27 research outputs found
Human cargo a journey among refugees
No full textA portrait of the lives of today's refugees cites an alarming percentage of the world's population that has been forced to abandon home and family in order to survive, sharing the personal stories of people struggling to make lives for themselves in such areas as Cairo, Lebanon, and Australia. By the author of Gellhorn. An arresting portrait of the lives of today's refugees and a searching look into their future The word refugee is more often used to invoke a problem than it is to describe a population of millions of people forced to abandon their homes, possessions, and families in order to find a place where they may, quite literally, be allowed to live. In spite of the fact that refugees surround us-the latest UN estimates suggest that 20 million of the world's 6.3 billion people are refugees-few can grasp the scale of their presence or the implications of their growing numbers. Caroline Moorehead has traveled for nearly two years and across four continents to bring us their unforgettable stories. In prose that is at once affecting and informative, we are introduced to the men, women, and children she meets as she travels to Cairo, Guinea, Sicily, the U.S./Mexico border, Lebanon, England, Australia, and Finland. She explains how she came to work and for a time live among refugees, and why she could not escape the pressing need to understand and describe the chain of often terrifying events that mark their lives. Human Cargo is a work of deep and subtle sympathy that completely alters our understanding of what it means to have and lose a place in the world
THYMIC STROMAL LYMPHOPOIETIN EXPRESSION IN NASAL EPITHELIAL CELLS OF ALLERGIC ASTHMATICS
No full textThymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP), an epithelial-derived cytokine, has a critical role in the development of allergic inflammatory responses and have been implicated in type 2 allergic disease, including asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis. Genetic polymorphisms in the TSLP gene are among the most commonly cited variants associated with asthma and allergic disease, however, the functional effects of these polymorphism are not fully understood. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of a TSLP polymorphism in the Th2 inflammatory responses of the nasal epithelium, as well as in responding to nasal allergen provocation and intranasal corticosteroid treatment. We cultured nasal epithelial cells from allergic asthmatic subjects and examined cytokine and chemokine secretions and gene expression profiles in response to polyinosinic:polycytidylic acid treatment. To explore the functional consequences of the rs1837253 polymorphism we analyzed the two TSLP gene isoforms, as they have shown dichotomous effects, however, no associations were found between rs1837253 genotype and the expression of TSLP and gene isoforms. We did not find any associations of TSLP or cytokine production between genotypes, or in relation to response to nasal allergen challenge or corticosteroid treatment. Exploration of local and systemic effects of the rs1837253 SNP did not show any differences in response to INCS treatment in vitro or ex vivo. We did demonstrate that nasal epithelial cell-derived factors are capable of stimulating eosinophil/basophil colony forming units in the absence and presence of exogenous IL-3. Overall, the results indicate a role of the nasal epithelium in driving eosinophil/basophil differentiation and highlight the complexity of gene-environment interactions and the mechanisms of asthma and allergic inflammation.ThesisMaster of Science (MSc
Leadership in Food Policy: Raising a Foodie Part II
No full textThe target of this study was obesity’s problematic rise in America. It was noted in the research that children developed habits that would potentially last a lifetime and which also dictated their medical fate. The focus of this study was to identify and decrease the factors of childhood obesity through education, healthy eating, and changes in food choices through surveys administered by the researchers of this study. Research linked obesity to the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and chronic diseases in children through decreased physical activity and poor diet due to the lack of essential nutrition knowledge. Other factors in childhood obesity included poor food preparation/creation, deceptive advertising, cultural habits, and an increased demand for fast-paced foods; leaving children’s recognition and desire for healthy food choices clouded. The purpose of this study was to create and administer a survey to find results connected to childhood obesity within the Hispanic community in Springdale, Arkansas. The study also assessed parents’ education levels in addition to parental perceptions and knowledge of healthy eating choices. The framework of the study will potentially become a catalyst for ‘raising a foodie’ in other outreach programs, preschools, or any Early Childhood Development Program locally and nationwide
Reporting history : the writings of Alan Moorehead
No full textThis thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the author.
