‘We are not a rich country to waste our resources on expensive toys’: Mexico’s version of Atoms for Peace

Abstract

The Atoms for Peace initiative was announced by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 8 December 1953. The ways in which Eisenhower’s proposal was interpreted, adapted and reshaped by different countries allows us to understand the various meanings and uses of nuclear technologies, particularly in Third World countries. Mexico’s version of the initiative was related to its modernizing nationalism, a distaste for overt geopolitical alignment and nuclear weapons, and an intermittent commitment of the federal government with nuclear technologies. These ingredients eventually led to the promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, known as the Treaty of Tlatelolco (TT) signed in Mexico City in 1967. The TT made Latin America the first nuclear weapons-free populated region in the world, thus positioning Mexico in the new geopolitical nuclear order through a denuclearization discourse and a policy of non-engagement with nuclear technologies.     

The Third Man: Robert Dunn’s (1799–1877) Contribution to Aphasia Research in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England

Throughout his medical career, Robert Dunn (1799–1877) published a number of clinical cases with postmortem reports involving acquired language disorders, with the first noted in 1842. He developed a physiologically informed approach to psychological function during the 1850s along with a group of notable colleagues Benjamin Collins Brodie, Henry Holland, Thomas Laycock, John Daniel Morell, and Daniel Noble. He was also active in ethnographic research on human origins and racial diversity. As such, Dunn represents an interesting player in the developing fields of neurology, psychology, and anthropology in England in the latter part of the nineteenth century. These various strands converged at the meeting of the British Association of the Advancement of Science in 1868, where Dunn shared the program of lectures on the cutting-edge topic of aphasia with Paul Broca (1824–1880) and John Hughlings Jackson (1835–1911). Dunn’s ideas developed over a longer time frame than his younger colleagues and as such represent a unique blending of concepts from the earlier work of Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828) and Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud (1798–1881) to the perspectives on language organization in the brain developed after 1861.     

The validity of Barlow's 1877 case of acquired childhood aphasia: case notes versus published reports

In 1877, Barlow described a ten-year-old boy with right hemiplegia and aphasia, quick recovery of language function, and subsequent left hemiplegia and aphasia, who was shown to have symmetrical left and right Broca's area lesions at autopsy. The report of this case motivated many writers in the second half of the nineteenth century to develop theories on localization, laterality, equipotentiality and development of specialization, recovery of function, and the role of the right hemisphere (see Finger et al., 2003, for review). This paper presents an analysis of the original archived case notes that have recently come to light. Examination reveals discrepancies in significant details of the history of the case and raises questions about the degree of impairment and recovery throughout his illness as reported in the published article. Consideration of these differences between the presentation of the case in the British Medical Journal publication and the documentation in the original patient records raises issues about the validity of this case as evidence for the many arguments it was to support that have persisted to the present.     

LOW- AND MODERATE-INCOME HOUSING IN THE SUBURBS: THE MASSACHUSETTS "ANTI-SNOB ZONING" LAW EXPERIENCE

Can a state re-assertion of power to override local exclusionary zoning practices “open up” the suburbs for low and moderate income households? Such an approach, tried in Massachusetts over the last ten years, has had some notable, though limited results. Some 14,000 units of LMIH have been proposed under the innovative provisions of the Massachusetts “Anti-Snob Zoning” Law, but only about 3,600 have actually been built. The foremost factor limiting the impact of the law has been persistent resistance to it by suburbanites. While much suburban opposition undoubtably stems from racial prejudice and fears, some is based upon rational concern over the costs to local communities of providing services to the residents of subsidized housing. Offsetting these costs with state and/or federal subsidies could lower major barriers to the creation of more housing opportunities in the suburbs for low and moderate income persons.     

The laryngoscope and nineteenth-century British understanding of laryngeal movements

ABSTRACT

The source of the human voice is obscured from view. The development of the laryngoscope in the late 1850s provided the potential to see the action of the vocal folds during speaking for the first time. This new instrument materially contributed to the understanding of vocal fold neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and neuropathology. The laryngoscope led to elaborated understanding of disorders that previously were determined by changes in sound. The objective of this paper is to detail the consequences of this novel visualization of the larynx, and to trace how it aided in the development of understanding of the movements of the vocal folds. This is demonstrated through an examination of the activities and practices of a group of London clinicians in the second half of the nineteenth century.