Adults prenatally exposed to the Dutch Famine exhibit a metabolic signature associated with a broad spectrum of common diseases.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to famine in the prenatal period is associated with an increased risk of metabolic disease, including obesity and type 2 diabetes. We employed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomic profiling to identify the metabolic changes that are associated with survival of prenatal famine exposure during the Dutch Famine at the end of World War II and subsequently assess their link to disease. METHODS: NMR metabolomics data were generated from serum in 480 individuals prenatally exposed to famine (mean 58.8 years, 0.5 SD) and 464 controls (mean 57.9 years, 5.4 SD). We tested associations of prenatal famine exposure with levels of 168 individual metabolic biomarkers and compared the metabolic biomarker signature of famine exposure with those of 154 common diseases. RESULTS: Prenatal famine exposure was associated with higher concentrations of branched-chain amino acids ((iso)-leucine), aromatic amino acid (tyrosine), and glucose in later life (0.2-0.3 SD, p < 3 × 10-3). The metabolic biomarker signature of prenatal famine exposure was positively correlated to that of incident type 2 diabetes from the UK Biobank (r = 0.77, p = 3 × 10-27), also when re-estimating the signature of prenatal famine exposure among individuals without diabetes (r = 0.67, p = 1 × 10-18). Remarkably, this association extended to 115 common diseases for which signatures were available (0.3 ≤ r ≤ 0.9, p < 3.2 × 10-4). Correlations among metabolic signatures of famine exposure and disease outcomes were attenuated when the famine signature was adjusted for body mass index. CONCLUSIONS: Prenatal famine exposure is associated with a metabolic biomarker signature that strongly resembles signatures of a diverse set of diseases, an observation that can in part be attributed to a shared involvement of obesity.

The inability to mourn and nationalism in Japan after 1945.

Failure to deal with the issue of collective and social loss increases the risk of extreme nationalism. When taken too far, a repetition of manic defence can arise that manifests itself in the form of war. In this paper, the notion of the "inability to mourn" by the German Psychoanalysts A. and M. Mitshcerlich (1967) is discussed in relation to the problem of Japan's post World War II nationalism, and its silence on social matters. The process of confronting past atrocities committed by the state is then discussed from the perspective of structural theory.

Effects of World War II on Infectious Diseases in the Persian Gulf.

With the allied invasion, the southern half of Iran became the scene of a large presence of British and American occupation forces. The negative consequences of the styling of foreign elements during all the years of war and even afterward affected these areas in various dimensions of their health. The negative consequences of the occupation of southern Iran, the health and healthcare system of this part of Iran suffered problems in various forms of shortage of medicines, equipment, and treatment staff, especially the spread of various infectious and communicable diseases. The article aims to examine the effects of World War II on the southern, southwestern, and eastern regions of Iran from 1939 to 1945 and its consequences in the spread of infectious diseases in these regions. The research with an analytical-historical method relies on the library method and is based on the study of the data of unpublished documents from the archives of the National Archives and Library Organization, medical and economic social publications, and various local and public newspapers of Iran during this period. The study of documents and publications shows that due to Allied restrictive policies and successive waves of famine and widespread malnutrition, epidemic diseases, and drug monopoly, these areas experienced a period of severe decline in public health and spread of various infectious diseases.

Evaluation of a New DNA Extraction Method on Challenging Bone Samples Recovered from a WWII Mass Grave.

