722 research outputs found
Towards a new system of health: the challenge of western disease
Over the last three decades, the concept of Western disease
has become well established. Medicine has approached this group
of diseases by searching for new cures but has achieved relatively little
success. We argue that medicine should now accept the failure of this
strategy and place a major emphasis on prevention. The key objective
is to change the climate of opinion so that prevention is taken seriously
by the general population. The chief activity should be a wide ranging
public education campaign so as to persuade people to live a healthier
lifestyle. Medicine will require restructuring in order to carry out this
work. Medical education needs to be reformed so that medical students
receive the necessary training. This must be done as part of an
integrated approach in which government, industry and medical research
all play a major role. Governments should use taxation and
subsidies in areas such as food and tobacco so as to shift consumption
patterns towards healthier products. Governments must also tighten
laws on tobacco sales and advertising, support health education, and
improve food labelling. Industry must be made far more responsive to
the health needs of the population. This should be done both by public
education, so as to alter demand, and by government action. Medical
research should change its emphasis from studying the detailed
mechanisms of disease ("complex research") to studying the role of
lifestyle factors ("simple research")
The war on cancer: failure of therapy and research
A generally-held beliefby both the medical profession
and the lay public is that therapeutic medicine greatly
affects health. Providing more hospital beds, doctors
and resources is viewed as the path to improve health.
Therapeutic medicine is of much benefit to sick
people. However, with the exception of several highly
contagious infections, it has not reduced the incidence
of disease. This generalization applies particularly to
cancer. Despite this fact most ofthe expense and effort
devoted to the management of cancer is directed
towards early diagnosis (screening) and improved
therapy. Evidence has steadily accrued that this
strategy is essentially a failure: little impact has been
made on the toll taken by the major cancers.
The failure of therapy, coupled with the realization
that the overwhelming majority of cancer is related
to environmental, particularly lifestyle, factors,
dictates that prevention should be our foremost aim.
It follows, therefore, that cancer research should
concentrate on those environmental factors which
may cause or prevent cancer. Instead, most research
looks at either the detailed mechanisms of cancer
formation or else investigates new types of therapy.
Medicine should admit its severe limitations in
therapy and redirect itself. Using the fruits of an
expanded research programme into such areas as diet
and exercise, medicine should strive to apply this
knowledge to cancer prevention
The Body Dances: Carnival Dance and Organization
Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Maurice Merleau-Ponty we seek to open up traditional categories of thought surrounding the relation `body-organization' and elicit a thought experiment: What happens if we move the body from the periphery to the centre? We pass the interlocking theoretical concepts of object-body/subject-body and habitus through the theoretically constructed empirical case of `carnival dance' in order to re-evaluate such key organizational concepts as knowledge and learning. In doing so, we connect with an emerging body of literature on `sensible knowledge'; knowledge that is produced and preserved within bodily practices. The investigation of habitual appropriation in carnival dance also allows us to make links between repetition and experimentation, and reflect on the mechanism through which the principles of social organization, whilst internalized and experienced as natural, are embodied so that humans are capable of spontaneously generating an infinite array of appropriate actions. This perspective on social and organizational life, where change and permanence are intricately interwoven, contrasts sharply with the dominant view in organization studies which juxtaposes change/ creativity and stability
The perturbation response and power spectrum of a mean-field of IF neurons with inhomogeneous inputs
Spatial distribution of beef cattle on a New Zealand hill country farm: monitoring the use of streams and wet areas
Grazing livestock are an important source of contamination of freshwater, particularly when they have direct access to streams. Cattle in particular contribute to riparian habitat deterioration through stream bank destruction and direct defecation and urination in streams. Exclusion of stock or planting of riparian areas, are the most common catchment management methods used to protect waterways. Given the relatively low returns from beef and sheep farming, both of these strategies are very expensive and often logistically prohibitive in steep hill county landscapes. Despite this, policy trends indicate that fencing of streams in agricultural catchments may become mandatory in the future. It is important that we understand how much time cattle spend in and around hill country streams and wet areas (wetlands and hill side seeps), in order to quantify the likely environmental benefits from such policies.
The current study examined cattle movement data obtained using Global Positioning System (GPS) collars from experiments undertaken at Massey University’s hill country research farm, Tuapaka, near Palmerston North, to investigate the amount of time cattle spent in and around streams and wet areas. Animal movement data were collected over seven grazing events, in three winter periods (2012, 2013 and 2015). Permanent streams and wet areas were identified using a digital elevation model derived from 1m LiDAR data, aerial RGB images and RTK measurements.
Cattle spent 3.3 – 6% (48 – 86 min/day) of their day in streams and wet areas consistently across the 7 data collections. Cattle spent more time in streams and wet areas during the afternoon. There are differences in the median amount of time individual animals spend in non-risk areas. Further research is necessary to evaluate how we can influence the amount of time cattle spend in riparian areas on hill country and how stream bank behaviour varies at different times of the year
- …