bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Locomotor disability: Meaning, causes and effects of interventions
Authors: Ebrahim Shah , Adamson Joy , Ayis Salma , Beswick Andrew , Gooberman-Hill Rachael
Published: September 2008

This paper provides a synopsis of a long-term programme of MRC-funded work on locomotor disability in older people. Specifically it describes the meaning and experience of disability, examines the risk factors for disability and systematically reviews the evidence from randomized trials of complex interventions for disability. We undertook a national prospective study of a representative sample of 999 people aged 65 years or more plus in-depth interviews with a small subsample and a selected sample obtained from hospital sources. Secondary analysis of several large prospective studies was carried out and a systematic review and meta-analysis of published randomized controlled trials of the effects of complex interventions for disability.

Very few participants subscribed to the constructs of longstanding illness, disability or infirmity that surveys often use. A wide range of social and psychological factors, independently of chronic diseases, were strongly associated with disability. People with greater functional reserve capacity and those with greater self-efficacy were generally less likely to suffer from catastrophic decline in ability and had better quality of life in the face of disability. In reviewing 89 trials (over 97,000 participants) of complex interventions for disability, evidence of benefits was found although no relationship with intensity of intervention was apparent.

Our findings on the meaning and experience of disability suggest the need for modifications to routinely used survey questions and for different ways of understanding the need for and receipt of care among older people with disabilities. The diverse risk factors for disability suggest that novel approaches across social, psychological as well as more traditional rehabilitation and behavioural risk factor modification would be worth exploring. Complex interventions appeared to help older people to live independently and limit functional decline irrespective of age and health status.
Measuring and valuing mental health for use in economic evaluation
Authors: Brazier John
Published: September 2008

This article presents research undertaken as part of a wider programme of work concerned with measuring and health and wellbeing for economic evaluation. The focus is on developing quality adjusted life years (QALYs) in mental health, but the issues are common across all areas of health care. The article begins by reviewing the issues of what should be valued (health or broader notions of wellbeing), how mental health and wellbeing should be described, how mental health states should be valued and who should do the valuing.

The article presents four pieces of work. The first is a re-analysis of the ONS Psychiatric Morbidity 2000 Survey to provide evidence on the relevance of generic measures across different mental health disorders. It found that common mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, had a significant impact on the generic preference-based measure of health in the SF-6D, but psychosis and personality disorders did not. The article then presents two studies using the ratings of people experiencing the states of health. Both studies found that people experiencing different health states gave mental health greater weight than physical health compared to members of the general public trying to imagine the health states.

Finally, the article presents a study developing a condition-specific preference-based measure for calculating QALYs from an existing measure of mental health, the CORE-OM, using modern psychometric methods to construct health states amenable to valuation. It also considers a proposal to develop an entirely new QALY measure in mental health.
MOBILE and the provision of total joint replacement
Authors: Dieppe Paul , Dixon Diane , Horwood Jeremy , Pollard Beth , Johnston Marie
Published: September 2008

Modern joint replacements have been available for 45 years, but we still do not have clear indications for these interventions, and we do not know how to optimize the outcome for patients who agree to have them done. The MOBILE programme has been investigating these issues in relation to primary total hip and knee joint replacements, using mixed methods research.

There have been five main strands: (1) Epidemiological investigations to find out who is receiving total hip and knee replacements in the National Health Service (NHS). This has shown that there are extensive variations in different regions of the UK, with inequalities and probable inequities in the provision of these operations; (2) Epidemiological work to ascertain the population-based needs for the operations, showing under-provision of knee joint replacements, and a relative reluctance of both patients and GPs to consider knee surgery; (3) Quantitative and qualitative research into the views of patients, health care professionals and the public on the indications for, and prioritization of, total hip and knee joint replacements. This has shown lack of agreement within or between professional groups, as well as a mismatch between the views of patients and the public, and those of professionals; (4) Theoretical and experimental work on patient-related outcome measures, and the development of new instruments to assess both pain and function in people with osteoarthritis, based on the International Classification of Function, as well as a new integrated model of function; (5) Cohort studies of patients undergoing hip or knee joint replacements to find out what the determinants of good and bad outcomes are. These studies have emphasized the huge variation in disease severity at the time of surgery.

