: Evolution and Experimentation in the Early 20th Century

To some, a misguided Lamarckian and a fraud, to others a martyr in the fight against Darwinism, the Viennese zoologist Paul Kammerer (1880–1926) remains one of the most controversial scientists of the early 20th century. Here his work is reconsidered in light of turn-of-the-century problems in evolutionary theory and experimental methodology, as seen from Kammerer’s perspective in Vienna. Kammerer emerges not as an opponent of Darwinism, but as one would-be modernizer of the 19th-century theory, which had included a role for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Kammerer attempted a synthesis of Darwinism with genetics and the chromosome theory, while retaining the modifying effects of the environment as the main source of favorable variation, and he developed his program of experimentation to support it. Kammerer never had a regular university position, but worked at a private experimental laboratory, with sidelines as a teacher and a popular writer and lecturer. On the lecture circuit he held forth on the significance of his science for understanding and furthering cultural evolution and he satisfied his passion for the arts and performance. In his dual career as researcher and popularizer, he did not always follow academic convention. In the contentious and rapidly changing fields of heredity and evolution, some of his stances and practices, as well as his outsider status and part-Jewish background, aroused suspicion and set the stage for the scandal that ended his career and prompted his suicide.     

20th Century Carbon Budget of Forest Soils in the Alps

Dendrochronological studies and forest inventory surveys have reported increased growth and biospheric carbon (C) sequestration for European forests in the recent past. The potential of concomitant changes in forest soil C stocks are not accounted for in the IPCC guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories. We developed a model-based approach to address this problem and assess the role of soils in forest C balance in the European Alps. The decomposition model FORCLIM-D was driven by long-term (that is, 1900–1985 AD) litter input scenarios constructed from forest inventory data, region-specific dendrochronological basal area indices, and time series of anthropogenic litter removal. The effect of spatial climate variability on organic matter decomposition across the case study region (Switzerland) was explicitly accounted for by constant long-term annual means of actual evapotranspiration and temperature. Uncertainties in forest development, litter removal, fine root litter input, and dynamics of forest soil C were studied by an explorative factorial sensitivity analysis. We found that forest soils contribute substantially to the biospheric C sequestration for Switzerland: Our “best estimate” yielded an increase of 0.35 Mt C/y or 0.33 t C/(ha y) in forest soils for 1985, that is, 27% of the C sequestered by forest trees (BUWAL 1994). Uncertainties regarding C accumulation in forest soils were substantial (0.11–0.58 Mt C/y) but could be reduced by estimating forest soil C stocks in the future. Whereas soils can be important for the C balance in naturally regrowing forests, their C sequestration is negligible (less than 5%) relative to anthropogenic CO₂ emissions in Western Europe at present. Received 25 August 1998; accepted 17 March 1999.     

Fertility Changes in Rural Moroccan Berbers during the 20th Century

Morocco’s fertility pattern evolved in the 20th century from a traditional model close to ‘natural fertility’ to a modern pattern incorporating contraception. The very high fertility rate of nearly 7 offspring per woman observed in the 1960s was still at a level of 5.5 offspring per woman in the early 1980s. The total fertility rate subsequently declined to 2.5 by 2003. This decline was apparently, principally, the result of two factors in the urban context: the relative increase in women’s age at marriage and the use of contraception to regulate and to close reproduction. This research studied a group of Berber agriculturists in the region of Marrakech to better understand the extension and modalities of fertility changes in a rural environment. Though delayed, the changes observed in rural Berbers paralleled the general trends seen at the national level. As in the urban environment, the changes affecting reproductive patterns resulted from an increase in the age at marriage of women and the introduction of contraception. However, these changes were apparently minor adaptations to the traditional pattern, in that the progressive increase in mean age at marriage was obtained by the decrease in the frequency of pre-nubile unions (<15 years old) and not from the upward shift of the modal age. On the other hand, contraception apparently was employed to stop childbearing after the expected family size was already attained.     

Molecular Evolution of Zika Virus during Its Emergence in the 20th Century

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus first isolated in Uganda in 1947. Although entomological and virologic surveillance have reported ZIKV enzootic activity in diverse countries of Africa and Asia, few human cases were reported until 2007, when a Zika fever epidemic took place in Micronesia. In the context of West Africa, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Arboviruses and Hemorrhagic Fever at Institut Pasteur of Dakar (http://www.pasteur.fr/recherche/banques/CRORA/) reports the periodic circulation of ZIKV since 1968. Despite several reports on ZIKV, the genetic relationships among viral strains from West Africa remain poorly understood. To evaluate the viral spread and its molecular epidemiology, we investigated 37 ZIKV isolates collected from 1968 to 2002 in six localities in Senegal and Côte d''Ivoire. In addition, we included strains from six other countries. Our results suggested that these two countries in West Africa experienced at least two independent introductions of ZIKV during the 20^th century, and that apparently these viral lineages were not restricted by mosquito vector species. Moreover, we present evidence that ZIKV has possibly undergone recombination in nature and that a loss of the N154 glycosylation site in the envelope protein was a possible adaptive response to the Aedes dalzieli vector.     

