Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between "racial" ...groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an anthropological and historical context.
Unequal Treatment Smedley, Brian D; Stith, Adrienne Y; Care, Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health
11/2002
eBook
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Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even ...after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received.
In Unequal Treatment , a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed.
How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.
A number of inorganic (nitryl chloride, ClNO2; chlorine,
Cl2; and hypochlorous acid, HOCl) and chlorinated, oxygenated volatile
organic compounds (ClOVOCs) have been measured in Manchester, UK during
...October and November 2014 using time-of-flight chemical ionisation mass
spectrometry (ToF-CIMS) with the I− reagent ion. ClOVOCs appear to be
mostly photochemical in origin, although direct emission from vehicles is
also suggested. Peak concentrations of ClNO2, Cl2 and HOCl reach
506, 16 and 9 ppt respectively. The concentrations of ClNO2 are
comparable to measurements made in London, but measurements of ClOVOCs,
Cl2 and HOCl by this method are the first reported in the UK. Maximum
HOCl and Cl2 concentrations are found during the day and ClNO2
concentrations remain elevated into the afternoon if photolysis rates are
low. Cl2 exhibits a strong dependency on shortwave radiation, further
adding to the growing body of evidence that it is a product of secondary
chemistry. However, night-time emission is also observed. The contribution of
ClNO2, Cl2 and ClOVOCs to the chlorine radical budget suggests
that Cl2 can be a greater source of Cl than ClNO2, contributing
74 % of the Cl radicals produced on a high radiant-flux day. In contrast,
on a low radiant-flux day, this drops to 14 %, as both Cl2 production
and loss pathways are inhibited by reduced photolysis rates. This results in
ClNO2 making up the dominant fraction (83 %) on low radiant-flux
days, as its concentrations are still high. As most ClOVOCs appear to be formed
photochemically, they exhibit a similar dependence on photolysis,
contributing 3 % of the Cl radical budget observed here.
We describe and validate a Monte Carlo model to track
photons over the full range of solar wavelengths as they travel into
optically thick Antarctic blue ice. The model considers both reflection and
...transmission of radiation at the surface of blue ice, scattering by air
bubbles within it, and spectral absorption due to the ice. The ice surface is treated as planar whilst bubbles are considered to be spherical scattering
centres using the Henyey–Greenstein approximation. Using bubble radii and
number concentrations that are representative of Antarctic blue ice, we
calculate spectral albedos and spectrally integrated downwelling and
upwelling radiative fluxes as functions of depth and find that, relative to
the incident irradiance, there is a marked subsurface enhancement in the
downwelling flux and accordingly also in the mean irradiance. This is due to the interaction between the refractive air–ice interface and the scattering interior and is particularly notable at blue and UV wavelengths which correspond to the minimum of the absorption spectrum of ice. In contrast the absorption path length at IR wavelengths is short and consequently the attenuation is more complex than can be described by a simple Lambert–Beer style exponential decay law – instead we present a triple-exponential fit to the net irradiance against depth. We find that there is a moderate dependence on the solar zenith angle and surface conditions such as altitude and cloud optical depth. Representative broadband albedos for blue ice are calculated in the range from 0.585 to 0.621. For macroscopic absorbing inclusions we observe both geometry- and size-dependent self-shadowing that reduces the
fractional irradiance incident on an inclusion's surface. Despite this, the
inclusions act as local photon sinks and are subject to fluxes that are
several times the magnitude of the single-scattering contribution. Such
enhancement may have consequences for the energy budget in regions of the
cryosphere where particulates are present near the surface. These results
also have particular relevance to measurements of the internal radiation
field: account must be taken of both self-shadowing and the optical effect
of introducing the detector. Turning to the particular example of englacial
meteorites, our modelling predicts iron meteorites to reside at much reduced
depths than previously suggested in the literature (< 10 cm vs.
∼ 40 cm) and further shows a size dependency that may explain
the observed bias in their Antarctic size distribution.
A growing body of research illuminates the mechanisms through which racism and discrimination influence the health status of people of color. Much of the focus of this research, however, has been on ...individually mediated racism (i.e., acts of discrimination and racial bias committed by White individuals against people of color). Yet research literature provides numerous examples of how racism operates not just at individual levels, but also at internalized, institutional, and structural levels. A more comprehensive model of the lived experience of race is needed that considers the cumulative, interactive effects of different forms of racism on health over the lifespan. Such a model must facilitate an intersectional analysis to better understand the interaction of race with gender, socioeconomic status, geography, and other factors, and should consider the negative consequences of racism for Whites.
Antarctica contains some of the most productive regions on Earth for collecting meteorites. These small areas of glacial ice are known as meteorite stranding zones, where upward-flowing ice combines ...with high ablation rates to concentrate large numbers of englacially transported meteorites onto their surface. However, meteorite collection data shows that iron and stony-iron meteorites are significantly under-represented from these regions as compared with all other sites on Earth. Here we explain how this discrepancy may be due to englacial solar warming, whereby meteorites a few tens of centimetres below the ice surface can be warmed up enough to cause melting of their surrounding ice and sink downwards. We show that meteorites with a high-enough thermal conductivity (for example, iron meteorites) can sink at a rate sufficient to offset the total annual upward ice transport, which may therefore permanently trap them below the ice surface and explain their absence from collection data.
