Shifting Agendas and Competing Interests within Public Health, Science and Technology, and Medicine in Africa

In lieu of the abstract, here is the review\u27s first paragraph: Until recent times, the conventional history of public health, of science and technology, and of medicine has been presented in the West as a tale of out-migration from the advanced, developed world (principally Europe and the United States) to the less developed (or underdeveloped) world.1 By this account, Africa emerges as a peculiar mix of charity case, experimental laboratory, and lucrative market. The four works considered here mark a significant turn in this curiously one-side and resilient story line. Each text begins from the premise—some more forcefully then others—that Africans have always been, and remain today, active agents in the creation, development, innovation, and adaptation of knowledge and practices across public health, science and technology, and medicine

Decision Making for Rapid Information Acquisition in the Reconnaissance of Random Fields

Research into several aspects of robot-enabled reconnaissance of random fields is reported. The work has two major components: the underlying theory of information acquisition in the exploration of unknown fields and the results of experiments on how humans use sensor-equipped robots to perform a simulated reconnaissance exercise. The theoretical framework reported herein extends work on robotic exploration that has been reported by ourselves and others. Several new figures of merit for evaluating exploration strategies are proposed and compared. Using concepts from differential topology and information theory, we develop the theoretical foundation of search strategies aimed at rapid discovery of topological features (locations of critical points and critical level sets) of a priori unknown differentiable random fields. The theory enables study of efficient reconnaissance strategies in which the tradeoff between speed and accuracy can be understood. The proposed approach to rapid discovery of topological features has led in a natural way to to the creation of parsimonious reconnaissance routines that do not rely on any prior knowledge of the environment. The design of topology-guided search protocols uses a mathematical framework that quantifies the relationship between what is discovered and what remains to be discovered. The quantification rests on an information theory inspired model whose properties allow us to treat search as a problem in optimal information acquisition. A central theme in this approach is that "conservative" and "aggressive" search strategies can be precisely defined, and search decisions regarding "exploration" vs. "exploitation" choices are informed by the rate at which the information metric is changing.Comment: 34 pages, 20 figure

Putting Sociology‟ at the Service of the Counterterrorist State While Marginalizing Sociologists

In leui of an abstract, here are the article\u27s first two paragraphs: In the long shadow of September 11, 2001, an enormous and sophisticated state apparatus featuring covert espionage, secret interrogations, and detentions without trials has been created for the ostensible purpose of defeating terrorism. The counterterrorist state operates with broad judicial discretion and minimal oversight or accountability. To safeguard a people’s freedom, it is said, one must occasionally limit that freedom. Benjamin Netanyahu warns that, “Making use of American freedom of speech and religion, of liberal immigration and visitation laws, and of the relative lack of surveillance which they could hardly enjoy in their own countries, [the terrorists] have turned the US into a terrorist haven in its own right” (Netanyahu, 1996:96). Many scholars of varied backgrounds have lamented the manner in which certain political forces in the US have exploited the current geopolitical mania to expand the government’s police powers and to weaken civil rights and judicial review. Here I do not propose to rehearse those arguments. Rather, my interest is to discuss the understated (though invaluable) role of certain sociological traditions as accomplices in the development of the counterterrorist state. Specifically, I will argue that the sociological traditions of hermeneutics and phenomenology have provided the theoretical and methodological weaponry for the counterterrorist state in its efforts to curtail freedom and to classify and catalogue massive amounts of data on large cross sections of the US population who are suspected of terrorist tendencies (or sympathies)

The Role of Historical-Cultural Formations within World-Systems Analysis: Reframing the Analysis of Biomedicine in East Africa

This essay introduces a novel analytical concept for world-systems analysis, historical-cultural formations, for the purpose of analyzing reciprocal global cultural exchanges across the capitalist world-system. This is done through four basic procedures. First, the perspective of world-systems analysis is adopted for the purpose of analyzing biomedicine in world-historical context and biomedicine itself is re-conceptualized as a historical-cultural formation across a single capitalist world-system. Second, in order to conceptually incorporate historical-cultural formations, the basic analytical framework of world-systems analysis is expanded to include cultural forms as integral features of the capitalist world-system, parallel with economic and political structures. Third, biomedicine is framed as an ontological whole, comprised of multiple, embedded ontological spheres that define it as a dynamic cultural form subject to ongoing change and development. Fourth, biomedicine’s journey to East Africa is framed as a facet of East Africa’s incorporation into the capitalist world-system — a necessary prelude to the “globalization” of biomedicine as a historical-cultural formation. Ultimately, contemporary East African medical systems are discovered to be but the latest incarnation of an evolving, global biomedicine — understood as a singular historical-cultural formation across the capitalist world-system

Globalization and Urban Education

In lieu of an abstract, here is the article\u27s first paragraph: Globalization has emerged as the watchword of the new millennium. We are experiencing greater movement across the globe (by people, ideas, diseases, etc.) and new connections between remote social and economic activities (for example, Chinese prison labor producing goods for Wal-Mart shoppers in Fargo, North Dakota). There is a growing economic interdependence internationally. Globalization represents the most visible face of global capitalism. Its ideological and material forms advance the interests of global capitalism and, therefore, the term globalization can provide a useful shorthand when discussing the contemporary period of global capitalism. Two major developments have set the pace for this current era of globalization

Diffraction of a superfluid Fermi gas by an atomic grating

An atomic grating generated by a pulsed standing wave laser field is proposed to manipulate the superfluid state in a quantum degenerate gas of fermionic atoms. We show that in the presence of atomic Cooper pairs, the density oscillations of the gas caused by the atomic grating exhibit a much longer coherence time than that in the normal Fermi gas. Our result indicates that the technique of a pulsed atomic grating can be a potential candidate to detect the atomic superfluid state in a quantum degenerate Fermi gas.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Mechanical manipulation of magnetic nanoparticles by magnetic force microscopy

A method has been developed in this work for the mechanical manipulation of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs). A helical curve was designed as the capture path to pick up and remove the target nanoparticle on a mica surface by a magnetic probe based on the magnetic force microscope (MFM). There were magnetic, tangential and pushing forces acting on the target particle during the approaching process when the tip followed the helical curve as the capture path. The magnetic force was significant when the tip was closer to the particle. The target particle can be attached on the surface of the magnetic probe tip and then be picked up after the tip retracted from the mica surface. Theoretical analysis and experimental results were presented for the pick-up and removal of MNPs. With this method, the precision and flexibility of manipulation of MNPs were improved significantly compared to the pushing or sliding of the target object away from the corresponding original location following a planned path

Organic-Vapor-Liquid-Solid Deposition with an Impinging Gas Jet

A method for rapid, mass-efficient deposition of highly crystalline organic films under near ambient conditions of pressure and temperature is reported based on delivery of an organic precursor via an impinging gas jet to a substrate coated by a thin liquid solvent layer. Films of the organic semiconductor tetracene were deposited by sublimation into a flow of argon carrier gas directed at an indium-tin-oxide/glass substrate coated by a thin layer of bis(2-ethylhexyl)sebecate, and growth was followed in situ with optical microscopy. A fluid dynamics model is applied to account for the gas phase transport and aggregation, and the results compared to experiment. The combination of gas jet delivery with an organic-vapor-liquid-solid growth mechanism leads to larger crystals and lower nucleation densities than on bare surfaces, with markedly different nucleation and growth kinetics. An explanation based on enhanced solution-phase diffusivity and a larger critical nucleus size in the liquid layer is proposed to account for the differences