"In Flanders Fields" — Canada's Official Poem: Breaking Faith

John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" now appears on the ten-dollar bill, its place firmly established within Canadian iconography. Yet the poem has been dismissed by both critics and poets as blithely Romantic and/or jingoistic, yet a close reading of the text reveals a deeper, conflicted significance. In the first two stanzas, McCrae uses conventional pastoral imagery to disrupt the familiar association between Christian ideals of redemption and renewal with nature, hauntingly capturing the uncertainty and fear that pervaded the collective consciousness of soldiers and civilians alike, both during and after World War I. However, in the last stanza, McCrae abandons his skillful representation of the war torn, spiritually diseased soul by applying an ideological gloss that reads like a recruiting poster. The critical silence surrounding the complexities of this poem have led to its reappropriation by the Canadian government as a symbol of the military and heroism rather than a rite of genuine war remembrance

The Geography of Drug Market Activities and Child Maltreatment

This study examines how drug market activities place children at risk for maltreatment over space and time. Data were collected for 95 Census tracts in Sacramento, California over seven years and were analyzed using Bayesian space-time models. Referrals for child maltreatment investigations were less likely to occur in places where current drug market activity was present. However, past year local and spatially lagged drugs sales were positively related to referrals. After the investigative phase, Census tracts with more drug sales had higher numbers of substantiations, and those with more possessions also had more entries into foster care. The temporal delay between drug sales and child maltreatment referrals may indicate that the surveillance systems designed to protect children may not be responsive to changing neighborhood conditions or be indicative of the time it takes for the detrimental effects of the drug use to appear

A Barrier to Exclusive Breastfeeding for Wic Enrollees: Limited Use of Exclusive Breastfeeding Food Package for Mothers

Background: In the first 2 weeks of life, most breastfeeding mother–infant dyads in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) receive infant formula from WIC, instead of a larger food package designed for exclusively breastfeeding mothers. This study was designed to explore reasons for high rates of formula supplementation of breastfeeding newborns enrolled in WIC and the limited use of the WIC expanded food package. Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 29 mothers who either partially or exclusively breastfed for at least 2 months. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, analyzed, coded, and organized into 10 themes. Results: Participants view the WIC program in a contradictory manner. They see it as highly supportive of breastfeeding, but also as a promoter of infant formula. The expanded food package for mothers is not valued, but free supplemental formula is highly valued. Misinformation about breastfeeding pervades the healthcare system, and exclusive breastfeeding is not promoted as an important health goal. Lack of access to breast pumps, the unacceptability of pumping in the workplace, and difficulties with nursing in public all contribute to formula supplementation. Conclusions: The healthcare system, the WIC program, and demands of daily life all contribute to low rates of exclusive breastfeeding in the WIC program. The available expanded food package for mothers who are exclusively breastfeeding is both disliked and underutilized, while free supplemental formula is rarely discouraged

Reflections on the Arts, Environment, and Culture After Ten Years of The Goose

To mark the tenth anniversary of The Goose, we asked prominent ecologically-minded scholars, writers, artists, and educators from across Canada to reflect on the relationship between the arts, culture, and the environment. Their comments illuminate a wide range of triumphs and tensions, from the politics and practices of environmentalist writing and art, to the connections between the environment and matters of diversity and justice, to the past and future of ALECC (Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada), to the world of a single poem

Childhood Adversity is Associated with Left Basal Ganglia Dysfunction During Reward Anticipation in Adulthood

Background: Childhood adversity increases the risk of psychopathology, but the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this vulnerability are not well-understood. In animal models, early adversity is associated with dysfunction in basal ganglia regions involved in reward processing, but this relationship has not been established in humans. Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine basal ganglia responses to (a) cues signaling possible monetary rewards and losses, and (b) delivery of monetary gains and penalties, in 13 young adults who experienced maltreatment before age 14 and 31 non-maltreated controls. Results: Relative to controls, individuals exposed to childhood adversity reported elevated symptoms of anhedonia and depression, rated reward cues less positively, and displayed a weaker response to reward cues in the left globus pallidus. There were no group differences in right hemisphere basal ganglia response to reward cues, or in basal ganglia response to loss cues, no-incentive cues, gains, or penalties. Conclusions: Results indicate that childhood adversity in humans is associated with blunted subjective responses to reward-predicting cues as well as dysfunction in left basal ganglia regions implicated in reward-related learning and motivation. This dysfunction may serve as a diathesis that contributes to the multiple negative outcomes and psychopathologies associated with childhood adversity. The findings suggest that interventions that target motivation and goal-directed action may be useful for reducing the negative consequences of childhood adversity.Psycholog

