The Chester Beatty Collection of Siamese Manuscripts in Ireland

This article demonstrates the importance of the Chester Beatty Library’s collection of Thai manuscripts and more broadly highlights the importance of including the study of Ireland in the history of the study of Asia. I hope it also encourages future scholars to look to Ireland when writing the intellectual history of exchange between Asia and Europe. Even though Ireland was not a colonizing power, indeed, it was colonized for most of its pre-modern history, its libraries and museums attest to a people that spread far and wide across the globe sometimes as a point of necessity and sometimes in the spirit of exploration

The Emotional Lives of Buddhist Monks in Modern Thai Film

As Phra Tham, a forest monk from Southern Thailand, traveled by train from his monastery to his home town for his younger sister’s cremation, he is tormented by visions of Muslim passengers wanting to kill him and the site of his sister being blown apart by a terrorist bomb. He is on the verge of tears the entire trip. This early scene in Nonzee Nimibutr’s film, OK Baytong, is one of many in recent Thai films which depict Southeast Asian Buddhist monks exhibiting extreme emotional joy, anger, or distress. Other films depict monks laughing hysterically, lashing out violently, sobbing uncontrollably, or fearfully trembling. These films, a small selection described below, offer a revealing lens into the myriad ways in which monks are displayed in Thailand. They also demonstrate the value of narrative ethics in the study and teaching of Southeast Asian Buddhism

Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks

Buddhism, often described as an austere religion that condemns desire, promotes denial, and idealizes the contemplative life, actually has a thriving leisure culture in Asia. Creative religious improvisations designed by Buddhists have been produced both within and outside of monasteries across the region—in Nepal, Japan, Korea, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Justin McDaniel looks at the growth of Asia’s culture of Buddhist leisure—what he calls “socially disengaged Buddhism”—through a study of architects responsible for monuments, museums, amusement parks, and other sites. In conversation with noted theorists of material and visual culture and anthropologists of art, McDaniel argues that such sites highlight the importance of public, leisure, and spectacle culture from a Buddhist perspective and illustrate how “secular” and “religious,” “public” and “private,” are in many ways false binaries. Moreover, places like Lek Wiriyaphan’s Sanctuary of Truth in Thailand, Suối Tiên Amusement Park in Saigon, and Shi Fa Zhao’s multilevel museum/ritual space/tea house in Singapore reflect a growing Buddhist ecumenism built through repetitive affective encounters instead of didactic sermons and sectarian developments. They present different Buddhist traditions, images, and aesthetic expressions as united but not uniform, collected but not concise: Together they form a gathering, not a movement. Despite the ingenuity of lay and ordained visionaries like Wiriyaphan and Zhao and their colleagues Kenzo Tange, Chan-soo Park, Tadao Ando, and others discussed in this book, creators of Buddhist leisure sites often face problems along the way. Parks and museums are complex adaptive systems that are changed and influenced by budgets, available materials, local and global economic conditions, and visitors. Architects must often compromise and settle at local optima, and no matter what they intend, their buildings will develop lives of their own. Provocative and theoretically innovative, Architects of Buddhist Leisure asks readers to question the very category of “religious” architecture. It challenges current methodological approaches in religious studies and speaks to a broad audience interested in modern art, architecture, religion, anthropology, and material culture. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.Knowledge Unlatche

Siamese Manuscript Collections in the United States

This article provides a brief survey of public collections of Thai manuscripts held in the United States, which is home to roughly 650 Thai manuscripts. Of the twenty institutions that house Thai manuscripts, the following five are highlighted in this article: the Asian Art Museum, the University of California at Berkeley, the New York Public Library, Princeton University Libraries, and the Walters Art Museum. The second half of this article details a few key manuscripts held at the University of Pennsylvania: the Abhidhamma chet Kamphi, one book of the Phra ‘Aphaimanī epic, and a rare set of royal decrees. In short, this overview illustrates the vast diversity of genres of Thai manuscripts held in the United States – including a Thai translation of the Gospel of Matthew – as well as the diversity of its collectors in the nineteenth-century, the majority of whom were women

Social vulnerability and Lyme disease incidence: a regional analysis of the United States, 2000-2014

Background: Lyme disease (LD), which is highly preventable communicable illness, is the most commonly reported vector borne disease in the USA. The Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) is a county level measure of SES and vulnerability to environmental hazards or disease outbreaks, but has not yet been used in the study of LD. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between the SoVI and LD incidence at the national level and regional division level in the United States between 2000 and 2014. Methods: County level LD data were downloaded from the CDC. County level SoVI were downloaded from the HVRI at the University of South Carolina and the CDC. Data were sorted into regional divisions as per the US Census Bureau and condense into three time intervals, 2000-2004, 2005-2009, and 2010-2014. QGIS was utilized to visually represent the data. Logarithmic OLS regression models were computed to determine the predictive power of the SoVI in LD incidence rates. Results: LD incidence was greatest in the Northeastern and upper Midwestern regions of the USA.  The results of the regression analyses showed that SoVI exhibited a significant quadratic relationship with LD incidence rates at the national level. Conclusion: Our results showed that counties with the highest and lowest social vulnerability were at greatest risk for LD. The SoVI may be a useful risk assessment tool for public health practitioners within the context of LD control

