Minority Workers Research Articles

Produção científica sobre os distúrbios psíquicos menores a partir do self report questionnarie

Objetivo: conhecer a produção científica publicada no Brasil em bases de dados eletrônicas sobre os Distúrbios Psíquicos Menores a partir do Self Report Questionarie, bem como identificar possíveis relações entre distúrbios psíquicos menores e trabalho. Método: realizou-se um levantamento bibliográfico nas bases de dados LILACS, MEDLINE e SCIELO, nos últimos dez anos, com as palavras-chave: transtornos mentais comuns, distúrbios psíquicos menores, morbidades psiquiátricas menores, problemas psiquiátricos menores. Resultados: obteve-se 41 estudos, sendo 38 artigos científicos e três dissertações. Observa-se um aumento de publicações do ano de 2004 (2,4%) para o de 2005 (14,6%). O periódico com maior número de publicações foi o Caderno de Saúde Pública (24,4%). Os estudos investigaram populações com idade maior ou igual a 14 anos (48,8%); trabalhadores da saúde (19,5%), trabalhadores de outras áreas (19,5%) e estudantes (12,2%). Conclusão: evidenciou-se que os distúrbios psíquicos menores estão presentes em diversas populações, de variadas regiões do país, apontando para a necessidade de novos estudos que investiguem a associação entre DPM e as condições de trabalho.

Recruitment of minor workers for defense against a specialized parasite of Atta leaf-cutting ant fungus gardens

Social insects that obligately depend on mutualists are known to defend both themselves and their partners from exploitation. One example is leaf-cutting ants, which defend the mutualistic fungus they cultivate for food from potentially virulent specialized microfungal parasites (genus Escovopsis). Mechanisms employed by the ants to reduce the impact of Escovopsis include grooming the mycelium of their fungal cultivar and weeding out infected parts of the fungus garden. These behavioral defense tasks are performed by specific size castes: minor and major workers, respectively. While minor workers are efficient at removing Escovopsis spores through fungus grooming, they are significantly less mobile than major workers. This implies that if major workers were to facilitate the movement of minor workers from uninfected to infected sites within colonies, defense against Escovopsis potentially would be faster, and consequently more efficient. Using dual-chamber sub-colony set-up experiments, we explore the role major workers play in the movement of minors from uninfected to infected chambers in two leaf-cutting ant species, Atta cephalotes and A. sexdens. We find that the presence of major workers results in an increase in the movement of minors when gardens are infected with Escovopsis. This suggests that minor workers may be recruited to help defend the fungus garden from infection, providing an example of how colony social structure influences defense against pathogens in a social insect.

“THE LION OF ZION”: LEON H. SULLIVAN AND THE PURSUIT OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE: INTRODUCTION

Previous articleNext article No Access“THE LION OF ZION”: LEON H. SULLIVAN AND THE PURSUIT OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE: INTRODUCTIONV. P. FranklinV. P. Franklin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 96, Number 1Winter 2011 A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.96.1.0039 Views: 22Total views on this site Copyright 2011 ASALHPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Deconstructing Personal-Professional Development in UK Clinical Psychology: Disciplining the Interdisciplinarity of Lived Experience

Personal-professional development (PPD) is central to clinical psychology in the UK. A qualitative research study of the disciplining role of psychological discourses about PPD and their contribution to perpetuating social power inequalities was conducted. Interviews with ten clinical psychologists from minority and majority groups in the profession were subjected to a critical analysis that theoretically interrogated power relations and identities in their PPD stories. Wider societal power relations were reproduced in the psychologists’ narratives. For participants from Black and minority ethnic (BME) and working class backgrounds, there were tensions between personal and professional identities arising from experiences of discrimination. They drew on social discourses outside mainstream psychology to create meaning and coherence. Contrastingly, men, a small minority in the profession, constructed majority narratives resourced largely by individualised models of PPD. Greatest congruence occurred for White women, the professional majority, whose subjectivities and PPD discourses closely mirrored each other. The research findings are discussed from a Foucauldian perspective on the disciplining role of professional knowledge using two case examples to illustrate individuals' idiographic management of power relations. PPD can be seen as on of psychology's technologies for regulation of unequal social relations via practices of the self. BME psychologists challenged the dominant discourses of PPD whilst the paradox of individualism (that its diversity generates innovative contestations of power) was evident in some White psychologists’ narratives. In spite of PPD being a conservative epistemic process, there are possibilities for new knowledge creation when psychological practitioners generate alternative discursive affordances derived from their own experiences. However, a significant distinction remains in the positioning of the disciplinary power of psychology: BME psychologists often took a transformational position to resist psychology’s role in minimising their experiences of social inequality, whereas majority psychologists were concerned with psychology assimilating a greater diversity of knowledges, but without second order change.