The challenge now is to use and implement our findings for maximum patient benefit.
Evidence-based diagnosis
Authors: Whiting Penny , Harbord Roger , de Salis Isabel , Egger Matthias , Sterne Jonathan
Published: September 2008

Making an accurate diagnosis is essential to ensure that a patient receives appropriate treatment and correct information regarding their prognosis. Characteristics of diagnostic tests are quantified in test accuracy studies, but many such studies have methodological flaws. The HSRC evidence-based diagnosis programme has focused on methods for systematic reviews of test accuracy studies, and the wider context in which tests are ordered and interpreted. We carried out a range of projects relating to literature searching, quality assessment, meta-analysis, presentation of results, and interactions between doctors and patients during the diagnostic process. We have shown that systematic reviews of test accuracy studies should search a range of databases and that current diagnostic filters do not have sufficient accuracy to be used in test accuracy reviews. Summary quality scores should not be used in test accuracy reviews; the Quality Assessment of Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy included in Systematic Reviews (QUADAS) tool for assessing test accuracy studies is acceptable for quality assessment. We have shown that the hierarchical summary receiver operating characteristic (HSROC) and bivariate models for meta-analysis of test accuracy are statistically equivalent in many circumstances, and have developed an add-on module for the statistical software package Stata that enables these statistically rigorous models to be fitted by those without expert statistical knowledge. Three areas that would benefit from further research are literature searching, synthesis of results from individual patient data and presentation of results.
Using qualitative research methods to improve recruitment to randomized controlled trials: The Quartet study
Authors: de Salis Isabel , Tomlin Zelda , Toerien Merran , Donovan Jenny
Published: September 2008

Objective:

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the optimum method for evaluating health care interventions, yet many fail to recruit sufficient participants in a timely manner. The ProtecT (Prostate testing for cancer and Treatment) study employed qualitative research methods as part of a complex intervention to improve recruitment to the RCT. The Quartet (Qualitative research to improve recruitment to trials) study was set up to evalute whether the ProtecT study's success in increasing randomization rates could be replicated in other trials experiencing recruitment difficulties. This paper reports on the issues that emerged from the attempts to apply qualitative research methods to improve recruitment rates in RCTs collaborating with the Quartet team.

Methods:

The methods used were: investigation of RCT documents; semi-structured interviews and focus groups with RCT staff; audio-recording of recruitment appointments; and individual and group feedback sessions for RCT staff. Data were analysed using content and thematic analysis.

Results:

Barriers arose when we attempted to establish collaborations with RCTs. Difficulties were encountered in securing the commitment of all relevant staff because of poor communication between lead investigators and other staff as well as RCT staff's concerns about having recruitment appointments audio-recorded. Recruitment processes were often more complex than anticipated. Governance procedures took considerable time and resources, limiting the time available for data collection and implementation of the intervention before recruitment closure.

Conclusion:

Straightforward replication of the ProtecT complex intervention was more complicated than expected. However, the study has increased understanding of RCT recruitment and identified ways to overcome barriers to collaboration. Such research is more easily undertaken in the feasibility stage of an RCT, and greater success will be achieved if the research is integrated into the everyday conduct of RCTs.
Policy-makers’ attitudes to decision support models for coronary heart disease: A qualitative study
Authors: Taylor-Robinson David , Milton Beth , Lloyd-Williams Ffion , O'flaherty Martin , Capewell Simon
Published: September 2008

Objectives:

To explore attitudes to the use of models for coronary heart disease to support decision-making for policy and service planning.

Methods:

Qualitative study using semi-structured interviews with 33 policy- and decision-makers purposively sampled from the UK National Health Service (NHS) (national, regional and local levels), academia and voluntary organizations. Interviews were transcribed, coded and emergent themes identified using framework analysis aided by NVivo software.

Results:

Policy-makers and planners were generally enthusiastic about models to assist in decision-making through: predicting trends; assessing the effect of interventions on health inequalities; quantifying the impact of population level and targeted interventions, and facilitating economic evaluation. The perceived advantages of using models included: more rational commissioning; the facility for scenario testing; advocacy for population level interventions and off-the-shelf synthesis to aid real time decision-making. However, although participants were aware of models to support decision-making, these were not being used routinely. Some participants felt that models oversimplify complex situations and that there is a lack of shared understanding as to how models work. Factors that increase confidence in decision support models included: rigorous validation and peer review, the availability of user-support and increased transparency.

Conclusion:

Policy-makers and planners were generally enthusiastic about the use of models to support decision-making, illustrating the potential uses for models and the factors that improve confidence in them. However, existing models are often not being used in practice. So new models that are fit for practice need to be developed.
A practical approach to using spot urine protein/creatinine ratios for assessing proteinuria in pregnancy
Authors: Marnoch Catherine A , Larson Lucia , Weitzen Sherry , Phipps Maureen G , Sung C James , Powrie Raymond O
Published: September 2008

Objective:

The aim of this study is to assess the diagnostic accuracy of the spot urine protein/creatinine ratio compared with the 24-hour urine protein in pregnancy.

