A retrospective mortality study of workers exposed to radon in a Brazilian underground coal mine

Recently a high radon concentration was detected in the underground coal mine of Figueira, located in the south of Brazil. This coal mine has been operating since 1942 without taking cognizance of the high radon environment. In order to assess possible radon-related health effects on the workers, a retrospective (1979-2002) mortality study of 2,856 Brazilian coal miners was conducted, with 2,024 underground workers potentially exposed to radon daughters. Standard mortality ratio (SMR) analysis hints at lower mortality from all causes for both underground (SMR = 88, 95% CI = 78-98) and surface workers (SMR = 96, 95% CI = 80-114). A high statistically significant SMR for lung cancer mortality was observed only in the underground miners (SMR = 173, 95% CI = 102-292), with a statistically significant trend reflecting the duration of underground work. High statistically significant SMRs were observed for pneumonia as a cause of death between both surface (SMR = 304, 95% CI = 126-730) and underground miners (SMR = 253, 95% CI = 140-457). Because mortality from smoking-related cancers other than lung cancer was not found elevated in underground workers and because diesel equipments were not used in this mine, it can be concluded that the enhanced lung cancer mortality observed for underground miners is associated with exposure to radon and radon daughters, rather than other confounding risk factors.     

Persistence of genetic damage in lymphocytes from former uranium miners

Lymphocytes from former uranium miners who finished work underground one or more decades ago were analysed with respect to possibly persisting genetic damage induced by their radiation exposure. A modified micronucleus-centromere test was used which determined the frequency of micronucleus-containing binucleate cells after cytochalasin B treatment and the percentage of centromere-free micronuclei, assessed with the help of immunofluorescence labeling of centromere protein B. Whereas the overall frequency of micronucleus-containing cells was not significantly elevated above the level found in a control group, former miners showed a greater percentage of centromere-free micronuclei, i.e. micronuclei containing only acentric fragments. Our results are in excellent agreement with those of an earlier uranium miner study and lend support to the assumption that genetic damage from alpha radiation can persist for many years after exposure, possibly due to genomic instability. The frequency of micronucleus-containing cells, but not the percentage of centromere-free micronuclei, significantly increased with time since last exposure in the mines. This can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that miners who have finished working underground longer ago tend to be older, and there is an increase of the frequency of micronucleus-containing cells with age.     

A comparative study of physiological strain of underground coal miners in India

Ninety-eight healthy underground coal miners aged between 23-58 years were studied during their activity period. Physiological strain of different category of miners in terms of heart rate was monitored continuously with heart rate monitor that revealed the tasks as heavy to very heavy for them. Oxygen consumption was measured directly by using oxylog-2 machine that corresponded to metabolic costs for different activities ranging from 4.96 kcal/min to 5.47 kcal/min. The mean relative aerobic strain varied from 47.4%-56.8%--depicting acceptable level of physical strain was well encroached by the miners who irrespective of ages and categories showed poor recovery responses. This entails that miners are exerting themselves beyond their capacities where inevitably older workforce face the maximum burden.     

Indicators of humoral immunity in smokers and nonsmokers working underground

A group of 215 underground shale miners (148 smokers and 67 nonsmokers) was examined for levels of immunoglobulins in sera (IgG, IgA, IgM) and saliva (sIgA), transferrin (TRF), alpha 2-macroglobulin (A 2M) and lysozyme levels in sera (LYS) and saliva (sLYS). The control group consisting of 95 healthy men was selected to match the age of the exposed miners. The mine environment was characterized by the presence of ionizing radiation, due to a geological configuration of the rock. The study revealed that the decline of IgG, IgA and sLYS levels in smokers was significantly deeper than in nonsmokers and controls. The levels of sIgA and serum LYS levels were increased both in smokers and nonsmokers. The change in the serum LYS and A 2M levels in miners did not depend on the smoking habits, except of A 2M levels in miners employed for more than 21 years. The differences were, as a rule, less pronounced in younger miners and tended to increase with the increasing length of work underground. The distribution analysis revealed some inter-miner differences in the susceptibility to these changes and the formation of smaller subgroups of miners with more or less subnormal test values, which supports the hypothesis on the heterogeneity of this population group. The tests showed that the statistical analysis of abnormal test values might play an important role in the assessment of the health risk in individuals. A simultaneous detection of subnormal values in some of pairs of tests may provide decisive data allowing a reliable differentiation between the afflicted miners and the healthy control subjects.     