The EDA in Oakland: A Case That Catalyzed a Field

Th e book took hold of people’s attention and imagination not only because of the authors’ (dubious) claims of virtually complete originality, but also because it told a gripping story that was then fi tted ex post facto with an absorbing theoretical explanation. Th e volume tells the case study tale of a project funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) in Oakland, California, that was intended to create permanent jobs for minorities through the construction of a hangar and terminal and the subsequent leasing of the terminal to a for-profi t company that would expand and hire minority workers. Financial resources had been appropriated, local actors seemed favorably disposed, and confl ict appeared minimal—and yet after several years, almost nothing had happened on the ground. Pressman and Wildavsky’s analysis of the implementation process leading to such disappointing results concluded that the causes of failure “were of a prosaic and everyday character. Agreements had to be maintained after they were reached. Numerous approvals and clearances had to be obtained from a variety of participants” (xx). Th e authors argue that implementation is an exceedingly diffi cult challenge, and they encourage readers to expect frequent problems, perhaps occasionally punctuated by rare successes.

James Joyce (review)

Reviewed by: James Joyce Vike Martina Plock James Joyce. Sean Latham, ed. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2010. Pp. xii + 228. $74.95 (cloth); $32.95 (paper). Scholarly companions and study guides to James Joyce's work are published consistently. In 1990 Cambridge University Press issued its Cambridge Companion to James Joyce—by now a classic in Joyce scholarship with the second expanded and revised edition published in 2004. To match the Companion's textual focus on Joyce, CUP issued, in 2009, the equally useful collection of essays James Joyce in Context. As its title suggests, this volume emphasises—in addition to paying minute attention to Joyce's biography and to the assorted critical readings of his oeuvre—the political and contextual resonances in his writings. Together these two companions provide a comprehensive and instructive critical take on Joyce. Now the Irish Academic Press has brought out another introductory guide to the works of one of Ireland's most significant literary giants. Although it is marketed foremost with a student readership in mind, this new collection of essays is, as the publisher's website attests, supposed to appeal to Joyce novices as well as his more conversant critics. Given the saturation of the Joyce criticism market, I was curious to see what kind of innovative and fresh perspectives this new companion would and could offer. Would the volume attempt to reclaim Joyce as a writer with a distinctive Irish agenda? The fact that the collection appeared in the publisher's Irish Writers in their Time series would have made such an outline feasible. Fortunately, though, the editor has resisted limiting the critical agenda in such a manner by opting for a more stratified approach to Joyce's texts. That said, the array of included articles appears, at first glance, disappointingly conventional: chapters on Joyce's biography and his works are paired with three essays that pay a passing nod to Joyce's ongoing significance in different branches of literary criticism: Joyce and theory, Joyce and his socio-political context, and Joyce and reception history. Together these essays are supposed to engage, as Sean Latham's introduction states, "Joyce's disparate modernities, each holding a distinct and carefully ground prism up to the works in order to reveal their dazzling richness" (12). The stakes are high, therefore, and as with every other collection of essays, this one is only partly successful in its effort to offer new insights into Joyce's writings. David G. Wright's essay on Dubliners, for instance, helpfully reviews the main interpretative avenues that critics have taken in reading Joyce's 1914 collection of short stories. But Wright matches this overview of the well-known critical paradigms with the convincing thesis that Joyce's early experiences with censorship and reluctant publishers spurred "an evolving strategy" of "parodically rewriting an existing text" (45–46), which he maintained throughout his writing career. Especially rewarding is also Miranda Hickmann's contribution on Joyce's so-called minor works that gives welcome [End Page 187] attention to Chamber Music (1907), Giacomo Joyce (published posthumously in 1968), and Exiles (1918) and reads these texts not as marginal literary attempts but as significant contributions to Joyce's intellectual development as a writer. "Taken together," Hickmann argues, "these three texts trace a progression of Joyce's thought over the multiple facets of a single problem – about forms of desire and love, how they should be defined […], and how they are best served by social arrangements" (98–99). Further contributions by Kevin J. H. Dettmar on A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Michael Groden on Ulysses (1922), and Tim Conley on Finnegans Wake (1939)—all of them carefully researched and lucidly written—complete the line-up of introductory essays to Joyce's work. First-time readers of Joyce's texts will find much to gain from these scholarly and perceptive pieces. Christine van Boheemen-Saaf's follow-up article introduces the second cluster of essays, which reviews critical perspectives conventionally applied to Joyce's works. His relationship to (post-)structuralist theory is thereby the focus of Boheemen-Saaf's remarks, focusing on critical appropriations of Joyce's works by such theorists as...