Study Design:

In this prospective cohort study of inpatient pregnant women, the protein/creatinine ratio and dipstick protein were assessed from a single urine sample collected at the start of the 24-hour urine. Both tests were compared with the 24-hour urine protein for correlation and test characteristics.

Results:

In the 196 specimens analysed, we found a strong correlation between the spot urine protein/creatinine ratio and 24-hour urine protein ( r2 = 0.78, P < 0.01). A protein/creatinine ratio <0.1 ruled out significant proteinuria (≥300 mg/day) with sensitivity and negative predictive value 100%. A protein/creatinine ratio ≥0.4 detected significant proteinuria (specificity and positive predictive value of 100%). A protein/creatinine ratio ≥4.6 had a specificity and positive predictive value of 100% for detecting severe proteinuria (≥5000 mg/day). Urine dipsticks correlated poorly with the 24-hour urine protein ( r2 = 0.40, P = 0.826). Nineteen percent of dipsticks reading nil or trace were false-negative results.

Conclusion:

The spot urine protein/creatinine ratio correlated well with the 24-hour urine protein and performed better than the urine dipsticks. Significant proteinuria in pregnancy was excluded if the protein/creatinine ratio was <0.1 and identified when it was ≥0.4.
Kawasaki syndrome during pregnancy: a case report and literature review
Authors: Lefkou Eleftheria , Mahadeva Ula , Jones Andy , Hancock Jane , Hunt Beverley J
Published: September 2008

Kawasaki disease (KD) is characterized by persistent fever, mucous membrane hyperaemia, cervical lymph node enlargement, exanthema and periungual desquamation. It is seen mainly in children, with <60 cases reported in adults. We present the case, the first to the best of our knowledge, of a 17-year-woman who developed KD during the second trimester of pregnancy and died 47 days postpartum from cardiac arrest due to acute myocardial infarction. The case, the medical history, the clinical outcome and the postmortem findings are discussed, and we review the literature on adult KD.
A Study of Semi-Active Vibration Control for Vehicle Suspension System Using an Adjustable Shock Absorber
Authors: Wu Jian-Da , Lin Chih-Jer , Kuo Kun-Yin
Published: September 2008

A semi-active vehicle suspension system using an adjustable shock absorber for a quarter-car model vibration control is presented in this paper. Two control techniques are developed for assessing both ride comfort and road handling. Apart from the conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, a controller using fuzzy sets and fuzzy inferences is developed and its performance is experimentally tested. In the preliminary work, the characteristics and performance of an adjustable shock absorber are measured in order to build a data bank on various road conditions. The experimental results indicated that both the PID controller and the fuzzy controller effectively suppress the vibration of the proposed quarter-car model. The comparison and analysis of the proposed controllers are also described in this paper. Furthermore, the characteristic analysis and evaluation of the human exposure to whole body vibration has also been established by international standard.
Effect of Ageing on Hearing Thresholds in the Low Frequency Region
Authors: Kurakata Kenji , Mizunami Tazu , Sato Hiroshi , Inukai Yukio
Published: September 2008

The hearing threshold for low frequency (LF) tones was measured in a pressure field to investigate the effects of ageing on hearing sensitivity. Participants were young adults around 20 years old and older adults over 60. Measurement results showed that the older listeners had a higher threshold, on average, than the young listeners. The difference of median thresholds between these two groups was about 10 dB at every measurement frequency. Furthermore, hearing abnormalities other than age-related hearing loss showed no great effect upon the LF thresholds. Comparison of LF thresholds and audiograms (i.e. mid and high frequency hearing) of the older listeners revealed only moderate correlation between them. These results suggest that older people retain good hearing sensitivity in the LF region, in contrast to their often-degraded sensitivity at higher frequencies. Therefore, in LF noise evaluation, we should carefully regard the possibility that older listeners can perceive a low level LF noise.
Human Body under Two-Directional Random Vibration
Authors: Demić Miroslav S. , Lukic Jovanka K.
Published: September 2008

Human body behaviour under the influence of two-directional random vibrations is of great importance for optimal motor vehicle design. Efforts are being made in order to discover as much information about the influence of vibration on human body as possible. References show that the most attention has been paid to vertical vibration, although intensive research has been performed lately on the other sorts of excitation. This paper shows the results of the investigation of behaviour of human body, in seated position, under the influence of random two-directional (fore and aft and vertical vibration). The investigation is performed using an electro-hydraulic simulator, on a group of 18 healthy male participants. Subjects are asked to adjust level of fore and aft excitation in order to give the same sensation as vertical excitation. Experiments are performed in order to give results which might improve human body modeling in driving conditions. Excitation amplitudes (0, 55, 1, 75 and 2, 25 m/s2 R.M.S.) and seat backrest conditions (with (K) and without inclination (S)) were varied. Data results were analysed, and partial coherent and transfer functions analysis has been performed and results are given in detail. Human body transmissibility characteristics, under two directional random excitations, depend on its spatial position. Two directional random excitations affect human body transfer functions, which points out the fact that it behaves like a nonlinear dynamic system. This should be taken into consideration in synthesis of biodynamic vibration models of human body.
The Statistical Distribution of Normal Hearing Thresholds for Low-Frequency Tones
Authors: Kurakata Kenji , Mizunami Tazu
Published: September 2008

