Food Insecurity and Associated Factors in Brazilian Undergraduates during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Undergraduates may face challenges to assure food security, related to economic and mental distress, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to assess food insecurity and its associated factors in undergraduates during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online cross-sectional study was conducted from August 2020 to February 2021 with 4775 undergraduates from all Brazilian regions. The questionnaire contained socio-economic variables, the validated Brazilian food insecurity scale, and the ESQUADA scale to assess diet quality. The median age of the students was 22.0 years, and 48.0% reported income decreasing with the pandemic. Food insecurity was present in 38.6% of the students, 4.5% with severe food insecurity and 7.7% moderate. Logistic regressions showed students with brown and black skin color/race presented the highest OR for food insecurity; both income and weight increase or reduction during the pandemic was also associated with a higher OR for food insecurity, and better diet quality was associated with decreased OR for food insecurity. Our study showed a considerable presence of food insecurity in undergraduates. Policy for this population must be directed to the most vulnerable: those with brown and black skin color/race, who changed income during the pandemic, and those presented with difficulties maintaining weight and with poor diet quality.

Transient neonatal hyperpigmentation of the proximal nail fold in a Chinese infant: a case report

Cutaneous alterations are common in neonates and usually occur in the first few days of life. Most of these are transient and benign, appearing as physiological responses to birth. Skin pigmentation disorders are considered transitory dermatoses of newborn infants. Nail pigmentation manifests as asymptomatic brown to bluish-black skin pigmentation over the fingers and toes in newborns. Hyperpigmentation of the distal phalanx of both hands and feet is commonly found in dark-skinned newborns, but it is rare in fair-skinned newborns and East Asian populations. We herein describe a Chinese infant with transient neonatal hyperpigmentation of the proximal nail fold.

The Name of Grim: Tracing the Character of Grim the Collier in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Theatre

Grim the Collier is a curious comic character who receives little critical attention. Grim appears in three key plays, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pamphlets, herbals, and ballad culture. This article examines, and rejects, Grim as a potentially useful figure for environmental awareness. I dispel legends about the basis of this character, and examine how the labile significance of the name ‘Grim’ implicates it in networks of superficial similarity between devils, colliers, and racialized black skin. These networks link to the proverb that underlies most early modern depictions of Grim: ‘like will to like quoth the devil to the collier’.

Existential Psychoanalysis and Sociogeny

This article explores Sartre’s existential psychoanalysis as a phenomenological method for apprehending the fundamental project of the existent through an examination of the anonymous features of human desire. In grasping the anonymity underlying the “I want,” existential psychoanalysis seeks the meaning of freedom from a standpoint of alterity. I then analyze Fanon’s Black Skin White Masks as a work of existential psychoanalysis which hinges on his use of “sociogeny” to diagnose the alienation of Black existents. Finally, I conclude by examining the implications of a Fanonian existential psychoanalysis for anti-racism through a discussion of Michael Monahan’s critical reflections on the notion of being nonracist.

Painting historiography: Meleko Mokgosi's Democratic Intuition

This interview focuses particularly on Democratic Intuition (2013-20), Meleko Mokgosi's epic, eight-chapter painting cycle, the title of which references Gayatri Spivak's lecture on the necessary relationship between education and democracy. Education, reflection on theory and practice and engagement with young practitioners are all important parts of Mokgosi's work. The interview discusses the way the chapter format of Democratic Intuition is influenced by film processes, and the research and critical analysis on which his work is based; this includes historiography; the western genre of history painting; narrative tropes and the work of Hayden White; and painting techniques that more accurately construct Black skin tones. It also discusses discourses of race and assumptions about whiteness in the western canon; and whether there is a possibility for the Black subject to inhabit allegorical representational space without being overdetermined by histories of Blackness and race discourse. Stuart Hall's work has been important to Mokgosi because of its analysis of the complexities of the discourses within which cultural production and consumption is located. This has been helpful for reflecting on the location of the western art tradition within discourses of the Enlightenment and western humanism, which provide specific rules of circulation and consumption, and structures of authority. Such discourses assume that the viewer has the necessary tools or literacies to read in order to arrive at the meanings proposed in cultural objects. Mokgosi is engaged in continuous reflection on the extent to which, in spite of this, he, as a particular subject from Botswana, has managed to locate meaning within the narrow practice of painting.

