Our Lives, Our Thoughts and Our Allegiance: New Immigrants and American Industry in 1914

Through comparative analysis of the immigrant labor forces at work in iron mining in northern Minnesota, coal mining in Illinois, and steel milling in the Calumet region of Chicago and Gary, this paper addresses the forms of social distance separating and marginalizing new immigrants from American society and trade unionism that existed in 1914, the year that marked the end point of mass immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe. The “new immigration” was a labor migration that congregated its subjects overwhelmingly in what were called "unskilled" or "semi-skilled" forms of labor. Skilled work was largely, with certain variations, the preserve of "American" or old immigrant workers. This labor gulf separating new immigrants and American workers was hardened by a spatial separateness. New immigrants often lived in what have been called industrial villages—the mining town or location, the factory neighborhood— striking in their isolation and insularity from mainstream society. This separateness and insularity became a major preoccupation for corporate managers, Progressive reformers, and for American trade unions as new immigrants began to engage in major labor struggles leading up to 1914. But among the three industries, only the union of coal miners, the United Mine Workers, enjoyed success in organizing the new immigrants. In the steel mills and the iron mines, the unions were either rooted out or failed to gain a foothold at all. The explanation for these differences is to be found in the different forms of industrial development among the industries studied.

Repeat chlamydia screening among adolescents: cohort study in a school-based programme in New Orleans

OBJECTIVES To describe uptake of chlamydia screening, determine rates of repeated yearly screening and investigate determinants of repeated participation in an organised school-based screening programme. METHODS The authors analysed data from 1995 to 2005 from female and male students in up to 13 schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The authors calculated proportions of students tested among all enrolled students and among those with parental consent and the percentage of positive chlamydia tests in each school year. The authors used random effects logistic regression to examine the effect of past screening history on subsequent participation. RESULTS 35 041 students were registered for at least one school year. Overall coverage was >30% in all school years. Among all students registered for 4 years, 10.6% (95% CI 9.3% to 12.0%) of women and 12.7% (95% CI 11.2% to 14.2%) of men had a test every year. Among students with parental consent for 4 years, 49.3% (95% CI 44.6% to 54.1%) of women and 59.3% (95% CI 54.5% to 64.0%) of men had a test every year. Among students registered for 2 or more years, those with a previous positive chlamydia test were less likely to have a subsequent test (female adjusted OR 0.77, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.88 and male adjusted OR 0.84, 95% CI 0.69 to 1.02). Chlamydia positivity increased over time. CONCLUSIONS High levels of uptake can be achieved in school-based chlamydia screening programmes, but repeated yearly screening is difficult to sustain over time.

New Philology and the Biogenetics of Texts

The discussion on the New Philology triggered by French and North American scholars in the last decade of the 20th century emphasized the material character of textual transmission inside and outside the written evidences of medieval manuscripts by downgrading the active role of the historical author. However, the reception of the ideas propagated by the New Philology adherents was rather divided. Some researchers considered it to be the result of an academic “crisis” (R.T. Pickens) or questioned its innovative status (K. Stackmann: “Neue Philologie?”); others appreciated the “new attitudes to the page” it had brought to mind (J. Bumke after R.H. and M.A, Rouse) or even saw a new era of the “powers of philology” evoked (H.-U. Gumbrecht). Besides the debates on the New Philology another concept of textual materiality strengthened in the last decade, maintaining that textual alterations somewhat relate to biogenetic mutations. In a matter of fact, phenomena such as genetic and textual variation, gene recombination and ‘contamination’ (the mixing of different exemplars in one manuscript text) share common features. The paper discusses to what extent the biogenetic concepts can be used for evaluating manifestations of textual production (as the approach of ‘critique génétique’ does) and of textual transmission (as the phylogenetic analysis of manuscript variation does). In this context yet the genealogical concept of stemmatology – the treelike representation of textual development abhorred by the New Philology adepts – might prove to be useful for describing the history of texts. The textual material to be analyzed will be drawn from the Parzival Project, which is currently preparing a new electronic edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival novel written shortly after 1200 and transmitted in numerous manuscripts up to the age of printing. Researches of the project have actually resulted in suggesting that the advanced knowledge of the manuscript transmission yields a more precise idea on the author’s own writing process.

The Anomalous Merging of the African and North Atlantic Jet Streams during the Northern Hemisphere Winter of 2010

The North Atlantic jet stream during winter 2010 was unusually zonal, so the typically separated Atlantic and African jets were merged into one zonal jet. Moreover, the latitude–height structure and temporal variability of the North Atlantic jet during this winter were more characteristic of the North Pacific. This work examines the possibility of a flow regime change from an eddy-driven to a mixed eddy–thermally driven jet. A monthly jet zonality index is defined, which shows that a persistent merged jet state has occurred in the past, both at the end of the 1960s and during a few sporadic months. The anomalously zonal jet is found to be associated with anomalous tropical Pacific diabatic heating and eddy anomalies similar to those found during a negative North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) state. A Lagrangian back-trajectory diagnosis of eight winters suggests the tropical Pacific is a source of momentum to the Atlantic and African jets and that this source was stronger during the winter of 2010. The results suggest that the combination of weak eddy variance and fluxes in the North Atlantic, along with strong tropical heating, act to push the jet toward a merged eddy–thermally driven state. The authors also find significant SST anomalies in the North Atlantic, which reinforce the anomalous zonal winds, particularly in the eastern Atlantic.