The statistical distribution of normal hearing thresholds for pure tones in the low-frequency (LF) region was estimated as a function of frequency, using a similar procedure to that used in an earlier work by the authors Kurakata et al., [3]. First, the distribution of individual LF thresholds was investigated using threshold measurement data. Results indicated that the threshold variation among individuals can be approximated using a normal distribution. Second, under the assumption of normality, standard deviations (SDs) of hearing threshold distributions were calculated. For that calculation, the measurement data of different studies were integrated to enhance the estimation accuracy. Finally, using the obtained SDs, the threshold distribution around the average value was presented graphically. These results illustrate the profile of our auditory sensitivity at LFs more accurately and are useful for evaluating the audibility of LF noises because they incorporate individual differences.
The Use of Multiple Resolution Cross-Correlations to Align Simultaneously Collected Whole-Body Vibration Data
Authors: Jack Robert J. , Oliver Michele , Dony Robert , Dickey James P.
Published: September 2008

A multiple resolution cross-correlation (MRXcorr) procedure was created to align 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) whole-body vibration (WBV) data time histories collected at the operator/set interface (OSI) and chassis of mobile forestry machinery. Three validation tests were conducted to substantiate the use of the MRXcorr. The results of these validation tests indicate that the MRXcorr can accurately determine the phase shift between two identical 6-DOF data time histories, as well as the phase shift between the 6-DOF chassis and simulated 6-DOF OSI data time histories for forestry skidders. The MRXcorr was also found to align actual field 6-DOF WBV data sets collected on the OSI and chassis of three forestry skidders better than a cross-correlation utilizing the entire length of the data time histories with r2-values from regression analyses between the two time histories being greater when those time histories were aligned with the MRXcorr 83.6% of the time.
Vehicle/Steel Guideway Interaction When the Maglev Train is Hovering
Authors: Li Li , Meng Guang
Published: September 2008

Aiming at the problem of unstable hovering of the maglev train on the steel guideway, tests were made on the natural vibration frequencies of this maglev system. Moreover, the authors make the strength calculation, the modal analysis and the interaction analysis between vehicle and the steel guideway. The result shows that the designed pseudo-static loadings of the steel guideway are not enough for the actual dynamic vehicle-guideway interaction. The system stability is related to the second suspension's frequency and damping the controlling system's frequency and damping the track's frequency and damp, and the system's basic parameters (specified balance position, the ratio of vehicles to the guideway, the electrical resistance and the induction of the coil). With the modified stiffness of the guideway frame column, the vehicle/steel guideway system can be stable when the maglev trains are hovering on the steel guideway in the maintenance yard.
Incorporating Low Frequency Noise Legislation for the Energy Industry in Alberta, Canada
Authors: DeGagne David C. , Lapka Stephanie D.
Published: September 2008

Environmental noise from energy industry facilities in Alberta, Canada, is regulated by the province's Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) (until 2008 known as the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board [EUB]) as set out in Directive 038: Noise Control. The 2007 edition of the directive, which comprises a comprehensive policy and guide, adopts A-weighted energy equivalent sound levels (LAeq), with sound pressure level criteria, as the primary measurement system for a receptor location. With the receptor being some distance from the energy industry noise source, the high and medium frequency components can dissipate or be absorbed by air and ground conditions, leaving mostly low frequency noise (LFN). Consequently, A-weighted measurements do not reflect the full annoyance potential of the remaining industrial noise. Complaints related to LFN are often described by the affected party as a deep, heavy sound, like “humming”, sometimes with an accompanying vibration. In some cases, the direction of the source of the LFN will be unknown to the receptor. However, it is the complainant that is most able to detect the presence of the LFN, signifying a particular sensitivity of the individual to the sound while others in the same family may not be able to detect the sound at all. To make a proper determination for the presence of LFN, the data must be collected during a time when environmental conditions are representative of when the sound is annoying. Residents who are impacted by LFN may suffer from sleep disturbances, headaches, and in some cases chronic fatigue. This paper examines the work undertaken by the ERCB to understand the issue, the various metrics tested to easily identify LFN, and finally the approach that would be incorporated into the new 2007 edition of Directive 038: Noise Control to address the problem.
Re-Producing a Nationalist Literature in the Age of Globalization: Reading (Im)migration in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Authors: Chandra Sarika
Published: September 2008

