bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Gay Oral History Project in Zimbabwe: Black Empowerment, Human Rights, and the Research Process
Authors: Epprecht Marc 
Published: May 2006

This paper discusses an attempt to apply historical research directly to the development of a culture of human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe. The research concerns sensitive and controversial issues around sexuality, race, and nationalism that are important in and of themselves. What I would like to argue here, however, is that the method used to design and carry out the research project is at least as interesting. This holds true from the point of view of both professional historians like myself and community activists—two perspectives that are often difficult to reconcile in practice. In this project, “ivory tower” and “grassroots” are brought together in a mutually enriching relationship that offers an alternative model to the methods that currently predominate in the production of historical knowledge in southern Africa.Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) is a non-government organization that was founded in 1990. It provides counseling, legal and other support services to men and women struggling with issues of sexuality. It also strives to promote a politics in Zimbabwe that would embrace sexual orientation as a human right. Toward the latter goal it has lobbied government for changes to current laws that discriminate against homosexuals and which expose gay men and women to extortion (so far, in vain). With somewhat more success, it has lobbied the police directly to raise awareness of the extortion issue. GALZ also publishes pamphlets, a newsletter, and other information designed to educate Zimbabweans in general about homosexuality and homophobia. Through these efforts it seeks to challenge popular stereotypes of homosexuals as Westernized perverts who spread diseases and corrupt children. One recent publication included detailed historical research that showed how homosexual practices—including loving and mutual homosexual relationships—have been indigenous to the country throughout recorded history, and probably from time immemorial.
Images of an African Ruler: Kabaka Mutesa of Buganda, ca. 1857–1884
Authors: Reid Richard 
Published: May 2006

There can be few areas of the world which have been more systematically misrepresented than Africa, especially that part of the continent south of the Sahara. For centuries, and certainly since the Midas-like Mansa Musa sat astride West Africa on the maps of fourteenth-century Spain, the weird and wonderful imagery of Africa has flooded Europe's vision of that continent. Much of this imagery has been generated by Europeans, and even where it has been generated by Africans themselves, the original meaning and intention is often difficult to discover. The imagery has, to the non-African world, become Africa; this is the case to the point where, at the end of the twentieth century, almost every adjective placed before the name “Africa” is loaded, has some ideological or political currency, and indeed has a history of its own.Most famously, perhaps, Africa was for a long time “dark”, and still that image periodically appears in assorted Western media, a comforting crutch to an audience which remains somewhat confused as to what to make of the continent. Africa is often supposed to have a “heart,” in a way that neither Europe nor North America does. This is perhaps related to the continent's geographical shape, for it is rather more self-contained than Europe, Asia, or the Americas. It is more likely, however, that an African “heart” is sought precisely because it cannot, using the clumsy surgical tools of Western culture, be found. In more recent times, Africa's “dark heart” has been replaced by its “troubled heart;” but the idea remains unchanged.
What's in an Alias? Family Names, Individual Histories, and Historical Method in the Western Sudan
Authors: Mann Gregory 
Published: May 2006

Writing in hisLes Bambara du Ségou et du Kaarta, the French colonial administrator and ethnographer Charles Monteil considered the family name, orjamu, tosum up the history of the community which bears it: it refers to everything which concerns the ancestors, as well as the accomplishments of current members of the community, including their turpitudes and even their alliances, be they fraternal, conjugal, political, or supernatural.Monteil was right, to a certain degree. In the Western Sudan, family names are weighted with history and significance. Yet what Monteil characterized as evidence of stability and tradition, Charles Bird has more recently called a “ticket to mobility.” The fluidity and mobility that had come to characterize thejamueluded Monteil entirely, just as its mutability often eludes contemporary historians.Ajamurepresentsbothan all-important identity marker and an instrument of “mobility.” Yet it is also highly contigent, even aleatory. This mobility has a double sense, signifying both the mutable nature of the name itself and its potential for “making outsiders insiders” by creating an immediate link between people who would otherwise be strangers.Jamuw—the plural takes a ‘w’—also have a deep historicity. Embedded in them are history and myth, along with suggestions of family occupational category—commonly referred to as ‘caste’—and social status. Epics such asSundiataoften provide etymologies and legendary origins of family names, and scholars have sought—misguidedly—to use these to understand the historical processes of ‘caste’ formation and other aspects of the distant Mande past.
Historical Account or Discourse on Identity? A Reexamination of Fulbe Hegemony and Autochthonous Submission in Banyo
Authors: Gausset Quentin 
Published: May 2006

