탈근대 시대의 전후 기능주의 민족지의 의의 : 중국 민족지의 황금기로부터의 교훈

이 글은 필자가 비교문화연구소 콜로키엄에서 발표한 The Worth of Postwar Functionalist Ethnography in the Postmodern Age: Lessons from the Golden Age of China Ethnography를 번역한 것이다.1957년 베르나르 갈린(Bemard Gallin)과 리타 갈린(Rita Gallin)은 신싱(新興) 마을에서 현지조사를 수행하기 위해 창화(彰化)현에 도착했고(Gallin 1966: 4-5), 아더 울프(Arthur Wolf)와 마저리 울프(Margery Wolf)는 시아시조우(下西周) 마을을 연구하기 위해 타이페이(台北)현에 도착했다(Wolf 1968: vii). 중국 민족지의 황금기가 시작된 시점은 이와 같이 기록에 명시되어 있는 반면, 그것이 끝난 시점은 분명치가 않다. 중국 과학원(아직 중국 사회과학원으로 나뉘지 않았던)이 일단의 서구 사회과학자들에게 중국 농촌에 대한 실험적인 현지 조사를 허가해 주었다는 공식 발표를 토대로 그 시기 를 대략 1978년 말 경으로 추정 할 수 있다. 그 당시는 대만이 정치적으로뿐만 아니라 인류학적으로도 중국을 대신하던 시기였다. 중국 본토로부터 축출당한 외국 인류학과들(대다수가 미국인이었던)은 차선책으로 대만으로 옮겨갔다. 당시 대만에는 중국 문화가 계속해서 번창하고 있었을 뿐 아니라 공산주의자들의 침탈도 존재하지 않았기 때문이다. 황금기의 대만의 민족지들은 대만이 중국으로 간주되었던 당시의 정치적 상황과 직접적인 관련이 없는 일련의 편견을 담고 있는데, 이러한 편견은 80년대와 90년대의 불완전한 혁명을 거치기 이전의 인류학의 이론적 분위기와 밀접하게 관련되어 있는 것이 분명하다. 이러한 편견에는 문화적 총체성이라는 이념과 적응주의(adaptationism), 공시주의(synchronicism) 등이 포함된다. 나는 이들 편견들과 이러한 편견들을 비판적 관점으로 발전시킨 민족지들을 주제로 다루어 보려 고 한다. 황금기의 민족지들을 비난하기 위해서 이 글을 쓰는 것은 아니다. 하물며 이들 민족지를 중국 공산당이 소위 역사적 과실이라고 불렀던 것으로 치부하기 위해서는 더더욱 아니다. 나는 오히려 건설적인 세 가지 질문을 던지고자 한다. 첫째, 황금기의 인류학자들이 대만에 관한 글을 쓰는 과정에서 무엇이 포함되고 무엇이 배제되었는가? 이러한 배제와 포함의 유형이 역사적 변화와 연속에 관한 기술과 해석의 가능성에 어떤 영향을 미치는가? 둘째, 특정한 선험적 가정이 나 편견과 관련시켜 볼 때 황금기 민족지들의 이론적 문제들은 그것들을 이해하고 다루는 우리들 자신의 가능성을 어떤 식으로 제약하는가? 마지막으로, 이러한 민족지들은 흔히 중국적인 것으로 언급되는 상호 연관된 문화적 변이형들의 맥락 안에서 대만 문화에 대해 어떤 시사점을 제공하는가

Design and development of the second generation Mars Habitat

The second generation of Mars Habitat is to be utilized as an advanced permanent base for 20 crew members to live on Mars for a period of 6-12 months. It is designed to be a self-contained environment accommodating five main facilities: living, working, service, medical, and a greenhouse. The objective of the design is to create a comfortable, safe, living environment. Hexamars-2 and Lavapolis-2 are two different concepts for the advanced Mars Habitat. The design team assumes there will be an initial habitat located near or on the site from earlier missions that satisfies the requirement for a short-term habitation for the crew to use while constructing Hexamars-2 or Lavapolis-2. Prefabricated structures and materials will be shipped to the site before the long-term crew members arrive. Partial construction and preparation for the long-term habitat will be done by crew members or robotics from a previous mission. The construction of the long-term base will occur in phases. Hexamars-2 consists of six sphere-shaped inflatable modules that will be partially buried below the Martian surface. The construction of each sphere will occur in ten steps. Shape charges will be used to create the crater in which the spherical structure will be placed. The interior core will be unloaded and put into place followed by the exterior structure. The foundation will be filled, the interior bladder will be inflated, floor-to-floor joists connected, and sand pockets filled. Finally, the life support system and interior partitions are put in place. Each sphere consists of three levels of which the lower level will be safe haven. Particular attention is given to structural support, the dominance of internal pressure, the process of construction, and human factors

