Americas

ABSTRACT. The assumption of interregional equilibrium in migration research has recently been attacked. At issue is the motivation for on-going migration if rents and wags accurately compensate for spatial amenity variations; but if rents and wages fail to accurately compensate potential migrants, then amenity valuations must be flawed. We here show that arguments supporting substantial disequilibrium in the US. economy are unconvincing. The substantive issues are then clarified by a model which allows for both equilibrium and disequilibrium migration. We conclude that intertemporally systematic migration stems predominantly from equilibrium forces.

The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a process of nonhydrostatic pulmonary edema and hypoxemia associated with a variety of etiologies, carries a high morbidity, mortality (10 to 90%), and financial cost. The reported annual incidence in the United States is 150,000 cases, but this figure has been challenged, and it may be different in Europe. Part of the reason for these uncertainties are the heterogeneity of diseases underlying ARDS and the lack of uniform definitions for ARDS. Thus, those who wish to know the true incidence and outcome of this clinical syndrome are stymied. The American-European Consensus Committee on ARDS was formed to focus on these issues and on the pathophysiologic mechanisms of the process. It was felt that international coordination between North America and Europe in clinical studies of ARDS was becoming increasingly important in order to address the recent plethora of potential therapeutic agents for the prevention and treatment of ARDS.

Obesity is a significant public health concern affecting more than half a billion people worldwide. Obesity rise is not only limited to developed countries, but to developing nations as well. This paper aims to compare the mean body mass index trends in the World Health Organisation- (WHO-) categorised regions since 1980 to 2008 and secondly to appraise how socioeconomic disparities can lead to differences in obesity and physical activity level across developing nations. Taking into account past and current BMI trends, it is anticipated that obesity will continue to take a significant ascent, as observed by the sharp increase from 1999 to 2008. Gender differences in BMI will continue to be as apparent, that is, women showing a higher BMI trend than men. In the coming years, the maximum mean BMI in more developed countries might be exceeded by those in less developed ones. Rather than focusing on obesity at the individual level, the immediate environment of the obese individual to br...

Unlike Africa, the Middle East, or Asia, the Americas have a long albeit problematic track record with democracy. Apart from Cuba, the democracy promotion challenge is not so much how to democratize authoritarian regimes but on how to strengthen democratic institutions, governance, and citizenship while defending democratic constitutional orders from authoritarian backsliding by elected incumbent leaders. Moreover, democracy is currently a highly contested concept in the Americas in terms of its meaning and practices, as illustrated by the intense competition between rival visions of representative democracy and plebiscitary or direct alternatives in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela

Individual and situational risk factors associated with negative postabortion psychological sequelae have been identified, but the degree of posttraumatic stress reactions and the effects of culture are largely unknown. Retrospective data were collected using the Institute for Pregnancy Loss Questionnaire (IPLQ) and the Traumatic Stress Institute's (TSI) Belief Scale administered at health care facilities to 548 women (331 Russian and 217 American) who had experienced one or more abortions, but no other pregnancy losses. Overall, the findings here indicated that American women were more negatively influenced by their abortion experiences than Russian women. While 65% of American women and 13.1% of Russian women experienced multiple symptoms of increased arousal, re-experiencing and avoidance associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 14.3% of American and 0.9% of Russian women met the full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Russian women had significantly higher scores on ...

Evaluation of the knowledge, attitude and practice of breast self-examination in different groups of women in São Paulo.Application of a questionnaire to 392 women divided in four groups. Group one: 101 patients of the National Health Service, Group two: 95 female physicians; Group three: 95 female medical students; and Group four: 101 wives of gynecologists.Self-examination was performed by 90.3% of women, Group 1 having the lowest rate, 69.3%. However, proper self-examination (performed monthly or once per cycle, after menstrual period, with at least one stage in standing or sitting up position) was performed by only 30.4%, the poorest performance being found in Group 1 (15.7%) and the best one in Group 2 (43.6%). For women in Group 1, “mass media” was the most important source of information on breast self-examination, whereas for the other groups, it was “medical sources”.The majority of women are knowledgeable about breast self-examination but perform it improperly, this finding being more common among women who depend on the National Health Service, who represent a section of the general population. As breast self-examination remains an important tool in countries with limited resources, this study confirms the importance of disseminating proper information, and that more investment should be made in awareness campaigns.

