At Risk Populations

Vulnerability indices are valuable tools for supporting disaster risk management and are primarily used to reduce human losses. Despite relevant advances in developing tools and metrics towards identifying vulnerable populations , one current challenge is the incorporation of socioeconomic information into an early warning system for disasters. This paper aims to propose and evaluate a vulnerability population index to support monitoring and issuing early warnings for disaster risk in Brazil. Using indicators that characterize the population's physical exposure and capacity for response, the Operational Index for Vulnerability Analysis (InOV) was developed for 443 Brazilian municipalities. This study advances the current understanding of this topic through its use of data on an intra-urban scale, which allows a relational analysis of at-risk areas within each municipality. Based on a total of 6,227,740 vulnerable people in landslide risk areas, almost 42% were classified with very high, 35% with high and 23% with medium vulnerability. Data regarding the victims and populations affected by landslides were used to validate the index. The correlation between the incidences of human losses in the areas classified as very high vulnerability class was verified. The development and validation of the InOV demonstrated the potential for incorporating socioeconomic information into the context of the Brazilian Early Warning System (BEWS). This index can support the identification of priority areas providing additional information about vulnerable populations to be included in early warnings of disaster risk.

""Die geographische Untersuchung menschlichen Verhaltens hat ein globales Muster sozialer Gewalt offen bart, das in engem Zusammenhang mit von bedeutenden prahistorischen
KI imaveranderungen betroffenen Regionen steht (DeMeo 1986, 1998). Diese Schlussfolgerung ist das Ergebnis einer der ersten umfassenden Studien, in denen Weltkarten menschlichen Verhaltens und gesellschaftlicher Institutionen hinsichtlich Familienleben, Sexualitat, Methoden der Kindererziehung und des Status der Frau angefertigt wurden. Meine Forschungen konzentrierten sich diesbeziiglich insbesondere auf traumatische und repressive Einstellllngen, Verhaltensweisen, gesellschaftliche Gepflogenheiten und Institutionen, die wiederum - wie sich im Verlauf meiner
Untersuchungen herausstellte - mit Gewalt und Krieg in kultureller Beziehung stehen. Mein Hauptaugenmerk galt den biologischen Bediirfnissen von Sauglingen, Kindem
und Jugendlichen, den unterdriickenden und zerstorerischen Foigen, die bestimmte soziale lnstitlltionen und harte Lebensbedingungen fur ihre Bedlirfnisse haben, sowie
den Konsequenzen, die sich daraus fur das Verhalten del' Betroffenen ergeben. Die geographische Herangehensweise an die Frage nach dem Ursprung menschlicher Gewalttatigkeit, wie sie in meinen Veroffentlichungen vorgestellt und hier kurz
zusammengefasst wird (DeMeo 1986, 1998,2002), bestatigt die Existenz einer einstigen weltweiten Periode relativ friedlicher sozialer Bedingungen. Tn ihr feh lten Krieg, Mannerherrschaft und destruktive Aggression meistenteils entweder vollig oder waren nur in sehr geringem Ausmaf3 vorhanden. Ferner wurde es durch diesen Ansatz moglich, sowohl die genauen Zeitraume und Gebiete auf der Erde zu bestimmen, wo sich ehedem friedliche, demokratische und gleichberechtigt strukturierte menschliche Gemeinschaften erstmalig in gewaltvolle, kriegerische und despotische Kulturen verwandelten, als auch die wahrend dieser kulturellen Veranderungen vorherrschenden Umweltbedingungen zu rekonstruieren.""

When a new baby arrives among the Beng people of West Africa, they see it not as being born, but as being reincarnated after a rich life in a previous world. Far from being a tabula rasa, a Beng infant is thought to begin its life filled with spiritual knowledge. But how do these beliefs affect the ways the Beng raise their children?
In this unique and engaging ethnography of babies, Alma Gottlieb explores how Beng religious ideology affects every aspect of their childrearing practices, from bathing infants to protecting them from disease to teaching them how to crawl and walk. She shows too how widespread poverty among the Beng sets practical limits on these practices. A mother of two, Gottlieb includes moving discussions of how her experiences among the Beng changed the way she saw her own parenting. Throughout the book she also draws telling comparisons between Beng and Euro-American parenting, bringing home just how deeply culture matters to the ways we all raise our children.
Anyone interested in the culture of infancy, and vice versa, will enjoy The Afterlife Is Where We Come From.