Traditional accounts of the nineteenth-century Fulbe conquest in northern Cameroon tell roughly the same story: following the example of Usman Dan Fodio in Nigeria, the Fulbe of Cameroon organized in the beginning of the nineteenth century a “jihad” or a “holy war” against the local pagan populations to convert them to Islam and create an Islamic state. The divisions among the local populations and the military superiority of the Fulbe allowed them to conquer almost all northern Cameroon. They forced those who submitted to give an annual tribute of goods and servants, and they raided the other groups. In these traditional accounts the Fulbe are presented as unchallenged masters, while the local populations are depicted as slaves who were powerless over their fate; their role in the conquest of the region and in the administration of the new political order is supposed to have been insignificant.I will show that, on the contrary, in the area of Banyo the Wawa and Bute played a crucial role in the conquest of the sultanate and in its administration. I will then re-examine the cliche that all members of the local populations were the slaves of the Fulbe by distinguishing the fate of the Wawa and Bute on one side from that of the Kwanja and Mambila on the other, and by showing the importance of the Fulbe's identity in shaping the definition of slavery. Finally I will argue that, if the historical accounts found in the scientific literature invariably insist on Fulbe hegemony and minimize the role played by the local populations, it is because those accounts are often based on Fulbe traditions, and because these traditions are remodeled by the Fulbe in order to correspond to their discourse on identity.
“Twixt the Cup and the Lip:” Field Notes on the Way to Print
Authors: Henige David 
Published: May 2006

Typically—very typically—fledgling African historians launch their careers by engaging in a bout of fieldwork, sometimes in archives, but more often on location among a group of people whose activities have somehow captured their interest. Almost as typically, this work in the field then becomes the principal source for historians' future published work, which often never proceeds beyond the bounds set by the initial fieldwork.In this process of course the data accumulated in the field—field notes—become, possibly over and over again, the primary sources for this subsequent work. In some ways this process is not particularly different from that undertaken by other historians who use printed sources more heavily. There are differences, though, not the least of which is that these orally derived field notes grow stale with the passing of time and cannot be revivified as easily as archival notes.Moreover, of course, far more often than not, field notes are never allowed to escape into the public domain, whereas archival sources are usually already there when the historian sets about using them. What were once laboriously handwritten notebooks, and then audio tapes are now more likley to be 3.5″ diskettes, but otherwise they are as jealously guarded in the 1990s as they were in the 1950s. Indeed, perhaps moreso, in that the usable lifespan of a diskette is likely to be significantly less than that of the notebook, if not of the audio tape. In short, in perhaps twenty years posterity will find itself forced to rely on the published products—maybe yet in paper format?—rather than on the raw data which once underpinned them. In the circumstances, it might be worth considering once again the implications of this, with reference to a particular instance of respectable vintage.
Retrieving Hidden Traces of the Intercultural Past: An Introduction to Archival Resources in Cameroon, with Special Reference to the Central Archives of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon
Authors: Thomas Guy 
Published: May 2006

Towards the end of 1886 four missionaries set foot on Cameroonian soil in the harbor of Douala. They were representatives of the Switzerland based Basel Mission (BM) who had arrived to take over from the pioneers of Christian mission work in Cameroon, the British Baptists, two years after this part of west-central Africa had been brought under German colonial rule in 1884. Their challenge was founded on the key objectives of consolidating and expanding the web of christian communities which had been established along the Atlantic coast north of the Wouri estuary.Today, just over 110 years later, traces of the Basel Mission's enterprise are widely spread over the Anglophone South West and North West Provinces of Cameroon. These remnants of the past have been partly reshaped to suit the specific patterns of church activities and administration among their African target groups; partly they have been effaced through the erosive impact of time. But only partly, for numerous episodes and aspects of this chapter on religious and social history are well documented both in substantial collections of records and in several publications.
Being Fair to the Hounds: The Function and Practice of Annotation
Authors: Henige David 
Published: May 2006

Annotation is possibly the aspect of any edition in which the editor is most vulnerable.This is going to be a discourse without footnotes. I have always had a suppressed desire to risk such an indiscretion, and people have asked why I cannot write anything without timidly quoting chapter and verse from some German professor… Where we quote it will be from memory, wens [sic] and all, speaking with conviction but with no authority whatever.If footnotes were a rational form of communication, Darwinian selection would have resulted in the eyes being set vertically rather than on an inefficient horizontal plane.At a conference recently, a member of the audience criticized a historian (not present and not me) for adopting an “ad hominem” strategy in some published criticism. Later I asked her what she meant. Her reply was that the historian had not been content to disagree with certain approaches in another field, but went farther by specifying examples to sustain his case. In other words, he had named names. This struck me as rather a peculiar application of the phrase, but also as an example of the hypersensitivity that sometimes veils healthy and direct colloquy It would certainly be more unkind to shower criticisms at large, a kind of barrage bombing designed as much to intimidate a larger populace as to aim at limited but relevant targets. Moreover, it would be to offer an argument that was so diffuse and anonymous that it would be as meaningless as it was unfocused. One purpose of the present paper is to encourage ways to expand, but also to focus, colloquial arguments.
Mightier than the Sword: The Portuguese Pen in Ndau History
Authors: MacGonagle Elizabeth 
Published: May 2006