Neuropsychological Test Performance in African-American and White Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

Little information exists on the performance of black versus white patients with Alzheimer's disease on neuropsychological tests for dementia.In this study, we compared performance on the CERAD (Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease) neuropsychological battery between white (n equals 830) and black (n equals 158) patients with Alzheimer's disease enrolled in the CERAD study at 23 university medical centers in the United States. The black patients were older, had fewer years of formal education, and were more impaired in their activities of daily living than were the white patients. After controlling for these characteristics and for duration of the disease and severity of dementia, there were differences in the performance of black and white patients on several of the cognitive measures. Black patients scored lower than whites on tests of visual naming and constructional praxis and on the Mini-Mental State Examination. There were no statistical differences in performance on tests of fluency and word list memory. These findings suggest that cultural or experiential differences may modify performance on specific neuropsychological tests. These factors, in addition to age and educational background, should be considered when interpreting performance on neuropsychological tests in elderly black patients with dementia

Dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging of tumor-induced lymph flow.

The growth of metastatic tumors in mice can result in markedly increased lymph flow through tumor-draining lymph nodes (LNs), which is associated with LN lymphangiogenesis. A dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) assay was developed, which uses low-molecular weight gadolinium contrast agent to label the lymphatic drainage, to visualize and quantify tumor-draining lymph flow in vivo in mice bearing metastatic melanomas. Tumor-bearing mice showed greatly increased lymph flow into and through draining LNs and into the bloodstream. Quantitative analysis established that both the amount and the rate of lymph flow through draining LNs are significantly increased in melanoma-bearing mice. In addition, the rate of appearance of contrast media in the bloodstream was significantly increased in mice bearing melanomas. These results indicate that gadolinium-based contrast-enhanced MRI provides a noninvasive assay for high-resolution spatial identification and mapping of lymphatic drainage and for dynamic measurement of changes in lymph flow associated with cancer or lymphatic dysfunction in mice. Low-molecular weight gadolinium contrast is already used for 1.5-T MRI scanning in humans, which should facilitate translation of this imaging assay

Pretreatment CD4 Cell Slope and Progression to AIDS or Death in HIV-Infected Patients Initiating Antiretroviral Therapy—The CASCADE Collaboration: A Collaboration of 23 Cohort Studies

Analyzing data from several thousand cohort study participants, Marcel Wolbers and colleagues find that the rate of CD4 T cell decline is not useful in deciding when to start HIV treatment

Rapid Identification of Emerging Pathogens: Coronavirus

New surveillance approach can analyze >900 polymerase chain reactions per day

Data-driven approach for creating synthetic electronic medical records

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>New algorithms for disease outbreak detection are being developed to take advantage of full electronic medical records (EMRs) that contain a wealth of patient information. However, due to privacy concerns, even anonymized EMRs cannot be shared among researchers, resulting in great difficulty in comparing the effectiveness of these algorithms. To bridge the gap between novel bio-surveillance algorithms operating on full EMRs and the lack of non-identifiable EMR data, a method for generating complete and synthetic EMRs was developed.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This paper describes a novel methodology for generating complete synthetic EMRs both for an outbreak illness of interest (tularemia) and for background records. The method developed has three major steps: 1) synthetic patient identity and basic information generation; 2) identification of care patterns that the synthetic patients would receive based on the information present in real EMR data for similar health problems; 3) adaptation of these care patterns to the synthetic patient population.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We generated EMRs, including visit records, clinical activity, laboratory orders/results and radiology orders/results for 203 synthetic tularemia outbreak patients. Validation of the records by a medical expert revealed problems in 19% of the records; these were subsequently corrected. We also generated background EMRs for over 3000 patients in the 4-11 yr age group. Validation of those records by a medical expert revealed problems in fewer than 3% of these background patient EMRs and the errors were subsequently rectified.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>A data-driven method was developed for generating fully synthetic EMRs. The method is general and can be applied to any data set that has similar data elements (such as laboratory and radiology orders and results, clinical activity, prescription orders). The pilot synthetic outbreak records were for tularemia but our approach may be adapted to other infectious diseases. The pilot synthetic background records were in the 4-11 year old age group. The adaptations that must be made to the algorithms to produce synthetic background EMRs for other age groups are indicated.</p

