Seroepidemiology of norovirus-associated travelers' diarrhea

Background: Noroviruses (NoVs) are the most common cause of epidemic gastroenteritis, responsible for at least 50% of all gastroenteritis outbreaks worldwide and were recently identified as a leading cause of travelers' diarrhea (TD) in US and European travelers to Mexico, Guatemala, and India.

Methods: Serum and diarrheic stool samples were collected from 75 US student travelers to Cuernavaca, Mexico, who developed TD. NoV RNA was detected in acute diarrheic stool samples using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Serology assays were performed using GI.1 Norwalk virus (NV) and GII.4 Houston virus (HOV) virus-like particles (VLPs) to measure serum levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA) and IgG by dissociation-enhanced lanthanide fluorescent immunoassay (DELFIA); serum IgM was measured by capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the 50% antibody-blocking titer (BT50 ) was determined by a carbohydrate-blocking assay.

Results: NoV infection was identified in 12 (16%; 9 GI-NoV and 3 GII-NoV) of 75 travelers by either RT-PCR or fourfold or more rise in antibody titer. Significantly more individuals had detectable preexisting IgA antibodies against HOV (62/75, 83%) than against NV (49/75, 65%) (p = 0.025) VLPs. A significant difference was observed between NV- and HOV-specific preexisting IgA antibody levels (p = 0.0037), IgG (p = 0.003), and BT50 (p = <0.0001). None of the NoV-infected TD travelers had BT50  > 200, a level that has been described previously as a possible correlate of protection.

Conclusion: We found that GI-NoVs are commonly associated with TD cases identified in US adults traveling to Mexico, and seroprevalence rates and geometric mean antibody levels to a GI-NoV were lower than to a GII-NoV strain.

Autism in the air: using Point of View Video Priming and Natural Environment Teaching to help children with autism travel by plane

This paper describes a study that used video materials and visits to an airport to prepare children on the autism spectrum for travel by plane. Twenty parents and carers took part in the study with children aged from 3 to 16 years. The authors explain that the methods they used were based on Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) research; a video modeling technique called Point-Of-View Video-priming and during visits to an airport they used procedures known as Natural Environment Teaching. The findings suggest that using video and preparing children by taking them through what is likely to happen in the real environment when they travel by plane is effective and the authors suggest these strategies could be used to support children with autism with other experiences they need or would like to engage in such as visits to the dentist or hairdressers and access to leisure centres and other public spaces.

The work of memory: embodiment, materiality and home in Jeanne Bouvier’s autobiographical writings

In this paper I follow trails in the memory of work by reading the books and papers of Jeanne Bouvier, a French seamstress, ardent trade-unionist and passionate writer, who left a rich body of labour literature including four published historical studies, as well as the memoirs of her life, work and struggles. Work, action and creativity are three interrelated planes on which Bouvier situates herself, while memory and imagination are interwoven in the way she seeks to understand herself in the world with others. What emerges as a particularly striking theme from Bouvier’s papers is a material matrix of mnemonic and imaginary practices, wherein bodies, places and objects are entangled in the narrative constitution of the self of the woman worker/writer.

Book review: Philosophy and the city: classic to contemporary writings

Book Review: Philosophy and the City: Classic to Contemporary Writings Sharon M. Meagher (Ed.), 2007 Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 309 pp. US$75.50 hardback; US$24.95 paperback ISBN 978 0 7914 7308 5 paperback; 978 0 7914 7307 8 hardback

(Un)settling the Irish emigrant identity: representation and construction of an Irish emigrant/exile identity in the travel narratives of Kathleen Nevin and William Bulfin

Through an examination of the travel works of William Bulfin, Tales of the Pampas (1900) and Kathleen Nevin's You'll Never Go Back this paper considers the representation of the Irish in Argentina and the contribution of these narratives in the construction of identity and the reconstruction of the emigrant identity into an exilic one. Escaping one colonial framework (Britain/Ireland), travelling to and writing from within another postcolonial construct (Argentina and the Spanish Empire), this paper analyses how Bulfin and Nevin use language as a tool to construct, and even invent, an Irish identity. This identity is inextricably linked to home and the desire to return there. Despite this desire, Argentina becomes internalised to some extent, which in Bulfin can be seen in the mix of the Spanish, English and Irish languages in his stories, highlighting that the Irish were doing with language what they had already done with their lives; trying to adapt it to their new situation. In Nevin, the contrast between us and them (Irish and 'Native') demonstrates her attempts to shape an exilic rather than emigrant mentality. Through these texts I analyse how Argentina never quite becomes a new home, but a place where Irish identity is played out and acquires form.

