This comprehensive account of the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history examines its devastating effects on West Africa's most vulnerable populations: pregnant women and children. Noted experts across disciplines assess health care systems' responses to the epidemic in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone, emphasizing key areas such as pregnancy, prenatal services, childbirth, neonatal care, and survivor health among pregnant and non-pregnant women. The 30 chapters hone in on gender-based social issues exacerbated during the outbreak, from violence against women and girls to barriers to female education. At the same time, chapters pinpoint numerous areas for service delivery and policy improvements for more coordinated, effective, and humane actions during future pandemics. A sampling of the topics: Ebola virus disease: perinatal transmission and epidemiology Comprehensive clinical care for children with Ebola virus disease Maternal and reproductive rights: Ebola and the law in Liberia Ebola-related complications for maternal, newborn, and child health service delivery and utilization in Guinea The Ebola epidemic halted female genital cutting in Sierra Leone-temporarily Maternity care for Ebola at Medecins Sans Frontieres centers Stigmatization of pregnant women with and without Ebola Exclusion of women and infants from Ebola treatment trials Role of midwives during the Ebola epidemic Pregnant in the Time of Ebola is a powerful resource for public health specialists, anthropologists, social scientists, physicians, epidemiologists, nurses, midwives, and governmental and non-governmental agency staff studying the effects of the epidemic on women and children as a result of the most widespread Ebola outbreak to date.

Modern human beings are socialized to take the existence of ethnic and national identities as given and largely unproblematic. Very few individuals would question the apparent normality of this division into nations and ethnic groups however, the intensity of this widespread feeling hides the degree of its historical novelty. This book explores the ideological and institutional underpinnings, as well as the political implications of this powerful modern belief system. This is achieved through subtle theoretical and thorough empirical analysis, both of which draw critically on the leading approaches in the field.

Based on an ethnographic study of the traditional medicine of African Americans in the rural southern United States, this work concentrates on the original Louisiana Territory, with its Native and African American indigenous traditions, and the French migration and Black Haitian freed and enslaved population influx during the 1700s and 1800s. Fontenot finds strong ties between rural Louisiana practices and Haitian and West African medicine. The ethnographer, a native of the region where she did her research, is respected among local practicing secret doctors and is able to give a unique insider's view. Aside from documenting a rare treasure of our American cultural diversity, this study has a wider purpose in the field of health practices and policy. The high cost of Western medicine, lack of access to quality care, and the patient-doctor ratio are areas of major national concern, and rural residents and people of color are recognized to be the most at-risk populations. The alternative health-care system presented here can strengthen mainstream medicine's understanding of such patient populations while preserving valuable knowledge of healing plants and culturally sensitive therapies.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its totalitarian system has resulted in instability and conflict among its many ethnic groups. In this volume, a distinguished group of scholars from the Russian Center for Strategic Research and International Studies examines the ethnic conflicts roiling Central Asia and Transcaucasia today--the roots and dynamics of these conflicts, their possible consequences, and the possibilities for resolution. The analyses are based upon extensive field studies, interviews, local press accounts, and other sources unavailable in the West. The work presents an inside view of the conflicts, describes the forces involved, and provides a prognosis for future developments in the region.

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South Asians in Diaspora is a collection of essays concerning the history, politics, and anthropology of migration in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as in the numerous overseas locations, such as Fiji, Africa, the Caribbean and USA, where South Asians migrated in the colonial period and after. It addresses the connections between migration, problems of identity and ethnic conflict from a comparative perspective, and highlights the role of shared colonial experiences in providing 'communal' solidarities and discord.

What counts as ethnography and what counts as good ethnographic methodology are both highly contested. Volume 6 of this expanding series of books draws together a collection of chapters presenting a diversity of views on some of the debates and developments in ethnographic methodology. It does not try to present a single coherent view but, through its heterogeneity, illustrates the strength and liveliness of debate within this area. The chapters cover central topics such as the challenges to conventional views about validity in ethnographic work, feminist research, comparison within ethnographic research, the public identification of research sites, and the ethics and practice of research involving children. Other chapters deal with relatively newer topics such as the conduct of electronic ethnography, the development of the imagination and emotion within ethnographic writing, and the use of hypertext in the analysis and representation of ethnographic work.

Scholars remain locked in a battle over the relative importance of heredity and environment for such diverse matters as human intelligence, female institution, and racial stratification. The present collection is an attempt to contribute to the quality of this discussion, and focuses not only on the matter of relative weights, but the matter of interaction. Most of the contributions deal with the quality and character of the connection between the two. Four essays focus upon what is now known about this friendship in several areas of practical and theoretical significance. The authors reach beyond the caveat that "both are important" and indicate how and why there is a relationship of some complexity.

