Faith, Farming and Food Justice

Through a liberationist lens, religion and social justice are more similar than different. Food illuminates opportunities for building collective agency and community resilience in which religion and social justice might serve one another (White 2018). Specifically, faith communities can contribute to local food systems by using church-owned lands to provide access to farmland for beginning and BIPOC farmers, improve access to fresh, healthy produce, and enhance food security (FaithLands 2021). Faith communities are shifting mindsets from charity to justice and scarcity to abundance while addressing rural child hunger (Lietz-Bilecky 2020). Overall, this paper explores unique ways the Christian food movement addresses social, health, and environmental crises that challenge food systems. Additionally, this paper describes personal experiences during a fellowship while exploring the process of vocational discernment as connection to self and surrounding place through farming in rural and urban contexts located within Ohio, South Dakota, California, and Oregon. Overall, this paper explores topics of food justice, liberation theology/ecological theology of liberation, faith community engagement, social justice, environmental justice, agrarianism, agriculture, food sovereignty, food systems, and hunger

Fianna Fail and the Origins of The Irish Press

In order to win political support for its programme of economic self-sufficiency in the 1930s, Fianna Fail appealed to a number of constituencies: Irish manufacturers, the smaller farmers, and the urban working class. The success of this appeal depended on a number of factors, one of the principal being that an effective means of communication should be established. The Irish Press was founded in response to an immediate and pressing need for a mass circulation daily to assist in Fianna Fail\u27s struggle for hegemony against the ideas of the ruling party, Cumann na nGaedheal. Manning (l972:42) remarks that the significance of The Irish Press could hardly be overestimated in view of the hostility of the existing daily papers towards Fianna Fail

Degradation of paracetamol and other constituents in Perfalgan®

Background: The manufacturers of Perfalgan®, a formulation of intravenous paracetamol, recommend that each ampoule be used once only. This is most likely due to concerns regarding degradation of paracetamol or other ingredients in the solution, and sterility issues. However, in South Africa, where the expense of this drug limits use, some centres use one ampoule for multiple paediatric cases over the course of 12–24 hours. No obvious clinical adverse effects have been reported.Aim: The aim of this study was to examine this practice by assessing drug bioavailability as well as the in vitro stability of the paracetamol and excipients in Perfalgan® on exposure to air and specific stressors over time.Methodology: High-performance liquid chromatography (HPCL-UV) was used to determine the concentration of paracetamol and the presence of degradation products in samples taken at set time intervals following exposure of Perfalgan® to air and stressors. Since changes in other components, or excipients, may impact efficacy, these were measured using nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR). The octanol:water partition coefficient was used as an indicator of bioavailability. Ultraviolet spectroscopy was used to calculate the penetration of paracetamol in Perfalgan® into the lipid layer.Results: The paracetamol in Perfalgan® did not degrade on exposure to air over 24 hours. Neither did it degrade on exposure to acid, alkali, oxidative or heat stress. 1H NMR revealed no change in the formulation of Perfalgan® except for the conversion of the oxygen scavenger cysteine to cystine. The octanol:water partition coefficient likewise stayed constant and was in agreement with the value of 0.46–0.49 quoted in the literature.Conclusion: Paracetamol and the excipients in Perfalgan® did not degrade on exposure to air and other stressors over 24 hours. The drug retained its lipid permeability over this period.Keywords: excipients, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), Perfalgan®, ultraviolet spectroscopy (UV spectroscopy

The Irish Press and populism in Ireland

This thesis draws on critical perspectives in media and development studies m order to explain the formation, evolution and decline of one of Ireland's national daily newspapers, the Irish Press. From the mid-1970's onward, media and development studies was dominated by the conceptual framework provided by Dependency theory. The crisis of dependency approaches in the mid-1980's led some writers towards a re-orientation of policy studies away from the question of external structural influences and towards a new consideration of class conflicts and the inter-relations between the state, industry and the media. In particular, the work of Latin American theorists Cardoso and Faletto wasre interpreted within media studies to provide a model for concrete studies of specific sociohistorical formations and their interaction with the institutions of the mass media in late industrialising countries. This thesis proposes a critical reading of the model of Cardoso and Faletto with reference to "nationalpopular" phases of development and shows how some of the insights can be used to explain the rise and fall of the Irish Press in Ireland. Hence, it possible to draw an analogy between populism in Latin America and the case of Ireland in the 1930's. The empirical section of the thesis seeks to demonstrate, at one end the political circumstances underlying the foundation of the Irish Press in 1931 and, at another, the construction of a populist discourse of development in the Irish Press. It shows how this discourse sought to incorporate sections of the industrial bourgeoisie, the working class and marginalised rural groups within the Fianna Fail project of 'tate-assisted industrialisation. Finally, the thesis consideis how the multiple contradictions of this populist projet t shaped and influenced the development of the Irish Press from the 1930's to the present In conclusion, the thesis seeks to show that the democratic expectation of the populist era and the radical challenge of the Irish Press were undermined not simply by economic dependency but by the tensions inherent within the populist project

The Need for Caring Pedagogies: A personal look at education in depressed economies

By grounding my work in this series of four essays in literary theory, but telling stories to which almost anyone can relate I hope to begin making the connection between sometimes heady academics and everyday working-class Americans. Only when learners understand their circumstances and the need for education, can they begin to take control of what they learn and how they employ that knowledge

Communal Reciprocity in the Andes: An Ethnohistorical Approach to the Relationship Between Ayni and Food Production

Ayni, or reciprocity, historically characterizes Quechua culture as a fundamental aspect of ancient Andean societies. Furthermore, ayni represents a cosmovision that may come from pre-Hispanic times (as a political practice and ideology of the Inca Empire), that can be found in the texts of historians of the colonial period and endure to the present day. In this way, ayni is an ancient principle that has influenced Andean communities and continues to maintain today as a way to re-energize and maintain livelihood of the community through environmental conservation and complex household economies of sharing land, labor, and food. Due to the continuity of this custom, the principle of ayni arguably carries the Andean communities as a strategy to confront challenges faced in the past, like the colonization of the Spaniards, and remains today amidst Western modernity. Thereupon, ayni has created a distinct “resilience” that has been important for the vitality and foundation of Andean communities. Ultimately, these reciprocal exchanges extend into established commercial markets offering a potential theoretical model that could be repeated in other contexts outside of the Andean world for the future

Predicting exercise motivation and exercise behavior: A moderated mediation model testing the interaction between perceived exercise variety and basic psychological needs satisfaction

ObjectivesPerceived variety in exercise predicts exercise behavior through autonomous motivation. However, psychological need satisfaction (viz. for competence, autonomy, and relatedness) may moderate the relationship between perceived variety in exercise and exercise behavior (through autonomous motivation). The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the satisfaction of the basic psychological needs in exercise contexts moderates the mediating role of autonomous exercise motivation in the relationship between perceived variety in exercise and exercise behavior.DesignCross-sectional.MethodAdults (N = 499) completed an online questionnaire to measure the study variables. Associations were examined using structural equation modeling.ResultsPsychological need satisfaction moderated the positive indirect relationship between perceived exercise variety and self-reported exercise behavior (via autonomous motivation) such that perceived variety was associated with exercise behavior when psychological need satisfaction scores were lower than average.ConclusionsBased on these findings, perceived exercise variety may act as a compensatory source of motivation when psychological need satisfaction is low. In addition to attempting to foster need-supportive exercise contexts, it may be particularly important for exercise promotion specialists to foster the experience of variety among individuals who have lower psychological need satisfaction