http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xdemeo.htm#SAHARASIA
Ancient humans were peaceful - modern violence is avoidable. That's the basic message contained in "Saharasia", a controversial "marriage of heresies" over 10 years in the making. It will change forever your way of looking at the world, your home culture, and current events. Saharasia constitutes a revolutionary new discovery on a geographic pattern to global human behavior as deeply embedded within the scientific literature of anthropology, history and archaeology. It covers issues and events which typically are ignored in the "politically correct" academic environment, even though it was produced within that same environment. Saharasia presents the first cross-cultural, anthropological, archaeological and historical survey of human family and social institutions, tracing human violence back in time to specific times and places of first-origin. Saharasia also presents an additional controversy, given the factual identity of the violence-prone Saharasian region to be the homeland of the Islamo-fascist terror brigades. Saharasia has at several times in human history been the region from which massive armies marched out to conquer those moister regions lying at its periphery: into Europe, China, India and sub-Saharan Africa. These would be the early Indo-Aryan, Kurgan and Battle-Axe warriors, the Scythians and Huns, the Mongols, Turks, and Arab-Muslims, all of whom formed gigantic empires encompassing desert Saharasia and parts of its moister borderlands. While the analysis contained in this book starts around 12,000 BC and ends at around 1900 AD, the suggestion is clear, that the modern problem of global terrorism also springs forth from basic Saharasian-warrior roots. If you really want to know why so much of the world is in such a miserable condition, and to fully understand the current "march to war" within Islamic nations, this book will provide answers. One of the largest and most ambitious scientific and systematic, cross-cultural evaluations of human behavior ever undertaken. Originally a doctoral dissertation undertaken by the author at the University of Kansas, now supplemented with new chapters, and with hundreds of maps and illustrations. "Saharasia" is scarsely known to the wider public, given the controversial conclusions which precipitated from its development. But its findings, made as early as 1980, have been validated repeatedly by subsequent scientific discovery, and by world events. The new edition contains all-new Appendix documentation: "Update on Saharasia"reviewing archaeological evidence suggestive of an ancient period of generally peaceful human social conditions, world-wide.

Although the concept of sensuality has its roots in the Fathers of the Church, acquires its technical meaning in the twelfth century, and is used by the most significant writers of the thirteenth century, as Thomas Aquinas. In St. Thomas sensuality is clearly identified with the sensitive appetite considered outside the influence of reason. The acts of sensuality as such are the first movements, and its moral status is problematic.

Although the concept of sensuality has its roots in the Fathers of the Church, acquires its technical meaning in the twelfth century, and is used by the most significant writers of the thirteenth century, as Thomas Aquinas. In St. Thomas sensuality is clearly identified with the sensitive appetite considered outside the influence of reason. The acts of sensuality as such are the first movements, and its moral status is problematic.

Abuse among mentally ill inmates is a relevant issue in prison systems worldwide. This presentation will focus on the pervasiveness and severity of this abuse in the US and abroad. Pertinent statistics regarding the prevalence of abuse among the mentally ill in prison systems, as well as the obstacles to obtaining such statistics will be presented. Following the major deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals in the 1970s, the mentally ill inmate population has seen exponential increase in the United States. Abuse statistics of the mentally ill in United Kingdom prisons will also be presented and analyzed, including concerns in prison staff training, support, and supervision. A large portion of the presentation will also focus on the discontinuity between current Bureau of Prisons legislation and the current state of affairs in the American prison system - highlighting problems with maximum security exploitation, disproportional staff-to-inmate ratios, and police brutality resulting from a lack of education. In closing, opportunities for advocacy will be explored.

A B S T R A C T The knowledge on population demographics and the living conditions in risk areas are crucial for risk management and disaster response. In Brazil, this information is not available yet on a national scale. With the goal of characterizing at risk populations, in the present article a methodology is proposed to associate demographic census data with risk areas for landslides and floods in Brazil. The unique source of information about the Brazilian population, available for the entire country, in intra-urban scale, is provided by the Population Census developed by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. However, the association of census information with risk areas cannot be done in a direct and automated way, due to the different geometries between the risk areas and census tracts. Considering the need to associate data from distinct geometries, a new basemap was created, named Statistical Territorial Base of Risk. Its graphical delimitations incorporate ...

There is growing evidence that reward processing is disturbed in schizophrenia. However, it is uncertain whether this dysfunction predates or is secondary to the onset of psychosis. Studying 21 unmedicated persons at risk for psychosis plus 24 healthy controls (HCs) we used a incentive delay paradigm with monetary rewards during functional magnetic resonance imaging. During processing of reward information, at-risk individuals performed similarly well to controls and recruited the same brain areas. However, while anticipating rewards, the high-risk sample exhibited additional activation in the posterior cingulate cortex, and the medio-and superior frontal gyrus, whereas no significant group differences were found after rewards were administered. Importantly, symptom dimensions were differentially associated with anticipation and outcome of the reward. Positive symptoms were correlated with the anticipation signal in the ventral striatum (VS) and the right anterior insula (rAI). Nega...