Contextualizing the Global Nursing Care Chain: International Migration and the Status of Nursing in Kerala, India

In this article I explore the issue of nursing status in Kerala, India and how over time a colonial discourse of caste‐based pollution has given way to a discourse of sexual pollution under expanding migratory opportunities. Based on survey and qualitative research findings, I caution that the improving occupational status of nursing in India is not directly mapped onto social status, and this is particularly evident in the matrimonial market. In the light of these findings I argue that global nursing care chain (GNCC) analysis must assess more than just workplace contexts in order to conceptualize how global care chains (GCCs) interlock, and how they are differentiated from each other

Transnational masculinity: Indian nurses’ husbands in Ireland

On a nice Sunday afternoon in Kerala, Philip, Asha and I were cruising the backwaters from Kottayam to Allepey on a house boat. Asha, a 27 year old Hindu nurse, had just come back from Saudi Arabia, where she had been on a work contract. Philip, a 26 year old Christian man, had remained unemployed ever since he had graduated from a Master’s programme in Social Sciences from Trivandrum’s Centre for Development Studies. As he had not much to do, he had accepted to help me tour the area for my i..

Les infirmières indiennes émigrées dans les pays du Golfe : de l’opportunité à la stratégie

Lorsqu’à la fin des années soixante-dix, des infirmières commencèrent à être recrutées en Inde pour les hôpitaux des pays du Golfe, ce fut une opportunité inattendue pour les plus aventureuses d’entre elles de s’assurer de bien meilleurs revenus que dans leur propre pays. Une génération plus tard, des dizaines de milliers de jeunes filles, principalement des chrétiennes du Kérala, choisissent expressément ce métier afin d’émigrer dès l’obtention de leur diplôme. Ce diplôme est ainsi devenu un véritable passeport pour l’émigration, pour les infirmières elles-mêmes et, par contrecoup, pour leur proches.Pour les plus âgées des infirmières, la migration dans le Golfe permet de s’assurer un avenir plus prospère une fois revenues au pays ; pour les plus jeunes, cette migration est vue comme une étape avant une migration vers l’Occident. Dans tous les cas, les familles encouragent filles ou épouses à partir pour le Golfe en raison des bénéfices immédiats qu’elles en retirent mais aussi parce que cela s’inscrit dans leurs stratégies d’ascension sociale.The Emigrant Indian Nurses in the Gulf : From opportunity to Strategy : Haitian Transnational Family.When in the middle of the seventies, Indian nurses started to be hired for newly built hospitals in the Gulf, it was an unexpected opportunity for the most adventurous of them to ensure unexpected good wages. One generation later, thousands of young girls, predominantly Christians from Kerala, fill up the nursing schools all over India with the objective of migrating after graduation. Hence the nursing diploma is obviously considered as a passport opening the world not only to the nurse herself, but also to her relatives.Migration to the Gulf is now considered as an intermediate step before further migration to the West or before to come back in India as housewife. It allows married women to improve widely the financial position of their parents and in-laws remaining in India ; it allows the young single nurses to save for their dowry or to find a husband with a better social background. In either case, families encourage their migration because it is very consciously regarded as a privileged opportunity to increase social mobility.Las enfermeras indias inmigrantes en los países del Golfo: de la oportunidad a la estrategia. Al final de los años 1970, cuando se contrataron enfermeras en India, destinadas a los hospitales de los países del Golfo, fue una oportunidad inesperada para las mas atrevidas de ellas que querian obtener mejores sueldos que en su proprio país. Una generación despues, decenas de miles de mujeres jóvenes y principalmente cristianas del Kerala, decidieron deliberadamente de aprender el oficio de enfermera para poder emigrar cuando obtenian su diploma. Este se convirtio entonces en un verdadero pasaporte para emigrar, para las enfermeras y, por supuesto, para sus familiares.Para las enfermeras las mas mayores, la migración hacia el Golfo permitia de asegurarse un futuro mas prospero cuando volvian a su país ; para las mas jóvenes esta migración se concibe como un primer paso antes de una migración hacia el Occidente. En todo los casos, las familias incitan las hijas y esposas a irse hacia el Golfo en razón de los beneficios inmediatos que le sacan pero también porque ese proceso se inscribe en una estratégica de ascención sociale

Transcending boundaries: Indian nurses in internal and international migration

"This paper discusses the case of Indian nurses who take up their profession as part of a family strategy, where planning for education and migration are intrinsic to the whole process. In effect, they migrate in a step-by-step phased manner: first within Indian states, mainly to metropolises, then to countries in the Persian Gulf, and further towards the West. It is not a simple, linear course of migration for them nor is it unique in any extraordinary way: yet their stories offer a terrain that is hitherto unexplored. The processes of migration start in the family milieu and involve considerations of job opportunities and information networks, working through precarious work contracts and unreliable middlemen. Meanwhile, their plans often include the life stages of marriage and motherhood. But anyhow, becoming a nurse in India today is in effect preparing to leave one’s homeland, if not forever, at least for long periods of time. The question of constant mobility and negotiation of boundaries within family and the outside world are, therefore, at the heart of the matter.

How uncertain are precipitation and peak flow estimates for the July 2021 flooding event?

