On an Empty Stomach

Author(s):  
Tom Scott-Smith

This book examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian “scientific” soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, the book argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement, but rather is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical project, but the way humanitarians conceive and tackle human needs has always been deeply influenced by culture, politics, and society. These influences extend down to the most detailed mechanisms for measuring malnutrition and providing sustenance. As the book shows, over the past century, the humanitarian approach to hunger has redefined food as nutrients and hunger as a medical condition. Aid has become more individualized, medicalized, and rationalized, shaped by modernism in bureaucracy, commerce, and food technology. The book focuses on the gains and losses that result, examining the complex compromises that arise between efficiency of distribution and quality of care. It concludes that humanitarian groups have developed an approach to the empty stomach that is dependent on compact, commercially produced devices and is often paternalistic and culturally insensitive.

Author(s):  
Roger Ekirch

Although a universal necessity, sleep, as the past powerfully indicates, is not a biological constant. Before the Industrial Revolution, sleep in western households differed in a variety of respects from that of today. Arising chiefly from a dearth of artificial illumination, the predominant form of sleep was segmented, consisting of two intervals of roughly 3 hours apiece bridged by up to an hour or so of wakefulness. Notwithstanding steps taken by families to preserve the tranquillity of their slumber, the quality of pre-industrial sleep was poor, owing to illness, anxiety, and environmental vexations. Large portions of the labouring population almost certainly suffered from sleep deprivation. Despite the prevalence of sleep-onset insomnia, awakening in the middle of the night was thought normal. Not until the turn of the nineteenth century and sleep’s consolidation did physicians view segmented sleep as a disorder requiring medication.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 798-798
Author(s):  
Lama Assi ◽  
Ahmed Shakarchi ◽  
Bonnielin Swenor ◽  
Nicholas Reed

Abstract Sensory impairment is a barrier to patient-provider communication and access to care, which may impact satisfaction with care. Satisfaction with the quality of care received in the past year was assessed in the 2017 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (weighted sample=53,905,182 Medicare beneficiaries). Self-reported sensory impairment was categorized as no sensory impairment, hearing impairment (HI)-only, vision impairment (VI)-only, and dual sensory impairment (DSI) – concurrent HI and VI. In a model adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics and health determinants, having DSI was associated with higher odds of dissatisfaction with the quality of care received (Odds Ratio [OR]=1.53, 95%Confidence Interval [CI]=1.14-2.06) relative to no sensory impairment; however, having HI-only or VI-only were not (OR=1.33, 95%CI=1.94-1.89, and OR=1.32, 95%CI=0.95-1.93, respectively). These findings have implications for healthcare providers as Medicare shifts to value-based reimbursement. Moreover, previous work that singularly focused on HI or VI alone may have failed to recognize the compounded effect of DSI.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 559-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asadusjjaman Suman ◽  
Fiona Dyer ◽  
Duanne White

Abstract. Thirty-six borehole temperature–depth profiles were analysed to reconstruct the ground surface temperature history (GSTH) of eastern Tasmania for the past 5 centuries. We used the singular value decomposition method to invert borehole temperatures to produce temperature histories. The quality of borehole data was classified as high or low based on model misfit. The quality of the borehole data was not dependent on topography or land use. Analysis reveals that three to five high-quality borehole temperature–depth profiles were adequate to reconstruct robust paleotemperature records from any area. Average GSTH reconstructed from Tasmanian boreholes shows temperature increases about 1.2 ± 0.2 °C during the past 5 centuries. Reconstructed temperatures were consistent with meteorological records and other proxy records from Tasmania during their period of overlap. Temperature changes were greatest around the north-east coast and decreased towards the centre of Tasmania. The extension of the East Australian Current (EAC) further south and its strengthening around the north-east coast of Tasmania over the past century was considered a prime driver of warmer temperatures observed in north-east Tasmania.


Urban History ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Meller

This paper juxtaposes two key themes: the concept of citizenship and ideas on urban renewal over the past century. The aim is to explore the interaction of cultural changes and the physical environment of cities. The concept of citizenship represents a cultural response to social change which itself has changed dramatically over the past century. Urban renewal has taken many forms. Yet behind all the growing technical expertise in dealing with the physical environment, there are specific social responses to the city which legitimize action. By looking at citizenship and urban renewal together, it is possible to establish a perspective on how the urban environment has been manipulated over the past century, often in ways which have barely interfaced with the social demands of many sections of the community.


