“Always Ready for any Sticky Job”: The Canadian Corps of (Civilian) Firefighters in the Second World War

The Canadian Corps of (Civilian) Firefighters was created. In 1942 to assist the British National Fire Service (NFS) in fighting fires caused by German bombings. Some 400 specially-recruited Corps members served in Britain from 1942 to 1944 under often very hazardous conditions. Its story remains one of the forgotten and more unique Canadian contributions to the war effort

Formal Bureaucracy and the Emergent Forms of the Informal Economy

social organization, development, bureaucracy, democracy

Money from a cultural point of view

Comment on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

Characteristics of East Tennessee Christmas tree producers and their farm operations

The major purpose of this study was to describe Christmas tree producers in Upper East Tennessee and their farm operations. It was believed that the information would help Extension Agents in Carter, Johnson, and Unicoi Counties to do a better job of planning programs to meet the interests and needs of the Christmas tree clientele. Thirty Christmas tree producers were interviewed. The survey instrument was developed by the researcher with the help of the graduate committee. Data obtained were selected characteristics of Christmas tree producers and their farm operations. Data were coded and punched on computer cards and computations were made by the University of Tennessee Computing Center. The analysis of variance F test and Chi-square test were used to deter mine the strength of relationships between variables. F values and x2 values which achieved the .05 probability level were accepted as significant. Major findings included the following: 1. Only four producers were operating on Christmas tree farms which a family member had previously established. Eighty-three percent of the producers were under the age of 50 with 40% between the ages of 30 and 40 years. 2. Eleven producers surveyed were members of a state Christmas tree growers\u27 association and five were members of the National Christmas Tree Growers\u27 Association. Producers who were members of a state Christmas tree association had grown trees an average of 10.3 years while the non-members had grown trees an average of 3.2 years. The producers who were members of the National Christmas Tree Association had grown trees an average of 13.2 years. 3. The largest number of Christmas trees in production was Frazer fir with 19 producers growing this species. The second largest number of trees in production was White pine with 23 producers growing this species. 4. Producer employment off the farm was significantly related to the average number of years producers had grown Christmas trees. Six producers not employed off the farm grew Christmas trees an average of 13 years, while 24 producers employed off the farm had grown Christmas trees an average of 4 years. 5. Producer employment off the farm was significantly related to the number of Extension Christmas tree meetings attended. Six producers employed on the farm attended 3 Extension Christmas tree meetings while 24 producers employed off the farm attended an average of 1.5 meetings. 6. Most Christmas tree producers had made contact with the Extension Service. Twenty-one producers attended 1 to 3 Extension Christmas tree meetings during the past 12 months. Seventeen producers did visit the Extension office 1 to 3 times, 17 producers telephoned the Extension office 1 to 4 times, and 16 producers received 1 to 3 farm visits from Extension agents. Three producers visited the Extension office 4 to 5 times. Nine producers telephoned the Extension office 5 to 12 times and 5 producers received 4 to 7 visits from Extension agents. 7. Producers having friends growing Christmas trees did significantly influence the number of Extension Christmas tree meetings attended. Those 7 producers not having close friends growing Christmas trees attended an average of 0.7 Extension Christmas tree meetings, while the 23 producers with close friends growing Christmas trees attended an average of 2.1 Extension Christmas tree meetings

Jack Goody : the anthropology of unequal society

In almost four decades Jack Goody has published a score of books seeking to explain the divergence of Africa from the Eurasian continent, and latterly to refute historical claims of western superiority to Asia. Since the millennium, he has sought to clarify his own vision of modern capitalism at a time when western hegemony is coming under pressure from globalization. Yet this achievement has not received the recognition from anthropologists that it deserves. This article, in reviewing six books published during the last decade, makes a case for reassessing Goody’s project from the mid-1970s until now. It singles out two books for special attention, The Theft of History and his latest volume, Metals, Culture and Capitalism. A consistent theme of his recent work is to juxtapose his own account of the history of western capitalism with those of Marx, Weber and other writers in the classical tradition of social theory. Jack Goody remains to this day an anthropologist whose sensibility was formed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork. But he knew that, if he aspired to throw light on the human predicament as a whole, he would have to become a world historian too.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/grva20hb2017Anthropology and Archaeolog