Researchers can access this thesis by asking their local university, institution or public library to
make a request on their behalf. Monash staff and postgraduate students can use the link in the References field
Leadership in food policy: raising a foodie part II
No full textObesity is experiencing a problematic rise in America. Children develop habits that potentially last a lifetime, which also dictate their medical fate. The focus of this study was to identify and decrease the factors of childhood obesity through education, healthy eating, and changes in food choices through surveys administered by the researchers. Previous research has linked obesity to the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and chronic diseases in children through decreased physical activity and poor diet due to the lack of essential nutrition knowledge. Other factors contributing to childhood obesity include poor food preparation/creation, deceptive advertising, cultural habits, and an increased demand for fast and convenience foods; leaving children’s recognition and desire for healthy food choices clouded. The purpose of this study was to discover the factors contributing to childhood obesity in the Hispanic culture. Therefore, childhood obesity factors were explored that related to and specifically linked food purchases, childhood activities, and eating patterns. The study took place with a prevalently Hispanic population within Springdale, Arkansas. The findings indicated that price, as well as nutrition and taste, were major factors when purchasing food. In addition, what a child ate, the amount of food the child ate, what the child weighed, and if the child participated in some form of exercise were determined to be factors contributing to childhood obesity
The History of the Seaconke Pokanoket Wampanoag Nation
No full textThis narrative is the history of the Seaconke Pokanoket Wampanoag Tribal Nation. (SPWTN) The history of SPWTN is inclusive of many of the Colonial American events that lead up to the founding of United States. The purpose ofthis narrative is to understand the history of the SPWTN through the perspective of a SPWTN's member and for SPWTN to be federally recognized by United States Government. This narrative is a rare and momentous account of history since it is written in the perspective of a Seaconke Pokanoket Wampanoag tribal member who descends from two heroic leaders of the Pokanoket Wampanoag Tribal Nation. The author descends from Massasoit, the great leader who first met and befriended the Pilgrims in 1620, as well as from Annawan, who was the last Pokanoket Wampanoag leader standing at the end of King Philips War. (1675-1676) Scholarly discourse, oral traditions, research, documentations, interviews, cited references, and clarifications of historic Wampanoag homeland will specify how the land is connected to the continuity and sovereignty of the SPWTN. A legal and academic argument concerning the issue of the dispossession of inherited title and ownership of certain land based cases will be addressed and discussed in this narrative. Relationships with local governments, as well as interactions with the United States Government will confirm SPWTN continuity and sovereignty from the past to the present. Church records and genealogical evidence of the group's historic identity and continuity as a sovereign tribal nation will be affirmed through, intermarriage within citizenship of SPWTN as well as with other Native American tribal nations. History, archeological artifacts, anthrological evidence, and newspaper clippings will also confirm the continuity of SPWTN from the past to the present. The conclusion of this narrative will explore the corrective possibilities and expectations for the future of the SPWTN
Stories of flight
No full textPeter Mares reviews a new book that reveals the complex and diverse reasons why people leave their home country
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
by Caroline Moorehead
Chatto & Windus, $44.95
CAROLINE MOOREHEAD is the kind of journalist and writer that Germans would describe as engagiert - committed. She does more than just write about a subject, she engages with it, becoming both practically and emotionally involved. In Moorehead’s case this meant finding the time and the money to help establish a legal advice service and educational programs for asylum seekers stuck in limbo in Cairo, and trying, over the course of several years, to keep track of a group of young men and women (mostly men) from Liberia - she calls them ‘the lost boys of Cairo’ - as they struggled to build new lives in new lands. Some of the stories have a more or less happy conclusion; others end in tragedy.
Philip Ruddock would describe Moorehead’s lost Liberians as ‘queue jumpers’, since they did not deign to wait indefinitely in long term refugee camps in Guinea but instead sought a future for themselves as illegal immigrants in the Egyptian capital. The brutal uncertainty of life in Cairo’s slums offers some prospect of opportunity and change; in the camps, there is only boredom and slow-motion starvation. When Moorehead takes us to the camps, we can be left in no doubt that the young Liberians’ decision to leave was justified.