Author(s):  
Steven A. Schroeder

During the past two decades a great deal has been learned about the role of physicians in generating medical costs and about ways of changing physicians' behavior so as to reduce those costs (8;10;19;30;34). Unfortunately, very little is known about how cost reductions affect the quality of care.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 141-147
Author(s):  
Maria Faidi

Accordingly to Shay and Sellers-Young (2005) “the term “belly dance” was adopted by natives and non-natives to denote all solo dance forms from Morocco to Uzbekistan that engage the hips, torso, arms and hands in undulations, shimmies, circles and spirals.” Dance historian Curt Sachs depicted the dance as “the swinging of the rectus abdominis” (Sachs 1963). This movement has been performed by many oriental dancers in the past century and has become part of the routine of oriental dancers worldwide. This movement has even named the dance “belly dance,” and become one of the most representative elements of contemporary Egyptian culture.This paper will be organized as follows: firstly, I am going to explain succinctly how I use the term “subaltern” in relation to dance and colonialism. Secondly, I am going to present the main scenarios, actors, and factors in which the rolling and trembling of the abdomen was danced, watched, desired and hated at the end of the nineteenth century, provoking strong love/hate reactions among the fin de siecle public. The discourse intermingles both dance and feminist analysis observing how movement constituted a metaphor of the unequal power relations between the metropolis and the colony within the particular historical context of British colonialism in Egypt.


1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Steckel

Quantitative historians who mine diverse sources of evidence usually fret over the quality of their raw materials. Most papers that introduce new sources of data attempt to explain who originally collected the evidence, why it was collected, and how the actual use of the data may differ from the original intentions. These discussions often include estimates of omissions or biases in the records and may explain the sensitivity of results to underlying assumptions.With a few notable exceptions, scholars have given surprisingly little attention to the quality of census data (see Ginsberg 1988; Furstenberg et al. 1979; Sharpless and Shortridge 1975). This neglect is remarkable in view of the public debate over the accuracy of the modern censuses, the conventions of scholarly scrutiny that apply to other types of records, and the widespread use made of census documents by nearly all disciplinary approaches to study of the past. Stimulated in part by the declining costs of entering and managing large databases, historians have intensively used the manuscript schedules of population for the nineteenth century, and numerous projects were recently completed or are planned for those of the early twentieth century (e.g., Ruggles and Menard 1990). Researchers have also made considerable use of additional schedules collected by the U.S. census beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, including those for slaves, manufacturing, and agriculture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (82) ◽  
Author(s):  
Humberto De Moraes Novaes

Esta resenha histórica pretende recordar os desafios para implementar qualidade na assistência nos hospitais brasileiros. Várias iniciativas foram propostas nos últimos 30 anos, mas a realidade atual ainda demonstra a grande necessidade de que muitas ações se têm por fazer. Esperamos que o alerta trazido pelo coronavírus possa estimular as mudanças necessárias para estas transformações.Palavras-chave: Gestão de qualidade em saúde; Acreditação hospitalar; Pandemia pelo novo coronavíruis (2019-nCoV) ABSTRACTThis historical review intends to recall the challenges to implement quality of care in Brazilian hospitals. Several initiatives have been proposed in the past 30 years, but the current reality still demonstrates the great need for many actions to be done. We hope that the alert brought by the coronavirus can stimulate the necessary changes for these transformations.Keywords: Quality Management; Hospital accreditation; New Coronavirus Pandemic (2019-nCoV)


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin G. Barnhurst

Since the nineteenth century, more kinds of news outlets and ways of presenting news grew along with telegraphic, telephonic, and digital communications, leading journalists, policymakers, and critics to assume that more events became available than ever before. Attentive audiences say in surveys that they feel overloaded with information, and journalists tend to agree. Although news seems to have become more focused on events, several studies analyzing U.S. news content for the past century and a half show that journalists have been including fewer events within their coverage. In newspapers the events in stories declined over the twentieth century, and national newscasts decreased the share of event coverage since 1968 on television and since 1980 on public radio. Mainstream news websites continued the trend through the 2000s. Instead of providing access to more of the “what”, journalists moved from event-centered to meaning-centered news, still claiming to give a factual account in their stories, built on a foundation of American realism. As journalists concentrated on fewer and bigger events to compete, audiences turned away from mainstream news to look for what seems like an abundance of events in digital media.


PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 549-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Kuist

In a volume of miscellaneous manuscripts at the British Museum, placed at random and inconspicuously among larger folio leaves, is a set of notes headed “Sterne.” The notes were written by Joseph Hunter, the nineteenth-century antiquary and literary historian, and they came to the British Museum with Hunter's other papers shortly after his death in 1861. In view of the abundant information about Sterne's private life which the notes contain, it is surprising that this item has remained unindexed and that it is not mentioned in the catalogue description of the volume. In the absence of such references, very likely only an occasional reader who has happened upon them has seen these notes, and, since the major biographies of Laurence Sterne make no use of distinct details which Hunter provides, it is quite possible that none of Sterne's biographers have encountered Hunter's information during the past century. At present, our familiarity with the early years of Sterne's marriage and his residence at Sutton-on-the-Forest is rather limited, based as it is upon isolated public records, some letters, fugitive anecdotes, and the unflattering and sometimes vicious account written by John Croft. No impartial memoirs with any claim to authenticity or wealth of details have until now seemed available. Thus, the intimate account of Sterne which Hunter has given presents to modern scholars an unexpected and promising opportunity to gain new insight into the life and, perhaps, into the work of one of England's most unusual writers. A transcript of Hunter's notes appears below, followed by a brief evaluation of them according to our present knowledge of Laurence Sterne.


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