Fatty acids play an important role in the barrier function of skin and represent a major source of proinflammatory mediators such as prostaglandins, leukotrienes and other lipids in inflammatory skin disorders. This book combines the two major functions of fatty acids in skin biology. In the first part the biosynthesis of fatty acids in skin with its role in barrier function as well as the role of dietary fatty acids on skin cell function and in the treatment of inflammatory skin diseases is presented. The second part deals with skin as a source of proinflammatory eicosanoids, especially with the keratinocyte as a major cellular source. Metabolism of eicosanoids in skin, its role in psoriasis and atopic dermatitis as well as pharmacological inhibition of eicosanoid biosynthesis is reviewed. The book finishes with a chapter describing the methods used for quantification of fatty acids and derivatives in skin inflammation. Anyone interested in skin physiology would benefit from the overviews about the two sites of fatty acids' function in skin integrity and in skin inflammation.

"With finely crafted ethnography, Tsipy Ivry engages her readers in the most intimate of experiences-pregnancy. Research in Japan and Israel reveals how medical knowledge and technologies are made use of differentially in these two locations by both physicians and women to accomplish a remarkably dissimilar embodiment of future motherhood. Ivry's position is that concern about the ramifications of technologically assisted reproduction should not usurp representations of the cultures of pregnancy." -Margaret Lock, author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death "A fascinating double-ethnography of pregnancy in two cultures. This outstanding book reveals stunning cultural differences in the interpretation of the embodied experience of pregnancy. In spite of their mutual technological sophistication, Japanese and Israeli views on pregnancy could hardly be more different, nor could the biomedical advice that women in each culture receive. Ivry's work takes Brigitte Jordan's analysis of birth in four cultures to a new level, focusing specifically on the cultural influences that profoundly affect both women's and obstetricians' perceptions and management of pregnancy, and deeply demonstrating the influence of culture on biomedical 'science.'" -Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage With all of the burgeoning social interest in new reproductive technologies and in childbirth, why has pregnancy been forgotten? Isn't pregnancy just as culturally variant as other aspects of reproduction? Embodying Culture looks at pregnancy as much more than just "expecting." Tsipy Ivry juxtaposes pregnancy in two non-western postindustrial democracies, one preoccupied with military conflicts and existential threats (Israel), the other horrified by the graying of society and shrinking birth rates (Japan). Through ethnographic exploration of pregnancy experiences of Japanese and Israeli women and comparative study of ob-gyns and the bioemedical cultures that medicalize pregnancy in divergent ways, Ivry illuminates pregnancy as a meaningful cultural category for social analysis: a first step toward an anthropology of pregnancy. Tsipy Ivry is a lecturer in anthropology at the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Haifa, Israel. A volume in the Studies in Medical Anthropology series, edited by Mac Marshall

Animal Cognition and Sequential Behavior: Behavioral, Biological, and Computational Perspectives brings together psychologists studying cognitive skill in animal and human subjects, connectionist theorists, and neuroscientists who have a common interest in understanding function and dysfunction in the realm of complex cognitive behavior. In this volume, discussion focuses on behavioral, cognitive, psychobiological, and computational approaches to understanding the integration of ongoing behavior, with particular attention to models of timing and the organization of sequential behavior.

This annotated bibliography, the first book-length survey of the historic development of inquiry in physical anthropology, brings together a broad selection of source materials that will enable the student to obtain an accurate perspective on its history and perceive the underlying thematic continuity of anthropological thought. The first of four chronological section into which the bibliography is divided covers the literature from ancient times through the beginning of the Enlightenment at the close of the 17th century. The 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries are treated respectively in the sections that follow.

One of the major themes of human population genetics is assaying genetic variation in human populations. The ultimate goal of this objective is to understand the extent of genetic diversity and the use of this knowledge to reconstruct our evolutionary history. The discipline had undergone a revolutionary transition with the advent of molecular techniques in the 1980s. With this shift, statistical methods have also been developed to perceive the biological and molecular basis of human genetic variation. Using the new perspectives gained during the above transition, this volume describes the applications of molecular markers spanning the autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial genome in the analysis of human diversity in contemporary populations. This is the first reference book of its kind to bring together data from these diverse sets of markers for understanding evolutionary histories and relationships of modern humans in a single volume.

Religion and the Social Order

ELLIOTT M. BLASS Fifteen years have passed since the first volume on developmental psychobiology (Blass, 1986) appeared in this series and 13 since the publication of the second volume (Blass, 1988). These volumes documented the status of the broad domain of scientific inquiry called developmental psychobiology and were also written with an eye to the future. The future has been revolutionary in at least three ways. First, there was the demise of a descriptive ethology as we had known it, to be replaced first by sociobiology and later by its more sophisticated versions based on quantitative predictions of social interactions that reflected relatedness and inclu sive fitness. Second, there was the emergence of cognitive science, including cogni tive development, as an enormously strong and interactive multidisciplinary effort. Making the "functional" brain more accessible made this revolution all the more relevant to our discipline. In the laboratory, immunocytochemical detection of immediate / early genes, such as los, now allows us to trace neuronal circuits activated during complex behaviors. The "functional" brain of primates, especially humans, was also made very accessible through neuroimaging with which we can look at and into brains as they solve and attempt to solve particular tasks. Those of us who were trained in neurology as graduate students two or three decades ago recognize only the people in white coats and patients in beds or on gurneys when we visit neurologi cal units today. The rest is essentially new."