Hormones and social monitoring: Menstrual cycle shifts in progesterone underlie women's sensitivity to social information

During the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, women's bodies prepare themselves for possible pregnancy and this preparation includes a dramatic increase in progesterone. This increase in progesterone may underlie a variety of functionally relevant psychological changes designed to help women overcome challenges historically encountered during pregnancy (e.g., warding off social threats and recruiting allies). This paper reports data supporting the hypothesis that increases in progesterone during the luteal phase underlie heightened levels of social monitoring—that is, heightened sensitivity to social cues indicating the presence of social opportunity or threat. Increases in progesterone during the luteal phase were associated with increased accuracy in decoding facial expressions (Study 1) and increased attention to social stimuli (Study 2). Findings suggest that increases in progesterone during the luteal phase may be linked functionally with low-level perceptual attunements that help women effectively navigate their social world.     

Watching soap opera in the diaspora: cultural proximity or critical proximity?

Abstract

This paper focused on an area of transnational Arabic television, which has attracted little scholarly attention: soap operas and their consumption among women in the Arab diaspora. Focus groups with Arab audiences in London revealed the significant role that soap operas play in sustaining a gendered critical and reflexive proximity to the Arab world. The paper shows that soap opera viewing provides female audiences in the diaspora with opportunities to reflect on their own gender identities as distant from hegemonic discourses of gender in their region of origin but as proximate to a moral set of values they associate with this same region. This was especially, but not exclusively, the case with young women born in the diaspora.     

Slipping Through Sky Holes: Yurok Body Imagery in Northern California

Yurok perceptions of the body as the inscribed surface of social and environmental change are explored in this paper. To the violence and brutality of Spaniards, fur traders, gold miners, American soldiers, and Indian policies of the US government since the eighteenth century, Yurok women attribute the high incidence of degenerative diseases, drug abuse and criminality in northern California. This piece contemplates the lives of eight generations of sixteen Yurok extended families, mapping intergenerational shifts in Yurok social relations and political practices. It considers the mutation of knowledge in the constitution of the natural and social sciences and the effects of this knowledge when implemented in Yurok country. Here, Foucault's genealogical method values what anthropology and biomedicine, for example, tend to disregard in the analysis of descent: the correlation between body and history. This historico-critical investigation shows how certain events mark their power and engrave memories on individuals' bodies. It is within a hybrid set of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary practices that a more fruitful understanding of Yurok body imagery can be fashioned.     

Life-in-Death: Raising Dead Sons in New Orleans

The social and religious work of African-American women in New Orleans who mourn and memorialise the dead attends primarily to sons and grandsons, the young black men who are most frequently the victims of homicide. Based on ethnographic and historical research in two Christian congregations, this article examines the forms of relatedness that women have developed to support and advocate for each other, the displaced, and the deceased. Tracing more broadly the development of vulnerability and violence at the urban margins, I argue that this work unfolds in a continued context of social death, predicated on dominant and still racist determinations of human value. I thus examine the transformative potential of African-American religious women’s relational practices, highlighting in particular their assertion of black social and spiritual value, in the kingdom of God if not yet in the inclusive, just, and sustainable city and world they envision.     

Reduced Gaze Following and Attention to Heads when Viewing a "Live" Social Scene

Social stimuli are known to both attract and direct our attention, but most research on social attention has been conducted in highly controlled laboratory settings lacking in social context. This study examined the role of social context on viewing behaviour of participants whilst they watched a dynamic social scene, under three different conditions. In two social groups, participants believed they were watching a live webcam of other participants. The socially-engaged group believed they would later complete a group task with the people in the video, whilst the non-engaged group believed they would not meet the people in the scene. In a third condition, participants simply free-viewed the same video with the knowledge that it was pre-recorded, with no suggestion of a later interaction. Results demonstrated that the social context in which the stimulus was viewed significantly influenced viewing behaviour. Specifically, participants in the social conditions allocated less visual attention towards the heads of the actors in the scene and followed their gaze less than those in the free-viewing group. These findings suggest that by underestimating the impact of social context in social attention, researchers risk coming to inaccurate conclusions about how we attend to others in the real world.     

职业倦怠与性别的相关性及其生物学基础的研究*

从上个世纪七十年代开始,职业倦怠就引起了欧美发达国家相关学者的关注。在中国,对这方面的研究相对较少。近年来,随着我国社会经济的快速发展,人们的工作压力增大,而职业倦怠对人们工作和生活造成的影响也日趋严重,已经成为日常生活中一个不可回避的问题。男性和女性之间职业倦怠的表现和程度存在一定差异,本文从环境和生物学的角度分析男性和女性之间职业倦怠的表现和程度不同的原因。     

Indoor radon and lung cancer. Estimating the risks.

