Bottled Water, the Pure Commodity in the Age of Branding

Copyright 2006 by SAGE PublicationsBottled water has become a pervasive global business, and bottled water consumption continues to increase rapidly, particularly in countries where clean potable tap water is available at very low or no cost. This article discusses the ways the rich cultural meanings of water are used in marketing and branding, and the forms of consumer resistance that oppose bottled water as a commodity. The contrast between tap water and bottled water can be seen as a reflection of a contest for authority and public trust between governments and corporations, in a context of heightened anxieties about risk and health. The article concludes that bottled water is a case where sound cultural logic leads to environmentally destructive behavior

Maine’s Public Reserved Lands: A Tale of Loss and Recovery

The story of Maine’s public reserved lands—or public lots—is worth the telling for its own sake and for its enduring lessons. Provided for in the Maine Constitution of 1820 and neglected for more than a century, the public lots were once scattered widely across the Unorganized Territory of northern, western, and eastern Maine. Today, they are restored to public use and benefit, reassembled into large blocks of land that, in aggregate, are more than twice the size of Baxter State Park. These consolidated public lots offer a wide spectrum of extraordinary values, include many of the crown jewels of Maine’s natural heritage, and will remain for public use and enjoyment as long as they are valued, accessed, and safeguarded from harm

Panel #7: Public Ownership vs. Private Rights: The Case of Maine\u27s Disputed Public Lots

When Maine separated from Massachusetts, the Articles of Separation (part of the new state\u27s Constitution) required that as it sold off its public domain (about 8 million acres) Maine continue to reserve four lots of 320 acres per town. Panelists trace the legal analysis and history of the implications of Public Lot policy through the 1980s, finally asking the question, How did this remarkable change in the history of Maine and to the very map of Maine come about

Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption

The study of the consumption of goods has never achieved the prominence in anthropology of either production or exchange. Yet the accelerating consumption of western goods in non-western societies is one of the most obtrusive cultural and economic trends of the last three centuries. This article addresses the general issue of why goods flow between cultural groups by re-examining the concept of consumption. It raises questions of importance to studies of development, material culture, ethnohistory, and symbolic anthropology

Is Prosocial Behavior Associated with Increased Registration for Deceased Organ Donation? A Cross-sectional Study of Ontario, Canada

Background. A community that promotes prosocial behaviors such as organ donor registration or charitable giving could reinforce those behaviors among its residents. Understanding the nature of the relationship between prosocial behaviors at the community level and an individual\u27s decision to engage in prosocial behavior can help in the targeting of communities with lower rates of prosocial activities. The objective of this study was to assess if the likelihood that an individual is a registered deceased organ donor in Ontario, Canada, is associated with community-level charitable giving. Methods. This cross-sectional population-based study involved individual- and community-level data from multiple administrative data sources from ICES and Statistics Canada. To assess the unadjusted and adjusted effects of community-level charitable giving on organ donor registration, we ran 4 sequential multilevel random intercept logistic regression models and used a number of individual- and community-level confounding factors. Results. Statistically significant between-community variance (0.322, SE = 0.020) and interclass correlation coefficient (0.089) suggest that substantial variation in organ donor registration can be attributed to the between-community differences. Community-level charitable giving was correlated with organ donor registration (odds ratios, 1.351; 95% confidence intervals, 1.245-1.466) in the model containing only individual-level confounding factors. However, this relationship became statistically nonsignificant (odds ratios, 0.982; 95% confidence intervals, 907-1.063) when a series of community-level confounding factors were added to the model. Among these confounding factors, individuals\u27 immigration status and community-level ethnic/immigrant concentration had the most pronounced association with organ donor registration. Conclusion. The identification of the characteristics of populations and communities with low organ donor registration rates may inform future initiatives in the area of organ donation awareness and promotion to make them more effective among those particular groups

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Pulmonary Function Measures in the Framingham Heart Study

The ratio of forced expiratory volume in one second to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC) is a measure used to diagnose airflow obstruction and is highly heritable. We performed a genome-wide association study in 7,691 Framingham Heart Study participants to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with the FEV1/FVC ratio, analyzed as a percent of the predicted value. Identified SNPs were examined in an independent set of 835 Family Heart Study participants enriched for airflow obstruction. Four SNPs in tight linkage disequilibrium on chromosome 4q31 were associated with the percent predicted FEV1/FVC ratio with p-values of genome-wide significance in the Framingham sample (best p-value = 3.6e-09). One of the four chromosome 4q31 SNPs (rs13147758; p-value 2.3e-08 in Framingham) was genotyped in the Family Heart Study and produced evidence of association with the same phenotype, percent predicted FEV1/FVC (p-value = 2.0e-04). The effect estimates for association in the Framingham and Family Heart studies were in the same direction, with the minor allele (G) associated with higher FEV1/FVC ratio levels. Results from the Family Heart Study demonstrated that the association extended to FEV1 and dichotomous airflow obstruction phenotypes, particularly among smokers. The SNP rs13147758 was associated with the percent predicted FEV1/FVC ratio in independent samples from the Framingham and Family Heart Studies producing a combined p-value of 8.3e-11, and this region of chromosome 4 around 145.68 megabases was associated with COPD in three additional populations reported in the accompanying manuscript. The associated SNPs do not lie within a gene transcript but are near the hedgehog-interacting protein (HHIP) gene and several expressed sequence tags cloned from fetal lung. Though it is unclear what gene or regulatory effect explains the association, the region warrants further investigation

Persistent Variation in Medicare Payment Authorization for Home Hemodialysis Treatments

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142984/1/hesr12650-sup-0001-AppendixSA1.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142984/2/hesr12650.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142984/3/hesr12650_am.pd