A Tilting System for Powered Wheelchairs

The objective of our project is to create a wheelchair platform that can tilt a power wheelchair and its user back into a nearhorizontal position. The purpose of this is to allow a dentist to work on the patient in the manner and position with which they are most accustomed. The device currently used by our sponsor, The Virginia Home, is the Versatilt platform. The Versatilt is capable of lifting a maximum weight of 750 lbs. and tilting patients back, up to 65 degrees. However, the platform is too small to accept the power wheelchairs used by the majority of our sponsor’s patients. This means that patients in powered wheelchairs have to be transferred from their chairs and into manual wheelchairs for their dental service. According to OSHA, these patient transfers also cause 28.3% of workplace injuries for nurses and other care staff. Because of this we have created and prototyped a new design that will allow patients to remain in their powered wheelchairs when they go to get dental work done. In order to accommodate the larger powered wheelchairs and meet our sponsor’s desires, our design incorporates three key design points. The first is the use of heavy duty linear actuators, each of which are capable of exerting 1010 pounds of thrust. The two linear actuators are able to lift the heavier weight of a powered wheelchair and its patient, as well as provide a redundancy system that will ensure that the system will not fail catastrophically. The second design point was the incorporation of a larger tilting platform. This allows the larger powered wheelchairs to be put onto our tilter. The final design consideration was creating a system that would allow the platform to tilt back 80 degrees, which allows for the dentist to work in their normal position. These 3 key design considerations create a system that meets all of the requirements of our project sponsor, while creating a unique system that is not currently on the market.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1070/thumbnail.jp

Disparities in First-to-Second Dose Measles-containing Vaccination Coverage: A Comparative Analysis of the Predictive Power of Three Economic Indices

While overall mortality from measles has decreased, it is still associated with significant global infant deaths. Studies indicate that a second dose of measles-containing vaccine (MCV) is necessary to produce sufficient immunity to measles, yet several developing countries are deficient of a two-dose schedule. This study examined the efficacy of three economic indices—the Human Development Index (HDI), the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), and the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)—in predicting first-to-second MCV dosage disparities. Country-level data for MCV coverage were downloaded from the World Health Organization (WHO). Briggsian logarithmic regression models of MCV dosage disparities were calculated to compare the predictive power of the HDI, IHDI, and MPI. The MPI explained the most variance in dosage disparities, F (1, 54) = 41.835, p \u3c 0.001, R2 = 0.437, b = 0.938, followed by the IDHI (R2 = 0.361, b = −0.935) and HDI (R2 = 0.354, b = −1.023). We suggest the MPI explained the greatest variance because it uses multiple indicators to determine poverty across three dimensions of human development. The MPI predicted larger disparities in more developing countries. Future efforts should be directed toward discovering and reducing barriers to second dose MCV administration in these countries

Colorectal Cancer, Socioeconomic Distribution and Behavior: A Comparative Analysis of Urban and Rural Counties in the USA

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks second for all cancer related deaths among men and women together and third for either sex when considered separately. Disparities exist in CRC incidence and mortality between rural and urban counties in the USA. This study sought to explore socioeconomic and behavioral factors that may partly explain these observed differences. Methods: Using educational and income levels as measures of socioeconomic status (SES), and average alcohol consumption and smoking frequency as behavioral factors, data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program for analysis were coupled. Results: Results showed statistically significant inequalities for CRC incidence (t = 2.678, p = 0.010) and mortality (t = 2.567, p = 0.013), as well as socioeconomic (i.e., poverty; t = 5.644, p < 0.001) and behavioral (i.e., smoking; t = 2.885, p = 0.006) factors between selected rural and urban counties. Regression analysis for colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates at the rural, urban, and national levels yielded relative impacts of smoking frequency, alcohol consumption, and educational level. Conclusions: Health policies aimed at reducing disparities between rural and urban populations in the USA must therefore adequately address SES and behavioral factors. Key words: colorectal cancer, rural health, social determinants of health, health behavio

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (1929-2014)

Une grande figure de l’anthropologie anglo-saxonne nous a quittés le 19 janvier 2014. Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, que ses collègues, étudiants et amis appelaient affectueusement « Tambi », a enseigné dans les départements d’anthropologie britanniques et américains les plus prestigieux. Assistant lecturer puis Fellow au King’s College de Cambridge de 1964 à 1972, il fut ensuite professeur à l’Université de Chicago de 1973 à 1976, et occupa la chaire Esther &Sidney Rabb de l’Université Harvard de..