Bohème sans frontière ed. by Pascal Brissette, Anthony Glinoer

how, through the interrelationship between poetry past and present, the former helps the latter “à avoir conscience d’elle-même, comme l’aide à avoir conscience d’elle-même tout ce qui la brise avec dévotion” (169). “Brisons-la,” as Francis Ponge wrote, not without devotion, in his prose poem “Le pain.” As do Bonnefoy’s concluding “Paroles d’Introduction,” La conscience de soi testifies to poetry’s fractious autonomy. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson BRISSETTE, PASCAL, et ANTHONY GLINOER, éd., Bohème sans frontière. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7535-1071-5. Pp. 357. 18 a. While Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) may figure as a relatively minor work of literature, its cultural impact has been enormous. In large measure it is due to this work of fiction that the idea of “the Bohemian” impacted the European and eventually international imagination. This study presents twentyfour essays from a conference held at University of Toronto in 2008 that illustrate the variety, transformation, and migration of the concept of “bohemia” from the nineteenth century to the present. It is a measure of the complexity of the subject that the editors have judiciously divided the contributions into three categories: the first considers the different forms that the notion of the bohemian can take and discusses the social and historical forces that contributed to its emergence; the second concentrates on bohemianism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France; the final section focuses on manifestations of the bohemian outside the Hexagon. In the first section Nathalie Heinich and Jerrold Seigel, a sociologist and a historian respectively, provide excellent historical background for the bohemian phenomenon, namely how legal changes at the dawn of the nineteenth century inadvertently created a large class of disaffected artists, and that bohemianism, essentially a bourgeois phenomenon from its origins, always possessed a symbolic dimension at the same time as a historical reality. Seigel speaks of “competing bohemias” (43), and the second section of this volume provides ample illustrations of this point. Concentrating on French bohemianism, there are excellent essays dealing with literary figures such as Tristan Corbière, Jean Richepin, Francis Carco and, of course, Murger, but space is also accorded to what might be termed “political bohemia,” in the personage of Jules Vallès, as well as the arguably slumming bohemian, but true bourgeois, Guy Debord. As one might expect, there is an essay on surrealism and bohemia. David Vrysdaghs details this conflicted relationship and reinforces the impression that attraction-repulsion was a standard surrealist approach to any movement of even passing interest. International bohemia, bohème sans frontière, is the subject of the third section. The focus is entirely literary with illuminating essays on the bohemian influence in Belgium, Spain, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. In a particularly noteworthy contribution, Clémentine Hougue analyzes the ways three writers of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, quite literally take bohemia on the road in an extreme refusal of social integration “tout en déconstruisant l’idée d’une appartenance à un lieu national, à un espace littéraire, à une topographie préexistante” (344). The Beat Generation offered an uneasy alliance of political and literary bohemia. Hougue never makes clear whether the Beats had any knowledge of Murger’s work, and this remains uncertain in other essays Reviews 349 as well. Naturally, such a question does not really matter. As the collection makes perfectly apparent, whatever its precise origins, the idea of an enchanted locale called Bohemia, a state of mind more than a place, rapidly took command of the middle class’s literary and at times political imagination. Eventually it would become the modern world’s mythical Golden Age, a time of boisterous friendship, sexual license, and financial insouciance. In its Romantic avatars, la vie de bohème is no young person’s fantasy, but the mingling of memory and desire which is the realm of an older generation. In the past hundred fifty years or so, bohemia has developed in myriad directions, yet without ever entirely abandoning Mimi and Rodolphe’s garret. Florida State University William Cloonan CAMUS, ALBERT. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard...

