The Irish hospitals sweepstake in the United States of America, 1930-1939

The Irish hospitals sweepstake was established by statute in the Irish Free State in 1930 to fund the state’s hospital service. The vast majority of tickets were sold outside Ireland, particularly in countries where such gambling was illegal at the time. Initially the largest market was in the United Kingdom, but following the introduction of restrictive legislation there in 1934, the promoters of the sweepstake turned their attentions to North America and after 1936 the United States became the largest source of contributions to the Irish sweep. This article examines a number of factors concerning the relationship of the Irish sweep with the USA, including: an effort to estimate the amount of money contributed to the sweep by Americans; the role of the Irish diaspora and of prominent republicans, including Joseph McGarrity and Connie Neenan, in the illegal ticket distribution network; the efforts of American Federal agencies and government departments to disrupt the sweepstake organisation in America; how the sweep was used by those who sought to legalise gambling in the USA; the attitudes of both the Irish and American governments to the sweep’s activities in America; and how the legalisation of gambling in America brought about the demise of the Irish sweep.

Benevolent Patriotism: Art, Dissent and the American Effect

This article examines the role of contemporary art in a post-9/11 context through The American Effect exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 2003. This exhibition displayed a range of artworks from around the world that specifically engaged with, commented upon and interrogated the USA's pre-eminent position as a global superpower. In the politically charged climate after 9/11, the exhibition offered itself as a critical voice amid the more obvious patriotic clamour: it was one of the places where Americans could ask (and answer) the question, `Why do they hate us so much?' Although The American Effect claimed to be a space of dissent, it ultimately failed to question, let alone challenge, US global hegemony. Instead, the exhibition articulated a benevolent patriotism that forced artwork from other nations into supplicating and abject positions, and it obscured the complex discursive networks that connect artists, curators, critics, audiences and art museums.

Factores explicativos de las actitudes hacia el castigo juvenil. Evidencias de un diseño factorial

El rol desempeñado por la opinión pública en el desarrollo de la política criminal actual justifica el incremento de investigaciones destinadas a evaluar las actitudes de los ciudadanos hacia el castigo. No obstante, los avances en este ámbito han sido limitados debido a la utilización de rudimentarios instrumentos de medida. Por ello, el presente trabajo tiene como propósito explorar el efecto que generan en la opinión ciudadana ciertas variables referidas al hecho delictivo y al infractor, precisando su contribución relativa y la interacción existente entre ellas. Para satisfacer este objetivo se recurrió a un diseño factorial de la encuesta, creando una población de 256 casos-escenario fruto de la combinación de cuatro factores: la edad del joven, su historial delictivo, el grado de implicación en el hecho y el tipo de delito cometido. Los mismos fueron distribuidos en grupos de ocho casos ordenados aleatoriamente y fueron suministrados a 32 sujetos. Posteriormente se aplicaron análisis de regresión logística binaria. Los resultados obtenidos revelan que la naturaleza violenta de los hechos, la implicación activa de los jóvenes y el historial delictivo son predictores importantes de las condenas punitivas. Sin embargo la edad, una variable fundamental en la configuración de la justicia juvenil, no resulta significativa. De este modo, el trabajo muestra el potencial explicativo de este conjunto de factores y debate sus implicaciones teóricas y metodológicas para la investigación futura en este terreno.

La incidencia de los valores culturales en el voluntariado: el caso de Europa

La realidad del voluntariado es sumamente compleja hasta el punto de que resulta complicado definir y caracterizar el trabajo voluntario, dada la gran variedad de interpretaciones, motivaciones, variables sociodemográficas y aspectos culturales que configuran el perfil de los voluntarios. El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar la influencia conjunta de algunas variables sociodemográficas, así como de los valores culturales de índole secular o tradicional, sobre el perfil de los voluntarios en Europa. Además, se investiga qué variables orientan a los voluntarios hacia un determinado tipo de voluntariado u otro. Para ello se ha aplicado principalmente una metodología de regresión logística a partir de la información disponible en la European Value Study. Los resultados obtenidos ayudan a establecer una caracterización del voluntariado en Europa, y confirman la influencia de los valores culturales, en primer lugar, en la realización o no de trabajos de voluntariado, y en segundo lugar, en la elección que hacen estas personas del tipo de actividad con la que están comprometidos. Al analizar dos tipos de voluntariado de motivación supuestamente muy diferente, se concluye que existe un grupo de valores que influyen en ambos, aunque el sentido y la intensidad en la que lo hacen sea diferente; por otra parte, algunos valores tienen influencia o no en la realización de trabajos de voluntariado, dependiendo del tipo específico al que nos refiramos.