Revealing regional deforestation dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar - Insights from multi-temporal land cover change analysis

The north-eastern escarpment of Madagascar harbours the island’s last remaining large-scale humid forest massifs surrounded by a small-scale agricultural mosaic. There is high deforestation, commonly thought to be caused by shifting cultivation practiced by local land users to produce upland rice. However, little is known about the dynamics between forest and shifting cultivation systems at a regional level. Our study presents a first attempt to quantify changes in the extent of forest and different agricultural land cover classes, and to identify the main dynamics of land cover change for two intervals, 1995–2005 and 2005–2011. Over the 16-year study period, the speed of forest loss increased, the total area of upland rice production remained almost stable, and the area of irrigated rice fields slightly increased. While our findings seem to confirm a general trend of land use intensification, deforestation through shifting cultivation is still on the rise. Deforestation mostly affects the small forest fragments interspersed in the agricultural mosaic and is slowly leading to a homogenization of the landscape. These findings have important implications for future interventions to slow forest loss in the region, as the processes of agricultural expansion through shifting cultivation versus intensified land use cannot per se be considered mutually exclusive.

Beyond deforestation monitoring in conservation hotspots: Analysing landscape mosaic dynamics in north-eastern Madagascar

Due to its extraordinary biodiversity and rapid deforestation, north-eastern Madagascar is a conservation hotspot of global importance. Reducing shifting cultivation is a high priority for policy-makers and conservationists; however, spatially explicit evidence of shifting cultivation is lacking due to the difficulty of mapping it with common remote sensing methods. To overcome this challenge, we adopted a landscape mosaic approach to assess the changes between natural forests, shifting cultivation and permanent cultivation systems at the regional level from 1995 to 2011. Our study confirmed that shifting cultivation is still being used to produce subsistence rice throughout the region, but there is a trend of intensification away from shifting cultivation towards permanent rice production, especially near protected areas. While large continuous forest exists today only in the core zones of protected areas, the agricultural matrix is still dominated by a dense cover of tree crops and smaller forest fragments. We believe that this evidence makes a crucial contribution to the development of interventions to prevent further conversion of forest to agricultural land while improving local land users' well-being.

Feminism, gender equity and sexual/reproductive health in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

Sexual/reproductive/health and rights are crucial public health concerns that have been specifically integrated into the Millennium Development Goals to be accomplished by 2015. These issues are related to several health outcomes, including HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence (GBV) among women. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region comprises Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), West Bank and Gaza (WBG), and Yemen. This region is primarily Arabic speaking (except for Israel and Iran), and primarily Muslim (except for Israel). Some traditional and cultural views and practices in this region engender gender inequalities, which manifest themselves in the economic, political and social spheres. HIV and gender-based violence in the region may be interlinked with gender inequalities which breed justification for partner violence and honour killings, and increase the chance that HIV will transform into an epidemic in the region if not addressed. A feminist framework, focused on economic, political and social empowerment for women would be useful to consider applying to sexual/reproductive health in the region.^

Neogene calcareous nannofossils in the Caribbean and the eastern equatorial Pacific

Principal components analysis of nannofossil assemblages in five ODP sites in the Caribbean and the eastern equatorial Pacific was used to monitor Neogene surface water circulation changes. In 15.83-10.71 Ma, floral distributions clearly show the existence of the Circum-tropical Current between the Caribbean and the eastern equatorial Pacific and no surface water communication between the northern and southern Caribbean. In 10.71-9.36 Ma, the Circum-tropical Current weakened and the northward intra-Caribbean current had been initiated. Northern and southern Caribbean surface waters again became separated in 8.35-3.65 Ma and the Circum-tropical Current was regenerated. After 2.76 Ma, the northward intra-Caribbean current has completely been established and the Circum-tropical Current disappeared. This suggests that a barrier to the Circum-tropical Current had formed, indicating the final closure of the Isthmus of Panama.

Ground beetle (Carabidae) abundance data from north-eastern Australian rainforest, between June 2008 - January 2010, using pitfall traps

Understanding how the environment influences patterns of diversity is vital for effective conservation management, especially in a changing global climate. While assemblage structure and species richness patterns are often correlated with current environmental factors, historical influences may also be considerable, especially for taxa with poor dispersal abilities. Mountain-top regions throughout tropical rainforests can act as important refugia for taxa characterised by low dispersal capacities such as flightless ground beetles (Carabidae), an ecologically significant predatory group. We surveyed flightless ground beetles along elevational gradients in five different subregions within the Australian Wet Tropics World Heritage Area to investigate (1) whether the diversity and composition of flightless ground beetles are elevationally stratified, and, if so, (2) what environmental factors (other than elevation per se) are associated with these patterns. Generalised linear models and model averaging techniques were used to relate patterns of diversity to environmental factors. Unlike most taxonomic groups, flightless ground beetles increased in species richness and abundance with elevation. Additionally, each subregion consisted of distinct assemblages containing a high level of regional endemic species. Species richness was most strongly positively associated with the historical climatic conditions and negatively associated with severity of recent disturbance (treefalls) and current climatic conditions. Assemblage composition was associated with latitude and current and historical climatic conditions. Our results suggest that distributional patterns of flightless ground beetles are not only likely to be associated with factors that change with elevation (current climatic conditions), but also factors that are independent of elevation (recent disturbance and historical climatic conditions). Variation in historical vegetation stability explained both species richness and assemblage composition patterns, probably reflecting the significance of upland refugia at a geographic time scale. These findings are important for conservation management as upland habitats are under threat from climate change.