Towards a complex ecology: an essay on plague history in Brazil (1890s-1970s).

Hepatozoon spp. infections in wild rodents in an area of endemic canine hepatozoonosis in southeastern Brazil

Plague remains a threat to public health and is considered as a re-emerging infectious disease today. Rodents play an important role as major hosts in plague persistence and driving plague outbreaks in natural foci; however, few studies have tested the association between host diversity in ecosystems and human plague risk. Here we use zero-inflated generalized additive models to examine the association of species richness with human plague presence (where plague outbreaks could occur) and intensity (the average number of annual human cases when they occurred) in China during the Third Pandemic. We also account for transportation network density, annual precipitation levels and human population size. We found rodent species richness, particularly of rodent plague hosts, is positively associated with the presence of human plague. Further investigation shows that species richness of both wild and commensal rodent plague hosts are positively correlated with the presence, but only the latter correlated with the intensity. Our results indicated a positive relationship between rodent diversity and human plague, which may provide suggestions for the plague surveillance system.

Historical sources documenting recurrent plagues of the “Second Pandemic” usually focus on urban epidemic mortality. Instead, plague persists in remote, rural hinterlands: areas less visible in the written sources of late medieval Europe. Plague spreads as fleas move from relatively resistant rodents, which serve as “maintenance hosts,” to an array of more susceptible rural mammals, now called “amplifying hosts.” Using sources relevant to plague in thinly populated Central and Western Alpine regions, this paper postulates that Alpine Europe could have been a region of plague persistence via its population of wild rodents, particularly the Alpine marmot.

Brazil’s Health in Black and White

Understanding Kazakhstan's plague history is crucial for early warning and effective health disaster management. We used descriptive-analytical methods to analyze spatial data for human cases in natural plague foci in Kazakhstan during 1926-2003. The findings revealed 565 human cases across 82 outbreaks in Almaty (32.22%), Aktobe (1.59%), Atyrau (4.42%), Mangystau (21.24%), and Kyzylorda (40.53%) oblasts. Before antibiotic drugs were introduced in 1947-1948, major plague outbreaks occurred in 1926, 1929, 1945, 1947, and 1948, constituting 80.7% of human transmission. Plague spread through flea bites, camel handling, wild animal contact, aerosol transmissions, and rodent bites. Patients were up to 86 years of age; 49.9% were male and 50.1% female. Pulmonary cases were reported most frequently (72.4%), and person-to-person infection occurred at an incidence rate of 0.29 cases/10,000 population. Risk increased with human expansion into natural plague foci areas. Swift diagnosis and treatment are essential for curbing plague outbreaks in Kazakhstan.

Dharmakīrti (6th century AD) is counted among the most significant and innovative Indian philosophers. This Buddhist thinker attempted to meet the challenges of a new era in Indian history marked by brahmanical hostility towards Buddhism as well as profound political, economic, religious, and institutional transformations, leading to the emergence of overt interreligious polemics. In order to defend and promote the pristine truth of Buddhism as the only rational path towards salvation, Dharmakīrti elaborated, partly on the basis of Dignāga’s (5th-6th century AD) epistemology, sophisticated accounts of ontology, cognition, language, action, religious authority, and truth. Far from being an axiomatically neutral and disinterested inquiry into human cognition, Buddhist epistemology (otherwise known as “Buddhist logic”) became the methodology adopted by Buddhist apologetics from the 6th century onwards. Nevertheless, one should be wary of discarding Dharmakīrti’s philosophy as a purely religious account of human cognition and action. First, because the present author is aware of no religiously neutral Western philosophy prior to the 20th century. Second, because Dharmakīrti’s views, especially on concept formation, language, and authority, can be at least partly studied independently of his own Buddhist metaphysical assumptions.

The article is devoted to the study of the Soviet period of Ukraine’s economy, in particular the transformation of institutions in the absence of Ukrainian statehood. The subject of the study is corporatism as a mechanism for coordinating and implementing the interests of the state, society and business in different economic systems: the command-administrative and market ones. The aim of the article is to identify the main factors of the deinstitutionalization of corporatism in the Soviet economy and to clarify their impact on the modern economy of Ukraine. General scientific methods of interdisciplinary research, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction and a systemic approach are used in generalizing economic trends and determining cause-and-effect relationships. It is argued that the ideology of Bolshevism was the basis for changing the economic system, on whose basis the transformation of economic institutions in the command-administrative economy was carried out. The author reveals the content and mechanisms of the nationalization of the economy, the degeneration of formal institutions of corporatism and their use to restrict economic freedom and suppress civil society, which contradicts the very idea of corporatism as a union of equals. The importance of excluding national interests from economic consciousness and practice is emphasized, as evidenced in particular by the inefficiency of the allocation and use of Ukraine's productive resources. The article established the consequences of the deinstitutionalization of corporatism in the Soviet period for the economy of modern Ukraine, namely: high concentration of property, monopolism, the inability of large industry to self-sustainable development, the lack of concentration of capital in high-tech industries, and the lack of social partnership. The conclusion is made about the replacement of corporatism by bureaucratic corporatism in the Soviet period of Ukrainian history and its further transformation into oligarchic corporatism in the 90s of the 20th century.