La conscience de soi de la poésie: colloques de la Fondation Hugot du Collège de France (1993–2004) ed. by Yves Bonnefoy

BONNEFOY, YVES, éd. La conscience de soi de la poésie: colloques de la Fondation Hugot du Collège de France (1993–2004). Paris: Seuil, 2008. ISBN 978-2-02-097138-6. Pp. 416. 15 a. Spanning two decades (1987–2006) of annual meetings of the Fondation Hugot and including essays by over twenty participants, this volume offers a perspective on poetry that is as eclectic as it is fascinating and wide-ranging. As does the anthology’s title, many of the essays point to a question dear to Bonnefoy: poetry’s self-consciousness, self-reflexivity, or what he called, in 2001, “l’autonomie du poétique” (372), to which “la critique qui se veut ou se prétend scientifique” can only substitute “des spectres plus ou moins pâles” (11). The reader should not expect a clear presentation and sustained examination of some “concept” of poetry’s self-consciousness. Rather, to take in the entirety of this volume is like stumbling onto the vestiges of a learned society seemingly from an era much further removed than its actual dates of existence. Vestiges since as of 2002 the participants seemed to have reached the end inevitably contained within Bonnefoy’s proposed and refined conditions for the yearly meetings, namely, that the way or “form of knowing” specific to poetry “only can be found upstream from any conceptual reading and even further from any ideological commitment ” (373). Confronted with this demanding hypothesis, the twenty or so essays that make up the anthology circle around the “autonomy of the poetic”— with some coming closer than others—from every which angle, multiple historical periods, and from a mix of long established critics (Jean Starobinski, Karlheinz Stierle, Maurice Olender, Bertrand Marchal, and Jacqueline Risset, to name but a few), and a younger generation (such as Jérôme Thélot, Patrick Née, and François Trémolières). In their approach to the question of poetry’s self-consciousness, many of the essays range from readings of the reception of Homer during Roman Antiquity (U. Todini) to the interrelationship of writing and painting in the works of Petrarch (P. Oster) and Montaigne (K. Stierle). As is befitting of Bonnefoy’s general hypothesis , many other essays offer readings of non-Francophone poets such as Leopardi (C. Ossola), Keats (J.E. Jackson and M. Edwards), Yeats (J. Thélot), and Rilke (M. Finck). A number of other essays focus on the poetry of Baudelaire (J. Starobinski), Nerval (P. Labarthe), Mallarmé and Valéry (B. Marchal), while still others read the prose of Balzac (P. Née) or Proust (J. Risset). A few essays, the best to my mind, directly address Bonnefoy’s anxious question as to the “autonomy of the poetic.” Among others, by way of a careful reading of Giambattista Vico, Maurice Olender turns Bonnefoy’s view around to analyze poetry’s previous entwinement with religion, politics, and law: “au point souvent de ne plus former qu’une entité aux aspects indistincts” (135). In an essay ranging from the Chanson de Roland to Flaubert, Rimbaud, and Proust, Michel Zink offers a dazzling demonstration as to THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 85, No. 2, December 2011 Printed in U.S.A. REVIEWS Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger 348 how, through the interrelationship between poetry past and present, the former helps the latter “à avoir conscience d’elle-même, comme l’aide à avoir conscience d’elle-même tout ce qui la brise avec dévotion” (169). “Brisons-la,” as Francis Ponge wrote, not without devotion, in his prose poem “Le pain.” As do Bonnefoy’s concluding “Paroles d’Introduction,” La conscience de soi testifies to poetry’s fractious autonomy. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson BRISSETTE, PASCAL, et ANTHONY GLINOER, éd., Bohème sans frontière. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7535-1071-5. Pp. 357. 18 a. While Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) may figure as a relatively minor work of literature, its cultural impact has been enormous. In large measure it is due to this work of fiction that the idea of “the Bohemian” impacted the European and eventually international imagination. This...