This paper examines the claims of the Gestalt psychologists that there was a crisis in experimental psychology ca. 1900, which arose because the prevailing sensory atomism excluded meaning from among psychological phenomena. The Gestaltists claim that a primary motivation of their movement was to show, against the speculative psychologists and philosophers and Verstehen historians, that natural scientific psychology can handle meaning. Purportedly, they revealed this motivation in their initial German-language presentations but in English emphasized their scientific accomplishments for an American audience. The paper finds that: there was a recognized crisis in the new experimental psychology ca. 1900 pertaining especially to sensory atomism; that the Gestaltists responded to the crisis with new experimental findings and theoretical concepts that challenged atomism; in both languages, they raised problems of meaning and discussed the contest with speculative psychology and philosophy only after presenting their scientific case; that they introduced phenomenological observations on meaning and perceptual organization into their psychology but did not develop a theory of meaning or solve philosophical problems; that they argued ‘‘philosophically,’’ that is, using abstract, conceptual arguments; and that this aspect of their cognitive style was not received well by some prominent members of their American audience.

Since 1949 there have been dramatic changes in the flow of migrants from Mainland China to Canada, which existing structural models of migration, emphasizing factors in the destination country, do not fully capture. Conditions in the country of origin, and geopolitical rela- ...

In 1999 the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) was asked by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to offer a series of workshops on higher education policy questions for a selected group of higher education decision-makers from ...

abortion experiences than Russian women. While 65% of American women and 13.1% of Russian women experienced multiple symptoms of increased arousal, re-experiencing and avoidance as- sociated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 14.3% of American and 0.9% of Russian wom- en met the full diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Russian women had signifi cantly higher scores on the TSI Belief Scale than

The social thought of Castoriadis and Lefort address Old World
constellations. Yet both are positioned in a critical relationship to the
Enlightenment and Romanticism, and pose questions about power, the
political and citizenship relevant to different civilizational settings. Two
political philosophies that emerged in the era of revolutionary critique are
examined in this paper alongside Castoriadis and Lefort. Thomas Jefferson’s
philosophy of republic and empire and Simon Bolivar’s creed of independence
were American visions that connected with the political imaginary.
Each set down traditions open to interpretation and mythologization. Both
invoked an older rivalry of two images of the New World, as American or as
Colombian, which was really a rivalry of Spanish and British Empires and
their civilizational influences. Where earlier republican visions developed
at the cusp of virtue and interest cultures had posed a particular range of
questions about democracy, civic constitution and independence, American
states now contained democratic and authoritarian potential. Even though
Castoriadis and Lefort did not make these American contexts the centre of
their work, each conceive the political and politics in ways that are relevant
to American modernities. A key argument put in this paper with respect to
Castoriadis and Lefort is that Castoriadis’s conception of creation is more
salient to the republican revolutions more generally, while Lefort’s notion
of political imaginary finds a strong case in the North American revolution.

Molecular Anthropology is a relatively young field of research. In fact, less than 50 years have passed since the symposium "Classification and Human Evolution" (1962, Burg Wartenstein, Austria), where the term was formally introduced by Emil Zuckerkandl. In this time, Molecular Anthropology has developed both methodologically and theoretically and extended its applications, so covering key aspects of human evolution such as the reconstruction of the history of human populations and peopling processes, the characterization of DNA in extinct humans and the role of adaptive processes in shaping the genetic diversity of our species. In the current scientific panorama, molecular anthropologists have to face a double challenge. As members of the anthropological community, we are strongly committed to the integration of biological findings and other lines of evidence (e.g. linguistic and archaeological), while keeping in line with methodological innovations which are moving the ...