Latin American migration in the central area of Iquique: New fronts of residential location and unequal forms of access to housing

Historically the central area of the city of Iquique has been established as residential space migrants choosing from different backgrounds , however since the late 2000s migration flows are diversified being mostly Latin American immigrants who live in precarious conditions , accessing tugurizados properties , deteriorated in an increasingly growing informal market. The results presented here are derived from quantitative residential location of migrants , as well as the implementation of 13 in-depth interviews . From these results emerge that Latin American migrants access to the same places where once lived internal migrants, however they inhabit a restrictive market , uneven and inadequate living conditions lease, but allows them to articulate residence and proximity to industrial networks , social and popular trade.

No Easy Way Through: Black Workers and Race Leadership at the Nadir

It is difficult, even excruciating, to imagine the staggering descent from high optimism to despondency experienced by many African Americans who lived between emancipation and the dawn of the twentieth century. For historians living in the post–civil rights era, recapturing the scale, velocity, and brutality of that dramatic fall has been hampered by two conceptual problems. The first of these, undergirded by prominent trends in the formerly “new” social history, is a widely shared enthusiasm for illuminating those hidden corners of daily life where men and women on the receiving end of Jim Crow continued to wield a degree of control. “Agency” has been the buzzword for a generation of scholarship that emphasizes the staying power and persistence of black Southerners in the face of relentless assaults on their social and economic status, their civil rights, and even, at times, their collective existence. This is, in many ways, an understandable reaction to an earlier consensus that relegated black historical initiative to the margins of a national fable cleansed of unseemly violence and sharp social conflict, but it can also be problematic.

Emergencias de la mediación intelectual. "La Revista de América" (París, 1912-1914) y la red de escritores latinoamericanos en Europa a comienzos del siglo XX

Este trabajo estudia el proyecto editorial de la Revista de América (1912-1914), fundada en París y dirigida por Francisco García Calderón. Mi propósito es analizar el modo en que muchos de los vínculos entre los escritores latinoamericanos radicados en París entre fines del siglo XIX y la Primera Guerra Mundial se materializaron en la edición de revistas. Propongo examinar las estrategias de difusión de las producciones latinoamericanas en el Viejo Continente, como así también algunos aspectos ideológicos y de intervención intelectual que la revista llegó a articular. En un primer momento, me detengo en los rasgos materiales tanto del proyecto editorial de la revista como de los vínculos entre los latinoamericanos desterrados. Luego indago las distintas formas de mediación crítica, por un lado, y cultural, por otro, que la revista escenificó y, en algunos casos, desarrolló activamente. En efecto, la revista de García Calderón vuelve visible una dimensión mediadora en varios sentidos: mediación crítica entre productores y lectores, pues se propuso como instancia de difusión, al convocar a “a los mejores escritores latinoamericanos”. Al mismo tiempo, propuso otras dos mediaciones: entre pares, al funcionar como consagradora, seleccionando y agrupando simbólicamente a los escritores de cada país latinoamericano. Finalmente, una mediación intercontinental entre culturas en la contemporaneidad, que intentó acercar dos gestos en la acción de la revista: una legitimación del pensamiento y el arte “de ultramar” y una valoración de los desarrollos artísticos europeos del presente.

The development of national in-group bias: English children's attributions of characteristics to English, American and German people

This study investigated the development of national in-group bias in 5-11-year-old children. Three hundred and seven English children were asked to attribute characteristics to their own national group either on its own or in conjunction with attributing characteristics to one of two national out-groups, either Americans or Germans. The importance which the children ascribed to their own national identity in relationship to their other social identities was also assessed. It was found that, with increasing age, there was an increase in the number of negative characteristics attributed to the national in-group, and an increase in the number of positive characteristics attributed to the two out-groups, the net result being an overall reduction in in-group bias across this age range. However, in-group favouritism was still exhibited at all ages. Greater importance was attributed to national identity with increasing age. However, the characteristics attributed to the English in-group did not vary as a function of the comparative out-group which was present while the attributions were being made. The presence of a comparative out-group also did not affect the importance that was ascribed to the national identity. These findings suggest that children are relatively insensitive to the prevailing comparative context when making judgments about national groups.