This essay examines the contradictions that develop within American literary studies as critics attempt to globalize the field. More specifically, the essay looks at immigrant/ethnic literary studies and how the concepts of immigration and immigrant literatures assist American literary studies in re-constructing a nationalist paradigm, even while attempting to "globalize" or update disciplinary practices. Via a reading of critical scholarship on Julia Alvarez's How the García Girls Lost their Accents , the essay analyzes the ways in which critics, driven by "globalization" anxiety, read the text in ways that recontain the global aspects of immigration within a dominant, US nationalist paradigm. Such readings work precisely to maintain the category of a US ethnic/immigrant literature. While the idea of immigration has long helped the United States to produce a national imaginary, and has also served as one of the major organizing categories for US literary studies, the concept is now shifted in order to accomplish the same purpose in the "new era" of globalization. The essay also offers possible ways in which to read both Alvarez's novel and others like it—ways that might better speak to historical, cultural and socio-economic conditions in which they are produced.
Enforcing Transnational White Solidarity: Asian Migration and the Formation of the U.S.-Canadian Boundary
Authors: Chang Kornel
Published: September 2008

“Enforcing Transnational White Solidarity” examines the struggle over Asian migration and labor trafficking in the Pacific Northwest, showing how it gave rise to a new emphasis on border policing and surveillance on the North American continent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The transnational circulation of Asian merchants, contract laborers, and smugglers integrated disparate points in the Pacific into a complex web of networks, with their myriad of movements traversing multiple and intersecting imperial and national spaces, linking the North American West to Asia and the South Pacific. These ever thickening global connections kindled a countermovement to solidify national borders among Anglo-American settler societies in the Pacific Northwest, who together elaborated new forms of sovereignty in an attempt to exert control over the mobility of Asian migrants around the Pacific and across landed borders in North America, even as they integrated the Pacific Northwest into a larger world. This article reveals how this double movement transformed the U.S.-Canadian boundary from an imaginary abstraction to a social reality on the North American Pacific Rim. It argues that efforts at Asiatic exclusion codified immigration and boundary controls as rightful prerogatives of the nation-state, which in turn, reconstructed racial and national borders through its practical enforcement in Canada and the United States. By relocating the historical origins of the border from the southern to the northern boundary, the article demonstrates that this struggle was transnational in scope, involving contests over Asian migration that extended across the Pacific world. In doing so, it highlights the contested and contingent process of consolidating the territorial state, and considers the multiple and overlapping sites—local, national, and the imperial—that shaped and defined its historical development.
The Deportation Terror
Authors: Buff Rachel Ida
Published: September 2008

This essay locates the recent wave of deportation raids carried out since 2005 by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in their historical context as a racialized system of social control The deportation terror imposed on immigrant communities by these raids is a crucial technology of the state. In the current historical moment, the word terror has been almost entirely defined by the homeland security state as a threat to the nation. A historical and comparative perspective on the experience of terror at the hands of this and other state formations now becomes particularly crucial.
The central comparison in this essay links the deportations of the early cold war period, 1945–1960, with the current moment, characterized by the detention and deportation of foreign-born people, predominantly men, from the Middle East, North and East Africa, South and Southeast Asia after 9/11, and the immigration raids that have constituted a direct governmental response to the immigrant rights mobilizations of 2006–07. In both periods the mass deportations of primarily Mexican laborers accompany constitutionally questionable detention and deportation of the foreign born for reasons defined by the state as “political.” Many political deportations target community leaders who represent foreign-born workers. These deportations render workers more vulnerable to exploitative work conditions and unconstitutional practices. In turn, the large sweeps focusing on immigrant workers have often been retribution for political organizing. The notion that these larger sweeps are market driven, rather than political, functions to define and divide foreign-born communities.
The deportation of particular foreign-born individuals for reasons of their ideology during the early cold war, or in the case of the “Special Registration” Program implemented in 2002, their birth place or religion, is a component of a racial regime governing entrance and exit. Operative since the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924 and the resulting criminalization of border crossing, this racial regime includes the deportation of foreign-born workers and their families as well as, in some cases, citizens who are members of racialized communities.
Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America
Authors: Maira Sunaina
Published: September 2008

