Because infants are the most vulnerable members of a community, their deaths – and the resulting infant mortality rate (IMR) – are said to signal more fundamental problems that are likely to affect the general health of a community. However, a focus on proximate- and intermediate-level risk factors in epidemiological analyses presents a decontextualized picture and ignores the role of larger forces on health, disease, and illness. In response to this trend, this project will contribute to a revitalization of the use of infant mortality as an index of larger social problems by tempering statistical analyses with critical reflection regarding the effects of the liminal position of Malta within the British imperial system, prior to the Second World War. In addition, by bringing together several analytic approaches which often proceed in parallel, rather than in dialogue – historical epidemiology, social history, and the analysis of colonial discourse – this dissertation highlights the problematics of knowledge production at both the theoretical and methodological level. As a result, my work is not just about Malta, one moment in history, the calculation of infant mortality rates, or the disentanglement of various determinants of infant mortality in this context; it is about the dynamics and repercussions of power differentials and of social, economic, and political inequalities, as they define and structure health outcomes and experiences. Specifically, I will show that fluctuations in international tensions affected Malta’s population on a number of levels because of the island’s importance as a British military and naval base and its location in the middle of the Mediterranean. I will demonstrate how Malta’s “strategic position” restricted political and economic development in the island and articulated with colonial perceptions of the Maltese as “Other” and Malta as “overpopulated.” Finally, I will argue that international tensions, Malta’s location within Empire, and perceptions of the island and its inhabitants in the early twentieth century affected the ways in which infant deaths were explained and understood and the strategies of intervention initiated in the island to curtail infant mortality – all of which had a tremendous impact on the rates at which infants in Malta died.

No description available.

La notion de prison est obsédante en littérature africaine d’expression française. Le dispositif d’enfermement des hommes dans un espace clos remonte véritablement à la période coloniale. Les nombreuses méthodes punitives qui avaient cours en Afrique précoloniale privilégiaient davantage d’autres formes de sanction que la prison. Il y avait par exemple le bannissement, la réparation immédiate, l’exil et la lapidation. Avec l’installation occidentale, l’habitat africain s’est doté d’une structure particulière et singulière. La prison fait désormais partie des politiques pénales de premier choix. Les écrivains, Ibrahima Ly dans "Toiles d’araignées", Henri Djombo dans "Le mort vivant", Auguste Moussirou Mouyama à travers "Parole de vivant" et Antoine Bangui dans "Prisonnier de Tombalbaye" montrent la complexité de ce nouveau phénomène. Ils évoquent les conditions de vie atypiques à savoir : la surpopulation, l’hygiène, la rareté d’aliments etc. La prison avilit l’homme au lieu de l’aider à prendre conscience de l’intérêt de sa peine par rapport à la société offensée. La resocialisation qui est la logique de justification de la prison qui allie la peine aux principes des droits de l’homme est fortement compromise. Mais malgré ces privations, la prison peut être un véritable chemin pouvant permettre à ceux qui ne succombent aux violences, de repenser la société. Ils combattent tout ce qui peut empêcher à l’homme de s’épanouir. C’est ainsi que l’on peut entendre l’héroïne de "Toiles d’araignées "souhaiter un monde libre / The concept of prison is recurring in African literature of French expression. Its device of enfermement of the men in a closed space goes up truly at the colonial period. The many punitive methods which had course in Africa pre-colonial privileged more other forms of sanction the prison.With the Occidental installation, the African housing obtains a particular and singular structure.The prison is part from now on of the penal policies of first choice. The writers, Ibrahima Ly in "Toiles d’araignées", Henri Djombo in "Le mort vivant", Auguste Moussirou Mouyama through "Parole de vivant" an d Antoine Bangui in "Prisonnier de Tombalbaye" show the complexity of this new phenomenon. They evoke the atypical living conditions to know: overpopulation, hygiene, scarcity of food etc. The prison degrades the man instead of helping it to become aware of the interest of its sorrow compared to the offended company. But in spite of these deprivations, the prison can be a true springboard which can make it possible those which do not succumb to violences, to reconsider the company. They fight all that can prevent with the man from opening out