Lack of Association Between the Trp719Arg Polymorphism in Kinesin-Like Protein-6 and Coronary Artery Disease in 19 Case-Control Studies

Objectives: We sought to replicate the association between the kinesin-like protein 6 (KIF6) Trp719Arg polymorphism (rs20455), and clinical coronary artery disease (CAD).
Background: Recent prospective studies suggest that carriers of the 719Arg allele in KIF6 are at increased risk of clinical CAD compared with noncarriers.
Methods: The KIF6 Trp719Arg polymorphism (rs20455) was genotyped in 19 case-control studies of nonfatal CAD either as part of a genome-wide association study or in a formal attempt to replicate the initial positive reports.
Results: A total of 17,000 cases and 39,369 controls of European descent as well as a modest number of South Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, East Asians, and admixed cases and controls were successfully genotyped. None of the 19 studies demonstrated an increased risk of CAD in carriers of the 719Arg allele compared with noncarriers. Regression analyses and fixed-effects meta-analyses ruled out with high degree of confidence an increase of <2% in the risk of CAD among European 719Arg carriers. We also observed no increase in the risk of CAD among 719Arg carriers in the subset of Europeans with early-onset disease (younger than 50 years of age for men and younger than 60 years of age for women) compared with similarly aged controls as well as all non-European subgroups.
Conclusions: The KIF6 Trp719Arg polymorphism was not associated with the risk of clinical CAD in this large replication study.

After Slavery: Race, Labor and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South

an edited collection of essays exploring the variety of experiences of freedpeople in the post-emancipation United States. Co-edited by Brian Kelly and Bruce E. Baker, with an afterword by Eric Foner.

Heterozygous ATM mutations do not contribute to early onset of breast cancer

Ataxia telangiectasia (AT) is a recessive syndrome, including cerebellar degeneration, immunologic defects and cancer predisposition, attributed to mutations in the recently isolated ATM (ataxia telangiectasia, mutated) gene. AT is diagnosed in 1/40,000 to 1/100,000 live births, with carriers calculated to comprise approximately 1% of the population. Studies of AT families have suggested that female relatives presumed to be carriers have a 5 to 8-fold increased risk for developing breast cancer, raising the possibility that germline ATM mutations may account for approximately 5% of all breast cancer cases. The increased risk for breast cancer reported for AT family members has been most evident among younger women, leading to an age-specific relative risk model predicting that 8% of breast cancer in women under age 40 arises in AT carriers, compared with 2% of cases between 40-59 years. To test this hypothesis, we undertook a germ-line mutational analysis of the ATM gene in a population of women with early onset of breast cancer, using a protein truncation (PTT) assay to detect chain-terminating mutations, which account for 90% of mutations identified in children with AT. We detected a heterozygous ATM mutation in 2/202 (1%) controls, consistent with the frequency of AT carriers predicted from epidemiologic studies. ATM mutations were present in only 2/401 (0.5%) women with early onset of breast cancer (P = 0.6). We conclude that heterozygous ATM mutations do not confer genetic predisposition to early onset of breast cancer.

What counts and what is being counted – The social organization of knowledge on the front lines of emergency medical services.

Paramedics are trained to use specialized medical knowledge and a variety of medical procedures and pharmaceutical interventions to “save patients and prevent further damage” in emergency situations, both as members of “health-care teams” in hospital emergency departments (Swanson, 2005: 96) and on the streets – unstandardized contexts “rife with chaotic, dangerous, and often uncontrollable elements” (Campeau, 2008: 3). The paramedic’s unique skill-set and ability to function in diverse situations have resulted in the occupation becoming ever more important to health care systems (Alberta Health and Wellness, 2008: 12).
Today, prehospital emergency services, while varying, exist in every major city and many rural areas throughout North America (Paramedics Association of Canada, 2008) and other countries around the world (Roudsari et al., 2007). Services in North America, for instance, treat and/or transport 2 million Canadians (over 250,000 in Alberta alone ) and between 25 and 30 million Americans annually (Emergency Medical Services Chiefs of Canada, 2006; National EMS Research Agenda, 2001). In Canada, paramedics make up one of the largest groups of health care professionals, with numbers exceeding 20,000 (Pike and Gibbons, 2008; Paramedics Association of Canada, 2008). However, there is little known about the work practices of paramedics, especially in light of recent changes to how their work is organized, making the profession “rich with unexplored opportunities for research on the full range of paramedic work” (Campeau, 2008: 2).