Understanding preferences for HIV care and treatment in Zambia: evidence from a discrete choice experiment among patients who have been lost to follow-up

Background: In public health HIV treatment programs in Africa, long-term retention remains a challenge. A number of improvement strategies exist (e.g., bring services closer to home, reduce visit frequency, expand hours of clinic operation, improve provider attitude), but implementers lack data about which to prioritize when resource constraints preclude implementing all. We used a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to quantify preferences for a number of potential clinic improvements to enhance retention. Methods and findings: We sought a random sample of HIV patients who were lost to follow-up (defined as >90 days late for their last scheduled appointment) from treatment facilities in Lusaka Province, Zambia. Among those contacted, we asked patients to choose between 2 hypothetical clinics in which the following 5 attributes of those facilities were varied: waiting time at the clinic (1, 3, or 5 hours), distance from residence to clinic (5, 10, or 20 km), ART supply given at each refill (1, 3, or 5 months), hours of operation (morning only, morning and afternoon, or morning and Saturday), and staff attitude ("rude" or "nice"). We used mixed-effects logistic regression to estimate relative utility (i.e., preference) for each attribute level. We calculated how much additional waiting time or travel distance patients were willing to accept in order to obtain other desired features of care. Between December 9, 2015 and May 31, 2016, we offered the survey to 385 patients, and 280 participated (average age 35; 60% female). Patients exhibited a strong preference for nice as opposed to rude providers (relative utility of 2.66; 95% CI 1.9–3.42; p < 0.001). In a standard willingness to wait or willingness to travel analysis, patients were willing to wait 19 hours more or travel 45 km farther to see nice rather than rude providers. An alternative analysis, in which trade-offs were constrained to values actually posed to patients in the experiment, suggested that patients were willing to accept a facility located 10 km from home (as opposed to 5) that required 5 hours of waiting per visit (as opposed to 1 hour) and that dispensed 3 months of medications (instead of 5) in order to access nice (as opposed to rude) providers. This study was limited by the fact that attributes included in the experiment may not have captured additional important determinants of preference. Conclusions: In this study, patients were willing to expend considerable time and effort as well as accept substantial inconvenience in order to access providers with a nice attitude. In addition to service delivery redesign (e.g., differentiated service delivery models), current improvement strategies should also prioritize improving provider attitude and promoting patient centeredness—an area of limited policy attention to date

Guidelines for Media Resources in Academic Libraries (2012)

Technology used in teaching, learning, and research has created new challenges and opportunities for managers of college and university library media resource collections and services. Moving images, sounds, and still images have become increasingly important in teaching, learning and research, and academic librarians are working closely with other agencies on campus to support faculty and student information needs. In some institutions, librarians have become true partners in the delivery of instruction, working with faculty, technologists, and instructional developers to create “new learning communities.” Most academic libraries collect media, and these materials are as vital and diverse as any print collection in an academic library. An academic library media operation may encompass a variety of activities, such as scheduling and managing the delivery of audiovisual equipment to classrooms, operating distance education television studios, offering instructional development and the production of audiovisual materials, and supporting multimedia production. However, this document will address only the core issues related to collecting and maintaining media resources and their attendant services

Different Responses to Reward Comparisons by Three Primate Species

Background: Recently, much attention has been paid to the role of cooperative breeding in the evolution of behavior. In many measures, cooperative breeders are more prosocial than non-cooperatively breeding species, including being more likely to actively share food. This is hypothesized to be due to selective pressures specific to the interdependency characteristic of cooperatively breeding species. Given the high costs of finding a new mate, it has been proposed that cooperative breeders, unlike primates that cooperate in other contexts, should not respond negatively to unequal outcomes between themselves and their partner. However, in this context such pressures may extend beyond cooperative breeders to other species with pair-bonding and bi-parental care. Methods: Here we test the response of two New World primate species with different parental strategies to unequal outcomes in both individual and social contrast conditions. One species tested was a cooperative breeder (Callithrix spp.) and the second practiced bi-parental care (Aotus spp.). Additionally, to verify our procedure, we tested a third confamilial species that shows no such interdependence but does respond to individual (but not social) contrast (Saimiri spp.). We tested all three genera using an established inequity paradigm in which individuals in a pair took turns to gain rewards that sometimes differed from those of their partners. Conclusions: None of the three species tested responded negatively to inequitable outcomes in this experimental context. Importantly, the Saimiri spp responded to individual contrast, as in earlier studies, validating our procedure. When these data are considered in relation to previous studies investigating responses to inequity in primates, they indicate that one aspect of cooperative breeding, pair-bonding or bi-parental care, may influence the evolution of these behaviors. These results emphasize the need to study a variety of species to gain insight in to how decision-making may vary across social structures