Occupational practices and problems of rural artisanal fisherfolks in Oyan Dam area of Ogun State

Artisanal Fish Societies constitutes one of the poorest societies in the developing world. Attempts to harness the potentials of the societies have often failed due to the enormity of the problem of poverty. This study was conducted in four major fishing villages namely; Abule titun, Apojola, Imama Odo and Ibaro in order to investigate the occupational practices and the problems of rural artisanal fisherfolks in Oyam's Dam, area of Ogun State. Eighty respondents were randomly selected among the artisanal fisher folks for interview using interview guide. The findings revealed that 43.8% of the fisherfolks are within active range of 31-40 years while 30% are within 21-30 years range. Also 31% had no formal education indicating a relatively high level of illiteracy among the fisherfolks while majority of the respondents practice fishing activities using paddle and canoe. It was similarly discovered from the study that the most pressing problems of the fisherfolks is the lack of basic social amenities like electricity, potable water, access roads, hospitals and markets. It is therefore recommended that basic social infrastructures be provided for the artisanal fishing communities in order to improve their social welfare, standard of living and the capacity to have a sustainable fishing occupation in the interest of food security and poverty alleviation

The Origins and Early History of the Steamer Albatross, 1880–18

Spencer Fullerton Baird (Fig. 1), a noted systematic zoologist and builder of scientific institutions in 19th century America, persuaded the U.S. Congress to establish the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries1 in March 1871. At that time, Baird was Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Following the death of Joseph Henry in 1878, he became head of the institution, a position he held until his own demise in 1887. In addition to his many duties as a Smithsonian official, including his prominent role in developing the Smithsonian’s Federally funded National Museum as the repository for governmental scientific collections, Baird directed the Fish Commission from 1871 until 1887. The Fish Commission’s original mission was to determine the reasons and remedies for the apparent decline of American fisheries off southern New England as well as other parts of the United States. In 1872, Congress further directed the Commission to begin a large fish hatching program aimed at increasing the supply of American food f

A History of Benthic Research in the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service has a long history of research on benthic invertebrates and habitats in support of the management of living marine resources. These studies began in the 1870's under Spencer F. Baird's guidance as part of an effort to characterize the Nation's fisheries and living marine resources and their ecological interactions. This century and a quarter of research has included many benthic invertebrate studies, including community characterizations, shellfish biology and culture, pathology, ecosystem energy budget modeling, habitat evaluations, assessments of human impacts, toxic chemical bioaccumulation in demersal food webs, habitat or endangered species management, benthic autecology, systematics (to define new species and species population boundaries), and other benthic studies. Here we review the scope of past and current studies as a background for strategic research planning and suggest areas for further research to support NOAA's goals of sustainable fisheries management, healthy coastal ecosystems, and protected species populations.

History of the Fisheries of Raritan Bay, New York and New Jersey

Raritan Bay is the body of water bounded by New York and New Jersey and lying immediately south of New York City (Fig. 1). It has close proximity to the most concentrated urban and industrial area in the United States. Its history has been one of extensive multiple use by the surrounding human population. Dating from the precolonial and colonial periods, people have employed many types of gear to catch and gather its once abundant fishes and shellfishes. Its beaches were once popular for sun bathing and swimming, but after the 1940's they were essentially abandoned because the water became too polluted. Another large use has been for pleasure boating and the transit and dockage of merchant, passenger, and military vessels. Channels and basins were dug in the bay, bulkheads and jetties were constructed along its shores, and it was a donor source of sand and gravel for construction projects. It has also been a receptor for large quantities of domestic and industrial wastes and, mainly for this reason, it is one ofthe most deteriorated estuaries in the United States.

FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF THE SNAKE: A LIFE HISTORY OF COBRA MANSA "COBRINHA" MESTRE OF CAPOEIRA

This dissertation is a cultural biography of Mestre Cobra Mansa, a mestre of the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira angola. The intention of this work is to track Mestre Cobrinha's life history and accomplishments from his beginning as an impoverished child in Rio to becoming a mestre of the tradition-its movements, music, history, ritual and philosophy. A highly skilled performer and researcher, he has become a cultural ambassador of the tradition in Brazil and abroad. Following the Trail of the Snake is an interdisciplinary work that integrates the research methods of ethnomusicology (oral history, interview, participant observation, musical and performance analysis and transcription) with a revised life history methodology to uncover the multiple cultures that inform the life of a mestre of capoeira. A reflexive auto-ethnography of the author opens a dialog between the experiences and developmental steps of both research partners' lives. Written in the intersection of ethnomusicology, studies of capoeira, social studies and music education, the academic dissertation format is performed as a roda of capoeira aiming to be respectful of the original context of performance. The result is a provocative ethnographic narrative that includes visual texts from the performative aspects of the tradition (music and movement), aural transcriptions of Mestre Cobra Mansa's storytelling and a myriad of writing techniques to accompany the reader in a multi-dimensional journey of multicultural understanding. The study follows Cinezio Feliciano Pe anha in his childhood struggle for survival as a street performer in Rio de Janeiro. Several key moves provided him with the opportunity to rebuild his life and to grow into a recognized mestre of the capoeira angola martial art as Mestre Cobra Mansa ("Tame Snake" in Portuguese). His dedicated work enabled him to contribute to the revival of the capoeira angola tradition during the 1980's in Bahia. After his move to the United States in the early 1990's, Mestre Cobrinha founded the International Capoeira Angola Foundation, which today has expanded to 28 groups around the world. Mestre Cobra returned home to Brazil to initiate projects that seek to develop a new sense of community from all that he has learned and been able to accomplish in his life through the performance and study of capoeira angola.

