US Postal System Research Articles

‘Some Time We Have Trouble in Getting Mail. And Everything Else Here’: Black Women, Freedom Food and the US Postal System

ABSTRACTThis article puts food at the centre of the Civil Rights Movement by illuminating rural Black women's experiences accessing food and survival goods in Mississippi from 1964 to 1968. Examining letter correspondence, it demonstrates how Black women strategically participated in the little‐known postal benevolence programme, ‘Box Project’, to feed their families. Within the context of surplus commodities and the food stamp programme, the article reveals how the postal system allowed Black women to acquire food and engage in conversations with northern sympathisers about the insidious state welfare structure under which they lived. As the volume of boxes and letters entering Mississippi increased, so did the risk of Black women's strategic use of the interstate mail services. The US Postal System, as quotidian and seemingly benign a state apparatus, was a battleground for food and freedom for ordinary rural Black women.

Politically induced regulatory risk and independent regulatory agencies

Uncertainty in election outcomes generates politically induced regulatory risk. For monopoly regulation, political parties’ risk attitudes towards such risk depend on a fluctuation effect that hurts both parties and an output–expansion effect that benefits at least one party. Irrespective of the parties’ risk attitudes, political parties have incentives to negotiate away regulatory risk by pre-electoral bargaining. Pareto-efficient bargaining outcomes fully eliminate regulatory risk and are attainable through institutionalizing independent regulatory agencies with a specific objective. Key aspects of the regulatory overhaul of the US Postal system in 1970 are argued to be consistent with these results.

Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network Misfit Forms: Paths Not Taken by the British Novel What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Post-Politics

Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network Misfit Forms: Paths Not Taken by the British Novel What Lies Between: Void Aesthetics and Postwar Post-Politics

Species Selective Measurement of 10 B. anthracis-Sterne Spores within 10 Minutes by Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy

The use of biological warfare agents by terrorists remains a global concern. While there has been substantial effort since the 2001 distribution of Bacillus anthracis spores through the US Postal System to develop analyzers to detect this and other biological agents, the analyzers lack sensitivity, lack specificity (produce high false-positive rates), are too slow, or cannot be fielded. For the past decade we have been investigating the ability of Surface Enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to overcome these limitations. Recently, we developed an assay by functionalizing silver nanoparticles with various peptides to selectively bind B. anthracis, and then adding acetic acid and silver colloids to release and detect, respectively, dipicolinic acid as a biomarker by SERS. Here we describe the successful measurement of B. anthracis-Sterne spores with a 10- to 20-fold selectivity over other Bacillus species at 105 spores/mL, using the peptide functionalized SERS assay with a sensitivity capable of detecting 10 spores in a 103 spores/mL sample in 6.5 minutes. This measurement represents 6 orders-of-magnitude improvement over our previous peptide based SERS assay measurements.

ChemInform Abstract: Anthracimycin, a Potent Anthrax Antibiotic from a Marine‐Derived Actinomycete.

The human infectious disease anthrax is caused by the sporeforming, Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus anthracis. The disease, which is most common in those that handle infected farm animals, has also been used as a bioterrorism weapon. In 2001, just a week after the World Trade Center attacks, anthrax was deliberately spread through the US postal system by sending letters with powdered B. anthracis spores. This caused 22 cases of anthrax infection and ultimately claimed five lives. [1] Depending upon the method of exposure (inhalation of spores and direct bacterial contact, among others) B. anthracis infections can require prolonged treatment often for six months with a variety of antibiotics. The pulmonary form of anthrax is considered a medical emergency that may require continuous intravenous therapy with potent antibiotics. In the event of a bioterrorism attack, individuals exposed to B. anthracis will be given antibiotics prior to the onset of the illness. A vaccine has been developed but is not yet available to the general public. [2] Given the severity of this disease, and the fact that it can be spread by aerosol dispersal, the development of effective new antibiotics remains a high priority. As a resource for developing microbial antibiotics, we have focused our efforts on marine microorganisms, particularly those that are in the deep oceans. Examination of a Streptomyces species (our strain CNH365), isolated from near-shore marine sediments found near Santa Barbara, CA, showed that culture extracts possessed significant activity against B. anthracis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in broth dilution assays. Subsequent fractionation of the extract following antibacterial activities yielded a pure

Moreno J, (editor). In the wake of terror: medicine and morality in a time of crisis. Cambridge (MA) and London: MIT Press, 2003. 229 pp. US $24.95. ISBN 0-262-13428-4