Bones and teeth represent a common finding in ancient DNA studies and in forensic casework, even after a long burial. Genetic typing is the gold standard for the personal identification of skeletal remains, but there are two main factors involved in the successful DNA typing of such samples: (1) the set-up of an efficient DNA extraction method; (2) the identification of the most suitable skeletal element for the downstream genetic analyses. In this paper, a protocol based on the processing of 0.5 g of bone powder decalcified using Na2EDTA proved to be suitable for a semi-automated DNA extraction workflow using the Maxwell® FSC DNA IQ™ Casework Kit (Promega, Madison, WI, USA). The performance of this method in terms of DNA recovery and quality was compared with a full demineralisation extraction protocol based on Qiagen technology and kits. No statistically significant differences were scored according to the DNA recovery and DNA degradation index (p-values ≥ 0.176; r ≥ 0.907). This new DNA extraction protocol was applied to 88 bone samples (41 femurs, 19 petrous bones, 12 metacarpals and 16 molars) allegedly belonging to 27 World War II Italian soldiers found in a mass grave on the isle of Cres (Croatia). The results of the qPCR performed by the Quantifiler Human DNA Quantification kit showed values above the lowest Limit of Quantification (lLOQ; 23 pg/µL) for all petrous bones, whereas other bone types showed, in most cases, lower amounts of DNA. Replicate STR-CE analyses showed successful typing (that is, >12 markers) in all tests on the petrous bones, followed by the metacarpals (83.3%), femurs (52.2%) and teeth (20.0%). Full profiles (22/22 autosomal markers) were achieved mainly in the petrous bones (84.2%), followed by the metacarpals (41.7%). Stochastic amplification artefacts such as drop-outs or drop-ins occurred with a frequency of 1.9% in the petrous bones, whereas they were higher when the DNA recovered from other bone elements was amplified (up to 13.9% in the femurs). Overall, the results of this study confirm that petrous bone outperforms other bone elements in terms of the quantity and quality of the recovered DNA; for this reason, if available, it should always be preferred for genetic testing. In addition, our results highlight the need for accurate planning of the DVI operation, which should be carried out by a multi-disciplinary team, and the tricky issue of identifying other suitable skeletal elements for genetic testing. Overall, the results presented in this paper support the need to adopt preanalytical strategies positively related to the successful genetic testing of aged skeletal remains in order to reduce costs and the time of analysis.

The mysteries of DNA preservation in bone: A comparative study of petrous bones and metacarpal epiphyses using ATR-FTIR spectroscopy.

A comparative analysis of 26 petrous bones and epiphyses of metacarpals from the Second World War era revealed no significant differences in DNA yield or success in STR typing. This unexpected parity in DNA preservation between the petrous bone, a renowned source of endogenous DNA in skeletal remains, and the epiphyses of metacarpals, which are porous and susceptible to taphonomic changes, is surprising. In this study, we introduced ATR-FTIR spectroscopy as an approach to unravel the correlation between bone molecular structure and DNA preservation. Metacarpals and petrous bones with same taphonomic history were sampled and prepared for DNA analyses. While one portion of the sample was used for DNA analysis, the other underwent ATR-FTIR spectroscopic examination. The normalized spectra and FTIR indices between the epiphyses of metacarpals and petrous bones were compared. Because the taphonomic history of the remains used is relatively short and stable, the ATR-FTIR spectroscopy unveiled subtle structural differences between the two bone types. Petrous bones exhibited higher mineralization, whereas epiphyses contained more organic matter. The unexpected preservation of DNA in the epiphyses of metacarpals can likely be attributed to the presence of soft tissue remnants within the trabeculae. Here observed differences in the molecular structure of bones indicate there are different mechanisms enabling DNA preservation in skeletal tissues.

Identification of the 18 World War II executed citizens of Adele, Rethymnon, Crete using an ancient DNA approach and low coverage genomes.

In the Battle of Crete during the World War II occupation of Greece, the German forces faced substantial civilian resistance. To retribute the numerous German losses, a series of mass executions took place in numerous places in Crete; a common practice reported from Greece and elsewhere. In Adele, a village in the regional unit of Rethymnon, 18 male civilians were executed and buried in a burial pit at the Sarakina site. In this study, the first one conducted for a conflict that occurred in Greece, we identified for humanitarian purposes the 18 skulls of the Sarakina victims, following a request from the local community of Adele. The molecular identification of historical human remains via ancient DNA approaches and low coverage whole genome sequencing has only recently been introduced. Here, we performed genome skimming on the living relatives of the victims, as well as high throughput historical DNA analysis on the skulls to infer the kinship degrees among the victims via genetic relatedness analyses. We also conducted targeted anthropological analysis to successfully complete the identification of all Sarakina victims. We demonstrate that our methodological approach constitutes a potentially highly informative forensic tool to identify war victims. It can hence be applied to analogous studies on degraded DNA, thus, paving the path for systematic war victim identification in Greece and beyond.

Tropicalizing the Portable Radio: Electronics and the U.S. Military's Battle against Fungi in the Pacific War.