Tourist photographers and the promotion of travel: the Polytechnic Touring Association, 1888–1939

The Polytechnic Touring Association (PTA) was a London-based, originally philanthropic turned commercial travel firm whose historical origins coincided with the arrival of the Kodak camera in 1888 – thus, of popular (tourist) photography. This article examines the PTA’s changing relationship with tourist photographers, and how this influenced the company’s understanding of what role photography could play in promoting the tours, in the late nineteenth and early twenty century. This inquiry is advanced on the basis of the observation that, during this time, the PTA’s passage from viewing tourists as citizens to educate, to customers to please, paralleled the move from using photography-based images to mixed media. Such a development was certainly a response to unprecedented market demands; this article argues that it should also be considered in relation to the widening of photographic perceptions engendered by the democratization of the medium, to which the PTA responded, first as educator, then as service provider. In doing so, the article raises several questions about the shifting relationship between “high”, or established, and “low”, or emerging, forms of culture, as mass photography and the mass marketing of tourism developed.

Travelers' Diarrhea in Children Visiting Tropical Countries

We studied a group of 174 Portuguese children (aged 2 mo-16 y) who mostly traveled to tropical Portuguese-speaking countries and found an attack rate of 21.8% for travelers' diarrhea, much lower than previously described. We also showed that African rate analysis by region may hide significant differences between countries.

Orientalism and Imperialism in French West Africa. Considerations on travel literature, colonial tourism, and the desert as a “commodity” in Mauritania

In this article we intend to make a summary overview of the influence that literary production, originated under colonial mapping missions or later in travel writing, had in the construction and establishment of a discourse to advertise and promote tourism in Mauritania. To this end we will draw on travel narratives that are illustrative of different periods and that correspond in some way to discourses of otherness. In this specific case, such discourses relate to the “Moors” of the West African coast and were produced in various historical contexts. We will also consider the discourse present in the tourism promotion materials of the colonial period and we will demonstrate to what extent it can be engaged in a dialogue with 19th and 20th centuries’ Western colonial literature.

Westerners in search of the legendary potion : ayahuasca travel in the borderland between tourism and pilgrimage

The thesis examines the phenomenon most commonly known as “ayahuasca tourism” – i.e. the practice of westerners traveling to South America and partaking in ceremonies in which a powerful entheogenic brew, ayahuasca, is consumed. While this popular phenomenon has been steadily increasing during the last decades, it has, however, been insufficiently studied by scholars. An important question which has not been properly addressed in earlier studies is how ayahuasca tourism relates to the wider occurrence of travel and how it should be perceived with reference to the theoretical frameworks on the subject of travel. Drawing on theories regarding pilgrimage and tourism, the main purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between ayahuasca tourism and the broader spectrum of travel. In particular, the study tests the designations “pilgrimage”, “religious tourism” and “spiritual tourism” with reference to ayahuasca tourism. Utilizing earlier literature as well as ayahuasca tourists‟ reports obtained from an Internet forum as a basis for analysis, I search for a suitable terminology to be used for the phenomenon. The study lays special emphasis on the protagonists‟ motivations, experiences and outcomes in order to take note of various aspects of the wide-ranging occurrence of ayahuasca tourism. Key findings indicate that ayahuasca tourism is best understood as a combination of pilgrimage and tourism. On the basis of the analysis I argue that ayahuasca tourism should be labeled as “pilgrimage” and/or “spiritual tourism”, and the tourists respectively as “pilgrims” and/or “spiritual tourists”. The category of “religious tourism/tourist”, on the other hand, turns out to be an inappropriate designation when describing the phenomenon. In general, through my study I show that the results are consistent with the present trend in the study of travel to perceive pilgrimage and tourism as theoretically similar phenomena. The study of ayahuasca tourism serves thus as living proof of contemporary travel, in which the categories of pilgrimage and tourism are often indistinguishable. I suggest that ayahuasca tourism is by no means exceptional on this point, but can rather be used as an illustration of modern travel forms on a general level. Thus, the present study does not only add to the research of ayahuasca tourism, but also provides additional insights into the study of travel.