When Al Qaeda hijacked four aeroplanes on 11th September 2001 and crashed them into the twin towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and Pennsylvania, the world changed. The United States had suffered through international terrorism on a scale that was unimaginable. The war on terror began in earnest almost immedia-tely in the aftermath of these devastating events. And concern about the threat due to chemical and biological weapons is intimately connected. Specifically, the subsequent distribution of anthrax through the US postal system served to heighten public, professional, and political anxiety regarding bio-terrorist threats. In the wake of terror reflects on the shifting perceptions of security in the United States in the wake of …

Smallpox containment updated: considerations for the 21st century

Smallpox containment updated: considerations for the 21st century

A generalized linear mixed models approach for detecting incident clusters of disease in small areas, with an application to biological terrorism.

Since the intentional dissemination of anthrax through the US postal system in the fall of 2001, there has been increased interest in surveillance for detection of biological terrorism. More generally, this could be described as the detection of incident disease clusters. In addition, the advent of affordable and quick geocoding allows for surveillance on a finer spatial scale than has been possible in the past. Surveillance for incident clusters of disease in both time and space is a relatively undeveloped arena of statistical methodology. Surveillance for bioterrorism detection, in particular, raises unique issues with methodological relevance. For example, the bioterrorism agents of greatest concern cause initial symptoms that may be difficult to distinguish from those of naturally occurring disease. In this paper, the authors propose a general approach to evaluating whether observed counts in relatively small areas are larger than would be expected on the basis of a history of naturally occurring disease. They implement the approach using generalized linear mixed models. The approach is illustrated using data on health-care visits (1996-1999) from a large Massachusetts managed care organization/multispecialty practice group in the context of syndromic surveillance for anthrax. The authors argue that there is great value in using the geographic data.

Medical Preparedness and Response to Terrorism with Biological and Chemical Agents -- Present Status in USA

Over the past decade, acts of terrorism have ranged from dissemination of aerosolized Anthrax spores, intentional food product contamination, release of chemical weapons in major metropolitan subway systems and suicide attacks using explosive devices. Unfortunately, predicting when and how such attacks might occur has proven to be very difficult. Since the bombing attacks at the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 and 2001, the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and just recently in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and the release of impressively weaponized anthrax spores in the US Postal System during the autumn of 2001, large-scale terrorist attacks on civilian populations using weapons of mass destruction no longer seem in the realm of the fantastic. At their worst, the New York, Oklahoma City, and Tokyo attacks may represent the crossing of a grim threshold, weakening long-standing taboos and increasing the likelihood of analogous attacks in the future. Preparing the medical community to address these threats is a formidable challenge, but the consequences of being unprepared could be devastating. The medical and healthcare infrastructure must be prepared to both prevent and treat illness and injury that would result from CBRNE terrorism, especially a covert terrorist attack. This article outlines steps for strengthening medical and public health capacity to protect against these dangers that have been taken in the USA. Investments in scientific knowledge, public health and hospital and healthcare systems provide the best defense against terrorism and will improve our ability to successfully respond to other public health threats that will emerge in the twenty first century.

Inserting the Diaphragm In(to) Modern American Fiction: Mary McCarthy, Philip Roth, and the Literature of Contraception