Marcel Mauss's economic vision, 1920-1925 : anthropology, politics, journalism

Marcel Mauss took some time to resume his academic and political duties after the Great War, but the period 1920–1925 was one of intense activity and achievement on all fronts. He assumed Durkheim’s responsibility as leader of a depleted Année Sociologique group and relaunched the journal. He was optimistic that his international socialist politics would bear national fruit and it did. He was also a prolific financial journalist at this time, writing about the exchange rate crisis of 1922–1924. He maintained a Chinese wall between these compartments of his life, briefly combining them in the last chapter of The Gift, which is only a tentative synthesis. This separation of his intellectual and political commitments makes it easier for anthropologists to ignore his politics and, worse, to perpetuate in his name that opposition between market contracts and gifts as economic principles that he wrote his famous essay to refutehttp://journals.sagepub.com/home/jcshb2017Anthropology and Archaeolog

On-sky wide field adaptive optics correction using multiple laser guide stars at the MMT

We describe results from the first astronomical adaptive optics system to use multiple laser guide stars, located at the 6.5-m MMT telescope in Arizona. Its initial operational mode, ground-layer adaptive optics (GLAO), provides uniform stellar wavefront correction within the 2 arc minute diameter laser beacon constellation, reducing the stellar image widths by as much as 53%, from 0.70 to 0.33 arc seconds at lambda = 2.14 microns. GLAO is achieved by applying a correction to the telescope's adaptive secondary mirror that is an average of wavefront measurements from five laser beacons supplemented with image motion from a faint stellar source. Optimization of the adaptive optics system in subsequent commissioning runs will further improve correction performance where it is predicted to deliver 0.1 to 0.2 arc second resolution in the near-infrared during a majority of seeing conditions.Comment: 13 pages, 1 table, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal. Expected March 200

Adherence to prophylaxis in adolescents and young adults with severe haemophilia: A quantitative study with patients

© 2017 van Os et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Introduction: haemophilia is an inherited bleeding disorder caused by a deficiency in one of the blood coagulation factors. For people affected by severe haemophilia, the deficiency can cause spontaneous internal bleeding. Most young people with severe haemophilia in the UK follow a preventative treatment regimen (prophylaxis) consisting of several intravenous injections of factor concentrate each week. There is good evidence that prophylaxis reduces bleeds whilst also improving quality of life. However, levels of adherence among young people with haemophilia reported in the existing literature vary widely and are predominately based on estimations made by healthcare professionals and parents. Additionally, drivers of (non)adherence among young people specifically have not been evidenced. Aim: to assess self-reported adherence among young people with haemophilia, provide evidence of psychosocial predictors of adherence, and to establish the associations between non-adherence and number of bleeds and hospital visits. Methods: 91 participants were recruited during outpatient appointments in 13 haemophilia centres across England and Wales, and invited to complete a questionnaire assessing self-reported adherence (VERITAS-Pro), Haemophilia-related pain and impact of pain, Illness Perceptions, Beliefs about Medications, Self-efficacy, Outcome expectations, Positive and Negative Affect, and Social support. Number of hospital visits and bleeds during the previous six months were collected from medical files. Results: Of 78 participants with complete data, just 18% had scores indicating non-adherence. Psychosocial predictors differed between intentional (skipping) and un-intentional (forgetting) non-adherence. Overall, however, better adherence was reported where participants perceived the need for prophylaxis was greater than their concern over taking it as well as having a positive expectancy of its effectiveness, good social support and a stronger emotional reaction to having haemophilia. Conclusion: The findings indicate that adherence is generally good, and that assessing illness and treatment beliefs, social support and outcome expectations may play a valuable role in identifying which individuals are at risk of non-adherence. Interventions aimed at improving adherence should particularly consider improving social support, reducing patients’ concerns about prophylaxis, increasing their belief in the necessity of prophylaxis, and increasing positive outcome expectations.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio