Radioactive Performances: Teaching about Radiation after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and its release of radioac- tive contamination, the Japanese state put into motion risk communica- tion strategies to explain the danger of radiation e
Seismic St. Louis
Emily SekineI'm interested in better understanding the ongoing geological processes that shape St. Louis and the Mississippi Valley region. So far, I've been looking into the history of seismicity in the region, focusing on the fascinating but little known history of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the most devastating earthquakes to have hit the US east of the Rockies. I've also been exploring how St. Louis and surrounding areas are dealing with the possibility of another earthquake occurring in the future. According to one article I read, one of the biggest uncertainties is what would happen to the heavily engineered Mississippi River in the case of another major tremblor. The shaking could break the levees, flooding wide areas along the river and creating cascading effects. The flow of the river might also reverse completely, as occurred during the New Madrid earthquakes.
On these possibilities and the lack of scientific consensus surrounding intraplate seismicity in this zone, see this article in The Atlantic.
On current efforts to create earthquake hazard maps in St. Louis, see this overview on the US Geological Survey site.
For a deeper dive into the history of the New Madrid earthquakes, see this book by historian of science Conevery Bolton Valencius.
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joerene.avilesThe main point of the article was that despite $13.5 billion in monetary dontions to Haiti, the country is not much better than before the earthquake. The article notes Haiti's ongoing political turmoil, a cholera epidemic (which the U.N. is underfunding and not taking credit for causing), and the system which stifles foreign aid to Haiti as factors for the lack of actual improvements to Haiti even with the large amount of donations they received.
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joerene.avilesThe components of the report are a timeline of the ebola outbreak, MSF's actions in response, a conclusion regarding future outbreaks similar to ebola, and a map of the region affected by ebola.
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joerene.avilesThe main argument is that previous disasters involving burning buildings in US history and the subsequent investigations affected emergency response, policy making, and disaster investigation today. These past events can be applied to the 9/11 terrorist attack and investigation of the buildings afterward.
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joerene.aviles1. “Chronic disaster syndrome” thus refers in this analysis to the cluster of trauma-and posttrauma-related phenomena that are at once individual, social, and political and that are associated with disaster as simultaneously causative and experiential of a chronic condition of distress in relation to displacement.
2. Most efforts to rebuild health care facilities focused on emergency care, routine care, and surgical services rather than psychiatry.
3. For many people, the idea that they had to stay in a state of heightened response to the pending “crisis”—a state they had already been in for over two years—produced huge anxiety and exhaustion.
4. Instead, the notion that New Orleanians themselves were a threat to public or national security circulated and became a rationale for the efforts the government did take to effect change in New Orleans. This change, in effect, targeted the poor. The poor, it seems, were to be evicted from New Orleans as a way to “clean up” the city and help it recover once and for all.
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joerene.aviles1. Arguably, the new Ukrainian accounting of the Cherobyl unknown was part and parcel of the government's strategies for "knowledge-based" governance and social mobilization. In 1991 and in its first set of laws, the new parliament denounced the Soviet management of Chemobyl as "an act of genocide."
2. On the one hand, the Ukrainian government rejected Western neoliberal prescriptions to downsize its social welfare domain; on the other hand, it presented itself as informed by the principles of a moder risk society. On the one hand, these Chernobyl laws allowed for unprecedented civic organizing; on the other hand, they became distinct venues of corruption through which informal practices of providing or selling access to state privileges and protections (blat) expanded.
3. Government-operated radiation research clinics and non- governmental organizations mediate an informal economy of illness and claims to a "biological citizenship"-a demand for, but limited access to, a form of social welfare based on medical, scientific, and legal criteria that recognize injury and compensate for it.
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joerene.avilesThe film best addresses health care professionals and families of those with chronic illness, as it shows the medical professionals' struggles and successes in providing comfort, closure, and knowledge in end-of-life care. It provides more empathy to the doctors who may get very involved in their patients' lives and who also feel grief when their patient has to get more bad news or passes away.
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joerene.avilesBruze Nizeye and Sara Stulac both work with Partners in Health (founded by Paul Farmer) while Salmaan Keshavjee is a physician and researcher whose expertise is in multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and global health. Farmer's and Keshavjee's anthropological research in particular is important to emergency response because it would allow for improved preparation of treatment to those communities. Their work in seeing the social causes of health epidemics would also allow for better prevention of disasters.
In the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, citizen scientists collectively tracked and monitored residual radioactivity in Japan, legitimizing alternative views to an official assessm