For scholars of southeastern Africa interested in the early history of the region, the pen of the Portuguese was indeed mightier than the sword. Although most of the first Portuguese arrivals carried either the sword or the cross, they put these down to wield the pen and leave a written record of their triumphs and travails. The documents left by Portuguese soldiers, religious men, and others in the service of the crown provide details that are relative not only to the Portuguese experience but also to African life. This paper focuses on Portuguese writings that describe the area around the port of Sofala and its hinterland, home to the Shona who live south of the Zambezi river on the central Mozambican coastal plain and the Zimbabwe plateau. Both around Sofala and further west in the interior the inhabitants speak Ndau, a dialect of the Shona language. The wealth of evidence left by the Portuguese since the sixteenth century sheds light on changes and continuities in Ndau history.The materials that have survived are amazingly detailed and informative despite their inherent biases. Historians have long recognized the prejudices of the colonizer either creeping into the documents or jumping off the page in a more blatant manner. The examples provided here are no different. The Portuguese, like other Europeans, had certain notions stemming from a Eurocentric mentality that was an integral part of their worldview. In these records, we see how the quest for gold and a ‘civilizing’ mission coalesced into systematic exploitation.
Propensity Score-Weighted Analysis of Postoperative Infection in Patients With and Without Preoperative Urine Culture
Authors: O’Brien William J. , Schweizer Marin L. , Strymish Judith , Beck Brice F. , Au Vanessa , Chan Jeffrey A. , Brown Madisen , Itani Kamal M. F. , Dukes Kimberly C. , Walhof Julia Friberg , Gupta Kalpana 
Published: March 2024

ImportanceAlthough recent guidelines recommend against performance of preoperative urine culture before nongenitourinary surgery, many clinicians still order preoperative urine cultures and prescribe antibiotics for treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria in an effort to reduce infection risk.ObjectiveTo assess the association between preoperative urine culture testing and postoperative urinary tract infection (UTI) or surgical site infection (SSI), independent of baseline patient characteristics or type of surgery.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis cohort study analyzed surgical procedures performed from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2019, at any of 112 US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers. The cohort comprised VA enrollees who underwent major elective noncardiac, nonurological operations. Machine learning and inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) were used to balance the characteristics between those who did and did not undergo a urine culture. Data analyses were performed between January 2023 and January 2024.ExposuresPerformance of urine culture within 30 days prior to surgery.Main Outcomes and MeasuresThe 2 main outcomes were UTI and SSI occurring within 30 days after surgery. Weighted logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) for postoperative infection based on treatment status.ResultsA total of 250 389 VA enrollees who underwent 288 858 surgical procedures were included, with 88.9% (256 753) of surgical procedures received by males and 48.9% (141 340) received by patients 65 years or older. Baseline characteristics were well balanced among treatment groups after applying IPTW weights. Preoperative urine culture was performed for 10.5% of surgical procedures (30 384 of 288 858). The IPTW analysis found that preoperative urine culture was not associated with SSI (adjusted OR [AOR], 0.99; 95% CI, 0.90-1.10) or postoperative UTI (AOR, 1.18; 95% CI, 0.98-1.40). In analyses limited to orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery as a proxy for prosthetic implants, the adjusted risks for UTI and SSI were also not associated with preoperative urine culture performance.Conclusions and RelevanceThis cohort study found no association between performance of a preoperative urine culture and lower risk of postoperative UTI or SSI. The results support the deimplementation of urine cultures and associated antibiotic treatment prior to surgery, even when using prosthetic implants.
Development and Validation of an Automated Classifier to Diagnose Acute Otitis Media in Children
Authors: Shaikh Nader , Conway Shannon J. , Kovačević Jelena , Condessa Filipe , Shope Timothy R. , Haralam Mary Ann , Campese Catherine , Lee Matthew C. , Larsson Tomas , Cavdar Zafer , Hoberman Alejandro 
Published: March 2024