Historical studies of white racial thought focus exclusively on white ideas about the "Negroes". Bay's study is the first to examine the reverse -- black ideas about whites, and, consequently, black understandings of race and racial categories. Bay examines African-American ideas about white racial character and destiny in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In examining black racial thought, this work also explores the extent to which black Americans accepted or rejected 19th century notions about innate racial characteristics.

"Ambiguous Memory" examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views.

Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.

Biologists and anthropologists in Japan have played a crucial role in the development of primatology as a scientific discipline. Publication of Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior under the editorship of Tetsuro Matsuzawa reaffirms the pervasive and creative role played by the intellectual descendants of Kinji Imanishi and Junichiro Itani in the fields of behavioral ecology, psychology, and cognitive science. Matsuzawa and his colleagues-humans and other primate partners- explore a broad range of issues including the phylogeny of perception and cognition; the origin of human speech; learning and memory; recognition of self, others, and species; society and social interaction; and culture. With data from field and laboratory studies of more than 90 primate species and of more than 50 years of long-term research, the intellectual breadth represented in this volume makes it a major contribution to comparative cognitive science and to current views on the origin of the mind and behavior of humans.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is one of the most important molecular biological methods ever devised, with numerous applications to cli- cal molecular medicine. Since its description in 1985, PCR has undergone tremendous improvements, and many variations on the basic PCR theme have been published. With such a large volume of PCR-related literature, a clinical scientist wishing to use the technique will have a difficult task loc- ing the relevant information to implement it effectively. There is thus clearly a need for an up-to-date volume with detailed protocols to facilitate the setting up of those techniques most relevant to clinical applications. Unlike some other books on this topic, Clinical Applications of PCR includes only methods that are of direct relevance in clinical settings. The book is organized in three parts: an introductory section, a section on general methodology, and a final section with specific clinical applications. The first section covers the basic principles of PCR and is most useful to those new to molecular diagnosis. The next chapter includes useful tips for setting up a PCR laboratory. Section 2 then outlines some of the most commonly used PCR-based techniques in molecular diagnosis. Section 3 includes carefully chosen examples that represent typical applications of PCR in diverse clinical fields, encompassing hematology, oncology, genetics, and microbiology.

It is now widely recognised that biological psychiatry is rapidly coming into its own. For over the last three decades dramatic advances in this young discipline have been made, all of which attest to the staying power of the experimental method. Those who made this revolution in knowledge happen are a breed of investigators availing themselves of the tools of molecular biology, pharmacology, genetics, and perhaps, above all, the technology of neuroimaging. The introduction of the interdisciplinary method of approach to the study of psychopathology had made it very clear that neuroimaging, as a set of techniques, is unique in that it is gradually providing us with evidence supporting Kraepelin's original view that mental illness is closely associated with abnormal changes in the brain.
Broadly speaking, there are presently two structural techniques in neuroimaging - computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - and three functional techniques - single photon emission tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Through PET technology, for example, we have learned that, in early brain development, the primitive areas, mostly the brain stem and thalamus, are the first to show high activity in an infant. This is followed by the development of cortical areas by year one. Between the ages of four to 10, the cortex is almost twice as active in the child as in the adult. This information alerts us to what might happen in the way of trauma in abused children, especially those under the age of three. Child abuse increases the risk of physical changes, not only in the stress systems, but also in brain development (Glaser and Weissman). In addition to the difficult problem of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we have to take into account the possibility of other types of mental illness as the consequences of child abuse. These include depression, eating disorders, and drug and alcohol problems.
The combination of PET and fMRI represents a more remarkable example of the power of neuroimaging since the two have made it feasible to map accurately in vitro identifiable cortical fields, or networks. In a landmark NIH investigation of human cortical reorganization (plasticity), persuasive evidence was brought forward showing that the process of learning as a motor task involves a specific network of neurons. These neurons occur in the cortical field that is responsible for that particular task. Such findings are important partly because they provide evidence supporting the current notion that labor in the cortex is divided among ensembles of specialized neurons that cooperate in the performance of complex tasks. Cooperation, then, in this, sense implies crosstalk among ensembles and that signals are both processed and retransmitted to neighbouring ensembles. To understand the workings of these ensembles, much better spatial and temporal resolution in functional brain mapping is required. This can be achieved with an NMR instrument whose magnet is 4.1 Tesla or more.

The present volume is the first in the advances in oncobiology series. It is meant to be useful not only to clinical and non-clinical oncologists but also to graduate students and medical students. The individual chapters are presented as self-contained summaries of current knowledge rather than as reviews. The last chapter deals with the subject of chemotherapy.