This article focuses on the ways in which young South Asian Muslim immigrants living in the U.S. express ideas of national and transnational belonging during the War on Terror. Based on an ethnographic study in New England, the research explores how a group of working-class Muslim immigrant youth grappled with issues of displacement, belonging, and exclusion that extended well before and after 2001 but were heightened in the post-9/11 moment. The article discusses the everyday experiences of national belonging, or cultural citizenship, for young immigrants in the contexts of the school, workplace, and public sphere and, in particular, their experiences of transnational or flexible citizenship. Drawing on Aihwa Ong’s work, the essay demonstrates that the flexiblization of citizenship for these youth was not accompanied by a flexiblity of rights but by bio-political regimes of insecurity under neoliberal capitalism. These children of economic migrants belong to transnational families whose economic and cultural strategies defy Orientalist notions of “tradition” and “model minority” families while rupturing and recreating familial and social ties.
The paper analyses three domains in which flexible citizenship is practiced or negotiated by youth: transnational popular culture and cultural consumption, labor and education, war and human rights. The tensions in each of these domains are embedded in the larger context of U.S. empire, which I argue is in itself a form of flexible power based on ambiguous, covert, or non-territorial forms of global control. Transnational economic, social, or political ties have been curtailed for Muslim immigrant communities by the national security state and any flexibility in their national allegiances is seen as a threat. The paradox of flexible citizenship in the current moment is that it is considered desirable for some and dangerous for others, underscoring that sovereign rights to “freedom” and “mobility” are unevenly distributed.
Immigration Enforcement and the Complication of National Sovereignty: Understanding Local Enforcement as an Exercise in Neoliberal Governance
Authors: Kretsedemas Philip
Published: September 2008

This essay reviews the recent expansion of immigration laws that have been enacted by local and state governments to control unauthorized migration. Although these laws evoke a conventional, territorial paradigm of national sovereignty, I demonstrate that they are actually leading toward a more complex form of sovereignty that tolerates wide variations in the way that immigration laws are enforced in different parts of the United States. I also argue that it is a mistake to view these laws only through the lens of an immigration control agenda. Drawing on the writing of Aiwha Ong and Georgio Agamben, I observe that these laws have been shaped by neoliberal governing strategies that create exceptions to prior legal precedent as well as fostering a looser connection between territoriality, rights and legal status. My discussion explains how local enforcement laws have been shaped by these neoliberal priorities, which are more oriented toward the selective policing of an expanding migrant workforce than toward mass deportation of "illegals." As a result, immigration scholars and immigrant rights advocates should come to terms with the likelihood that these priorities will become the dominant, driving force behind future trajectories of local enforcement and other forms of immigration enforcement.
Beyond Mexico: Guadalupan Sacred Space Production and Mobilization in a Chicago Suburb
Authors: Peña Elaine
Published: September 2008

Beyond México opens at a meeting of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran and “American” (presumably devotees with U.S. citizenship) Guadalupanas/os at the “Second Tepeyac of North America” in a Chicago suburb. Taking this Sunday morning gathering at the “Second Tepeyac,” a replica of Tepeyac—the Marian shrine in Mexico City where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in 1531—and early twentieth labor migration circuits to the Chicago area as a point of departure, this article examines the transposition of sacred space across national borders. The essay contends that although both shrines share architectural elements and devotional performances, the U.S.-based sacred space doubles as a political platform and safe haven for undocumented devotees. The “Second Tepeyac” provides naturalization and citizenship workshops, trips to Chicago and the state capital to support immigration reform, and an environment that encourages intercultural dialogue and socio-economic networking. La Virgen de Guadalupe is an inherent part of Mexico’s identity. Her presence in the Midwest, however, does not offer solely a Mexican perspective; the “Second Tepeyac” provides an atmosphere in which communities are encouraged to celebrate their distinct heritages and homelands. Guadalupanas/os acknowledge each other’s national affiliations but their religious principles exceed secular identifications.
Mexican Nationalisms, Southern Racisms: Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the U.S. South, 1908–1939
Authors: Weise Julie M.
Published: September 2008