ImportanceAcute otitis media (AOM) is a frequently diagnosed illness in children, yet the accuracy of diagnosis has been consistently low. Multiple neural networks have been developed to recognize the presence of AOM with limited clinical application.ObjectiveTo develop and internally validate an artificial intelligence decision-support tool to interpret videos of the tympanic membrane and enhance accuracy in the diagnosis of AOM.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis diagnostic study analyzed otoscopic videos of the tympanic membrane captured using a smartphone during outpatient clinic visits at 2 sites in Pennsylvania between 2018 and 2023. Eligible participants included children who presented for sick visits or wellness visits.ExposureOtoscopic examination.Main Outcomes and MeasuresUsing the otoscopic videos that were annotated by validated otoscopists, a deep residual-recurrent neural network was trained to predict both features of the tympanic membrane and the diagnosis of AOM vs no AOM. The accuracy of this network was compared with a second network trained using a decision tree approach. A noise quality filter was also trained to prompt users that the video segment acquired may not be adequate for diagnostic purposes.ResultsUsing 1151 videos from 635 children (majority younger than 3 years of age), the deep residual-recurrent neural network had almost identical diagnostic accuracy as the decision tree network. The finalized deep residual-recurrent neural network algorithm classified tympanic membrane videos into AOM vs no AOM categories with a sensitivity of 93.8% (95% CI, 92.6%-95.0%) and specificity of 93.5% (95% CI, 92.8%-94.3%) and the decision tree model had a sensitivity of 93.7% (95% CI, 92.4%-94.9%) and specificity of 93.3% (92.5%-94.1%). Of the tympanic membrane features outputted, bulging of the TM most closely aligned with the predicted diagnosis; bulging was present in 230 of 230 cases (100%) in which the diagnosis was predicted to be AOM in the test set.Conclusions and RelevanceThese findings suggest that given its high accuracy, the algorithm and medical-grade application that facilitates image acquisition and quality filtering could reasonably be used in primary care or acute care settings to aid with automated diagnosis of AOM and decisions regarding treatment.
Evaluation of the performance of both machine learning models using PET and CT radiomics for predicting recurrence following lung stereotactic body radiation therapy: A single‐institutional study
Authors: Nemoto Hikaru , Saito Masahide , Satoh Yoko , Komiyama Takafumi , Marino Kan , Aoki Shinichi , Suzuki Hidekazu , Sano Naoki , Nonaka Hotaka , Watanabe Hiroaki , Funayama Satoshi , Onishi Hiroshi 
Published: March 2024

AbstractPurposePredicting recurrence following stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for non‐small cell lung cancer provides important information for the feasibility of the individualized radiotherapy and allows to select the appropriate treatment strategy based on the risk of recurrence. In this study, we evaluated the performance of both machine learning models using positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) radiomic features for predicting recurrence after SBRT.MethodsPlanning CT and PET images of 82 non‐small cell lung cancer patients who performed SBRT at our hospital were used. First, tumors were delineated on each CT and PET of each patient, and 111 unique radiomic features were extracted, respectively. Next, the 10 features were selected using three different feature selection algorithms, respectively. Recurrence prediction models based on the selected features and four different machine learning algorithms were developed, respectively. Finally, we compared the predictive performance of each model for each recurrence pattern using the mean area under the curve (AUC) calculated following the 0.632+ bootstrap method.ResultsThe highest performance for local recurrence, regional lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis were observed in models using Support vector machine with PET features (mean AUC = 0.646), Naive Bayes with PET features (mean AUC = 0.611), and Support vector machine with CT features (mean AUC = 0.645), respectively.ConclusionsWe comprehensively evaluated the performance of prediction model developed for recurrence following SBRT. The model in this study would provide information to predict the recurrence pattern and assist in making treatment strategies.
Guiding modern traditional Chinese medicine research using the theory of state‐target differentiation and treatment—Maintaining the validity of traditional Chinese medicine and creating new medical science
Authors: Lin Jiaran , Tian Jiaxing , Fang Xinyi , Zhang Boxun , Yang Yingying , Wei Yu , He Lisha , Lei Ye , Song Bin , Zhao Linhua , Tong Xiaolin 
Published: March 2024

AbstractAs an important part of Chinese civilization, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a long history and broad social foundation. In the development of modern medicine, TCM bears the responsibility of inheriting Chinese culture, while integrating with modern science and technology to continuously promote medical progress. The theory of “state‐target differentiation and treatment” is an innovative model combining Chinese and Western medicine that has provided a new mindset and method for modernizing TCM. This theory not only guides the reconstruction of modern TCM diagnosis and treatment systems, but also strongly promotes the reconstruction of the modern herbal system. As an emerging bioinformatics technology, phenomics research can reveal biological processes dynamically and quantitatively, which will help “open the black box” of TCM by providing technical methods to reveal the nature of “state” and the mechanism of “state modulation” in TCM. TCM can provide a valuable clinical reference from the perspective of disease cognition, sort out phenomics information parameters systematically and uniformly, and provide more accurate and meaningful data for phenomics research. The in‐depth combination of TCM and phenomics from the concept and technology will vigorously promote the development of human precision medicine. Modern TCM research guided by the theory of state‐target differentiation and treatment can effectively improve the scientific basis and targetability of clinical treatments and can also initiate a breakthrough in the integration of Chinese and Western medicine, further promoting the profound communication and cooperation between Chinese and Western medicine, so as to achieve better development of medicine in the future.