Intencionalidad, experiencia y función: la articulación de los saberes médicos

At present time, in many Latinoamerican and European societies there is a diversity of illness care models, wich are considered in an isolated and even antagonistic way by State Health Sector. This happens by living out the observation of individual and groups practices which shows the narrow and continual relationship between this models. This paper describes particular relations between biomedicine and selfcare to show the constant transaction process between them. In first place some basic biomedical and selfcare characteristics are considered, then we observe the transaction between them with special attention to drugs prescription and self medication. Transaction process is usually ignored by biomedicine and self medication process specially criticized by it. We are in the presence of a paradox because biomedicine and State Health Sector constantly promotes selfcare process which invol- ves self medication. We notice that this takes place without a reflection on articulation and consequences of this transactions on health/illness/care process. We propose to think about this process in view of its intentional use by Health Services.En las sociedades americanas y europeas actuales existen formas de atención de los padecimientos que son consideradas en forma aislada y hasta antagónica por el Sector Salud, en lugar de observar las estrechas y constantes relaciones que se dan entre dichas formas a través de las prácticas y representaciones de los sujetos y grupos que las utilizan. En ese trabajo se describen en particular las relaciones que existen entre la biomedicina y la autoatención, para evidenciar el continuo proceso de transacciones que opera entre las mismas. Primero se describen algunas características básicas de la biomedicina y la autoatención, para luego observar las relaciones que existen entre ambas, especialmente a través de la prescripción de fármacos y de la automedicación. Este proceso transaccional tiende a ser ignorado por la biomedicina, que critica especialmente la automedicación, lo que resulta paradójico, dado que el Sector Salud impulsa constantemente actividades de autoatención que incluyen la automedicación, sin reflexionar sobre la articulación y sobre las consecuencias que estas transacciones tienen para el proceso salud/enfermedad/atención. Se propone que el Sector Salud utilice intencionalmente estos procesos transaccionales

Antropología de la Salud en las Américas: contextualizaciones y sugerencias

En este editorial no voy a comentar los textos que se presentan en este número dedicado a la antropología de la salud en las Américas, sino señalar algunos aspectos y procesos que, sin embargo, tienen que ver con ellos, dado que dichos artículos son una expresión de la calidad y diversificación de la antropología médica actual, que es producto de una larga trayectoria que tiene que ver, sobre todo, con las consecuencias que los procesos históricos y sociales, incluidos los académicos y profesionales, tienen en la constitución, desarrollo y reformulación de las diferentes ciencias y disciplinas. Y señalo esto porque, inicialmente, a los antropólogos –salvo raras excepciones– no les interesaron los procesos de salud/enfermedad/ atención-prevención (s/e/a-p), sino que se los encontraron en sus trabajos de campo o en sus análisis etnológicos como parte intrínseca e inevitable de toda cultura y sociedad a las que pretendían describir en su totalidad

For Richer or For Poorer? Evidence from Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and Venezuela

We analyze household income dynamics using longitudinal data from Indonesia, South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Spain and Venezuela. In all four countries, households with the lowest reported base-year income experienced the largest absolute income gains. This result is robust to reasonable amounts of measurement error in two of the countries. In three of the four countries, households with the lowest predicted base-year income experienced gains at least as large as their wealthier counterparts. Thus, with one exception, the empirical importance of cumulative advantage, poverty traps, and skill-biased technical change was no greater than structural or macroeconomic changes that favored initially poor households in these four countries

Electric field and exciton structure in CdSe nanocrystals

Quantum Stark effect in semiconductor nanocrystals is theoretically investigated, using the effective mass formalism within a $4\times 4$ Baldereschi-Lipari Hamiltonian model for the hole states. General expressions are reported for the hole eigenfunctions at zero electric field. Electron and hole single particle energies as functions of the electric field ($\mathbf{E}_{QD}$) are reported. Stark shift and binding energy of the excitonic levels are obtained by full diagonalization of the correlated electron-hole Hamiltonian in presence of the external field. Particularly, the structure of the lower excitonic states and their symmetry properties in CdSe nanocrystals are studied. It is found that the dependence of the exciton binding energy upon the applied field is strongly reduced for small quantum dot radius. Optical selection rules for absorption and luminescence are obtained. The electric-field induced quenching of the optical spectra as a function of $\mathbf{E}_{QD}$ is studied in terms of the exciton dipole matrix element. It is predicted that photoluminescence spectra present anomalous field dependence of the emission lines. These results agree in magnitude with experimental observation and with the main features of photoluminescence experiments in nanostructures.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl

Direct vs. indirect optical recombination in Ge films grown on Si substrates

The optical emission spectra from Ge films on Si are markedly different from their bulk Ge counterparts. Whereas bulk Ge emission is dominated by the material's indirect gap, the photoluminescence signal from Ge films is mainly associated with its direct band gap. Using a new class of Ge-on-Si films grown by a recently introduced CVD approach, we study the direct and indirect photoluminescence from intrinsic and doped samples and we conclude that the origin of the discrepancy is the lack of self-absorption in thin Ge films combined with a deviation from quasi-equilibrium conditions in the conduction band. The latter is confirmed by a simple model suggesting that the deviation from quasi-equilibrium is caused by the much shorter recombination lifetime in the films relative to bulk Ge

Asymmetric amplification in amino acid sublimation involving racemic compound to conglomerate conversion

A straightforward unprecedented sublimation protocol that reveals both conversion of a racemic compound into a racemic conglomerate and subsequent enantioenrichment has been developed for the proteinogenic amino acid valine. The phenomenon has been observed in closed and open systems, providing insight into asymmetric amplification mechanisms under presumably prebiotic condition