The Empowering Effects of Cooperative Development Among Indigenous Women in Southern Mexico

Abstract The Zapatista uprising, rebellion, and ongoing attempts to create a new way of life inside Mexico is unique. While Zapatistas have purposely isolated themselves from the Mexican government, they are not isolated from surrounding communities. Zapatista influences can be seen in the practices and organization of cooperatives and in the altered role of indigenous women in the surrounding communities. This study focuses on four cooperatives: one located in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, and the others in rural surrounding areas. The selected collectives produce traditional artisan work, basic food staples, natural personal care products, and herbal medicines. Using a snowball sampling technique, the investigator identified prospective interview participants. Nineteen women participated in 1-2 hour formal interviews, four individually and the others in small group settings; all formal interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Participants ranged in age from early 20s to early 50s; the majority self-identified as Tzotzil and Tzeltal, which represent approximately 71% of the indigenous population in Chiapas. Of the four cooperatives represented, two had direct working relationships with Zapatista cooperatives, and all had practices modeled on the Zapatista movement. Based on a phenomenological analysis of the transcripts, this paper argues that while the cooperatives were developed in response to forced internal displacement and extreme poverty, they were sustained because they provided a new kind of partnership, influenced by the Zapatista Movement, for the women to participate in the support and survival of their families. These findings suggest the potential of cooperatives as a cost-effective tool of development to promote gender role equality worldwide as well as provide recognition that this complex study and novel findings were only possible through a multidisciplinary and transnational academic and community partnership, integrating social work, women’s studies, and geography

A New Bispectral Test for Nonlinear Serial Dependence

Bispectrum, nonlinearity, time series analysis

Neonatal care practices in sub-Saharan Africa: a systematic review of quantitative and qualitative data.

BACKGROUND: Recommended immediate newborn care practices include thermal care (immediate drying and wrapping, skin-to-skin contact after delivery, delayed bathing), hygienic cord care and early initiation of breastfeeding. This paper systematically reviews quantitative and qualitative data from sub-Saharan Africa on the prevalence of key immediate newborn care practices and the factors that influence them. METHODS: Studies were identified by searching relevant databases and websites, contacting national and international academics and implementers and hand-searching reference lists of included articles. English-language published and unpublished literature reporting primary data from sub-Saharan Africa (published between January 2001 and May 2014) were included if it met the quality criteria. Quantitative prevalence data were extracted and summarized. Qualitative data were synthesized through thematic analysis, with deductive coding used to identify emergent themes within each care practice. A framework approach was used to identify prominent and divergent themes. RESULTS: Forty-two studies were included as well as DHS data - only available for early breastfeeding practices from 33 countries. Results found variation in the prevalence of immediate newborn care practices between countries, with the exception of skin-to-skin contact after delivery which was universally low. The importance of keeping newborn babies warm was well recognized, although thermal care practices were sub-optimal. Similar factors influenced practices across countries, including delayed drying and wrapping because the birth attendant focused on the mother; bathing newborns soon after delivery to remove the dirt and blood; negative beliefs about the vernix; applying substances to the cord to make it drop off quickly; and delayed breastfeeding because of a perception of a lack of milk or because the baby needs to sleep after delivery or does not showing signs of hunger. CONCLUSION: The majority of studies included in this review came from five countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda). There is a need for more research from a wider geographical area, more research on newborn care practices at health facilities and standardization in measuring newborn care practices. The findings of this study could inform behaviour change interventions to improve the uptake of immediate newborn care practices

Two-dimensional Yang-Mills theory in the leading 1/N expansion revisited

We obtain a formal solution of an integral equation for $q\bar q$ bound states, depending on a parameter \eta which interpolates between 't Hooft's (\eta=0) and Wu's (\eta=1) equations. We also get an explicit approximate expression for its spectrum for a particular value of the ratio of the coupling constant to the quark mass. The spectrum turns out to be in qualitative agreement with 't Hooft's as long as \eta \neq 1. In the limit \eta=1 (Wu's case) the entire spectrum collapses to zero, in particular no rising Regge trajectories are found.Comment: CERN-TH/96-364, 13 pages, revTeX, no figure

The Mersey Estuary : sediment geochemistry

This report describes a study of the geochemistry of the Mersey estuary carried out between April 2000 and December 2002. The study was the first in a new programme of surveys of the geochemistry of major British estuaries aimed at enhancing our knowledge and understanding of the distribution of contaminants in estuarine sediments. The report first summarises the physical setting, historical development, geology, hydrography and bathymetry of the Mersey estuary and its catchment. Details of the sampling and analytical programmes are then given followed by a discussion of the sedimentology and geochemistry. The chemistry of the water column and suspended particulate matter have not been studied, the chief concern being with the geochemistry of the surface and near-surface sediments of the Mersey estuary and an examination of their likely sources and present state of contamination