Radon is ubiquitous in indoor environments. Epidemiologic studies of underground miners with exposure to radon and experimental evidence have established that radon causes lung cancer. The finding that this naturally occurring carcinogen is present in the air of homes and other buildings has raised concern about the lung cancer risk to the general population from radon. I review current approaches for assessing the risk of indoor radon, emphasizing the extrapolation of the risks for miners to the general population. Although uncertainties are inherent in this risk assessment, the present evidence warrants identifying homes that have unacceptably high concentrations.     

‘He who relies on relatives and friends die poor’: class closure and stratagems of civility in peri-urban Kenya

Africanist anthropology has tended to paint social relations on the continent in a positive light, giving the impression that a pro-social relationality will provide the poor with economic assistance in moments of need. This article troubles these accounts by turning to Kenya, where a history of socioeconomic stratification has created a landscape of class closure. Rather than generously give, upwardly mobile families seek to distance themselves from potential requests for material assistance. Meanwhile, they valorize their own hard work as the source of their success, encouraging the poor to follow suit: to pursue economic independence. In this context, the article underscores the work of relation-making as poor families attempt to keep social relationships with wealthy locals open by practising ‘civility’: hiding their anticipation of material support by concealing economic distress whilst outwardly performing their own success. Taking inspiration from F.G. Bailey's classic work on ‘stratagems and spoils’, the article emphasizes the interested, conscious effort of making relations as a means of combating economic exclusion in an unequal world.     

Managing the Myth of Ecotourism: A Queensland Case Study

Although social anthropologists are taking an increased interest in tourism in Australia, not much attention has been paid thus far to the sites from which visitors take off into the bush, wilderness or nature. Tourist resorts and lodges are not simply the locations in which basic needs are met before more energetic activities begin. Especially in ecotourist settings, important ideological claims are made about their built environments as well as the everyday practices and localised activities which are ongoing in these discursive sites. This paper provides an ethnographic analysis of one such ecotourist resort. It aims to detail the myths which are manufactured about its relation to the island environment in which it is situated, and to the world beyond.     

东北沦陷时期辽源矿工墓遇难矿工遗骸的骨骼创伤

本文所研究的材料来自吉林省辽源市东北沦陷时期辽源矿工墓陈列馆。通过对陈列馆中197例遇难矿工遗骸(男性186例,女性4例,未成年7例)的观察和研究,发现暴力行为导致的骨骼创伤在该群体中大量存在,共计发现遭受创伤个体40例,各类创伤70处。本文运用法医创伤学的研究方法,对辽源矿工墓遇难矿工遗骸上的各类创伤进行了观察和测量,分析伤害发生时施暴者的位置、打击方向和用手习惯等,结合骨折类型和具体的创伤形态对遗骸上出现的所有创伤进行分类研究。经过分析可知,遇难矿工遗骸上所见创伤大部分是人为手持刀、锤、棒等高效击打工具当面暴力打击颅骨所致,且打击者左手持械的几率较大,推测当时可能存在专职的"打手"对矿工实施管理和惩戒。文章还对部分创伤个体的遇害情境进行了推测,为探讨日伪时期辽源地区矿工的生存状态提供了重要参考。     

Childhood sexual abuse and HIV risk among crack-using commercial sex workers in San Salvador, El Salvador: a qualitative analysis

This article explores the relationship between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and later HIV risk. It draws on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 40 women who either used crack or engaged in commercial sex work in the greater metropolitan area of San Salvador, El Salvador, 28 of whom experienced CSA. Although the relationship between CSA and later HIV risk has been clearly demonstrated, the processes that lead women who have experienced CSA to experience HIV risk are unclear. The theoretical model presented here incorporates the psychological effects of CSA, particularly stigmatization, as well as its social consequences and the larger context of poverty in which these women live. The meanings women draw from past abuse experiences and their rationale for choices made help explain the association between CSA and later risk as mediated through sex work and crack addiction. Self-report data gathered in this study indicate that HIV prevalence may be considerably higher in this high-risk population than Salvadoran national rates.     

Background stratified Poisson regression analysis of cohort data

Background stratified Poisson regression is an approach that has been used in the analysis of data derived from a variety of epidemiologically important studies of radiation-exposed populations, including uranium miners, nuclear industry workers, and atomic bomb survivors. We describe a novel approach to fit Poisson regression models that adjust for a set of covariates through background stratification while directly estimating the radiation-disease association of primary interest. The approach makes use of an expression for the Poisson likelihood that treats the coefficients for stratum-specific indicator variables as ‘nuisance’ variables and avoids the need to explicitly estimate the coefficients for these stratum-specific parameters. Log-linear models, as well as other general relative rate models, are accommodated. This approach is illustrated using data from the Life Span Study of Japanese atomic bomb survivors and data from a study of underground uranium miners. The point estimate and confidence interval obtained from this ‘conditional’ regression approach are identical to the values obtained using unconditional Poisson regression with model terms for each background stratum. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed approach allows estimation of background stratified Poisson regression models of non-standard form, such as models that parameterize latency effects, as well as regression models in which the number of strata is large, thereby overcoming the limitations of previously available statistical software for fitting background stratified Poisson regression models.     

