Estrutura e estratégias

Fiquei emocionado pela honra que a Associação Brasileira de Antropologia me fez, quando me convidou para pronunciar a palestra formal de sua reunião de 1986. Quero começar, então, com um depoimento pessoal, para mostrar porque este acontecimento é o mais gratificante da minha vida profissional. Minha primeira vinda ao Brasil foi motivada por um impulso romântico. Naquela altura o Brasil era para mim um país exótico onde eu poderia fazer pesquisa de campo entre os índios. Mas felizmente não ficou nisto. O Brasil para mim jamais transformou-se num simples “caso” a ser estudado para demonstrar teorias gerais; muito pelo contrário, rapidamente transformou-se num país que eu havia de certo modo adotado e ao qual permaneceria sempre emocional e intelectualmente comprometido. Isto se deu porque logo encontrei colegas e companheiros de pesquisa que compartilhavam minhas preocupações intelectuais, especialmente no período em que eu estava dirigindo um projeto de pesquisa no Brasil Central que dependia do esforço colaborativo de antropólogos brasileiros e norte-americanos sob o patrocínio conjunto da Universidade de Harvard e do Museu Nacional1. Contudo, só comecei a sentirme parte da antropologia brasileira quando voltei ao Museu Nacional nos anos 1969-70 para juntar-me a Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira na implantação do novo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social. Porém, mesmo o prazer de ter podido prestar aquela contribuição para o desenvolvimento da antropologia no Brasil não pode ser comparado ao prazer de ser convidado a falar perante a ABA, pois só então senti-me finalmente enturmado

Are corticosteroid injections more beneficial than anaesthetic injections alone in the management of rotator cuff-related shoulder pain? A systematic review.

This is the accepted version of the following article: Tim Cook, Catherine Minns Lowe, Mark Maybury, and Jeremy S. Lewis, ‘Are corticosteroid injections more beneficial than anaesthetic injections alone in the management of rotator cuff-related shoulder pain? A systematic review’, British Journal of Sports Medicine, April 2018, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-097444. Published by BMJ Journals. © 2018 The Author(s). Content in the UH Research Archive is made available for personal research, educational, and non-commercial purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, all content is protected by copyright, and in the absence of an open license, permissions for further re-use should be sought from the publisher, the author, or other copyright holder.Objective To compare the effectiveness of corticosteroid injections to local anaesthetic injections in the management of rotator cuff-related shoulder pain (RCRSP). Design Systematic review with best evidence synthesis. Data sources The Cochrane, PubMed, CINAHL Plus, PEDro and EMBASE electronic databases were searched (inception until 8 June 2017). Reference lists of included articles were also hand searched. Eligibility criteria Two reviewers independently evaluated eligibility. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) were included if they compared subacromial injections of corticosteroid with anaesthetic injections. Two reviewers independently extracted data regarding short-term, midterm and long-term outcomes for pain, self-reported function, range of motion and patient-perceived improvement. Results Thirteen RCTs (n=1013) were included. Four trials (n=475) were judged as being at low risk of bias. Three studies of low risk of bias favoured the use of corticosteroid over anaesthetic-only injections in the short term (up to 8 weeks). There was strong evidence of no significant difference between injection types in midterm outcomes (12-26 weeks). There was limited evidence of no significant difference between injection types in long-term outcomes. Conclusion Corticosteroid injections may have a short-term benefit (up to 8 weeks) over local anaesthetic injections alone in the management of RCRSP. Beyond 8 weeks, there was no evidence to suggest a benefit of corticosteroid over local anaesthetic injections. Trial registration number PROSPERO CRD42016033161.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Relaxed observance of traditional marriage rules allows social connectivity without loss of genetic diversity

© 2015 The Author. Marriage rules, the community prescriptions that dictate who an individual can or cannot marry, are extremely diverse and universally present in traditional societies. A major focus of research in the early decades of modern anthropology, marriage rules impose social and economic forces that help structure societies and forge connections between them. However, in those early anthropological studies, the biological benefits or disadvantages of marriage rules could not be determined. We revisit this question by applying a novel simulation framework and genome-wide data to explore the effects of Asymmetric Prescriptive Alliance, an elaborate set of marriage rules that has been a focus of research for many anthropologists. Simulations show that strict adherence to these marriage rules reduces genetic diversity on the autosomes, X chromosome and mitochondrial DNA, but relaxed compliance produces genetic diversity similar to random mating. Genome-wide data from the Indonesian community of Rindi, one of the early study populations for Asymmetric Prescriptive Alliance, are more consistent with relaxed compliance than strict adherence. We therefore suggest that, in practice, marriage rules are treated with sufficient flexibility to allow social connectivity without significant degradation of biological diversity

Nutritional status and growth of indigenous Xavante children, Central Brazil

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The aim of this study was to characterize the nutritional status of Xavante Indian children less than 10 years of age in Central Brazil and to evaluate the hypothesis of an association between child nutrition and socioeconomic differentiation in this population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was conducted in July 2006 that included all children under the age of 10 from the Xavante village Pimentel Barbosa in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The data collected included weight, height, and sociodemographic information. Sociodemographic data were used to generate two indices ("income" and "wealth") and to determine the proportion of adults in each household. Descriptive analyses were performed for weight-for-age (W/A), height-for-age (H/A), and weight-for-height (W/H) using the NCHS and the WHO growth references. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted using H/A and W/A as a response variables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of a total of 246 children under the age of ten residing in the village, 232 (94.3%) were evaluated. Following the NCHS reference, 5.6% of children under the age of ten presented low W/A and 14.7% presented low H/A. Among children under the age of five, deficit percentages for weight and height were 4.5% and 29.9%, respectively, following the WHO curves. Among children < 2 years of age, H/A index variability was found to be directly related to child's age and inversely related to the proportion of adults in the household. Maternal BMI was positively associated with growth for children from 2 to 4 years of age, explaining 11.5% of the z-score variability for the H/A index. For children 5 years of age and older, the wealth index and maternal height were positively associated with H/A. No significant associations were found using W/A as the dependent variable.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study demonstrated that undernutrition, in particular linear growth deficit, is a notable health issue for Xavante children. These findings contrast with the nutritional profile observed among Brazilian children nationally, which is characterized by a sharp decline in child undernutrition in recent decades, even in the poorest regions of the country. This discrepancy calls attention to the persistent health disparities that exist between indigenous and non-indigenous people in Brazil.</p