This chapter investigates the role of temperature and precipitation in the outbreaks of plague in late medieval England. For allowing a meaningful quantitative analysis the time frame is extended to 1500; well-known major plague outbreaks are listed and the evidence for the less well studied plague waves, particularly those of the fifteenth century, is reconsidered. In England the majority of large-scale plague waves falls into a meteorological pattern of warm and dry summers, which followed on average or slightly colder than average winters as well as on runs of summers of one to three years of average or slightly below average temperature and probably average to above average precipitation levels. Between the middle of the fourteenth century and 1500 the frequency and severity of plague declined, nonetheless national or regional plague outbreaks occurred about every decade over this period. The regularity of plague outbreaks and the triggering of major outbreaks by clearly defined meteorological parameters indicate the persistence of plague outside the reservoir of urban Black rats as sylvatic plague in an unknown wild rodent host. On the example of field voles this chapter reviews the (climatic) conditions needed for a mass rodent proliferation in Europe north of the Alps. For England the existence of a potential reservoir of sylvatic plague was confirmed by a number of cases of plague in rural eastern Suffolk in the early twentieth century, when Black rats were extinct. Hence the recurrence of plague waves between the arrival of the Black Death and 1500 must have been largely due to the involvement of a wildlife reservoir of Yersinia pestis; plague was most likely not being constantly reintroduced to the country after 1350.

Plague, a zoonosis caused by Yersinia pestis, is still found in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Madagascar reports almost one third of the cases worldwide. Y. pestis can be encountered in three very different types of foci: urban, rural, and sylvatic. Flea vector and wild rodent host population dynamics are tightly correlated with modulation of climatic conditions, an association that could be crucial for both the maintenance of foci and human plague epidemics. The black rat Rattus rattus, the main host of Y. pestis in Madagascar, is found to exhibit high resistance to plague in endemic areas, opposing the concept of high mortality rates among rats exposed to the infection. Also, endemic fleas could play an essential role in maintenance of the foci. This review discusses recent advances in the understanding of the role of these factors as well as human behavior in the persistence of plague in Madagascar.

Pathogenesis of Endemic Pemphigus Foliaceus

Out of 167 species of Chiroptera reported for Brazil, only three representatives of Desmodontinae (Phyllostomidae) are hematophagous, a unique feature among the known species of bats. This reduced group includes Desmodus rotundus, Diaemus youngi and Diphylla ecaudata, all widely distributed over Central and South America. The first notice about vampire bats appeared in the beginning of the 16th century, in the tenth book of the first “Decade” of Pietro Martire de Anghiera (1511), related to the exploration of the continent. For Brazil, the oldest citation of blood-sucking bats was due to Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1555). Exceedingly abundant, those bats attacked human beings and caused serious damage to herds, being extremely difficult to control due to the scarce means available during colonial times. Among those, special mention should be made to the “gatos morcegueiros” (literally “bat-hunting cats”), individuals of Felis catus used to catch vampire bats in houses and corrals. Mentioned at least since the first half of the 18th century, those cats were included in property valuations and reached the price of several heads of cattle. Even nowadays, domestic cats are efficient predators of hematophagous bats in rural areas of Brazil and Argentina. Judging from historical records, the problems now caused by bloodsucking bats should not be regarded as one of the consequences of an omnipresent “ecological unbalance”, caused by a shortage of natural hosts and/or the loss of natural habitats. A highly plastic and opportunistic species such as Desmodus rotundus became adapted with extreme efficiency to the new environment, predominantly modeled by the expansion of cattle breeding, the progressive confinement of the herds, and the construction of buildings affording shelter for the bats. These are factors that would have promoted the explosive growth of an already substantially large original population of bats, to the point of converting it into an authentic pest.