Short‐term response of a declining woodland bird assemblage to the removal of a despotic competitor

Interspecific aggression by the noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala), a highly despotic species, is homogenizing woodland avifaunas across eastern Australia. Although a native species, the noisy miner's aggressive exclusion of small birds is a Key Threatening Process under national law. Large‐scale removal of noisy miners has been proposed as a management response to this threat following increases in miner presence due to anthropogenic land use practices. We tested this proposal by experimentally removing noisy miners from eucalypt woodland remnants (16–49 ha), assigned randomly as control (n = 12) or treatment (miner removal) sites (n = 12). Standardized bird surveys were conducted before and after removal, and generalized linear mixed models were used to investigate the effect of miner removal on bird assemblage metrics. Despite removing 3552 noisy miners in three sessions of systematic shooting, densities of noisy miners remained similarly high in treatment and control sites, even just 14 days after their removal. However, there was evidence of an increase in richness and abundance of small birds in treatment sites compared to controls—an effect we only expected to see if noisy miner densities were drastically reduced. We suggest that miner removal may have reduced the ability of the recolonizing miners to aggressively exclude small birds, even without substantially reducing miner densities, due to the breakdown of social structures that are central to the species' despotic behaviour. However, this effect on small birds is unlikely to persist in the long term. Synthesis and applications: Despite evidence from other studies that direct removal of noisy miners can result in rapid and sustained conservation benefit for bird communities at small scales, our findings cast doubt on the potential to scale‐up this management approach. The circumstances under which direct control of noisy miners can be achieved remain unresolved.     

An ethnomedicine study among women in Uremia (North-West Iran)

During the recent years, ethomedicine has attracted a great deal of attention among the investigators throughout the world. Although ethnomedicine seeks, in the first place, to compensate for a biological need through providing cures for disorders, it, however, is of a cultural nature, too, in that it investigates people's behaviors and reactions toward health and the issues related to it. Consequently, traditional health must be counted as a component of a society's culture. Investigations of people's views toward traditional medicine are capable of throwing light on acquaintance with their conducts, customs, traditions and behaviors, as well as the social-economic conditions prevailing in their environment. In addition, such investigations of public medicine bring about familiarities with gradual developments in traditional medical methodologies as introduced by culture, economic, or social factors, first into the society, then medicine. Familiarizations with cultural diversities in relation to medicine are the end results. The present paper comprise an anthropological approach toward investigation of ethnomedical practiced by women of Uremia (North-West, Iran).     

Adventive eriophyoid mites: a global review of their impact, pathways, prevention and challenges

Eriophyoids have high potential as adventive mite species (AMS) because their small size make them difficult to detect, and can be easily distributed in world trade. Economic, social and environmental impact from adventive eriophyoid mites has been significant. Considerable attention has been given to adventive insect species while adventive mites have received little attention and little information is available for eriophyoids. This paper summarizes information on adventive eriophyoid mites, their impact, and the history of some important invasions. The status of adventive species of eriophyoids introduced as biological control agents of weeds is presented. A list of eriophyoid mites reported as invasive species worldwide is given. Pathways of concern and biosecurity actions to reduce the risk of eriophyoid mites are discussed. The need to raise public awareness of the risk and importance of these tiny organisms as AMS is emphasized. Scientific and technical challenges to deal with adventive eriophyoids are discussed.     

基于贮食行为的鸟类社会认知研究进展

贮食是动物应对环境变化和不可预测性而进化出的有效生存对策,认知则是当前鸟类学研究的热点问题之一。目前鸟类贮食行为中的认知研究多集中在空间认知,而社会认知研究相对滞后。对于贮食物种而言,储藏食物被盗现象非常普遍,为了避免被盗食,贮食者不仅要有发达的空间认知能力去记忆贮食地点,同时还需要极强的社会认知能力处理与盗食者的关系,可见社会认知在鸟类的贮食行为中扮演着重要角色。本文将从鸟类贮食的社会关系认知以及社会地位认知两个方面,对鸟类贮食行为中的社会认知研究进行综述,以期为后续鸟类社会认知研究提供借鉴和参考。