Deep ecology is the field of environmental ethics, which seeks to change human values and attitudes that would lead to the solution to environmental problems. The aim of this thesis is to confront the selected propositions which deep ecology include (overpopulation, economic growth, decentralization, ethics of voluntary simplicity and biodiversity) with views of other authors and to seek answers to the ethical and social issues associated with them. Opinions on the topic and their role in solvin

Orientador: Marcus Aloizio Martinez de Aguiar / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Fisica Gleb Wataghin / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-06T09:06:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Araujo_SabrinaBorgesLino_M.pdf: 19936174 bytes, checksum: 244a3026e19c4b20487790757ebb20ee (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Apresentaremos duas formas de modelar a dinâmica de populações ecológicas do tipo cadeia alimentar. Em uma delas consideramos que os indivíduos estão distribuídos homogeneamente no espaço e interagem entre si com iguais probabilidades, de forma que o espaço não precisa ser tratado explicitamente. Este tipo de modelo é conhecido como Modelo de campo médio. Na outra forma de modelagem, consideramos que as espécies estão distribuídas no espaço, onde os indivíduos migram e interagem apenas com aqueles que estão em uma determinada vizinhança de suas posições, o Modelo espacial. Ambos os modelos consideram o tempo discreto e o espaço, no caso do modelo espacial, é simulado por uma rede bidimensional de N x N sítios. Mostraremos as dinâmicas para duas espécies, uma espécie predadora e outra presa, e posteriormente incluiremos uma terceira espécie, de forma a ter uma cadeia alimentar de três espécies, utilizando os dois modelos. No modelo de campo médio de duas espécies observamos atratores no espa»co de fases que vão desde a pontos fixos até atratores caóticos. Ao incluir a terceira espécie os atratores ficam mais elaborados. No modelo espacial evidenciamos que o tamanho da vizinhança de interação modifica consideravelmente a dinâmica e a forma como as espécies se organizam no espaço. Quando a vizinhança de interação assume valores intermediários ocorrem superpopulações, porém ao aumentarmos esta interação as superpopulações desaparecem e o modelo espacial tende ao modelo de campo médio. Observamos também a sincronização da dinâmica das populações dos sítios ao longo do tempo / Abstract: We study the dynamics of ecological populations of predators and preys using two different approaches. The first is a Mean Field approach, in which we assume that the individuals are homogeneously mixed in space, so that they interact with one another with equal probability. In this case the space is not explicitly treated. The second approach considers that the individuals are distributed in space, where they can migrate and interact only with those that are in a given neighborhood of their position. In both models we consider time and space in a discrete manner. We study the dynamics generated by the interaction of two species, a predator and a prey, and also the dynamics of a system with three species, using both models. The mean field model shows the appearance of several types of attractors, including chaotic ones. In the spatial model we show that the size of the interaction neighborhood modifies the dynamics and the organization of the species in the space. When the interaction neighborhood has intermediate values, super-populations arise. Nonetheless, if we further increase the size of interaction neighborhood, the super-populations disappear and the spatial model reduces to the mean field model. We also observe situations where the population oscillations become synchronized during the time evolution / Mestrado / Sistemas Dinamicos / Mestre em Física

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-18T18:55:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTACAO NARA.pdf: 538849 bytes, checksum: 00f9e9d05c4c8b235b692425e70ebe92 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-03-30 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Objective of this study is to analyze, under the aegis of the recent globalization of capital, the expansion of relative surplus population as a restructuring of the workforce, as well as its causes and its implications on the working class. The effects of globalization of capital and productive restructuring bring significant changes in the structure of the workforce worldwide. These changes extend continuously created competition for capital among workers for too few jobs. The called relative surplus population expansion comes in even in rich countries, and that are the result of measures taken to restore the capital. Neoliberal ideology posited as a way to bypass the capitalist crisis, which is configured in the falling rate of profit in the private sector combined with the fiscal crisis in the public sector, has directed the accumulation regime for the remuneration of creditors and shareholders. In this context , part of the capital is subtracted from the production process, contributing to the advancement of the process of deindustrialization and industrial relocation as a means of lowering costs of production and restore the rate of profit. Implications of these processes on the labor market show that it is directly influenced by the existence of overcrowding on the conditio sine qua non of capital accumulation. / O objetivo deste trabalho é o de analisar, sob a égide da mundialização recente do capital, a expansão da superpopulação relativa como forma de reestruturação da força de trabalho, bem como, suas causas e suas implicações sobre a classe trabalhadora. Os efeitos da mundialização do capital e da reestruturação produtiva trazem significativas mudanças na estrutura da força de trabalho em nível mundial. Tais mudanças alargam incessantemente a concorrência criada pelo capital entre os trabalhadores por um número insuficiente de empregos. A chamada superpopulação relativa apresenta-se em expansão até mesmo nos países do Norte, e isto se dá em decorrência das medidas adotadas para restaurar o capital. A ideologia neoliberal posta como uma forma de contornar a crise capitalista, a qual se configura em queda da taxa de lucro no setor privado combinada à crise fiscal no setor público, tem direcionado o regime de acumulação para a remuneração de credores e acionistas. Nesse contexto, parte do capital é subtraído do processo produtivo, contribuindo para o avanço do processo de desindustrialização e deslocalização industrial, como meio de baixar os custos da produção e restabelecer a taxa de lucro. As implicações desses processos sobre o mercado de trabalho evidenciam que o mesmo é diretamente influenciado pela existência da superpopulação relativa conditio sine qua non à acumulação de capital.

Thesis (M. Law. (Development and Management)) --University of Limpopo, 2019 / Like many other countries, South Africa has its own socio-economic challenges. For the past two decades, the country has been experiencing rapid population growth, yet in the same period, there has been a pervasive decline in social and economic stability, and in the end, stagnant human wellbeing. This has been as a result of diminishing access to basic services such as health care, quality housing, quality education and safe clean drinking water. Among other factors, unregulated and rapid population growth contribute to these socio-economic challenges. This study seeks to illustrate that overpopulation undermines and threatens social development, societal stability and survival of humanity. Therefore, the examines the possibility of enacting a legislation or policy that will regulate or limit procreation or the right to give birth. It also reflects on the Chinese experience to obtain some lessons from China’s One-Child Policy. It is submitted that South Africa must draft its own policy or legislation that will regulate population growth with the primary objective of aligning population with available state resources. Keywords: overpopulation, right to reproductive health, socio-economic rights, human wellbeing, social transformation.

The focus of this thesis is the application of data envelopment analysis to understand and evaluate the performance of diverse animal welfare organizations across the United States. The results include identification of the most efficient animal welfare organizations, at least among those that post statistics on their operations, and a discussion of various partnerships that may improve the performance of the more inefficient organizations. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that there are 4000 - 6000 independently-run animal shelters across the United States, with an estimated 6-8 million companion animals entering them each year. Unfortunately, more than half of these animals are euthanized. The methods shared in this research illustrate how data envelopment analysis may help shelters improve these statistics through evaluation and cooperation. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is based on the principle that the efficiency of an organization depends on its ability to transform its inputs into the desired outputs. The result of a DEA model is a single measure that summarizes the relative efficiency of each decision making unit (DMU) when compared with similar organizations. The DEA linear program defines an efficiency frontier with the most efficient animal shelters that are put into the model that "envelops" the other DMUs. Individual efficiency scores are calculated by determining how close each DMU is to reaching the frontier. The results shared in this research focus on the performance of 15 animal shelters. Lack of standardized data regarding individual animal shelter performance limited the ability to review a larger number of shelters and provide more robust results. Various programs are in place within the United States to improve the collection and availability of individual shelter performance. Specifically, the Asilomar Accords provide a strong framework for doing this and could significantly reduce euthanasia of companion animals if more shelters would adopt the practice of collecting and reporting their data in this format. It is demonstrated in this research that combining performance data with financial data within the data envelopment analysis technique can be powerful in helping shelters identify how to better deliver results. The addition of data from other organizations will make the results even more robust and useful for each shelter involved.