Determinantes y consecuencias del trabajo infantil: un análisis de la literatura

<span>El presente artículo presenta los resultados de una revisión sistemática de la literatura que analiza uno de los fenómenos más complejos del mercado laboral: el trabajo infantil. El ejercicio muestra que los mayores desarrollos teóricos y empíricos se concentran en el estudio de la relación entre el trabajo de los menores y las variables de capital humano, en especial, la educación y la salud; relaciones complejas debido a que no existe una contundente evidencia de los efectos negativos del trabajo de los niños sobre estas variables. El documento destaca que con los desarrollos más recientes de la literatura se han desvirtuado hipótesis como el "luxury axiom", que atribuye el problema a la pobreza, y aparecen enfoques más amplios que incluyen los efectos de los mercados imperfectos, las migraciones y los programas de transferencias sobre el fenómeno de estudio.</span>

Secretory profile of metapleural gland cells of the leaf‐cutting ant Acromyrmex coronatus (Formicidae: Attini)

Ants present a pair of metapleural glands located at the posterolateral end of the thorax. Because of its importance in the social organization of ants, the present study was aimed at describing the morphophysiology of this gland in three worker castes of Acromyrmex coronatus, focused on secretory activity using histological and histochemical techniques. Our findings revealed that the secretory and the storage portions of this gland are connected by extracytoplasmic portion of canaliculi that drain the secretion from each secretory cell to the collecting chamber. This secretion contains glycoproteins. In minor workers, the secretion contains higher levels of polysaccharides when compared to that of major workers, supporting the role of the metapleural gland in the maintenance of the fungus garden. The nucleus as well as cytoplasm of secretory cells were strongly positive for RNA indicating that these cells are active in the synthesis of proteins and lipids, compounds found in the final secretion. The variant of the CEC revealed that the secretory activity of the entire gland is synchronous, as all cells exhibit the result.

Can Hawaiian carnivorous caterpillars attack invasive ants or vice versa?

The Hawaiian Islands have allowed insects to evolve unique habits, because the islands are isolated and originally lacked predators, such as ants and wasps. Ambush carnivorous caterpillars (Eupithecia spp.; Lepidoptera: Geometridae) provide a remarkable example of a feeding behaviour unique to the Hawaiian Islands. Their prey includes various arthropods species. Eupithecia larvae even attack predatory arthropods such as parasitoids. However, it is unclear whether Eupithecia can attack ants. Here, I examined whether Eupithecia orichloris can attack the invasive ant Pheidole megacephala under laboratory conditions. Eupithecia orichloris could successfully attack the minor worker of P. megacephala. However, the major worker of P. megacephala counterattacked.

Can Hawaiian carnivorous caterpillars attack invasive ants or vice versa?

AbstractThe Hawaiian Islands have allowed insects to evolve unique habits, because the islands are isolated and originally lacked predators, such as ants and wasps. Ambush carnivorous caterpillars (Eupithecia spp.; Lepidoptera: Geometridae) provide a remarkable example of a feeding behaviour unique to the Hawaiian Islands. Their prey includes various arthropods species. Eupithecia larvae even attack predatory arthropods such as parasitoids. However, it is unclear whether Eupithecia can attack ants. Here, I examined whether Eupithecia orichloris can attack the invasive ant Pheidole megacephala under laboratory conditions. Eupithecia orichloris could successfully attack the minor worker of P. megacephala. However, the major worker of P. megacephala counterattacked.

La Librería de Juan Polo en Murcia a mediados del siglo XVIII

A través del análisis del inventario de los bienes dejados a su muerte por el librero Juan Polo, junto a la utilización de otras fuentes archivísticas, se retrata el perfil vital y las actividades desarrolladas por este profesional del libro en la Murcia de mediados del siglo XVIII. La trascripción e identificación de los libros y otros impresos menores reseñados en el inventario y, sobre todo, la cuantía de ejemplares por título ha permitido abordar el tipo de clientela de la librería y la aceptación o el éxito de determinados productos editoriales, siempre en consonancia con unas necesidades prácticas, formativas o recreativas y con unos hábitos lectores fácilmente reconocibles.

Cooperative food transport in the Neotropical ant, Pheidole oxyops

Cooperation in foraging through information sharing is widespread in social insects and has been much studied. In contrast, cooperative transport of food items by groups of workers is less common and has received comparatively little attention. We investigated collective food retrieval in the Neotropical ant Pheidole oxyops, a ground-nesting species in which minor workers (mean body weight 0.6 mg) collectively transport larger dead insects back to the nest entrance. In total, 29% of items and 78% of total mass is transported collectively. We examined the configurations of ants carrying single experimental food items (weight 119 mg, size 10 × 10 × 1 mm) and found it to be non-random, with twice as many carrying ants at the corners as expected. This arrangement is achieved by preferential joining of corners and leaving of sides by carriers. Corner carrying increased carrying speed by up to 29%. Ants also preferentially carried food items from the front and back, versus the middle.