History of the Continuous Plankton Recorder Database. Proceedings of 'The Colour of Ocean Data' Symposium, Brussels, 25-27 November 2002.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey has operated in the North Atlantic and North Sea since 1931, providing a unitque multi-decadal dataset of plankton abundance. Over the period since 1931 technology has advanced and the system for storing the CPR data has developed considerably. From 1969 an electronic database was developed to store the results of CPR analysis. Since that time the CPR database has undergone a number of changes due to performance related factors such as processor speed and disk capacity as well as economic factors such as the cost of software. These issues have been overcome and the system for storing and retrieving the data has become more user friendly at every development stage.

Short reflections on the history of African communication

This article aims to propose a chronological subdivision in the history of African communication. African communication today is one of the most important axes for implementing development strategies, sustaining education, health, and schooling programmes, and so on. However, many of these programmes fail due to a lack of or ineffective communication between international organisations, local elite and lay people. The reasons for this situation must be found in Africa’s history of communication, which has undergone radical transformations in its different phases. Using the functionalist analysis drawn up by Jakobson, this article proposes a new chronological subdivision of Africa’s history of communication, reflecting on the current contradictions in contemporary communication in Africa.

Understandings of citizenship education in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Public discourses among stakeholders in the public and private sectors

Internationally, citizenship education has come to the fore in the past decade. It may be particularly importantwithin the context of societies with a legacy of political conflict, such as Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where it is being implemented as part of the statutory curriculum. This article explores understandingsof citizenship education among stakeholders in the private and public sectors in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland with the aim to compare these with curricular conceptualizations of citizenship inboth contexts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in both societies involving non-governmentalorganizations, political parties, trade unions and the police. Results indicated that levels of awareness aboutcitizenship education varied substantially and understandings mainly reflected current theory and curriculumpractice in citizenship. Commonalities emerged as in both societies similar key concepts were identified whiledifferences transpired over issues relating to national identity and political conflict, which may raise questionsfor history and citizenship education in both societies.

Folklore’s Timeless Past, Ireland’s Present Past, and the Perception of Rural Houses in Early Historic Ireland

This study examines how the archaeology of historic Ireland has been interpreted. Two approaches to the history and archaeology of Ireland are identified. The first, the timeless past, has its roots in a neo-Lamarckian view of the past. This perspective was particularly developed in the work of geographer and ethnographer, Estyn Evans. The second view, associated in particular with a nationalist approach to Ireland’s past, looked to the west of the country where it was believed the culture had been preserved largely unchanged and in its purest form. The continuing impact of these frameworks upon the interpretation of rural settlement in the period 1200– 1700 is examined. It is argued that historians and archaeologists alike have underestimated the quality of buildings.

Accuracy of rural refractionists in western China

Purpose. We assessed the prevalence and predictors of inaccurate refractive error among rural refractionists in western China. Methods. A subset of primary school children with visual acuity (VA) ≤6/12 in ≥1 eye, undergoing subjective refinement by local refractionists after cycloplegic autorefraction in an ongoing population-based study, received repeat refraction by university optometrists for quality control. Results. Among 502 children (mean age 10.5 years, 53.2% girls), independent predictors of poor (inaccurate by ≥1.0 diopter [D]) refraction by 21 rural practitioners (66.7% with high school or lower education) included hyperopia (odds ratio [OR], 4.2; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.4-7.3, P < 0.001), astigmatism (OR = 3.8; 95% CI, 2.5-5.6; P < 0.001) and VA uncorrectable to >6/12 by the rural refractionist (OR = 4.7; 95% CI, 3.1-7.3; P = < 0.001). Among 201 children whose vision was uncorrectable in ≥1 eye by the rural refractionists, vision could be improved to >6/12 by the university optometrist in 110 (54.7%). We estimate vision could be so improved in 9.1% of all children refracted by these rural refractionists. A reason for inaccuracy in this setting is the erroneous tendency of rural refractionists to adjust instrument values for accommodation, even under cycloplegia. Conclusions. Rural refractionists in western China have little formal training and frequently fail to optimize VA among children, even when autorefractors are used. Training is needed emphasizing better use of automated refraction, particularly in children with astigmatism and hyperopia. © 2014 The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Inc.

Validity of a personal and family history of cataract and cataract surgery in genetic studies.

PURPOSE:

To determine the accuracy of a history of cataract and cataract surgery (self-report and for a sibling), and to determine which demographic, cognitive, and medical factors are predictive of an accurate history.