The early twentieth century brought transformative Mexican migrations to places from Texas to Alaska, Michigan to California, and the South was no exception. Examining the case of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the South from 1908 to 1939, this essay shows how international migration, in this case between the United States and Mexico, has shaped the racial ideologies of nations and societies at both ends of migration streams. It traces the arrival of Mexican immigrants to two Southern locations, New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, and discusses their initial experiences of race and class there. It then focuses on the middle- and upper-class community surrounding Mexico’s New Orleans consulate, as well as the self-appointed leadership among poor Mexican sharecroppers in Gunnison, Mississippi, to illuminate the distinctly Mexican strategies which Mexicans of all social classes pursued in their quest to attain and retain white status in the U.S. South.
In the early twentieth century U.S. South, there were no Mexican Americans who could call upon U.S. citizenship or claims to be “Caucasian” under the law, nor organizers drawing Mexicans into class-based politics. There, Mexicans’ sole cultural and political claims took the form of Mexico-directed activism, through which the racial ideologies of both immigrants and Mexican government bureaucrats had a discernible impact upon the color line’s shape and foundations. Conversely, it was in the South that Mexican government representatives most directly confronted the black-white eugenic binary of U.S. white supremacy, and did so without the support of U.S.-based institutions or groups. This article argues that during the decade following the Mexican revolution, Mexican immigrants and bureaucrats in the South emphasized Mexico’s pre-revolutionary tradition of cultural whitening, avoiding the official post-revolutionary celebration of race-mixing, or mestizaje. In so doing, they successfully elided questions of eugenic race in their negotiation of the color line. They eventually secured Mexicans’ acceptance as white, a trajectory more closely mirroring national trends for European, rather than Mexican immigrants in the same period.
New Americans or Diasporic Nationalists?: Mexican Migrant Responses to Naturalization and Implications for Political Participation
Authors: Félix Adrián
Published: September 2008

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews in a citizenship class in Southern California, this paper analyzes Mexican immigrant responses to naturalization. Far from being a conduit for Americanization, the citizenship class emerges as a space where Mexican migrants make the naturalization process intelligible on their own cultural and political terms, positing it as a potentially empowering institution for the immigrant rights movement. Among respondents who were once reticent to seek U.S. citizenship, there seems to be a shift in consensus in favor of naturalization as a political tool to secure stability and community empowerment. Similarly, the newly eligible also share a sense of urgency to naturalize in an immigrant-hostile and increasingly precarious political environment. However, ethnic attachment to the homeland does not always wane over time or upon naturalization. The interview data suggests that naturalizers retain their Mexican ethnic identities and loyalties largely in response to the institutional discrimination they face throughout the process of political enfranchisement. Far from being an impediment to political participation, ethnic identification and attachment to the homeland post-naturalization may drive immigrant political participation across international boundaries.
Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis
Authors: Briggs Laura , McCormick Gladys , Way J. T.
Published: September 2008

This essay argues that transnationalism is an indispensible term, bringing into sharp relief all the ways that scholarly disciplines have relied upon, and reified, the nation. Although some have charged that the concept is intellectually “soft,” this article contends that it does crucial work in undoing academic complicity with the ideological work of constructing the nation. Transnationalism is, we argue, a radical intervention with roots in anti-imperialist writers back to Fanon and Wallerstein, forward to the sharpest critics of neoliberalism. Drawing on work principally from Latin American and the United States, this article suggests that transnationalism need not be a concept that obviates our ability to think borders, walls, and militaries, but is precisely the conceptual apparatus that allows us to locate objects like the border wall in relation to transnational currents of globalization and its discontents.
In 1986, Joan Scott summarized a decade of feminist scholarship by arguing that gender refers to far more than sexed bodies (or even worse, female ones), but to entire symbolic systems and forms of social organization. In this piece, we suggest that the same is true of the nation—that it has organized knowledge, disciplines (Mexican History, American Literature), and forms of social organization (the entire bureaucratic apparatus associated with the Guatemalan economy). While the nation is anything but a transhistorical, natural, or autonomous entity, it has been politically usefully and academically expedient to proceed as if it were. “Gender” was the name Scott gave to the conceptual acid that could reveal the constructedness and utility of sex; “transnationalism” is the sign under which a critique of the nation has been underway.
Animating Statues: A Case Study in Ritual
Authors: Johnston Sarah Iles
Published: September 2008

This article argues that the practice of ritualized animation developed only late in Greek and Roman history, within a particular intellectual climate—the Platonizing religious system called theurgy. Ritualized animation enabled theurgists to work within a worldview that sharply distinguished between the physical and spiritual realms. I use my reconstruction of animation rituals as a platform to make some observations about how we should study ancient rituals, suggesting that scholars need to listen more attentively to what our sources say about their rituals than we have been accustomed to do in the wake of the theoretical legacies of social anthropology. Reconstruction of ancient animation rituals and their intentions “from the inside” aligns well with recent theories of ritual, even as the two offer different sorts of insights.
Tragedy as “An Augury of a Happy Life”
Authors: Wise Jennifer
Published: September 2008

