Suchergebnisse

The United States and the Soviet Union negotiated for cultural exchanges during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s to promote good will and cooperation because they both realized that global nuclear annihilation was undesirable. The Soviets sent ballerinas and classical musicians while the United States sent jazz musicians abroad to promote American ideals and democracy. However, these cultural exchanges were rife with issues. A key claim of the Soviet propaganda machine was that America was a racist, segregated country, and this played into which musicians could travel into the Eastern European Bloc and the Soviet Union. By sending African American musicians and racially integrated ensembles abroad through the Jazz Ambassadors Program, the United States hypocritically portrayed itself as an equal, democratic society. Despite these and other issues, the Jazz Ambassadors Program was effective as a form of cultural diplomacy. This essay looks at the reasons behind the program's success, specifically in how the participants exercised autonomy on their tours, disregarded governmental goals, and reached out to the people to form strong bonds of diplomacy and friendship through music. Their success offers a key to dispersing future tensions and conflict through the efficacy of cultural interaction.

Neste artigo abordamos o Serviço Social e estabelecemos discussões que percorrem a origem da profissão e sua profissionalização, como também problematizamos a "questão social" como "objeto" de intervenção e finalizamos com o debate do Serviço Social como área do conhecimento. Palavras-Chave: Serviço Social; profissão; área do conhecimento.

This paper analyzes the change over time in American media coverage of the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941 from the immediate aftermath through the 1946 findings of the Joint Congressional Committee — the final official investigation into the attack. It analyzes the way in which media initially portrayed Pearl Harbor as a patriotic call-to-arms in the face of a national tragedy, but in the five years following the attack, reflected the public frenzy to find someone to blame; the finger pointed first at military officials and later at the Roosevelt administration for failing to prevent or even deliberately inciting the Japanese attack. The paper contextualizes this change over time through events that occurred both in the Pacific Theater of WWII and on the American home front. To assert an historical relevance, this research paper frames the change in media perception of Pearl Harbor within the implication that the necessity to inculpate American officials and identify a scapegoat emerged from the prevailing tone of racialized nationalism present in the U.S. at the time. The sources used in the paper primarily consist of newspaper articles, clippings, and political cartoons, many of which originate from the Laurance F. Safford and Husband E. Kimmel Collections at the American Heritage Center, as well as secondary source material both to provide contextual events of WWII and to justify the overall assertion of a link between the changing depictions of Pearl Harbor and racial perceptions within the Unites States.

Because the Wild Animals Screening Center (CETAS) focuses intensely on restoration and maintenance of primate health and diversity in the Amazon region, detection of potential threats to animal health is crucial. In this view, neglected infections such as leptospirosis are of particular interest. In this report, we have studied the seroreactivity of anti-Leptospira antibodies from primate blood samples collected at CETAS between September 2011 and September 2012. Of the 14 animals investigated by the microscopic agglutination test using live antigens, five (35.7%) were reactive against serovars Celledoni (1), Hebdomadis (1), Icterohaemorrhagiae (2), and Sejroe (1). The results indicate that it is important to identify the contact of these animals with possible pathogens in order to ensure reintroduction of healthy animals into the wild and further understand the disease epidemiology in animals under captivity, gathering, and voluntary surrender of domestic captivity in Acre, Brazil.

Genetic factors play a significant role in athletic performance and its related phenotypes such as power, strength and aerobic capacity. In this regard, the lack of a muscle protein due to a genetic polymorphism has been found to affect sport performance in a wide variety of ways. α-actinin-3 is a protein located within the skeletal muscle with a key role in the production of sarcomeric force. A common stop-codon polymorphism (rs1815739; R577X) in the gene that codes for α-actinin-3 (ACTN3) produces individuals with the XX genotype that lack expression of a functional α-actinin-3. In contrast, individuals with the R-allele (i.e., RX vs. RR genotypes) in this polymorphism can express α-actinin-3. Interestingly, around ~18% of the world population have the XX genotype and much has been debated about why a polymorphism that produces a lack of a muscle protein has endured natural selection. Several investigations have found that α-actinin-3 deficiency due to XX homozygosity in the ACTN3 R577X polymorphism can negatively affect sports performance through several structural, metabolic, or signaling changes. In addition, new evidence suggests that α-actinin-3 deficiency may also impact sports performance through indirect factors such a higher risk for injury or lower resistance to muscle-damaging exercise. The purpose of this discussion is to provide a clear explanation of the effect of α-actinin-3 deficiency due to the ACTN3 XX genotype on sport. Key focus has been provided about the effect of α-actinin-3 deficiency on morphologic changes in skeletal muscle, on the low frequency of XX athletes in some athletic disciplines, and on injury epidemiology.

Copper is a micronutrient for living organisms, but at high concentrations it may cause several deleterious effects. The objective of this study was to evaluate the behavior of agricultural crops to different concentrations of Cu in the soil. The species Triticum aestivum (wheat), Zea mays (maize), Oryza sativa (rice), Phaseolus vulgaris (dry bean), Glycine max (soybean), and Raphanus sativus (radish) were cultivated in the soils Typic Hapludox (TyHpx) and Rhodic Acrudox (RhAcx). The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse and the soils were set in pots in a completely randomized design, with four replicates per treatment adding the following Cu concentrations (as Cu-nitrate): 0, 75, 150, 300, 600, 800, 1000, 1200 mg kg-1 dry soil. Measurements of biological variables, such as shoot dry weight (SDW), plant height, stem diameter, and number of leaves were carried out, in addition to determining Cu content in the SDW. At the TyHpx, a decreasing order of tolerance to Cu phytotoxicity was: dry bean, maize, soybean, wheat, radish, and rice. However, at the RhAcx, the decreasing order was: maize, soybean, radish, wheat, dry bean, and rice. The species that revealed the highest sensitivity to high Cu concentrations in soil was rice and that with the lowest sensitivity was maize.