METHODS:

All participants in the Salisbury Eye Evaluation (SEE) project and their locally resident siblings were questioned about a personal and family history of cataract or cataract surgery. Lens grading at the slit lamp, using standardized photographs and a grading system, was performed for both SEE participants (probands) and their siblings. Cognitive testing and a history of systemic comorbidities were also obtained for all probands.

RESULTS:

Sensitivity of a history of cataract provided on behalf of a sibling was 32%, specificity 98%. The performance was better for a history of cataract surgery: sensitivity 90%, specificity 89%. For self-report of cataract, sensitivity was also low at 55%, with specificity at 77%. Self-report of cataract surgery gave a much better performance: sensitivity 94%, specificity 100%. Different cutoffs in the definition of cataract had little impact. Factors predicting a correct history of cataract included high school or greater education in the proband (odds ratio [OR] = 1.13, 95% confidence interval [CI]1.02-1.25) and younger sibling (but not proband) age (OR = 0.94 for each year of age, 95% CI 0.90-0.99). Gender, race and Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) result were not predictive.

CONCLUSIONS:

Whereas accurate self and family histories for cataract surgery may be obtainable, it is difficult to ascertain cataract status accurately from history alone.

Profiles of ageing in the South of Portugal: education and cognitive functioning in elderly persons living in institutionalized and community contexts

The region of the Algarve shows huge differences between the coastline where population in the urban areas grows, and the inland rural areas, in some cases very isolated, which frequently have high ageing indexes. This general scenario, with an elderly population with very different economic and social conditions, frames the ongoing PhD research designed as a cross-sectional study of an intentional sample of elderly persons. The basic theoretical framework departs from the perspective of developmental psychology of life-span and the model of selection, optimisation and compensation for optimal ageing (Baltes & Baltes, 1990; Freund & Baltes, 2002). The present study is a first step in the analysis of empirical data collected in the PhD sample (N=156; age range 65 to 97 years; M = 80.4 years; SD = 7.2 years). Its purpose is to assess the cognitive functioning of participants, screening for cognitive impairment and examine the relations between the cognitive status of the subjects and a number of selected variables including educational level, age, physical activity and living contexts of the subjects. We accessed the cognitive status of the participants with the Portuguese version of Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) finding a 10.3% prevalence of positive cases with cognitive impairment. The results also show significant relationships between the cognitive status accessed by the MMSE and educational level, professional qualification, age, living arrangement and activity level of the participants. The relationship verified between educational level and cognitive status of the participants was the largest correlation found in the study with the variability in educational level accounting for 44.8% of the variability in MMSE score. This results points in the same direction of several lines of research that corroborate the strong intercorrelation between education and cognitive functioning in old age.

New perspectives on the history of brazilian agriculture.

One of the objectives of this book has been to highlight the importance of the history of agriculture in today's food production and consumption patterns, recovering parts of this history which are not easily found or which have been forgotten or neglected, but which have had a large impact on what we are today.

Indices and Implications of Emotional Underarousal for Persons with a History of Head Trauma

We examined the role of altered emotional functioning across the spectrum of injury severity (mild head injury [MHI], moderate/severe traumatic brain injury [TBI]), its implications for social behaviours, and the effect of modifying arousal and its relation to cognitive performance. In the first study (N = 230), students with self-reported MHI endorsed engaging in socially unacceptable and erratic behaviours significantly more often than did those with no MHI. We did not find significant differences between the groups in the measure of emotional intelligence (EI); however, for students who reported a MHI, scores on the EI measure significantly predicted reports of socially unacceptable behaviours such that lower scores predicted poorer social functioning, accounting for approximately 20% of the variance. Also, the experience of postconcussive symptoms was found to be significantly greater for students with MHI relative to their peers. In the second study (N = 85), we further examined emotional underarousal in terms of physiological (i.e., electrodermal activation [EDA]) and self-reported responsivity to emotionally-evocative picture stimuli. Although the valence ratings of the stimuli did not differ between students with and without MHI as we had expected, we found evidence of reduced and/or indiscriminate emotional responding to the stimuli for those with MHI which mimics that observed in other studies for persons with moderate/severe TBI. We also found that emotional underarousal followed a gradient of injury severity despite reporting a pattern of experiencing more life stressors. In the third study (N = 81), we replicated our findings of emotional underarousal for those with head trauma and also uniquely explored neuroendocrine aspects (salivary cortisol; cortisol awakening response [CAR]) and autonomic indices (EDA) of emotional dysregulation in terms of stress responsivity across the spectrum of injury severity (MHI [n = 32], moderate/severe TBI [n = 9], and age and education matched controls [n = 40]). Although the manipulation was effective in modifying arousal state in terms of autonomic and self-reported indices, we did not support our hypothesis that increased arousal would be related to improved performance on cognitive measures for those with prior injury. To our knowledge, this is the only study to examine the CAR with this population. Repeated measure analysis revealed that, upon awakening, students with no reported head trauma illustrated the typical CAR increase 45 minutes after waking, whereas, students who had a history of either mild head trauma or moderate/severe TBI demonstrated a blunted CAR. Thus, across the three studies we have provided evidence of emotional underarousal, its potential implications for social interactions, and also have identified potentially useful indices of dysregulated stress responsivity regardless of injury severity.