Grassroots Emergency Health Risk Communication and Transmedia Public Participation: H1N1 Flu, Travelers from Epicenters, and Cyber Vigilantism

Grassroots risk reduction tactics took new forms in the era of social media. Chinese netizens mobilized human flesh searches (HFS), or cyber vigilantism, to reduce the risks posed by international travelers who might import the H1N1 flu virus into China. My study suggests that at the beginning of the H1N1 flu epidemic, rigorous transmedia intervention efforts were made to discipline the early irresponsible overseas Chinese who traveled extensively after arriving in China, but much less attention was paid to risks posed by foreign travelers. The grassroots risk tactics employed emotional appeals, valuative judgment, and moral condemnation to criticize the irresponsible travel of the earliest imported H1N1 flu cases. These transmedia risk tactics got quickly appropriated by regional and national governments to reduce alienation of overseas Chinese and to discipline overseas returnees. Analysis of the HFS episodes reveals the need to create an interface of interaction between authorities and the public for open systems of communication and to consider local public health practices, emotion needs, and values and beliefs when designing health risk communication messages

The origins of a new Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense sleeping sickness outbreak in eastern Uganda.

BACKGROUND: Sleeping sickness, caused by two trypanosome subspecies, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense, is a parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly in sub-Saharan Africa. We report on a recent outbreak of T b rhodesiense sleeping sickness outside the established south-east Ugandan focus, in Soroti District where the disease had previously been absent. Soroti District has been the subject of large-scale livestock restocking activities and, because domestic cattle are important reservoirs of T b rhodesiense, we investigated the role of cattle in the origins of the outbreak. METHODS: We identified the origins of cattle entering the outbreak area in the 4 years preceding the outbreak. A matched case-control study was conducted to assess whether the distance of villages from the main market involved with restocking was a risk factor for sleeping sickness. We investigated the spatial clustering of sleeping sickness cases at the start of the outbreak. FINDINGS: Over 50% (1510 of 2796) of cattle traded at the market were reported to have originated from endemic sleeping sickness areas. The case-control study revealed that distance to the cattle market was a highly significant risk factor for sleeping sickness (p<0.001) and that there was a significant clustering of cases (27 of 28) close to the market at the start of the outbreak (p<0.001). As the outbreak progressed, the average distance of cases moved away from the cattle market (0.014 km per day, 95% CI 0.008-0.020 km per day, p<0.001). INTERPRETATIONS: The results are consistent with the disease being introduced by cattle infected with T b rhodesiense imported to the market from the endemic sleeping sickness focus. The subsequent spread of the disease away from the market suggests that sleeping sickness is becoming established in this new focus. Public health measures directed at controlling the infection in the animal reservoir should be considered to prevent the spread of sleeping sickness

Integrated control of vector-borne diseases of livestock--pyrethroids: panacea or poison?

Tick- and tsetse-borne diseases cost Africa approximately US$4-5 billion per year in livestock production-associated losses. The use of pyrethroid-treated cattle to control ticks and tsetse promises to be an increasingly important tool to counter this loss. However, uncontrolled use of this technology might lead to environmental damage, acaricide resistance in tick populations and a possible exacerbation of tick-borne diseases. Recent research to identify, quantify and to develop strategies to avoid these effects are highlighted

Size Matters: Imagery of the Fat Female Body in the Art of Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, Joel-Peter Witkin, Laurie Toby Edison, Leonard Nimoy, and Laura Aguilar

Since the early 1990s, a number of prominent artists have begun to produce images of the nude fat body. This dissertation looks at the works of several of those artists--Lucian Freud, Jenny Saville, Joel-Peter Witkin, Laurie Toby Edison, Leonard Nimoy, and Laura Aguilar--seeking to discover what meanings each individual artist layers onto the fat body. Asking why these artists might be interested in the fat body may seem an unnecessary question, as anxiety about fatness pervades Western culture. It is impossible to watch television, listen to the radio, or even read a magazine without being inundated by this unease; whether in the form of advertisements for various weight-loss programs and products, stories about the "obesity epidemic" facing the West, or human interest stories about life as an obese American. Therefore, this dissertation situates artistic images within a larger cultural context. In attempting to understand the meanings layered onto the body in the works of Freud, Saville, Witkin, Edison, Nimoy, and Aguilar, the dissertation draws heavily from the newly developing discipline of fat studies. Authors in this field are challenging the unexposed assumptions that underlie contemporary anxieties about the fat body--that the human body is natural, and that thinness is its natural state--on a number of grounds. Although there is no one unified fat theory, just as there is no one unified feminism, those working in the field share an understanding of the human body as socially constructed, and an understanding of the fat body as the site of many converging discourses; the discourse of science and medicine, of religion and morality, and of gender, racial and class difference. Using this understanding of fatness to read images, the dissertation approaches artistic representations of the body from a new perspective. High art traditionally depicts images of the ideal body (there are, of course, exceptions, such as Velazquez's paintings of court dwarfs) and there exist many art historical readings of this body. Contemporary art, however, has moved away from the idealized body to images of the grotesque: for example, Kiki Smith's images of flayed or dismembered bodies. This dissertation treats the fat body, not as an example of the abnormal or grotesque, but as a marginalized body, and attempts to address the reasons for its growing prevalence in contemporary art as well as locate representations of fatness within contemporary discourse about the body. As such, readings of contemporary artists are supplemented with cultural readings of popular media

Health scares: professional priorities

Currently, many health scholars are concerned about health scares. But what do they mean by the term ‘health scare’ – are health scares an identifiable phenomenon, and how do we currently understand their causation and consequences? By collecting and analyzing published articles about events considered to be health scares, this paper maps the current views of scholars on their characteristics and causes. Results show that health scares are generally understood as events characterized by fears of catastrophic consequences but little actual mortality. However, the social and economic impacts of these events have often been severe. This survey shows that health scares can be usefully sorted into 6 categories, each with identifiable internal dynamics, suggesting different communications strategies to achieve resolution in each category. Using the social amplification of risk framework, the conditions under which risk signals were amplified were traced in general terms among major stakeholders. Simple causes for health scare events could not be identified, though some triggers did emerge. Importantly, public ignorance of real risk, media scaremongering, and political inaction could be dismissed as primary explanations, though they were sometimes factors in scare events. Implications for risk communication and for future research on risk and public health are discussed. Keywords: Health scare, Social amplification of risk, Expert, Media, Risk controversyfunded by the Sidney Sax Travelling Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Public Health, National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia

Saussurian Binary Opposition as the Narrative Structure of Williams Summer and Smoke.

The Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, is one of the forefathers of structuralism whose works have inspired and influenced many of current modern thinkers. Binary opposition is one of many of his thoughts. This notion came up from his theory explaining that in fact in humans attempt at deriving conceptual meanings, their minds work by distinguishing the differences between things. Thus, Saussure basically suggests the idea that humans first logical operation is by discerning things through their relationships; one of Saussures basic relationships is binary opposition. For this reason, this study is conducted to prove this basic yet comprehensive theory as the narrative structure of Williams Summer and Smoke. Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke (1948) is chosen since it is richly endowed with binary symbols and characters. Moreover, the course of the narrative is also structured in dichotomies.The results of this study are: first, the binary symbols and characteristics found in the play reveal the dichotomies concerning the importance of soul/body, spirituality/sexuality, life/death, physical lust/divine love; second, the binary symbols and characters prove that the narrative structure of Summer and Smoke is constructed upon the binary oppositions as proven by the binary quests of soul and body and the binary role transformations between Alma and John as revealed by A.J. Greimas three pairs of actantial model