“If It Is Written by Allah, There Is Nothing That Can Stop It”: Saudi women’s breast cancer narratives

The purpose of this study was to identify cultural models of breast cancer held by Saudi women and to explore how these may influence early detection and treatment-seeking behaviors. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with breast cancer survivors (n=20) from two Western cities in Saudi Arabia. Respondents were recruited through social networking, using purposive, snowball sampling. Illness narratives elicited during interviews were transcribed, coded and then analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. Results suggest that fatalism, perceived threats to traditional role fulfillment, and a preference for traditional therapies commonly mark the breast cancer experiences of Saudi women, influencing their early detection and treatment-seeking behaviors. A more nuanced understanding of emic viewpoints could help to improve public health messaging and intervention strategies in Saudi Arabia

“If It Is Written by Allah, There Is Nothing That Can Stop It”: Saudi women’s breast cancer narratives

The purpose of this study was to identify cultural models of breast cancer held by Saudi women and to explore how these may influence early detection and treatment-seeking behaviors. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with breast cancer survivors (n=20) from two Western cities in Saudi Arabia. Respondents were recruited through social networking, using purposive, snowball sampling. Illness narratives elicited during interviews were transcribed, coded and then analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. Results suggest that fatalism, perceived threats to traditional role fulfillment, and a preference for traditional therapies commonly mark the breast cancer experiences of Saudi women, influencing their early detection and treatment-seeking behaviors. A more nuanced understanding of emic viewpoints could help to improve public health messaging and intervention strategies in Saudi Arabia

Wearing the Label of Mental Illness: Community-Based Participatory Action Research of Mental Illness Stigma

Stigma remains an impediment to seeking and receiving the requisite care for mental illness. To enhance a local National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) affiliate’s understanding of community members’ perceptions of mental illness and its associated stigma, a community-based participatory action research study was conducted. The study addressed the following research question: how do community members understand and experience the stigma associated with mental illness? Twenty-two participant-researchers wore mental illness labeled T-shirts around the local community, recorded their observations and reflections of this experience and recruited twenty-two community members for semi-structured interviews about mental illness stigma. Domain analysis of the interviews revealed community members’ understandings of (1) sources of stigma, (2) impacts of stigma, (3) conceptualizations of stigma and (4) pathways to change stigma. Findings were presented to members of the local NAMI affiliate as well as other community members. Practical implications, specific to the community of interest, are discussed

Conference on a Disk: A Successful Experiment in Hypermedia Publishing (Extended Abstract)

Academic conferences are a long-standing and effective form of multimedia communication. Conference participants can transmit and recieve information through sight, speech, gesture, text, and touch. This same-time, same-place communication is sufficiently valuable to justify large investments in time and travel funds. Printed conference proceedings are attempts to recapture the value of a life conference, but they are limited by a fragmented and inefficient approach to the problem. We addressed this problem in the multimedia proceedings of the DAGS\u2792 conference. The recently published CD-ROM delibers text, graphic, audio, and video information as an integrated whole, with extensive provisions for random access and hypermedia linking. We belive that this project provides a model for future conference publications and highlights some of the research issues that must be resolved before similar publications can be quickly and inexpensively produced

Community Versus Out-of-Hospital Birth: What's in a Name?

The term out‐of‐hospital has long been used as a kind of shorthand to refer collectively to births that occur in birth centers or at home. However, this term has also been a persistent cause of concern among health care providers who attend births in these settings, and researchers and midwives are increasingly adopting the term community birth instead to refer to planned home and birth center births. Some who resist the term out‐of‐hospital have argued that it reifies hospital birth as normative and community birth as other, marginal, or alternative. Here we propose community birth as a preferable term because it labels the practice for what it is—instead of for what it is not. This argument is similar to those made by communities of color who have critiqued the use of nonwhite as a demographic category that elevates Euro‐Americans as the default race. Medical anthropologists have also compared the use of the term out‐of‐hospital to the tendency to call nonallopathic forms of healing complementary or alternative. Yet, many so‐called complementary and alternative medicine practitioners prefer to identify their forms of healing as holistic, integrative, or functional to indicate that modalities such as acupuncture, Ayurveda, chiropractic, and so on are autonomous approaches that may exist outside of, but are not subservient to or less than, allopathic and biomedical modalities. These health care providers, too, commonly choose to refer to their practice with terms that convey what it is, rather than what it is not, just as persons of color choose to be identified for who they are, not for who they are not

The cloquet forest

This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations

Thermal Behavior of Benzoic Acid/Isonicotinamide Binary Cocrystals

YesA comprehensive study of the thermal behavior of the 1:1 and 2:1 benzoic acid/isonicotinamide cocrystals is reported. The 1:1 material shows a simple unit cell expansion followed by melting upon heating. The 2:1 crystal exhibits more complex behavior. Its unit cell first expands upon heating, as a result of C–H···π interactions being lengthened. It then is converted into the 1:1 crystal, as demonstrated by significant changes in its X-ray diffraction pattern. The loss of 1 equiv of benzoic acid is confirmed by thermogravimetric analysis–mass spectrometry. Hot stage microscopy confirms that, as intuitively expected, the transformation begins at the crystal surface. The temperature at which conversion occurs is highly dependent on the sample mass and geometry, being reduced when the sample is under a gas flow or has a greater exposed surface area but increased when the heating rate is elevated

Multiple scattering of light in a spherical cometary atmosphere with an axisymmetric dust jet

We have developed a numerical solution for the anisotropic multiple scattering of light in a cometary atmosphere. The atmosphere is assumed to be a spherical shell illuminated by parallel solar rays. The spatial variation of dust in the coma is symmetric about the Sun-comet axis. Multiple scattering of photons is determined by lambda iteration.We study two model dust profiles: (1) a spherically symmetric profile and (2) an axisymmetric dust jet at the comet's subsolar point. Calculation is made of the flux of visible energy impinging on the nucleus surface, the mean intensity of visible light throughout the coma, and an approximate solution for the flux of thermal radiation at the comet surface due to emission from dust particles in the coma. We determine conditions under which single and multiple scattering each become significant. Under all conditions examined, at no point on the nucleus surface does the radiant flux exceed the visible flux at the subsolar point of a bare nucleus.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29918/1/0000275.pd