The Wal-Marting of American Psychiatry: An Ethnography of Psychiatric Practice in the Late 20th Century

Object: U.S. psychiatry has been radicallyreorganized by changes in the way thepsychiatric hospital, the asylum, is funded.The imposition and internalization of costcontrol measures are major elements of thisreorganization. This paper traces the ways inwhich cost control methods associated withmanaged care have produced new ways oforganizing and patterning clinical work andclinical knowledge. Methods: Participant observation, used inqualitative sociological research, wasundertaken in three settings: a publichospital, a private hospital with roots in thehistory of the asylum, and a for-profithospital chain. The research consisted ofobservation of usual clinic practices andinterviews with clinicians and ancillary staff,such as utilization reviewers, concerning theirconstruction of and understandings about theirwork experience. In addition, interviews withpersonnel at a number of managed care companieswas arranged although actual ethnographicexperience was not performed in these companiesdue to declined permission. Interviews includedclinicians whose experiences bridged the pre-and post-managed care eras. Result: This paper argues that the widespreadadoption of Quality Assurance and UtilizationManagement procedures has created new standardsof evaluation and treatment. These standardsgrow out of a transition from a person-centeredto a population-based data base. They arejustified by a conviction on the part ofmanaged care proponents that good clinicaltreatment is equivalent to efficient costcontrol. This epistemological change results inthe development of a clinical knowledgepatterned along algorithmic pathways ratherthan subjective understanding. An increased andmore rapid rationalization of psychiatry is theresult. This rationalization process hasproduced moral dilemmas for practicingclinicians as they struggle to redefine theirprofessional purposes and identities within anew order. Conclusion: The rise of the `Quality Movement'has led to the reconstruction of clinicalknowledge as a result of the imposition ofsocial practices influenced by the culturalconsequences of capitalism. A peculiarlyAmerican psychiatry is the result.     

更新观念,拓宽思路,加大自然保护力度--第五次世界公园大会给我们的启示

20 0 3年 9月 8日第五届世界保护区大会在南非德班召开。该会由全球自然保护最权威机构———国际自然保护同盟举办 ,每 10年召开一次。来自170多个国家及组织的近 30 0 0人参加了为期 10天的会议。南非总统姆贝基、前总统曼德拉、约旦王后努尔、联合国副秘书长兼联合国环境署执行主任特普费尔、全球环境基金主席古德等政府首脑和国际政要在开幕式上讲了话。我作为唯一的国家代表在开幕式上作了“保护区对可持续发展和我们的未来至关重要 :中国的实践”的演讲。与会代表对中国的发言反响热烈 ,他们认为 ,中国大力加强保护区建设、拓展生态保…     

A Decrease in the Rate of Human Aging in the 20th Century and its Potential Causes

Biophysics - Abstract—Since the middle of the 20th century, there has been a decrease in the rate of aging for developed countries with a maximum for ages 60–85 years. The calculation...     

Clothing of Piety,Clothing of Poverty: Object Lessons in a Convent School

This paper focuses on the ways in which memories of the religious habits worn by Catholic teaching sisters prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) came to circulate in Atlantic Canada in the 1990s. At that time, people living in an impoverished rural settlement in northern New Brunswick recalled ominous dark and shrouded figures when discussing the religious past. However, the significance attached to the clothing of piety diverged considerably when the teaching sisters who once worked in that settlement recalled their past. They focused on the very materiality of their clothing as an object that had sensuous properties, constricting and enveloping, limiting and enabling their work. But they also recalled the clothing of others, the clothing of poverty in which their students came to school. One's deictic perspective, as either perceiver or wearer, altered the significance attached to the religious clothing of piety, or the threadbare clothing of poverty. This paper examines the ways in which the memories of objects from the past came to articulate broader grievances.     

20世纪初以前西方学者对中国冬虫夏草的记载和研究

冬虫夏草在中国是一种著名的药材。最早记录它的文献是15世纪的藏医籍《千万舍利》。随着法国传教士巴多明(Parennin)于1723年将冬虫夏草标本从北京寄往法兰西科学院,西方学术界开始了对这种中国药材的认识和研究历程。在1841年英国昆虫学家韦斯特伍德(Westwood)开始鉴定这种真菌以前,西方学者认为冬虫夏草的真菌子实体是植物的根。此后,英国真菌学家贝克莱(Berkeley)分别在1843和1856年将其定名为"Sphaeria Sinensis"和"Cordyceps sinensis"。但是为学界广泛使用并沿用至今的,却是意大利植物学家萨卡多(Saccardo)在其1883年的专著中为冬虫夏草的定名"Cordyceps sinensis(Berk.)Sacc."。在20世纪初以前,西方人对中国冬虫夏草的记录和描述具有多重价值,对于了解中国冬虫夏草的使用历史而言是重要的补充资料。     

HPV Prevalence among Women from Appalachia: Results from the CARE Project

Background

Cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates are high among women from Appalachia, yet data do not exist on human papillomavirus (HPV) prevalence among these women. We examined the prevalence of genital HPV among Appalachian women and identified correlates of HPV detection.

Methods

We report data from a case-control study conducted between January 2006 and December 2008 as part of the Community Awareness, Resources, and Education (CARE) Project. We examined HPV prevalence among 1116 women (278 women with abnormal Pap tests at study entry [cases], 838 women with normal Pap tests [controls]) from Appalachian Ohio. Analyses used multivariable logistic regression to identify correlates of HPV detection.

Results

The prevalence of HPV was 43.1% for any HPV type, 33.5% for high-risk HPV types, 23.4% for low-risk HPV types, and 12.5% for vaccine-preventable HPV types. Detection of any HPV type was more common among women who were ages 18–26 (OR = 2.09, 95% CI: 1.26–3.50), current smokers (OR = 1.86, 95% CI: 1.26–2.73), had at least five male sexual partners during their lifetime (OR = 2.28, 95% CI: 1.56–3.33), or had multiple male sexual partners during the last year (OR = 1.98, 95% CI: 1.25–3.14). Similar correlates were identified for detection of a high-risk HPV type.

Conclusions

HPV was prevalent among Appalachian women, with many women having a high-risk HPV type detected. Results may help explain the high cervical cancer rates observed among Appalachian women and can help inform future cervical cancer prevention efforts in this geographic region.