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Akron, Ohio, is home to many who came to the United States as refugees from Bhutan. Originally of Nepali background, they fled Bhutan during a period of ethnic cleansing beginning in the 1990s. As the Nepali/Bhutanese population grew, local providers (e.g., resettlement agencies, social services, emergency room personnel) noted significant levels of problem drinking compared to other local refugee populations. We use a Critical Medical Anthropology framework informed by intersectionality to illuminate the ways that both the intersecting identities and the interlocking systems of oppression experienced by refugees shape Nepali/Bhutanese experiences in the United States, particularly relating to drinking as a coping mechanism. This study focused on gaining local understandings surrounding alcohol use in the Nepali/Bhutanese community in order to inform culturally sustaining solutions for those who suffer from alcohol misuse. We found demographic variables of the Nepali/ Bhutanese, particularly those related to gender and generation, intersect with additional identities acquired in the sociocultural system of the United States, such as that of \"refugee,\" resulting in unique reasons for problem drinking. Results indicate that these unique reasons for problem drinking necessitate a range of interventions. We provide recommendations for providers, community members, and future research.

This article examines the discourse on modernity and nostalgia in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, with a focus on the boi-bumbá festival, a folkloric dramatic dance that tells the story of the death and resurrection of a rancher’s beloved bull. Although most of the population lives in urban areas and engages in wage labor, the region is still popularly imagined as a “place that time forgot”: a natural area largely free of modern human intervention. This paper discusses how the boi-bumbá of Amazonas rose to stratospheric popularity in the context of urbanization, industrialization, political change, and the “greening” of the region. I conclude by suggesting that the boi-bumbá’s rise is not unconnected to these larger demographic, socioeconomic, and political events and demonstrate how it has come to serve as a vehicle for collective memory and nostalgia.

The goal of recovery has emerged as a core value in the reformation of public and private mental health services in the last twenty years. However, definitions of recovery remain as varied as methods of implementation. Through an ethnographic lens, we examine meanings of recovery in the context of a major statewide reform of mental health services in New Mexico, focusing specifically on pro vider-voiced concerns regarding recovery and recovery-oriented care. We argue that the concept of recovery functions as a symbol that seemingly reconciles the long-standing tension between biological and social explanations of mental illness. Drawing upon provider perspectives, we also discuss concerns that popular rhetoric about recovery may mask some needed fundamental changes to transform the mental health system to a recovery orientation. Finally, we consider recovery from a capabilities standpoint and discuss how this view lends itself to addressing both individual and social components of mental illness.

This study investigated the possible benefit of subject specific optimization of preprocessing strategies in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments. The optimization was performed using the data-driven performance metrics developed recently [Neuroimage 15 (2002), 747]. We applied numerous preprocessing strategies and a multivariate statistical analysis to each of the 20 subjects in our two example fMRI data sets. We found that the optimal preprocessing strategy varied, in general, from subject to subject. For example, in one data set, optimum smoothing levels varied from 16 mm (4 subjects), 10 mm (5 subjects), to no smoothing at all (1 subject). This strongly suggests that group-specific preprocessing schemes may not give optimum results. For both studies, optimizing the preprocessing for each subject resulted in an increased number of suprathresholded voxels in within-subject analyses. Furthermore, we demonstrated that we were able to aggregate the optimized data with a random effects group analysis, resulting in improved sensitivity in one study and the detection of interesting, previously undetected results in the other.