Like Aeschylus’s Women of Aetna , fifth-century Greek tragedy functioned as an augury of happiness. In Aristotle’s time, however, these tetralogies were performed only as “monologies.” Stripped of their celebratory satyr plays and other civic elements, fifth-century tragedies came to look like one-act tear-jerkers, merely sad stories of the deaths of kings. This type of play, which Aristotle calls tragedy and attributes to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, was probably the invention of fourth-century Method actors. Their professional skill, together with new rules for tragic competition, transformed a propitious political art into a weepy histrionic one—and produced Aristotle’s otherwise perplexing “sad-ending” theory of tragedy.
Environmental Correlates of Gambling Behavior Among College Students: A Partial Application of Problem Behavior Theory to Gambling
Authors: Wickwire Emerson M. , McCausland Claudia , Whelan James P. , Luellen Jason , Meyers Andrew W. , Studaway Adrienne
Published: September 2008

This study explored the relation between gambling behavior among college students and the perceived environment, the component of problem behavior theory (Jessor & Jessor, 1977) that assesses the ways that youth perceive their parents and peers. Two hundred and thirty-three ethnically diverse undergraduates at a large urban public university completed a questionnaire to measure the perceived environment and the South Oaks Gambling Screen to assess gambling behavior and problems. The perceived environment accounted for significant variance in gambling problems and gambling frequency, with proximal components displaying stronger relations than distal components to the dependent variables. Men displayed higher rates than women of problem but not pathological gambling. These results provide further evidence of the salience of perceptions of parent and peer influences for understanding college gambling and support the perceived environment as a useful conceptualization of these perceptions. Directions for future research and suggestions for student service professionals are considered.
Importance of, Responsibility for, and Satisfaction With Academic Advising: A Faculty Perspective
Authors: Allen Janine M. , Smith Cathleen L.
Published: September 2008

A convenient response to the perennial problem of student dissatisfaction with academic advising is to simply say that faculty need to do more and better advising. In this study, faculty were surveyed about their attitudes toward, and experiences with, academic advising. Results showed that faculty, although generally satisfied with the advising they provide, do not necessarily feel responsible for all of the kinds of academic advising they believe are important for students to receive. These findings point to a gap in advising services that we suggest might best be bridged through faculty and student affairs partnerships.
Papyri from the Great Persecution: Roman and Christian Perspectives
Authors: Luijendijk Annemarie
Published: September 2008

Two papyrus documents from the time of the Great Persecution—an official document relating to the confiscation of church property and a private letter from a man to his wife—show how Christians were coping with the imperial measures by small acts of resistance. These mundane texts thus nuance our understanding of this formative period for ancient Christianity.
Is it “Every Man’s Right to Have Babies If He Wants Them”?: Male Pregnancy and the Limits of Reproductive Liberty
Authors: Sparrow Robert
Published: September 2008

Since the 1980s, a number of medical researchers have suggested that in the future it might be possible for men to become pregnant. Given the role played by the right to reproductive liberty in other debates about reproductive technologies, it will be extremely difficult to deny that this right extends to include male pregnancy. However, this constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of the idea of reproductive liberty. One therefore would be well advised to look again at the extent of this purported right in other contexts in which it is deployed.
The Religious Features of Scientific Medicine
Authors: Vanderpool Harold Y.
Published: September 2008

Against the common assumption that modern medicine is altogether secular and scientific, this article argues that the practice of medicine manifests characteristic features of religion. This exposition is predicated upon a delineation of the phenomenological characteristics of religion and upon a critical analysis of the ways scientific medicine does or does not manifest these characteristics. Insofar as medical practice is unknowingly religious, that practice can cause harm and delusion. An acknowledgment that scientific medicine embodies features of religion is a beginning point for scholarly reflection, criticism, and research from a variety of academic perspectives.
Non-invasive detection of colorectal cancer – do we still need the guaiac-based fecal occult blood test?1
Authors: Stein Jürgen , Loitsch Stefan M. , Shastri Yogesh
Published: September 2008

Given the simplicity of the method and how it can be applied, as well as proof that it lowers the mortality rate, fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) is currently the most commonly used screening method for colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the test suffers from poor sensitivity, particularly with respect to detecting early stages, as well as low acceptance among the population. Preliminary data on detecting calprotectin and tumour-M2-PK in the stool indicated that a better screening performance could be expected. But these tests also suffer from low sensitivity in detecting early stages and from poor specificity, thus limiting the usefulness of the tests as a result of high follow-up costs. Recently developed immunological tests (I-FOBT) demonstrate significantly increased sensitivity and specificity. I-FOBTs use antibodies specific to human hemoglobin and are therefore not affected by diet and drugs, leading to improved patient partipication. At present, I-FOBTs seem to be the most cost-effective approach for non-invasive screening. The detection of tumour-DNA in the stool opens up a new era in early diagnosis of colorectal cancer. Small trials have pointed to a very high sensitivity of these methods: 62–91% for colorectal cancer and between 26% and 73% for adenomas, with a very high level of specificity (93–100%). The major drawback of this type of testing, compared with other screening tests available today, is its high cost.