Effect of Silicon Content on Carbide Precipitation and Low-Temperature Toughness of Pressure Vessel Steels

Cr – Mn – Mo – Ni pressure vessel steels containing 0.54 and 1.55% Si are studied. Metallographic and fractographic analyses of the steels after tempering at 650 and 700°C are performed. The impact toughness at – 30°C and the hardness of the steels are determined. The mass fraction of the carbide phase in the steels is computed with the help of the J-MatPro 4.0 software

Pareto versus lognormal: a maximum entropy test

It is commonly found that distributions that seem to be lognormal over a broad range change to a power-law (Pareto) distribution for the last few percentiles. The distributions of many physical, natural, and social events (earthquake size, species abundance, income and wealth, as well as file, city, and firm sizes) display this structure. We present a test for the occurrence of power-law tails in statistical distributions based on maximum entropy. This methodology allows one to identify the true data-generating processes even in the case when it is neither lognormal nor Pareto. The maximum entropy approach is then compared with other widely used methods and applied to different levels of aggregation of complex systems. Our results provide support for the theory that distributions with lognormal body and Pareto tail can be generated as mixtures of lognormally distributed units

Provision of relapse prevention interventions in UK NHS Stop Smoking Services: a survey

Background UK NHS Stop Smoking Services provide cost effective smoking cessation interventions but, as yet, there has been no assessment of their provision of relapse prevention interventions. Methods Electronic questionnaire survey of 185 UK Stop Smoking Services Managers. Results Ninety six Stop Smoking Service managers returned completed questionnaires (52% response rate). Of these, 58.3% (n = 56) ran NHS Stop Smoking Services which provided relapse prevention interventions for clients with the most commonly provided interventions being behavioural support: telephone (77%), group (73%), and individual (54%). Just under half (48%, n = 27) offered nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), 21.4% (n = 12) bupropion; 19.6% (n = 11) varenicline. Over 80% of those providing relapse prevention interventions do so for over six months. Nearly two thirds of all respondents thought it was likely that they would either continue to provide or commence provision of relapse prevention interventions in their services. Of the remaining respondents, 66.7% (n = 22) believed that the government focus on four-week quit rates, and 42.9% (14 services) believed that inadequate funding for provision of relapse prevention interventions, were major barriers to introducing these interventions into routine care. Conclusions Just over half of UK managers of NHS Stop Smoking Services who responded to the questionnaire reported that, in their services, relapse prevention interventions were currently provided for clients, despite, at that time, there being a weak evidence base for their effectiveness. The most commonly provided relapse prevention interventions were those for which there was least evidence. If these interventions are found to be effective, barriers would need to be removed before they would become part of routine care

A high-throughput in vivo micronucleus assay for genome instability screening in mice.

We describe a sensitive, robust, high-throughput method for quantifying the formation of micronuclei, markers of genome instability, in mouse erythrocytes. Micronuclei are whole chromosomes or chromosome segments that have been separated from the nucleus. Other methods of detection rely on labor-intensive, microscopy-based techniques. Here we describe a 2-d, 96-well plate-based flow cytometric method of micronucleus scoring that is simple enough for a research technician experienced in flow cytometry to perform. The assay detects low levels of genome instability that cannot be readily identified by classic phenotyping, using 25 μl of blood. By using this assay, we have screened >10,000 blood samples and discovered novel genes that contribute to vertebrate genome maintenance, as well as novel disease models and mechanisms of genome instability disorders. We discuss experimental design considerations, including statistical power calculation, we provide troubleshooting tips and we discuss factors that contribute to a false-positive increase in the number of micronucleated red blood cells and to experimental variability.Acknowledgments We thank M. Hitcham and N. Harman for assistance with blood collections, W. Cheng for assistance with flow cytometry during high-throughput screening and K. Dry for comments on the manuscript. R.E.M. is supported by Cancer Research UK (CRUK; project grant C20510/A12401). D.J.A. is supported by CRUK. D.J.A. and B.L.N. are supported by the Wellcome Trust. Research in the Jackson Laboratory is funded by CRUK program grant no. C6/A11224, the European Research Council and the European Community Seventh Framework Programme grant agreement no. HEALTH-F2-2010-259893 (DDResponse). Core funding is provided by CRUK (C6946/A14492) and the Wellcome Trust (WT092096). S.P.J. receives his salary from the University of Cambridge, UK, supplemented by CRUK. G.B. is funded by CRUK program grant no. C6/A11224.This is the accepted manuscript for a paper published in Nature Protocols 10, 205–215 (2015) doi:10.1038/nprot.2015.010, Published online 31 December 201