Acute Hunger Research Articles

Brain responses associated with consciousness of breathlessness (air hunger).

Little is known about the physiological mechanisms subserving the experience of air hunger and the affective control of breathing in humans. Acute hunger for air after inhalation of CO(2) was studied in nine healthy volunteers with positron emission tomography. Subjective breathlessness was manipulated while end-tidal CO(2-) was held constant. Subjects experienced a significantly greater sense of air hunger breathing through a face mask than through a mouthpiece. The statistical contrast between the two conditions delineated a distributed network of primarily limbic/paralimbic brain regions, including multiple foci in dorsal anterior and middle cingulate gyrus, insula/claustrum, amygdala/periamygdala, lingual and middle temporal gyrus, hypothalamus, pulvinar, and midbrain. This pattern of activations was confirmed by a correlational analysis with breathlessness ratings. The commonality of regions of mesencephalon, diencephalon and limbic/paralimbic areas involved in primal emotions engendered by the basic vegetative systems including hunger for air, thirst, hunger, pain, micturition, and sleep, is discussed with particular reference to the cingulate gyrus. A theory that the phylogenetic origin of consciousness came from primal emotions engendered by immediate threat to the existence of the organism is discussed along with an alternative hypothesis by Edelman that primary awareness emerged with processes of ongoing perceptual categorization giving rise to a scene [Edelman, G. M. (1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (Penguin, London)].

Trade in Food and Food Products in Africa

The sub-Saharan African Region, unlike other developing regions, has made little progress in the past 20-30 years towards improving its food security situation. Indeed, in terms of average aggregate per caput availability of food, Sub-Saharan Africa is now worse off than in the past. Apart from the growing number of chronically food insecure people, projected to grow to one third of the population of the Region in the year 2002, the number of refugees and displaced persons, as a result of man-made problems, is growing. Immediate emergency needs are taking a considerable amount of national and international resources at the expense of longer-term development. In order to focus the efforts to alleviate food insecurity prevalent in the Region, so that the greatest sustainable impact can be realized, the paper discusses the current situation and prospects for the future, following broad areas within which appropriate actions by all concerned ought to be planned and implemented. The scale of food insecurity and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa underscores the importance of economic growth in general and agricultural growth in particular, in view of the high dependence of the economies on agriculture. A growing and productive agricultural sector in the Region would be the driving force for their economies, providing food, jobs, savings and market for food from the industrial sector. The Region has considerable untapped potential for increasing agricultural and food production. Exploiting this potential should be the number one priority, and calls for concrete agricultural and food policy initiatives. Measures should be taken to eliminate the inequities in the distribution of land, income, political power, education and training and access to inputs, including those embodying new technology to services, markets and finance. Almost all of a these issues are of a long-term nature; the acute hunger that exists now needs to be addressed immediately. Direct interventions that avoid where possible, distortions of economic incentives are needed. It is important to develop food security interventions that target the poorest and most food insecure, particularly those who do not benefit from economic growth and social security interventions that also have a development pay-off. These include, public works schemes which simultaneously provide an income transfer to poor employees, while contributing to development through tree planting, soil erosion control or road building. (Af. J. of Food and Nutritional Security: 2001 1(1): 12-25)

Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox (review)