Both Venice and Miami are high-density coastal cities that are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels and climate change. Aside from their sea-level location, they are both characterized by large populations, valuable infrastructure and real estate, and economic dependence on tourism, as well as the availability of advanced scientific data and technological expertize. Yet their responses have been quite different. We examine the biophysical environments of the two cities, as well as their socio-economic features, administrative arrangements vulnerabilities, and responses to sea level rise and flooding. Our study uses a qualitative approach to illustrate how adaptation policies have emerged in these two coastal cities. Based on this information, we critically compare the different adaptive responses of Venice and Miami and suggest what each city may learn from the other, as well as offer lessons for other vulnerable coastal cities. In the two cases presented here it would seem that adaptation to SLR has not yet led to a reformulation of the problem or a structural transformation of the relevant institutions. Decision-makers must address the complex issue of rising seas with a combination of scientific knowledge, socio-economic expertize, and good governance. In this regard, the "hi-tech" approach of Venice has generated problems of its own (as did the flood control projects in South Florida over half a century ago), while the increasing public mobilization in Miami appears more promising. The importance of continued long-term adaptation measures is essential in both cities.

In Brazil, the national public health apparatus became one of the most agile and expansive regulatory mechanisms of control and care during the 19th and early 20th centuries. As Brazilian doctors and social thinkers made public health central to their ideas of modernizing the nation, they simultaneously sought to challenge the notion that Brazil’s sociocultural and racial-ethnic diversity was an insurmountable obstacle to modernization. They conceived of public health as something greater than the sum of its parts, seeing it is as the best prescription for national unity and fundamental to the project of nation-building, not only as a series of practices, outcomes, and beliefs. Proto-psychiatrists, recognizing the ideological momentum and bureaucratic strength of public health, seized upon it as a means and a rationale to ground their therapeutic ideas and treatments. Their characterization of the indigent mentally ill on city streets in Rio de Janeiro as a public health issue politicized both the mentally ill and mental illness as subjects of public intervention. Fashioning themselves as the leading experts in this effort, they garnered the support of state officials and other doctors to create a series of public institutions, organizations, and other measures to treat the mentally ill as unitary intersections of psychiatry and public health. While Brazilian psychiatrists during the late 19th and 20th centuries surely went into private practice, professional psychiatry in Rio as a field turned toward returning irrational minds to reason and “civilizing” the publicly unwell—dual and deeply complex goals of the profession. Public health offered them a preexisting muscular infrastructure through which to practice their medical knowledge and, in so doing, allowed them to expand and legitimize their professional reach. So, under the auspices of an enterprising psychiatric field, mental health largely became public health.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the possibility of using the concept of the “long 19th century” as an interpretative model of historical science that claims to be universal. The author analyzes the concept of the “long 19th century” proposed by Eric Hobsbawm. The subject of the article is the concept of the “long 19th century”, the object is the possibility of its application and transplantation into Indonesian historical research. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the concept of the “long 19th century” as an interpretative model that allows us to analyze the features of the historical, social and cultural development of the territories of Indonesia, reduced in this article to Aceh. It is assumed that the interpretive models proposed by Western historians have a claim to universality, although the effect of their transplantation into non-Western historical contexts may be limited. The article analyzes 1) the features of the social and economic components in the transformation of Aceh during the “long 19th century”, 2) the role of the Islam in political changes in the region is revealed, 3) the consequences of the “long 19th century” for the subsequent history of the region are studied. The article shows the potential of the concept of the “long 19th century” for analyzing the history of social and political transformations in Indonesia through the prism of regional history. The results of the study suggest that the effect of using the concept of the “long 19th century” is limited. The author believes that this interpretative model is relatively effective and useful for analyzing social and political dynamics through the prism of religious institutions as sources and incentives for change, transformation and change in a modernizing society, to which Aceh belonged during the analyzed period of history.

Leishmania major is the causative agent of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL), and great gerbils are the main reservoir hosts in Iran. Abarkouh in central Iran is an emerging focal point for which the reservoir hosts of ZCL are unclear. This research project was designed to detect any Leishmania parasites in different wild rodent species. All rodents captured in 2011 and 2012 from Abarkouh district were identified based on morphological characteristics and by amplification of the rodent cytochrome b (Cyt b) gene. To detect Leishmania infection in rodents, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of each ear was extracted. Internal transcribed spacer-ribosomal deoxyribonucleic acid (ITS-rDNA), microsatellites, kinetoplast deoxyribonucleic acid (kDNA) and cytochrome b genes of Leishmania parasites were amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and sequencing were employed to confirm the Leishmania identification. Of 68 captured rodents in the region, 55 Rhombomys opimus were identified and nine Leishmania infections (9/55) were found. In addition, eight Meriones libycus and two Tatera indica were sampled, and one of each was confirmed to be infected. Two Meriones persicus and one Mus musculus were sampled with no infection. The results showed that all 11 unambiguously positive Leishmania infections were Leishmania major. Only one haplotype of L. major (GenBank access No. EF413075) was found and at least three rodents R. opimus, M. libycus and T. indica--appear to be the main and potential reservoir hosts in this ZCL focus. The reservoir hosts are variable and versatile in small ZCL focal locations.