COLORISM IN TONI MORRISONS GOD HELP THE CHILD

The present paper has been specifically designed to scrutinize the aspect of colorism in Toni Morrisons well acclaimed novel God Help the Child. African American literature is an academic body of writing produced by African descendants residing in America. The literary canon of African- American literature emerged in late part of 18th century in oral forms like sermon, gospel, music, jazz, blues and spirituals. African American writers have deliberately expressed their painful agony, racial segregation, social injustice and ill treatment which they tolerated in white American society. Toni Morrison was a prolific female novelist of African-American literary writing. Morrisons eleventh novel God Help the Child prominently deals with colorism, racism and child abuse. Conceptually, the term Colorism was coined by Alice Walker to address the superiority of lighter or white skin over the dark. Colorism has its genetic roots in racism because without racism the standardization of color conflict would not be exist. The novel unfolds the story of Bride, also known as Lula Ann who is born with dark black color. She receives ill treatment by her own parents and gets negative rejection because of having black skin. Brides dark color ruins her golden childhood period. Louis Bridewell rejects Bride from accepting as his baby. Similarly, Sweetness breeds Bride with harsh treatment and cruelty. The research study will primarily focus on to address the color conflict faced by child protagonist Lula Ann.

Evolutionary ecology of climacteric and non-climacteric fruits

Fleshy fruits can be divided between climacteric (CL, showing a typical rise in respiration and ethylene production with ripening after harvest) and non-climacteric (NC, showing no rise). However, despite the importance of the CL/NC traits in horticulture and the fruit industry, the evolutionary significance of the distinction remains untested. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that NC fruits, which ripen only on the plant, are adapted to tree dispersers (feeding in the tree), and CL fruits, which ripen after falling from the plant, are adapted to ground dispersers. A literature review of 276 reports of 80 edible fruits found a strong correlation between CL/NC traits and the type of seed disperser: fruits dispersed by tree dispersers are more likely to be NC, and those dispersed by ground dispersers are more likely to be CL. NC fruits are more likely to have red–black skin and smaller seeds (preferred by birds), and CL fruits to have green–brownish skin and larger seeds (preferred by large mammals). These results suggest that the CL/NC traits have an important but overlooked seed dispersal function, and CL fruits may have an adaptive advantage in reducing ineffective frugivory by tree dispersers by falling before ripening.

Giant congenital melanocytic nevi (garment variety): a case report

Giant congenital melanocytic nevi (GCMN) are large brown-to-black skin lesions caused due to genetic mutations which lead to defective proliferation, differentiation and migration of melanoblasts which are precursor cells of melanocytes. There is a mutation in the NRAS gene causing abnormal proliferation of embryonic melanoblasts. Congenital melanocytic nevus is primarily a clinical diagnosis. The malignant melanoma and neurocutaneous melanosis are the two major complications associated with GCMN. The risk of transformation of GCMN to malignant melanoma varies between 0 and 3.8%. About 1% of live births presents with a CMN. The incidence of GCMN is estimated at less than 1: 20,000 newborns. The variety ‘garment-like’ of GCMN is even scarcer, 1: 5,00,000. GCMN has got major psychosocial impact on the patient and his family due to its unsightly appearance. Treatment includes surgical and non-surgical procedures, psychological intervention and clinical follow-up, with special attention to changes in color, texture on the surface of the lesion. We presented a case of 1-day-old female neonate born with GCMN in our hospital.

Black skin, white masks: Izzat as an appropriation of Othello

Izzat was the first mainstream Hindi film to reference Othello and has so far escaped the attention of academics who have begun researching the underexplored field of Bollywood Shakespeares. The film stars Dharmendra playing both versions of a fair- and a dark-skinned twin, which is a novel take on a Shakespearean trope. As a mainstream film, Izzat does not aspire to the pedagogical cultural capital of Shakespeare that Saptapadi does, nor does it reference the performance traditions of Othello onstage or film. However, references to Othello that seem superficial at first glance are embedded throughout the film. The only direct reference to the play is when Deepa meets Shekhar (who is pretending to be his twin Dilip) for the first time, and he sees she has been reading Othello. This sparks off a conversation about appearances and colour prejudices that is quite alien to an industry that traditionally favours light-skinned protagonists but rarely acknowledges it. Through this article, I would like to explore the ways in which Shakespearean tropes, and in particular Shakespeare’s Othello, has been used to explore postcolonial anxieties about identity in India by juxtaposing Adivasi identities with more typical urban Indian identities. The film also suggests that the colonizers have been replaced in Indian society by the urban elite who value superficial white masks and practise a racism that is much more insidious by discriminating against other Indians based on colour, caste and class. Through this exploration, I will also examine how Othello impacts the Indian psyche and why the referencing of Othello in this film points towards the many ways in which Othello is adapted and appropriated in Indian mainstream media.