The disastrous July 2021 flooding event made us question the ability of current hydrometeorological tools in providing timely and reliable flood forecasts for unprecedented events. This is an urgent concern since extreme events are increasing due to global warming, and existing methods are usually limited to more frequently observed events with the usual flood generation processes. For the July 2021 event, we simulated the hourly streamflows of seven catchments located in western Germany by combining seven partly polarimetric, radar-based quantitative precipitation estimates (QPEs) with two hydrological models: a conceptual lumped model (GR4H) and a physically based, 3D distributed model (ParFlowCLM). GR4H parameters were calibrated with an emphasis on high flows using historical discharge observations, whereas ParFlowCLM parameters were estimated based on landscape and soil properties. The key results are as follows. (1) With no correction of the vertical profiles of radar variables, radar-based QPE products underestimated the total precipitation depth relative to rain gauges due to intense collision–coalescence processes near the surface, i.e., below the height levels monitored by the radars. (2) Correcting the vertical profiles of radar variables led to substantial improvements. (3) The probability of exceeding the highest measured peak flow before July 2021 was highly impacted by the QPE product, and this impact depended on the catchment for both models. (4) The estimation of model parameters had a larger impact than the choice of QPE product, but simulated peak flows of ParFlowCLM agreed with those of GR4H for five of the seven catchments. This study highlights the need for the correction of vertical profiles of reflectivity and other polarimetric variables near the surface to improve radar-based QPEs for extreme flooding events. It also underlines the large uncertainty in peak flow estimates due to model parameter estimation.</p

How uncertain are precipitation and peak flow estimates for the July 2021 flooding event?

The disastrous July 2021 flooding event made us question the ability of current hydrometeorological tools in providing timely and reliable flood forecasts for unprecedented events. This is an urgent concern since extreme events are increasing due to global warming, and existing methods are usually limited to more frequently observed events with the usual flood generation processes. For the July 2021 event, we simulated the hourly streamflows of seven catchments located in western Germany by combining seven partly polarimetric, radar-based quantitative precipitation estimates (QPEs) with two hydrological models: a conceptual lumped model (GR4H) and a physically based, 3D distributed model (ParFlowCLM). GR4H parameters were calibrated with an emphasis on high flows using historical discharge observations, whereas ParFlowCLM parameters were estimated based on landscape and soil properties. The key results are as follows. (1) With no correction of the vertical profiles of radar variables, radar-based QPE products underestimated the total precipitation depth relative to rain gauges due to intense collision–coalescence processes near the surface, i.e., below the height levels monitored by the radars. (2) Correcting the vertical profiles of radar variables led to substantial improvements. (3) The probability of exceeding the highest measured peak flow before July 2021 was highly impacted by the QPE product, and this impact depended on the catchment for both models. (4) The estimation of model parameters had a larger impact than the choice of QPE product, but simulated peak flows of ParFlowCLM agreed with those of GR4H for five of the seven catchments. This study highlights the need for the correction of vertical profiles of reflectivity and other polarimetric variables near the surface to improve radar-based QPEs for extreme flooding events. It also underlines the large uncertainty in peak flow estimates due to model parameter estimation.</p

Alkaloids in Marine Algae

This paper presents the alkaloids found in green, brown and red marine algae. Algal chemistry has interested many researchers in order to develop new drugs, as algae include compounds with functional groups which are characteristic from this particular source. Among these compounds, alkaloids present special interest because of their pharmacological activities. Alkaloid chemistry has been widely studied in terrestrial plants, but the number of studies in algae is insignificant. In this review, a detailed account of macro algae alkaloids with their structure and pharmacological activities is presented. The alkaloids found in marine algae may be divided into three groups: 1. Phenylethylamine alkaloids, 2. Indole and halogenated indole alkaloids, 3. Other alkaloids

Near-realtime quantitative precipitation estimation and prediction (RealPEP)

Flash floods in small- to medium-sized catchments and intense precipitation over cities caused by severe local storms pose increasing threats to our society. For the timely prediction of such events, the value of high-resolution and high-quality QPE and corresponding forecasts cannot be overrated. Seamless predictions harmonizing nowcasting and numerical weather prediction (NWP) across forecast lead times from minutes to days would greatly help to improve the value and efficiency of warnings. Organized by the Research Unit on Near-Realtime Precipitation Estimation and Prediction (RealPEP, www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/realpep) and supported by the Project on Seamless Integrated Forecasting System (SINFONY, www.dwd .de/DE/forschung/forschungsprogramme/sinfony_iafe/sinfony_node.html) of the German Meteorological Service (DWD), an international 3-day online conference was held from 5 to 7 October 2020, dedicated to Precipitation and Flash-Flood Predictions from Minutes to Days (https://indico .scc.kit.edu/event/883/). Most speakers agreed to have their presentations recorded, which we uploaded to YouTube for further distribution (see, e.g., on the conference homepage, https:// indico.scc.kit.edu/event/883/page/588-recorded-talks). The speakers were both invited experts in the respective research fields and researchers from the RealPEP and SINFONY projects. Talks and discussions could be followed on video stream. Interaction between the about 250 participants was enabled by entering written questions and comments via a dedicated tool, which allowed for voting and thus also ranking questions. Registered participants could enter chat rooms from where they could be moved to the speaker room for posing the questions directly to the speakers and the auditorium. On the last day of the conference podium discussions with selected speakers summarized talks and discussions and elaborated on overarching problems, ideas, and developments in the fields of quantitative precipitation estimation (QPE), quantitative precipitation nowcasting (QPN), quantitative precipitation forecasting (QPF), flash-flood prediction (FFP), and their organization into seamless prediction systems, which also constituted the topics of the five sessions during the conference. We report here in particular on the outcomes of the panel discussions

Hordenine amount in Phyllophora nervosa (D.C.Grev) (Marine Alga) collected from Şile (the Black Sea) and Dardanelle

In our earlier work, hordenine, an alkaloid was first time extracted from Phyllophora nervosa collected from Şile in 1969. In this work, this alkaloid was extracted in the same alga collected from Şile and Dardanelle and the amount of hordenine was determined by GC/MS analysis. The hordenine content was 39.66 ?g/g for Şile and 1.15 mg/g for Dardanelle sample