Aerosols play an important role in key atmospheric processes and feature high
spatial and temporal variabilities. This has motivated scientific interest in
the development of networks capable of ...measuring aerosol properties over
large geographical areas in near-real time. In this work we present and
discuss results of an aerosol optical depth (AOD) algorithm applied to
instruments of the European Brewer Network. This network is comprised of
close to 50 Brewer spectrophotometers, mostly located in Europe and adjacent
areas, although instruments operating at, for example, South America and Australia are
also members. Although we only show results for instruments calibrated by the
Regional Brewer Calibration Center for Europe, the implementation of the AOD
algorithm described is intended to be used by the whole network in the
future. Using data from the Brewer intercomparison campaigns in the years
2013 and 2015, and the period in between, plus comparisons with Cimel
sun photometers and UVPFR instruments, we check the precision, stability, and
uncertainty of the Brewer AOD in the ultraviolet range from 300 to
320 nm. Our results show a precision better than 0.01, an uncertainty
of less than 0.05, and, for well-maintained instruments, a stability similar to that of the ozone measurements. We also discuss future improvements to our
algorithm with respect to the input data, their processing, and the
characterization of the Brewer instruments for the measurement of AOD.
Long-term trends of total column ozone (TCO), assessments of stratospheric ozone recovery, and satellite validation are underpinned by a reliance on daily best representative values from Brewer ...spectrophotometers and other ground-based ozone instruments. In turn reporting of these daily total column ozone values to the World Ozone and Ultraviolet Radiation Data Centre (WOUDC) has traditionally been predicated upon a simple choice between direct sun (DS) and zenith sky (ZS) observations. For mid- and high-latitude monitoring sites impacted by cloud cover we discuss the potential deficiencies of this approach in terms of its rejection of otherwise valid observations and capability to evenly sample throughout the day. A new methodology is proposed that makes full use of all valid direct sun and zenith sky observations, accounting for unevenly spaced observations and their relative uncertainty, to calculate an improved estimate of the daily mean total column ozone. It is demonstrated that this method can increase the number of contributing observations by a factor of 2.5, increases the sampled time span, and reduces the spread of the representative time by half. The largest improvements in the daily mean estimate are seen on days with the smallest number of contributing direct sun observations. No effect on longer-term trends is detected, though for the sample data analysed we observe a mean increase of 2.8 DU (0.82 %) with respect to the traditional direct sun vs. zenith sky average choice. To complement the new calculation of a best representative value of total column ozone and separate its uncertainty from the spread of observations, we also propose reporting its standard error rather than the standard deviation, together with measures of the full range of values observed.
This study examines the adequacy of the existing Brewer network to supplement other networks from the ground and space to detect SO2 plumes of volcanic origin. It was found that large volcanic ...eruptions of the last decade in the Northern Hemisphere have a positive columnar SO2 signal seen by the Brewer instruments located under the plume. It is shown that a few days after the eruption the Brewer instrument is capable of detecting significant columnar SO2 increases, exceeding on average 2 DU relative to an unperturbed pre-volcanic 10-day baseline, with a mean close to 0 and σ = 0.46, as calculated from the 32 Brewer stations under study. Intercomparisons with independent measurements from the ground and space as well as theoretical calculations corroborate the capability of the Brewer network to detect volcanic plumes. For instance, the comparison with OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) and GOME-2 (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2) SO2 space-borne retrievals shows statistically significant agreement between the Brewer network data and the collocated satellite overpasses in the case of the Kasatochi eruption. Unfortunately, due to sparsity of satellite data, the significant positive departures seen in the Brewer and other ground networks following the Eyjafjallajökull, Bárðarbunga and Nabro eruptions could not be statistically confirmed by the data from satellite overpasses. A model exercise from the MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate) project shows that the large increases in SO2 over Europe following the Bárðarbunga eruption in Iceland were not caused by local pollution sources or ship emissions but were clearly linked to the volcanic eruption. Sulfur dioxide positive departures in Europe following Bárðarbunga could be traced by other networks from the free troposphere down to the surface (AirBase (European air quality database) and EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network)). We propose that by combining Brewer data with that from other networks and satellites, a useful tool aided by trajectory analyses and modelling could be created which can also be used to forecast high SO2 values both at ground level and in air flight corridors following future eruptions.
The International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) aims to mutate all protein-coding genes in the mouse using a combination of gene targeting and gene trapping in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and ...to make the generated resources readily available to the research community. The IKMC database and web portal (www.knockoutmouse.org) serves as the central public web site for IKMC data and facilitates the coordination and prioritization of work within the consortium. Researchers can access up-to-date information on IKMC knockout vectors, ES cells and mice for specific genes, and follow links to the respective repositories from which corresponding IKMC products can be ordered. Researchers can also use the web site to nominate genes for targeting, or to indicate that targeting of a gene should receive high priority. The IKMC database provides data to, and features extensive interconnections with, other community databases.
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