Characterization of Veterinary Pharmacy and Pharmacology Literature and its Availability to Pharmacy Education.

Objective. To characterize the veterinary pharmacy and pharmacology literature cited by veterinary drug monographs and journal articles and describe the database indexing and availability of this literature in libraries serving pharmacy schools. Methods. Citations in American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics monographs, Journal of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics (JVPT) articles, and Plumb's Veterinary Drug Handbook, Eighth Edition (Plumb's) were analyzed for publication type and age. Three zones of cited journals were determined by Bradford's Law of Scattering based on citation counts. Results. Monographs most often cited journal articles (1886 [64.7%]), unpublished "grey" literature (632 [21.7%]), and books (379 [13.0%]), but only a few cited proceedings (16 [0.5%]). In JVPT, articles predominated (9625 [91.9%]). Articles comprised 54.8% (1,959) of Plumb's citations; proceedings, 27.0%; books, 15.7%; and grey literature, 2.5%. The age of cited items varied, with 17.1% of monograph citations less than five years old, compared to 26.3% of cited items in JVPT and 40.5% of cited items in Plumb's being less than five years old. Zone 1 consisted of three veterinary journals for monographs, four veterinary journals for Plumb's, and 16 veterinary and human journals for JVPT. Indexing coverage was above 92% in Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed for zone 1 and 2 journals. Libraries serving both pharmacy and veterinary education programs subscribe to 95% of zone 1 journals, while libraries serving pharmacy education at institutions without a veterinary program subscribe to an average of 59% of zone 1 journals. Conclusion. Veterinary pharmacy and pharmacology literature relies on journals from human and veterinary practice, veterinary proceedings, and, less often, books and drug manufacturer information. Libraries supporting pharmacy programs could contribute to the education of future pharmacists who will be filling veterinary prescriptions by increasing access to this literature.

The perils and promises of microbial abundance: novel natures and model ecosystems, from artisanal cheese to alien seas.

Microbial life has been much in the news. From outbreaks of Escherichia coli to discussions of the benefits of raw and fermented foods to recent reports of life forms capable of living in extreme environments, the modest microbe has become a figure for thinking through the presents and possible futures of nature, writ large as well as small. Noting that dominant representations of microbial life have shifted from an idiom of peril to one of promise, we argue that microbes--especially when thriving as microbial communities--are being upheld as model ecosystems in a prescriptive sense, as tokens of how organisms and human ecological relations with them could, should, or might be. We do so in reference to two case studies: the regulatory politics of artisanal cheese and the speculative research of astrobiology. To think of and with microbial communities as model ecosystems offers a corrective to the scientific determinisms we detect in some recent calls to attend to the materiality of scientific objects.

The 'art' and 'science' of handcrafting cheese in the United States.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in the United States, this article demonstrates how American cheesemakers articulate the work of handcrafting cheese as a balance of 'art' and 'science', where art refers to aesthetic creativity and an intuitive ability to interpret observable conditions as a guide for contingent practice, while science refers to the accurate measuring of those conditions as well as meticulous record-keeping and hygiene. Artisanship thus entails a blend of subjective and objective practice and accounting, characterized here as the application of synaesthetic reason. Mutually defining, art and science in the crafting of cheese are far from mutually exclusive. And both are embedded in larger cultural contexts. Artisanship must also acknowledge market-based tastes and cultural understandings of acceptable form.

Cheese cultures: transforming American tastes and traditions.

Although the history of cheesemaking in the United States tells largely a tale of industrialization, there is a submerged yet continuous history of small-batch, hands-on, artisan cheese manufacture. This tradition, carried on in artisan cheese factories across the country, although concentrated in Wisconsin, is often overlooked by a new generation of artisan cheesemakers. Continuities in fabrication methods shared by preindustrial and post-industrial artisan creameries have been obscured by changes in the organization and significance of artisan production over the last one hundred years. Making cheese by hand has morphed from chore to occupation to vocation; from economic trade to expressive endeavor; from a craft to an art. American artisan cheesemaking tradition was invented and reinvented as a tradition of innovation. Indeed, ideological commitment to innovation as modern, progressive, American­and thus a marketable value­further obscures continuities between past and present, artisan factories, and new farmstead production. The social disconnect between the current artisan movement and American's enduring cheesemaking tradition reproduces class hierarchies even as it reflects growing equity in gendered occupational opportunities.

Reproduction as spiritual kin work: orthodoxy, IVF, and the moral economy of motherhood in Greece.

Bringing gender and kinship studies together with an anthropology of religion, in this article I demonstrate how urban Greek couples and clinical practitioners in the middle 1990s proceeded with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the absence of government regulations, and did so with reference to cultural beliefs and social relations consistent with Greek Orthodox religious practice. Drawing on ethnographic observations at an Athens IVF clinic as well as on interviews with former patients, I argue that Athenian women, in particular, engage IVF as a kind of spiritual kin work, normalizing the use of medical techniques with reference to ideologies of motherhood that treat it as a woman's moral achievement and as a source of womanly suffering. Since the period of ethnographic research described here, and despite disapproval of the Greek Orthodox Church, legislation regulating the use of IVF and other methods of medically assisted reproduction has become law. This article reconciles how the Church can officially reject medically assisted means of reproduction that Athenian users have normalized with reference to spiritual beliefs and practices.

With or against nature? IVF, gender and reproductive agency in Athens, Greece.

Based on ethnographic research in Athens, this paper argues that in vitro fertilization (IVF) in urban Greece does not so much make explicit the social construction of nature, as has been argued of the US and UK, but is accommodated into a prior understanding of "nature" as socially realized. Calling upon an ethic of maternal sacrifice, Athenian women see themselves taking charge of a natural process, often correcting damage done to them by nature. A sense that adults should produce children in order to realize their natures and be completed as women and men also poses particular, and gendered, ethical questions of fertility technologies: is this a proper way of realizing nature? While those who successfully use IVF depict assisted conception as "a natural" and "proper way of reproduction," some fear that others will view their child as abnormal. Contests over "normal" reproduction are articulated to a tradition/modernity dichotomy which Athenians discuss through an idiom of maturity. Believing that Greek society is not always mature enough to understand how natural IVF really is, couples turning to IVF follow one of the two strategies: to educate others or to completely hide it. Both groups want to guard against a view of IVF-in the terms of this volume-as a kind of "reproduction gone awry."