As the U.S. military became embroiled in "jungle warfare" across the Pacific during World War II, it was caught off guard by the rapid deterioration of materials and equipment in the tropics, where the air was hot, humid, and teeming with fungal spores. This article tells the story of how American scientists and engineers understood the "tropical deterioration" of portable radios and electronics and developed techniques to counteract it. Examining scientific efforts to prevent tropical decay reveals how exposure to tropical conditions during World War II shaped the development of portable electronics. Contributing to envirotech history and environmental media studies, this article uncovers the importance of climate proofing to the history of electronics miniaturization. Tropical deterioration, furthermore, provides a technology-focused lens for enriching our historical understanding of the tropics as an environmental imaginary.

Severe prenatal shocks and adolescent health: Evidence from the Dutch Hunger Winter.

This paper investigates health impacts at the end of adolescence of prenatal exposure to multiple shocks, by exploiting the unique natural experiment of the Dutch Hunger Winter. At the end of World War II, a famine occurred abruptly in the Western Netherlands (November 1944-May 1945), pushing the previously and subsequently well-nourished Dutch population to the brink of starvation. We link high-quality military recruits data with objective health measurements for the cohorts born in the years surrounding WWII with newly digitised historical records on calories and nutrient composition of the war rations, daily temperature, and warfare deaths. Using difference-in-differences and triple differences research designs, we first show that the cohorts exposed to the Dutch Hunger Winter since early gestation have a higher Body Mass Index and an increased probability of being obese at age 18. We then find that this effect is partly moderated by warfare exposure and a reduction in energy-adjusted protein intake. Lastly, we account for selective mortality using a copula-based approach and newly-digitised data on survival rates, and find evidence of both selection and scarring effects. These results emphasise the complexity of the mechanisms at play in studying the consequences of early conditions.

Contemporary History of Spine Fractures Following Deck-Slap Injury: From Deck Blast During World War II Naval Battles to Axial Trauma During Touristic Speedboat Sea Cruise in 21st Century.

In large-scale naval battles during World War II, sailors sometimes sustained serious lower limb injuries when explosion blast of sea mines was transmitted from underneath through the metal deck of the ships. Some of these sailors were thrown in the air due to the blast and sustained axial trauma of the spine when they landed on the hard deck, which was thus called a deck slap by Captain Joseph Barr in 1946, among others. Nowadays, this peculiar mechanism has shifted to the civilian setting. Tourists unaware of the danger may sustain spine compression fractures when they sit at the bow of speed boats while underway on a calm sea. When the craft unexpectedly crosses the wake of another ship, tourists are thrown a few feet in the air before suffering a hard landing on their buttocks. This historical vignette is presented as a preventive message to help to reduce this poorly known yet avoidable "summer wave of vertebral fractures."

Early-Life Exposure to War and Later-Life Physical Functional Health.

OBJECTIVES: A growing body of research shows that early-life exposure to war has adverse effects on later-life health. Research has emphasized the importance of exposure timing implicating domain-specific developmental processes and associated critical/sensitive periods. This study looks at the impacts of early childhood war exposure and the repercussions for later-life physical and functional health, with a focus on time of exposure as a source of variability. METHODS: We use residential histories from the Survey of Health Ageing, and Retirement in Europe linked to external data on the location and timing of hostilities to examine the impact of early-life exposure to World War II on later-life physical and functional health. RESULTS: Exposure to war increases the risk of objective (grip strength, chair rise, and peak expiratory flow) and self-reported (mobility limitations and activities of daily living) measures of functional health. Effects are especially pronounced for those born during the war and for those with more prolonged exposures. There is little evidence that the impact of war is mediated by war-related hardships, socioeconomic conditions, health behaviors, or adult chronic disease. DISCUSSION: Our results suggest early-life exposure to war has a lasting impact on physical functional health. Exposure appears to largely operate via direct effects, indicative of altered initial development of physical capacity in early life. Because exposure was so pervasive among some cohorts of older individuals, understanding the health of present older European populations requires wrestling with the residual consequences of wartime exposure at the start of their lives.

Past meets present: Reviving 80-year-old Canadian dried serum from World War II and its significance in advancing modern freeze-dried plasma for prehospital management of haemorrhage.