BOOK REVIEWS73 hatchet-faced James H. Lane, political mountebank turned cold-blooded killer. The last chapter takes the reader full circle, back to John Brown and his October 16-18, 1859, raid on Harpers Ferry. Events there, told in the words of the participants , depict a stunned citizenry, a small, dedicated band of abolitionists who are determined to free slaves or give their lives trying, and the utter hopelessness of Brown's plan. The epilogue returns to Kansas, introducing a new character, William Quantrill, about whom Goodrich has written inBloody Dawn, a previous book. Well-chosen, appropriately placed pictures and lithographs, mostly from the Kansas State Historical Society collection, liberally adorn the pages. Two nicely prepared maps keyed to the text help readers unfamiliar with the MissouriKansas border place events in a geographical context Though half-a-dozen manuscript sources appear in the bibliography, War to the Knife was written largely from published material. Those who prefer a more complete historical analysis ofthe struggle for Kansas should read James C. Matin's two books on the subject; James Monaghan's Civil War on the Western Border; 1854-1865 (1955); James A. Rawley's Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War (1969); or Michael Fellman's Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War (1989). But those looking for a lively, though uncritical account unburdened by analysis or completeness will find in War to the Knife a "you are there" approach in which participants provide in their own words a glance at not only pioneer life on the plains but also the general lawlessness that prevailed in Kansas after 1 854. Marion B. Lucas Western Kentucky University Lee's Miserables: Life in the Army ofNorthern Virginiafrom the Wilderness to Appomattox. By J. Tracy Power. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp. xxii, 463. $34.95.) Recent years have seen the publication of numerous volumes of "new military history" that examine the Civil War's common soldiers. J. Tracy Power's Lee's Miserables, which traces the Army of Northern Virginia through its final year of existence from May 1864 to April 1865, falls into that genre. The period covered by Power's book—including the Overland and 1 864 Valley Campaigns, the siege of Petersburg, and Appomattox—witnessed some of the most sanguine and important fighting of the Civil War, but until the 1980s it attracted little attention, compared to the more famous engagements of 1862 and 1863. Lee's Miserables is chronological in format and features extensive quotations from a large array of wartime letters, diaries, newspaper articles, and official papers such as the invaluable but little-known army inspection reports. The author intends the book to be a "braided narrative," interweaving narrative with 74CIVIL WAR HISTORY analysis. Power's chronicle of campaigns and battles is competent and wellwritten but offers little that is new. The book's last chapter offers more explicit analysis than preceding ones and places Lee's Miserables within the context of other Civil War scholarship. Power does an excellentjob in revealing the reactions of Lee's men to important events, including the 1864 presidential election, the Hampton Roads Conference , and proposals to recruit slaves into the Confederate Army. He likewise provides an insightful look at morale in the Army of Northern Virginia. During the Overland Campaign, Power reveals, the majority of Lee's soldiers maintained good spirits despite the enormous carnage and physical and mental strain of nearly nonstop fighting. Even when the Southerners fell back to the defenses of Richmond and Petersburg, many felt that holding off Grant's army would convince Northerners that the cities were impregnable and the Union could not win the war. The Confederate soldiers' abiding faith in Robert E. Lee and their belief that the Army of Northern Virginia constituted the main hope for Southern independence is clearly evident throughout the book. Attrition from battle losses and desertion had severely weakened Lee's forces by the summer of 1 864, but Power traces the army's final collapse to the winter of 1864-65, when acute hunger in the trenches and terrible conditions on the homefront resulted in a...

Community-based Food and Nutrition Surveillance as an Instrument of Socio-economic Development in Central America: A Point of View

In Central America food and nutrition surveillance systems serve to support a public sector agency in designing and operating development activities from the top down. Even though their main purpose is improving nutritional status of the poor surveillance activities have not contributed significantly to food security as of 1988. Grassroots organizations can bring about food security and improved nutritional status of low income people thereby contributing to the much desired socioeconomic development needed in Central America. Theses people should design operate and evaluate the food and nutritional surveillance activities themselves which will strengthen development oriented participation. To ensure success of this grassroots plan however any community based food and nutrition surveillance systems must provide certain services. For example they should identify warning signals that alert the community to possible acute hunger conditions so the community can take actions to prevent hunger. They should also have the technical capabilities to develop community based socioeconomic strategies and to implement any needed projects and programs that aim to improve food security especially for the poor. Further they need to regularly gather data to monitor and evaluate any programs and projects and to demonstrate need to politicians for development assistance. Since the governments of Central America cannot provide technical and financial solutions to poverty problems grassroot surveillance systems are especially needed. They are able to integrate information generating activities with decision making and action taking thereby contributing to technical and financial solutions.