Long-term trends in health status and determinants of health among the off-reserve Indigenous population in Canada, 1991–2012

The Indigenous population in Canada totals approximately 1.6 million individuals, representing about 5% of the total population. The off-reserve Indigenous population represents the fastest growing segment of the Indigenous population, with over 50% living in urban settings. Despite the size of the off-reserve population, research on the health of Indigenous peoples tends to remain focused on reserve-based populations. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of health and social determinants of health among off-reserve Indigenous peoples in Canada. Using data from the 1991 and 2012 Aboriginal Peoples Surveys this paper examines changes in health status and the social determinants of health over a 20-year time span. Results show a decline in health care use and self-reported health status in the period between 1991 and 2012. The results may be related to urbanization, aging, and increased prevalence of some chronic conditions. The findings may also be tied to barriers to achieving adequate off-reserve health care—jurisdictional disputes, disjointed program coverage, systemic racism, and a lack of equity-oriented health services. There remains a pressing need for Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments, researchers, and policymakers to build new relationships that bridge these gaps in health and access to timely care.     

Swedish limestone paving in 17th-and 18th-century English buildings

Documents concerning buildings by Christopher Wren record the use of Swedish and Danish marble as a paving material. In order to establish the origin of these marbles, original pavings are examined at St Paul's Cathedral and elsewhere. Through analyses of samples and by means of other evidence both marbles are identified as Orthoceras Limestone from the Swedish island of Öland. The stone industry of Öland is described and the import of Swedish stone into England in the 17th and 18th centuries is traced through Scandinavian and English customs accounts.     

Evaluating inputs to models of hominin raw material selection: map resolution and path choices

Selection of an appropriate scale is an important decision in study design in many branches of science, since perceived patterns often change with the scales of spatial extent or resolution of an analysis. In previously published work, we created a resource selection model to determine the importance of several independent variables for the selection of lithic materials by hominins at a Middle Palaeolithic site in southern France. Two of these independent variables (calories exerted and difficulty of the terrain covered in travel from source to site) were calculated using elevation data extracted from maps. In the present paper, we examine the differences in model performance when the variables ‘Calories’ and ‘Difficulty’ are calculated using 1) three base maps for elevation that differed in map resolution (from finest to coarsest: a 1:25,000 topographic base map, SPOT DEM, and SRTM DEM), and 2) two different methods for determining the route from source to site (straight-line route and least-cost route; both methods exclude areas with slopes >60% from travel). Our best model was the one that used data calculated using the topographic base map; however, the SRTM DEM-based data produced models of essentially equal quality. Regardless of map scale, models that used data calculated using a straight-line route always outperformed models that used data calculated using a least-cost route. This supports our previous finding that a straight-line route is a more appropriate measure for the path from lithic source to site than a least-cost route. We conclude that the map resolution of each of the base maps used here is appropriate for analyses involving spatial data pertaining to Neandertal activity because this type of data is essentially always coarse-grained.     

The life and times of Thomas Willis and his impact on contemporary medicine

Thomas Willis made numerous contributions to the neurosciences that were broad in scope. In an age of scientific breakthroughs and intellectual revolutions, Willis bestowed upon medical research the clinical rigor that set the stage for subsequent medical breakthroughs. In Cerebri Anatome, Willis introduced a measure of empiricism hitherto unknown in medieval times. By coupling the delineation of brain and neural anatomy with functional studies, Willis brought the science of clinical neurology into fruition. Psychiatry, too, benefited from Willis' elucidation of mental illness and intellectual disability, and modern behavioral psychologists claim Willis as one their early, most ardent champions.     

Chicago goes global: redevelopment,culture, and fear

Chicago's remarkably flexible growth machine, like their brethren across Rust Belt America, continues to aggressively press forward to build an internationally competitive city. This paper deepens our understanding of Chicago's recently changed growth machine. It focuses on its current redevelopment narrative as it is used on the South Side and chronicles two new features about it: its revamped use of fear and its re-fashioned notion of culture. I flesh out these two elements as they circulate through a now dominant redevelopment program: historic preservation. I chronicle three points in this paper. First, programs like historic preservation, like so many current city programs, have now fully shifted to being a neoliberal economic development tool to promote the “go-global Chicago” project. Second, two dominant fears recently nuanced anchor the narrative: fear of a city-destroying globalization and fear of city-subverting poor African-Americans. Third, a revamped notion of culture is used that helps provide resonance and dark appeal to the two offered fears. The culture notion is put into play as two dominant things, as the idealized and timeless glue that unifies Chicago's mainstream and as problematic values and meanings carried by black bodies which renders them civic tainting “ocular trash”.