COVID-19 places Iran’s nomadic pastoralists at a crossroads

Editorial: health of nomadic pastoralists: new approaches towards equity effectiveness.

Nomadic pastoralists of the African Sahel, the high steppes of central Asia (including the Tibetan Plateau and Mongolia), parts of the Near and Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and India use mobility to manage uncertainty and risk in arid and semiarid ecosystems (Scoones 1994). In these areas, livelihoods are threatened by drought, diseases, insects and war, among other calamities. Semiarid p...

Use of Land by Nomadic Pastoralists in Iran: 1970–1998

In this paper, I examine how some nomadic pastoralists in Iran changed their use of the physical environment over the past thirty years and how these changes related to their economic practices. I base this paper on my anthropological research among Qashqa’i nomadic pastoralists in southwestern Iran in the 1970s and 1990s, including eight visits since the revolution in 1978-1979 and the Islamic...

Colposcopy at a crossroads.

New cervical cancer prevention strategies are arising from rapidly improving insight into human papillomavirus (HPV) natural history and cervical carcinogenesis, challenging the conventional roles of cytology and colposcopically directed biopsy as the reference standards of screening and diagnosis, respectively. HPV testing has high sensitivity but mediocre specificity and positive predictive v...

Wireless at a Crossroads

As they say, all good things must come to an end. After years of record profits and soaring subscriber numbers, the U.S. wireless market is now becoming saturated, with over 90% of adults in the U.S. owning a cell phone, according to Pew Research Center. The heady growth cannot continue without another swell of innovation spurring new sales, which does not appear immediately forthcoming. Pundit...

Managed care at a crossroads.