Estimating Long-Term Survival of Critically Ill Patients: The PREDICT Model

BACKGROUND: Long-term survival outcome of critically ill patients is important in assessing effectiveness of new treatments and making treatment decisions. We developed a prognostic model for estimation of long-term survival of critically ill patients. METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This was a retrospective linked data cohort study involving 11,930 critically ill patients who survived more than 5 days in a university teaching hospital in Western Australia. Older age, male gender, co-morbidities, severe acute illness as measured by Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II predicted mortality, and more days of vasopressor or inotropic support, mechanical ventilation, and hemofiltration within the first 5 days of intensive care unit admission were associated with a worse long-term survival up to 15 years after the onset of critical illness. Among these seven pre-selected predictors, age (explained 50% of the variability of the model, hazard ratio [HR] between 80 and 60 years old = 1.95) and co-morbidity (explained 27% of the variability, HR between Charlson co-morbidity index 5 and 0 = 2.15) were the most important determinants. A nomogram based on the pre-selected predictors is provided to allow estimation of the median survival time and also the 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, 10-year, and 15-year survival probabilities for a patient. The discrimination (adjusted c-index = 0.757, 95% confidence interval 0.745-0.769) and calibration of this prognostic model were acceptable. SIGNIFICANCE: Age, gender, co-morbidities, severity of acute illness, and the intensity and duration of intensive care therapy can be used to estimate long-term survival of critically ill patients. Age and co-morbidity are the most important determinants of long-term prognosis of critically ill patients

ADVANCED RECIPROCATING COMPRESSION TECHNOLOGY (ARCT)

The U.S. natural gas pipeline industry is facing the twin challenges of increased flexibility and capacity expansion. To meet these challenges, the industry requires improved choices in gas compression to address new construction and enhancement of the currently installed infrastructure. The current fleet of installed reciprocating compression is primarily slow-speed integral machines. Most new reciprocating compression is and will be large, high-speed separable units. The major challenges with the fleet of slow-speed integral machines are: limited flexibility and a large range in performance. In an attempt to increase flexibility, many operators are choosing to single-act cylinders, which are causing reduced reliability and integrity. While the best performing units in the fleet exhibit thermal efficiencies between 90% and 92%, the low performers are running down to 50% with the mean at about 80%. The major cause for this large disparity is due to installation losses in the pulsation control system. In the better performers, the losses are about evenly split between installation losses and valve losses. The major challenges for high-speed machines are: cylinder nozzle pulsations, mechanical vibrations due to cylinder stretch, short valve life, and low thermal performance. To shift nozzle pulsation to higher orders, nozzles are shortened, and to dampen the amplitudes, orifices are added. The shortened nozzles result in mechanical coupling with the cylinder, thereby, causing increased vibration due to the cylinder stretch mode. Valve life is even shorter than for slow speeds and can be on the order of a few months. The thermal efficiency is 10% to 15% lower than slow-speed equipment with the best performance in the 75% to 80% range. The goal of this advanced reciprocating compression program is to develop the technology for both high speed and low speed compression that will expand unit flexibility, increase thermal efficiency, and increase reliability and integrity. Retrofit technologies that address the challenges of slow-speed integral compression are: (1) optimum turndown using a combination of speed and clearance with single-acting operation as a last resort; (2) if single-acting is required, implement infinite length nozzles to address nozzle pulsation and tunable side branch absorbers for 1x lateral pulsations; and (3) advanced valves, either the semi-active plate valve or the passive rotary valve, to extend valve life to three years with half the pressure drop. This next generation of slow-speed compression should attain 95% efficiency, a three-year valve life, and expanded turndown. New equipment technologies that address the challenges of large-horsepower, high-speed compression are: (1) optimum turndown with unit speed; (2) tapered nozzles to effectively reduce nozzle pulsation with half the pressure drop and minimization of mechanical cylinder stretch induced vibrations; (3) tunable side branch absorber or higher-order filter bottle to address lateral piping pulsations over the entire extended speed range with minimal pressure drop; and (4) semi-active plate valves or passive rotary valves to extend valve life with half the pressure drop. This next generation of large-horsepower, high-speed compression should attain 90% efficiency, a two-year valve life, 50% turndown, and less than 0.75 IPS vibration. This program has generated proof-of-concept technologies with the potential to meet these ambitious goals. Full development of these identified technologies is underway. The GMRC has committed to pursue the most promising enabling technologies for their industry