During World War II, Charles H. Best utilized Charles R. Drew's plasma isolation and drying technique to lead Canada's initiative to provide dried serum as a means of primary resuscitation for British casualties on the frontlines. Serum was likely utilized over plasma for its volume expansion properties without the risk of clotting during prolonged storage. We reconstituted dried serum from 1943 and discovered intact albumin, as well as anti-thrombin, plasminogen, protein C and protein S activity. Proteomic analysis identified 71 proteins, most prominent being albumin, and positive for hepatitis B by serological testing. Transmission of blood-borne diseases ended the programme, until modern advances in testing and pathogen reduction revived this technology. We tested the latest iteration of Canadian freeze-dried plasma (FDP), which was stored for 4 years, and demonstrated that its clotting capacity remained equivalent to fresh frozen plasma. We recommend that FDP is a strong alternative to contemporary prehospital resuscitation fluids (e.g. normal saline/lactated Ringer's) in managing prehospital haemorrhage where whole blood is unavailable.

CONTRIBUTION TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE HEALTH SITUATION WITHIN THE POPULATION IN SLAVONIA AND SRIJEM DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR WITH AN EMPHASIS ON INFECTIOUS DISEASES / Prilog poznavanju zdravstvenih prilika stanovnistva u Slavoniji i Srijemu tijekom Drugoga svjetskog rata, s naglaskom na zarazne bolesti

During World War II, the population of agricultural areas of Slavonia and Srijem lived in privation, but there was no famine. A more serious threat was infectious diseases, such as malaria, typhoid fever, and dysentery, which were also present within the population in the post-war period. Major epidemics broke out mostly in areas under partisan control, especially in the areas of western and central Slavonia, where major epidemic typhus contagious broke out. Venereal diseases, less common in the Slavonian area before the war, were also on the rise. Two factors had an impact on the health situation within the population ­ state medical institutions and partisan medical corps. Health care and measures to combat infectious diseases were provided by state authorities, and that is still an insufficiently explored area in historiography. During the first years of the war, the partisan medical corps personnel, initially mostly semiskilled and lacking necessary medical equipment and medications, relied on the support from the population to a greater extent than they were able to provide medical care to them. With the arrival of professional staff and the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment, mainly sourced from medical institutions in areas under partisan control, they assumed a more active role in supporting civilian authorities under the "people's rule"­specifically, the people's liberation committees. Their focus shifted to healthcare for the civilian population, primarily aimed at suppressing and preventing infectious diseases. Further research on this topic will contribute to a more realistic perception of the civilian population's everyday life during the war, which was presented in memoir literature and historiography of the socialist period as a heroic act of resistance rather than a struggle for survival in the conditions of privation and diseases; it will also complete the picture of the human losses of the civilian population caused by infectious diseases.

[HE GAVE EVERYTHING HE HAD: DR. SHLOMO GURFINKEL - A LAST DESCENDANT].

INTRODUCTION: Holocaust survivors gave a significant contribution to Israel's fighting forces and to the victory in the War of Independence. Many of them lost their lives in the battlefields. Many doctors who were survivors took an active part in the war, and afterwards in the building of the base of public medicine in the country. The "Last Descendants" were those Holocaust survivors who remained the last remnant of their nuclear family (parents, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters), who immigrated to Israel, joined the army and fell in battle, thus ending forever their family legacy. One of them was Dr. Shlomo Gurfinkel. During World War II he was a member of the Jewish underground and served as a doctor in Vilna's ghetto and in the ranks of the partisans. In the War of Independence, he was a doctor in a "Haganah" battalion and lost his life in the battles in Jerusalem. By telling his personal story, we intend to throw light on the heroic actions of those Holocaust survivors, amongst them medical personnel, who came to Israel and joined the fighting forces, including those who were "last descendants".