Get yourself a pessary .... A female contraceptive, a plug. Mary McCarthy, Dottie Makes an Honest Woman of Herself, 34. Fiction, in both its elite literary and popular pulp forms, provides a barometer measuring shifting attitudes in twentieth-century American culture. Today, magazines aimed at young female readers are filled glossy color advertisements for various forms of contraception. Indeed, birth control is so ubiquitous that advertisers often focus on side effects, such as clearer skin, to persuade savvy consumers to select their product. And yet, until 1936, Comstock Act criminalized distribution of lewd and lascivious material through US postal system, including medical information on birth control, pornography, and fiction that touched on subject. The long struggle of Margaret Sanger and other advocates for legal and social acceptance of contraception can be charted through American fiction, adding dimension to legal and historical documents. This article examines Mary McCarthy's 1954 story Dottie Makes an Honest Woman of Herself and Philip Roth's 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus to argue for effects of contraceptive technology on sexual and romantic relationships and shifting power dynamics between men and women.1 To fully understand these complex effects, we must situate birth control in its social context as it slowly shifted from an illicit and dirty knowledge to a scientific and medically legitimized prescription. Margaret Sanger, perhaps bestknown figure in fight for birth control, sought support of medical profession in order to legitimize contraception, which had long been considered immoral as well as illegal.2 Sanger advocated a Doctor's Only bill that would enable physicians to prescribe contraception at their discretion. Several doctors, including Hannah Stone, William J. Robinson, and Robert Latou Dickinson, supported Sanger and published articles in her monthly Birth Control Review. However, most physicians opposed contraception, and indeed the predominant position among prestigious doctors was not merely disapproval, but revulsion so hysterical that it prevented them from accepting facts (Gordon, Politics 258). These physicians saw contraception as tainted by unscientific approach of radical politics, and viewed their own position as protecting American social morality. Thus, while a minority of sympathetic doctors secretly provided contraception to private patients, medical profession as a whole did not publicly support birth control until 1937, when American Medical Association passed a qualified endorsement. This acceptance came with little enthusiasm, but rather objective of checking spread of useless and possibly injurious techniques and of ensuring their control by physicians rather than quacks (Speert 161). Cultural acceptance of birth control by medical profession and general public was slowly gained during twentieth century. McCarthy and Roth can be read as examples of rhetorical function of fiction in American birth control movement, educating and influencing readers, and as artifacts of cultural memory, reenacting history. Fiction played an important role in birth control movement, as I argue elsewhere, providing another ground to explore rhetoric of cause and revealing new insights into American culture.3 By focusing on increasingly public and dominant role of contraceptive technology in modern heterosexual romance, these texts relocate female as both subject and object of birth control, foregrounding and erasing woman as womb and sexual being. This article argues that their narratives represent in fiction feminist claims that reproductive technology simultaneously oppresses and frees women. As Adele Clarke has shown, modern reproductive science is grounded in an ideology of control: control over materials, over bodies, and over life itself. …

Bioterrorism surveillance during the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games

Surveillance will not discover a bioterrorist attack and, on its own, would be futile in attempting to manage a suspected attack. Lessons from the West Nile Virus encephalitis outbreak in New York in 1999 and the release of Bacillus anthracis through the US postal system in 2001 demonstrate the primacy of clinical diagnosis in recognition.

Medical Preparedness and Response to Terrorism with Biological and Chemical Agents -- Present Status in USA

Over the past decade, acts of terrorism have ranged from dissemination of aerosolized Anthrax spores, intentional food product contamination, release of chemical weapons in major metropolitan subway systems and suicide attacks using explosive devices. Unfortunately, predicting when and how such attacks might occur has proven to be very difficult. Since the bombing attacks at the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 and 2001, the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and just recently in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and the release of impressively weaponized anthrax spores in the US Postal System during the autumn of 2001, large-scale terrorist attacks on civilian populations using weapons of mass destruction no longer seem in the realm of the fantastic. At their worst, the New York, Oklahoma City, and Tokyo attacks may represent the crossing of a grim threshold, weakening long-standing taboos and increasing the likelihood of analogous attacks in the future. P...

Deleterious effects of electron beam radiation on allergen extracts.

The recent threat to the public posed by the dissemination of Bacillus anthracis through the US postal system has resulted in increased security measures, including electron beam irradiation for the sterilization of some mail. The deleterious effects of electron beam radiation on biological products are not fully understood. The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effect of electron beam radiation, as currently used to sterilize packages and mail in the United States, on several standardized or characterized allergen extracts. Selected irradiated extracts were analyzed for allergen content and potency by SDS-PAGE, immunoblot, and ELISA (including inhibition) and compared with untreated extracts. The compositions and immunochemical potencies of these products were altered significantly by irradiation treatment. Physical changes to native protein structures observed after electrophoretic separations coincided with near-complete loss of allergenic and antigenic epitopes present on major and minor allergens, according to ELISA and immunoblot comparisons with untreated extracts. These results indicate that extracts subjected to electron beam sterilization conditions are likely to contain modified component structures and properties that might compromise the clinical effectiveness of these products.

Bioterrorism: an overview

Bioterrorism has reached the forefront of the public imagination following recent events across the world. The disaster of 11 September 2001, followed by anthrax letters sent via the US postal system and now renewed tension over Iraq have all brought the possibility of bioterrorism closer. A number of biological agents could be used in a terrorist attack, including anthrax, plague, smallpox and botulinum toxin. The serious diseases that these agents produce have been brought under control in the developed world; however, a lack of protective immunity against such diseases could cause considerable morbidity and mortality if used in a terrorist attack. This essay provides a background to bioterrorism, discusses many of the current points of interest and gives an update to the economic consequences of such an attack.