Moorhead’s epic ‘journey among refugees’ takes in the site of a shipwrecked asylum boat in Sicily; a former nurses hostel called ‘Angel Heights’ in Newcastle in the north of England, to which asylum seekers have been ‘dispersed’ to get them out of London; the refugee camps that have turned into towns in Lebanon, where Palestinians have lived in exile for more than three generations; the fortified US-Mexico border, where highway signs warn drivers to be wary of scurrying families rather than scuttling wildlife; post-Taliban Afghanistan, where displaced people returned in great numbers with great dreams and even greater burdens; northern Finland, where a well-meaning but perhaps misguided program has resettled Sudanese Dinkas from the heat and colour of Africa to quiet apartments in a land of snow and endless night; and, of course, the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia.
In each place she introduces us to characters and tells their stories, reminding us of the complex and diverse reasons for human movement and of the remarkable human capacity to endure and overcome. Along the way Moorehead weaves in a brief history of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, detailed observations on refugee and migration policies around the globe and a thoughtful exploration on the illness of exile and its possible cures.
This is a dense book, yet wonderfully easy to read. But in the strength of Moorehead’s work also lies its weakness. In taking the side of the refugees, she provides us with a compelling account of the failings of the international system of protection in the contemporary world without offering us much in the way of alternative policy. For example, she describes in vivid detail the flow of undocumented migrants across the Mexican border into the US, but does not attempt to disentangle the problematic issue of ‘mixed flows’ - irregular migrants using the avenue of asylum to gain access to developed nations. She does not debate the question of open borders or to what extent border controls might be redesigned or relaxed. But perhaps that was too much to ask given the already ambitious scope of her literary journey. We can only hope that Moorehead’s eloquent story telling will encourage others to redouble their efforts to come up with ‘generous yet realistic measures’ that can improve the plight of the world’s displaced people. •
Peter Mares works at the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology and is the author of Borderline: Australia’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Wake of the Tampa (UNSW Press 2002)
The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in Northwest Europe, 1944
No full textThis dissertation examines in detail, the planning, conduct, and context of
Allied Operational Command during the period from the Normandy Invasion to the
end of Operation MARKET GARDEN, the airborne invasion of Holland. These
campaigns were influenced by several factors: the nature of the Allied Coalition, the
differing views and approach to battle of the separate services and the different
nationalities within the coalition, and the actual conduct of battle within the context of
a larger effort, the military campaign.
The 1944c ampaignw as uniquei n that it representedth e two year evolution of
a political-military coalition, whose campaign conduct in the field was overseen by a
fully integratedh eadquartersa nd whose staff was composedo f memberso f both the
individual services and separaten ationalities. While this headquartersp resenteda
united front behind its admired commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. its
competence to plan and control operations in anything but the broadest sense was
challengeda t every turn by the air and ground commandersta skedt o fight the actual
campaign.
This dissertation concludes that the "oversight" provided by the Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, SHAEF, and its Supreme Commander.
was not in tune with both operational realities and practices. and was not capable of
seizing opportunity and conducting a campaign of maneuver. During the actual
execution of MARKET GARDEN, the Allied Command system functioned poorly
causing the operation to fail by the narrowest margins. While MARKET GARDEN
has often been portrayed as a failure of one man, of intelligence, or of poor planning,
the coalition system and the men who ran it were not capable of fighting a
complicated battle efficiently because of their inability to function as a team, rather
than as a band of brothers, the creation of which was the responsibility of the Supreme
Commander
The making of a communist journalist: Rupert Lockwook, 1908-1940
No full textThe journalist/publicist Rupert Lockwood (1908-1997) was one of Australia’s best known Cold War communists, his name synonymous with the Royal Commission into Espionage in Australia, 1954-1955, as author of the notorious Document J. However the communist journalist did not spring fully formed into history. He joined the Australian Communist Party in 1939. This article traces Lockwood’s development as a journalist and his evolution as a communist between the wars. It is a story that ranges from small-town Western Victoria, and the West Wimmera Mail, to Melbourne and Sir Keith Murdoch’s Herald. In between, much of the world is traversed--significantly, South East Asia and Civil War Spain. Lockwood was part of a generation of Australian journalists, arguably the best of that generation (people like Brian Fitzpatrick, Douglas Wilkie, John Fisher, Clive Turnbull, Wilfred Burchett, later Alan Moorehead, and James Aldridge). This account of his pre-communist career is as much a glimpse of the world of these journalists as it is an individual’s biography