Quantifying Healthy Aging in Older Veterans Using Computational Audio Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Researchers are increasingly interested in better methods for assessing the pace of aging in older adults, including vocal analysis. The present study sought to determine whether paralinguistic vocal attributes improve estimates of the age and risk of mortality in older adults. METHODS: To measure vocal age, we curated interviews provided by male U.S. World War II Veterans in the Library of Congress collection. We used diarization to identify speakers and measure vocal features and matched recording data to mortality information. Veterans (N = 2 447) were randomly split into testing (n = 1 467) and validation (n = 980) subsets to generate estimations of vocal age and years of life remaining. Results were replicated to examine out-of-sample utility using Korean War Veterans (N = 352). RESULTS: World War II Veterans' average age was 86.08 at the time of recording and 91.28 at the time of death. Overall, 7.4% were prisoners of war, 43.3% were Army Veterans, and 29.3% were drafted. Vocal age estimates (mean absolute error = 3.255) were within 5 years of chronological age, 78.5% of the time. With chronological age held constant, older vocal age estimation was correlated with shorter life expectancy (aHR = 1.10; 95% confidence interval: 1.06-1.15; p < .001), even when adjusting for age at vocal assessment. CONCLUSIONS: Computational analyses reduced estimation error by 71.94% (approximately 8 years) and produced vocal age estimates that were correlated with both age and predicted time until death when age was held constant. Paralinguistic analyses augment other assessments for individuals when oral patient histories are recorded.

Attitudes to Male Homosexuality Within the British Medical Association in the 1950s.

The British Government appointed a departmental committee to review anti-homosexuality laws in 1954 following a marked increase in the number of arrests for homosexuality after World War II. The committee invited the British Medical Association (BMA) and other institutions to provide scientific and medical evidence relating to homosexuality. In 1954, the BMA established the Committee on Homosexuality and Prostitution to present its view on how the law impacted upon homosexuals and society. This paper analyses the BMA's attitudes to homosexuality by examining its submission to the Departmental Committee. Whilst the BMA supported implicitly the decriminalization of certain homosexual acts, it remained strongly opposed to homosexuality from a moral perspective and insisted that it was an illness. It is concluded that the BMA's submission was driven primarily by a desire to control the "unnatural deviant" behavior of homosexuals and to protect society from that behavior rather than to protect homosexuals.

Scientizing the 'environment': Solly Zuckerman and the idea of the School of Environmental Sciences.

In 1960 Sir Solly Zuckerman proposed the idea of an interdisciplinary department of 'environmental sciences' (ENV) for the newly established University of East Anglia (UEA). Prior to this point, the concept of 'environmental sciences' was little known: since then, departments and degree courses have rapidly proliferated through universities and colleges around the globe. This paper draws on archival research to explore the conditions and contexts that led to the proposal of a new and interdisciplinary grouping of sciences by Zuckerman. It argues that the activities of Zuckerman and other scientists in Britain during the Second World War and in the post-war period helped to create fertile conditions for a new kind of scientific authority to emerge as a tool of governance and source of policy advice. In particular, the specific challenges of post-war Britain - as addressed through scientific advisers and civil servants - led to the 'environment' becoming both the subject of sustained scientific study and an object of concern.

Expeditionary Surgeons: Essential to Surgical Leadership in World War II and Today.

This presidential address, given during the Annual Symposium of the Excelsior Surgical Society of the American College of Surgeons, explores the origins of the expeditionary surgeon. The essential traits of such a surgeon-leader are defined using examples from history and are then used to examine the leadership of Edward D Churchill during World War II as the prototypical expeditionary surgeon. In the future, identifying key military surgical leaders as expeditionary surgeons would serve our nation's interests well in preserving our fighting force on the battlefield. Consideration should be given to formally training and designating such surgical leaders for the military and other austere settings.

The 'social' in psychiatry and mental health: quantification, mental illness and society in international scientific networks (1920s-1950s).

The post-World War II international mental health movement placed significant emphasis on the concept of the 'social environment', a true paradigm shift in thinking about the causes of mental illness. Rather than focusing on individual risk factors, experts and policy-makers began to consider the interplay between social context and mental health and illness. Also, during this period, quantification gained prominence within the expanding field of Western psychiatry. Eventually, the concept of the 'social' became fragmented into quantifiable social determinants that could be correlated with mental illness and subjected to systematic neutralization. This trajectory paved the way for the prevailing biomedical psychiatric epidemiology. This broader inquiry challenges us to redefine our understanding of the 'social' in the context of mental health research and practice.