A Clinical Case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder

This article presents the clinical case of a 38-year-old man with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). “William” reports longstanding excessive and uncontrollable worry about a number of daily life events, including minor matters, his family, their health, and work. In addition, he endorses chronic symptoms of restlessness and irritability, muscle tension, concentration difficulties, and sleep disturbance. In an attempt to cope with his worries, William engages in excessive information and reassurance seeking, particularly with respect to decision making, and he often double-checks even minor tasks. In addition, he engages in procrastination, and avoids spontaneous or unplanned events. Although William describes himself as a born worrier, his GAD symptoms became noticeably problematic over the last several years, subsequent to an increasing number of stressors. Comorbid conditions as well as predisposing and precipitating factors are described in addition to the specific symptom presentation.

Polymorphism and Division of Labor During Foraging Cycles in the Leaf-cutting Ant Acromyrmex octospinosus (Formicidae; Attini)

While division of labor within leaf-cutting ant nests has been well-characterized in the context of the collection and processing of leaf material, environmental factors such as day-night cycles and heavy rainfall limit the time during which leaf-cutting ant workers leave the nest to gather forage. Using a novel “flat panel” nest design, we studied how patterns of within-nest task performance changed when a colony of the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex octospinosus was and was not provided access to forage. We conducted scan samples of individuals working within the nest under both conditions and compared task allocation patterns across provisioning regimes and between workers of different sizes. When labor was compared between worker size groups, “minor” workers (head width ≤2.0 mm) and “major” workers (head width >2.0 mm) showed significantly different task performance patterns when forage was available: minors performed mostly brood-care and garden maintenance, while majors were mostly involved in the handling of freshly-cut leaf fragments. In contrast, when the colony was deprived of forage, the task performance patterns of minor and major workers converged and did not significantly differ. Marked major workers known to be foragers tended to remain idle within the nest when the colony was deprived of forage, while non-foragers of similar head width engaged in a variety of within-nest tasks, suggesting polyethism in majors may be based on factors other than size.

Caste specialization in behavioral defenses against fungus garden parasites in Acromyrmex octospinosus leaf-cutting ants

Division of labor and caste specialization plays an important role in many aspects of social insect colony organization, including parasite defense. Within leaf-cutting ant colonies, worker caste specialization permeates colony tasks ranging from foraging, substrate incorporation, brood care, and chemical defenses via glandular secretions and mutualistic bacteria. Leaf-cutting ants rely on protecting a mutualistic fungus they grow for food from microfungi in the genus Escovopsis that parasitizes the ant–fungus relationship. Here, we examine whether Acromyrmex octospinosus leaf-cutter ant castes (minors and majors) display task specialization in two behavioral defenses against Escovopsis: fungus grooming (the removal of Escovopsis spores) and weeding (the removal of large pieces of Escovopsis-infected fungus garden). Using behavioral observations, we show that minors are the primary caste that performs fungus grooming, while weeding is almost exclusively performed by majors. In addition, using a sub-colony infection experimental setup, we show that at the early stages of infection, minors more efficiently remove Escovopsis spores from the fungus garden, thereby restricting Escovopsis spore germination and growth. At later stages of infection, after Escovopsis spore germination, we find that major workers are as efficient as minors in defending the fungus garden, likely due to the increased importance of weeding. Finally, we show, using SEM imaging, that the number of sensory structures is similar between minor and major workers. If these structures are invoked in recognition of the parasites, this finding suggests that both castes are able to sense Escovopsis. Our findings support that leaf-cutter ant behavioral defense tasks against Escovopsis are subject to caste specialization, likely facilitated by worker sizes being optimal for grooming and weeding by minors and majors, respectively, with important consequences for cultivar defense.

Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages (review)

Reviewed by: Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages Peter H. Goodrich Stephen Knight , Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009. Pp. xvii, 275. ISBN: 978-0-8014-4365-7. $27.95. The author, a well-respected professor at Cardiff University and author of a previous volume on Robin Hood published by the same press, has garnered prepublication praise from an impressive group of Arthurian experts, so one opens this volume with high expectations. Those expectations, for the most part, are readily met. At an unusually affordable academic book price and a relatively svelte 292 pages, including introduction, twenty-six black-and-white plates of illustrations, chapter notes, substantial primary and secondary bibliographies, and index, Knight encapsulates the development of the Merlin figure in an attractive and readable style. To achieve the feat of succinctness regarding such a multifarious figure, one must pursue a single main narrative theme, and Knight makes an appropriate choice indicated by the book's subtitle. In structuring 'the relation between knowledge and power' expressed by the mage's manifold appearances, Knight highlights 'Wisdom, Advice, Cleverness, and Education' as 'the major formations in the socio-cultural apprehension of the value' of knowledge, and Merlin as its representative to various kinds of power (xv). The overuse of prepositions and multisyllabic terms in that phrase—not really typical of the book's style as a whole—suggests what Knight is up against. Discerning any single coherent pattern in the unfolding of such a figure is problematic, especially since Knight must acknowledge so many exceptions in the course of applying these four rubrics to the works of different nations, genres, and periods. Nevertheless, his thematic dualism is itself important, because it can apply to all of the iconic dichotomies and counterbalancing tensions described in the Introduction of Merlin: A Casebook (2003). The plan of his book distributes Wisdom with Merlin's roots in Britain through Geoffrey of Monmouth, Advice with his subsequent development in medieval romance, Cleverness as the diminishment of his potency to the end of the Victorian period, and Education as the keynote of his popularity in the twentieth century. If one does not expect unwavering consistency from this approach and its applicability to individual works, but regards it as a loose guideline for representing Merlin's essential actions within narratives, it blazes a helpful path of broadly shifting emphases through the book. Knight implicitly recognizes its awkward but probably necessary artificiality when he notes that the acronym created from his categories coincides by 'some tricksterish force' with the name of one of the legend's early 'disseminators' WACE (xv). The challenge of generating a plan adequately to cover Merlin's guises through the ages is partially redressed by one of the book's most endearing traits—genuine respect for previous scholarship and steady application and acknowledgment of it throughout. Knight has done his homework; his bibliography is up to date and useful for scholars and lay readers alike. A not inconsiderable challenge for such a survey is to avoid idiosyncrasy while superseding previous survey monographs (most notably in this case, Christopher Dean's from 1992). Two good ways to achieve this are by referencing previously overlooked works from different periods, and quoting from or reexamining exhaustively discussed works more succinctly and [End Page 127] in a different light. Given the book's strong scholarly foundation, Knight succeeds at both. The first two chapters on the medieval legend provide particularly clear differentiation and treatments of the primary medieval sources in Welsh, Latin, French, and English, and the middle chapter on 'Cleverness' offers a particularly fine overview of Merlin's English literary fortunes in decline and reflorescence from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. The remaining two chapters, while still well-judged, demonstrate an inherent weakness of the chronological survey form: covering an increasing spate of works from multiple literary traditions and media results in increasingly brief discussions of individual landmarks, culminating with a dizzying parade of major and minor works in the final chapter—often with 'one-liner' commentary. In addition to the 'usual suspects,' Knight advances the Merlin repertoire by remarking several previous overlooked texts, such as the masques...

Language and Wage Determination in a Segmented Urban Labor Market: Evidence from Canada

I build a simple model of labor market segmentation in this paper. People of different language origins form separate urban labor submarkets. Utilizing the reported work language in the 2001 Census of Canada Public Use Microdata File on Individuals, I identify workers' labor market segments and test the two key implications of the model. First, I find that English speaking workers earn more than workers whose first language is not English even though they all speak English at work. In addition, minority workers earn higher wages in English-speaking jobs than non English-speaking jobs. Second, wages in the majority labor market increase with the majority population. On the other hand, wages in the minority labor market decrease with the majority population, but they increase with the minority population.

Safety climate and pesticide risk communication disparities in crop production by ethnicity

AbstractPesticide safety is a significant global health concern. This study explored factors associated with the risk divide, a term used to describe disparities in injuries and fatalities between majority and minority workers. Forty (40) farm workers from the South‐Atlantic region of the United States were recruited. Results revealed significant differences between ethnic groups on several measured constructs. Latino migrant workers (from the Americas) reported lower perceived control of their work environment and higher risk perception compared to Americans of European descent. Preliminary recommendations relevant to cultural ergonomics, risk communication usability, and safety climate are provided. Implications relevant to farm and manufacturing settings are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.