This essay explores the dynamic landscape of Anthropocene fiction, using novels such as John Lanchester’s The Wall and Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City as lenses through which to explore the aftermath of climate change. Both narratives tackle the question: what unfolds in the wake of environmental disaster? Focused on the consequences of flooding, these novels depict worlds grappling with diminishing resources and an acute scarcity of habitable land, intensifying the challenges of overpopulation. In response, the remaining governments resort to authoritarian measures, fostering oppression and control. This exploration unfolds through the lens of four primary Anthropocene themes: climate change, overpopulation, authoritarianism, and rebellion. By examining how these novels navigate these themes, the essay contributes to the emerging field of Anthropocene fiction. Moreover, it highlights the urgent need for addressing climate change while underscoring the social justice implications embedded in these narratives. John Lanchester’s The Wall and Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City serve as vital contributors to this literary landscape, shedding light on the intricate interplay between humanity and the environment in the face of Anthropocene challenges.

歷史學是研究人類過去活動紀錄的學問，而社會學則是研究群體關係行為的學問；早期從事歷史研究的學者，大都專注於政治軍事層面之探索，然而組成國家的基本單位，卻是為數眾多的百姓，故本文擬從研究過去群體關係行為的社會史觀點，來探討清代棚民存在所代表的意義及其影響，希冀由棚民角度審視當時相關的各項問題。 簡單來說，棚民就是一種離鄉背井，到異地山區生活的流寓者，由於他們搭蓋簡單的草棚居住，所以當地人和政府都依此而稱他們為「棚民」，藉以和土著有所區別。棚民並非源起於清代，早在明中葉，江西地區即有棚民蹤跡，不過當時人數並不多，且因其栽種麻靛而冠以「麻民」、「菁民」的稱謂，直到明末，彼等在山區日聚日眾，並趁亂四處滋擾，官方才將其改稱為所謂的「棚寇」、「棚匪」，直指他們為治安上的隱憂。 事實上，流動人口問題歷朝皆有，但清代卻對這類在山中生活的棚民特別重視，主要即因他們成群結隊於林深箐密處居住，且擁有流民去來不定、稽查匪易的特性，讓官方很擔心他們是否會聚眾謀反、意圖不軌；再則，棚民不像一般流民，以尋找臨時工作或向人乞討來勉強餬口，而是在山中栽種經濟作物或者從事工藝礦業的活動，日子一久，有些棚民甚至比當地土著還要富裕，結果竟引起對方嫉妒而發生大大小小的糾紛，造成社會不安。更甚者，棚民過度開發山區的結果，嚴重破壞當地環境，並促使水土大量流失，居住山下的土著往往飽受其害，損失難以估計。 值得一提的是，清代棚民產生的原因與一般流民不盡相同；歷代流民，大多因戰亂、饑荒、水旱災或賦役繁重而不得不離鄉背井，四處流移，然清代棚民卻是由於家鄉人口過盛、土地缺乏，為求生存，不得不外出謀生，但這時其他省分可耕平地幾乎已達飽和，於是只好往山上發展，故棚民並非一開始便打算到山裡生活；如果平地有田可耕，他們便不會入山謀生，當然也就無所謂的棚民了。所以道光中期以後，由於內亂外患頻仍，造成人口銳減，許多可耕地成為荒田，新來流民得以據此開墾，不再需要上山尋覓，棚民人數便漸漸減少，至光緒時期，雖偶在檔案中發現地方官提及棚民，卻也幾乎已經沒有所謂的棚民問題了。 雖然棚民為清代地方社會帶來治安惡化與環境破壞的負面結果，但不可否認，他們的存在與興盛，事實上正意味著當時中國人口壓迫的嚴重與人口流動的頻繁，並在某種程度上顯示了當時人口過盛、土地不足的景況。此外，棚民為求解決糧食問題，在山區普遍栽種玉米、蕃薯、洋芋等美洲作物以替代傳統稻麥裹腹，亦凸顯當時民間與官方對人口眾多而產生的糧食問題所採取的應變措施；再則，這些作物廣泛栽培，亦提供種植者一個補貼家用的機會，因為他們可以利用新式雜糧造麴釀酒、飼養牲畜，然後運至市場販售牟利，對改善窮困的傳統農業生活，助益甚多。而棚民為養家餬口所從事經濟作物栽培與工藝礦業活動，除對繁榮地方社會有一定貢獻外，也顯示當時農工商業正逐漸邁向多元化與專業化的經營。