This presentation reports on findings from an institutional ethnography that explored the work of paramedics and different technologies of knowledge and governance that intersect with and organize their work practices. More specifically, my tentative focus of this presentation is on discussing some of the ruling discourses central to many of the technologies used on the front lines of EMS in Alberta and the consequences of such governance practices for both the front line workers and their patients. In doing so, I will demonstrate how IE can be used to answer Rankin and Campbell’s (2006) call for additional research into “the social organization of information in health care and attention to the (often unintended) ways ‘such textual products may accomplish…ruling purposes but otherwise fail people and, moreover, obscure that failure’ (p. 182)” (cited in McCoy, 2008: 709).

Lower resting energy expenditure and fat oxidation in Native American and Hispanic infants born to mothers with diabetes

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether exposure to diabetes in utero affects resting energy expenditure (REE) and fuel oxidation in infants.

STUDY DESIGN: At 35 ± 5 days after birth, body composition and REE were measured in full-term offspring of Native American and Hispanic women with either well-controlled diabetes (13 girls, 11 boys) or normal healthy pregnancies (18 girls, 17 boys).

RESULTS: Control of dysglycemia during gestation in the women with diabetes mellitus met current clinical standards, shown by average glycated hemoglobin (5.9 ± 0.2%; 40.6 ± 2.3 mmol/mol). Infant body mass (offspring of women with diabetes: 4.78 ± 0.13, control offspring: 4.56 ± 0.08 kg) and body fatness (offspring of women with diabetes: 25.2 ± 0.6, control offspring: 24.2 ± 0.5 %) did not differ between groups. REE, adjusted for lean body mass, was 14% lower in offspring of women with diabetes (41.7 ± 2.3 kJ/h) than control offspring (48.6 ± 2.0, P = .025). Fat oxidation was 26% lower in offspring of women with diabetes (0.54 ± 0.05 g/h) than control offspring (0.76 ± 0.04, P < .01) but carbohydrate oxidation did not differ. Thus, fat oxidation accounted for a lower fraction of REE in the offspring of women with diabetes (49 ± 4%) than control offspring (60 ± 3%, P = .022). Mothers with diabetes were older and had higher prepregnancy body mass index than control mothers.

CONCLUSIONS: Well-controlled maternal diabetes did not significantly affect body mass or composition of offspring at 1-month old. However, infants with mothers with diabetes had reduced REE and fat oxidation, which could contribute to adiposity and future disease risk. Further studies are needed to assess the impact differences in age and higher prepregnancy body mass index.

Religious actions speak louder than words::exposure to credibilityenhancing displays predicts theism

One of the central aims of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) is to explain why supernatural agent beliefs are so widespread. A related but distinct aim is to explain why some individuals hold supernatural agent beliefs but others do not. Here, we aim to provide an initial test of the power of exposure to what Henrich calls “credibility enhancing displays” (or “CREDs”) in determining whether or not an individual holds explicit supernatural agent beliefs. We present evidence from two studies of Americans suggesting that exposure to CREDs, as measured by a scale we developed and validated, predicts current theism vs. non-theism, certainty of God’s existence/non-existence, and religiosity while controlling for overall religious socialization. These results are among the first to empirically support the theorized significance of CREDs for the acquisition of supernatural agent beliefs.

Moral asymmetries in judgments of agency withstand ludicrous causal deviance

Americans have been shown to attribute greater intentionality to immoral than to amoral actions in cases of causal deviance, that is, cases where a goal is satisfied in a way that deviates from initially planned means (e.g., a gunman wants to hit a target and his hand slips, but the bullet ricochets off a rock into the target). However, past research has yet to assess whether this asymmetry persists in cases of extreme causal deviance. Here, we manipulated the level of mild to extreme causal deviance of an immoral versus amoral act. The asymmetry in attributions of intentionality was observed at all but the
most extreme level of causal deviance, and, as we hypothesized, was mediated by attributions of Blame/credit and judgments of action performance. These findings are discussed as they support a multiple-concepts interpretation of the asymmetry, wherein blame renders a naïve concept of intentional action (the outcome matches the intention) more salient than a composite concept (the outcome matches the intention and was brought about by planned means), and in terms of their implications for cross-cultural research on judgments of agency.