bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
‘Norway is a peace nation’: A discourse analytic reading of the Norwegian peace engagement
Authors: Skånland Øystein Haga
Published: April 2010

Since the early 1990s, Norway has been involved in peace promotion in conflicts all over the world. The article explores how this activist peace promotion came to pass, and how it has become naturalized as an integral part of Norway’s foreign policy. It adopts a discourse analytic approach with the aim of uncovering the structure of meanings and understandings, the resulting realities and their influence on Norwegian policy. The main conclusion is that the discourse emerging in the wake of the Middle East peace process in 1993 has been dominated by one particular representation of the peace engagement. It inscribes Norway with considerable agency and ability to contribute to peace; it constructs the Norwegian approach as unique and efficient; it lays out a combination of self-interest and altruism as motivation; and it links the peace engagement to the very identity of the Norwegian nation. It thus legitimizes, naturalizes and defends the policy. As such, the dominant representation has been an important precondition for peace efforts. However, the analysis also indicates that the start of a denaturalization of the engagement has been witnessed in recent years.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: A post-Cold War empirical analysis of Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’ Theory
Authors: Charron Nicholas
Published: April 2010

Many in the media have depicted conflicts between the Western and Muslim worlds as a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ (CoC), and this has revived many of the questions surrounding the value of Samuel Huntington’s CoC theory. Previous empirical tests have analysed his theory using low-level conflict at the interstate level or violent conflict at the subnational level. The former have demonstrated little or no empirical support for his theory, while the results in the latter group are mixed. This analysis adds to previous empirical studies in a number of ways. One, the empirical models test CoC exclusively in the post-Cold War era. Two, along with examining the civilizational determinants of military interstate disputes, as prior studies have done, I include models that focus exclusively on interstate wars, because Huntington frequently points out that a CoC between states will lead to violent political conflict. Finally, this study directly tests Huntington’s civilizational ‘fault lines’ and Islamic ‘bloody border’ hypotheses. I include an extension and find that intra-civilizational conflict is relatively rare in the post-Cold War era. Contrary to earlier analyses, the data show strong empirical support for CoC, particularly when focusing on violent international conflict in the post-Cold War era, and the results are robust when testing the hypotheses with alternative data on international crises.
Working towards men’s health: Findings from the Sefton men’s health project
Authors: Robinson Mark , Robertson Steve , McCullagh Jo , Hacking Sue
Published: April 2010

Objective: To evaluate a health improvement initiative aimed at enhancing the health of men in deprived areas.

Design: A healthy lifestyle programme was undertaken with men to increase their health knowledge, and encourage behaviour modification and access to health improvement services. A peer mentoring programme was implemented and a training programme delivered to community and public sector staff.

Setting: The programme was delivered in the most deprived wards in Sefton (Liverpool, UK).

Method: Qualitative interviews were conducted with men in the lifestyle and peer mentoring programme five months into the programme ( n = 6). Further telephone interviews with men took place towards the project’s end ( n = 14). Interviews with community staff and health professionals who attended the training were completed ( n = 5), fully transcribed and analysed thematically to meet the evaluation aims.

Results: The key themes emerging were issues related to influences on participation (including settings and social networks), experiences of participation (including, for men, issues around control and physical activity) and for staff, the opportunity for reflection. Outcomes for men included: changed bio-medical body condition; increased functional capacity; and improved emotional and experiential well-being. Outcomes for staff included: planned change around individual practice; and networking and organizational change.

Conclusion: Men liked the convenient settings for the healthy lifestyle programme and its activities, although peer mentoring involves challenges over recruitment and support, and staff also benefited. Men made recommendations for acceptable locations, support for marginalized men, and appropriate incentives.
Emergency contraception education for health and human service professionals: An evaluation of knowledge and attitudes
Authors: Colarossi Lisa , Billowitz Marissa , Breitbart Vicki
Published: April 2010

Objective: To assess the knowledge and attitudes of health care providers, health educators, and social service providers before and after a training session on emergency contraceptive pills.

Design: A survey study using pre—post training measurements.

Setting: Two hundred and twenty-three medical, social service, and health education providers in receiving a 2.5-hour training session at their work site.

Methods: Human subjects approval was obtained from an Internal Review Board. Anonymous surveys were administered a few weeks prior to the training session and at completion of the training session. The training programme was free and not conditional on survey completion. No incentives were offered for research participation.

Results: A single training session was associated with increased knowledge about the timing, efficacy, and safety of emergency contraceptive pills as well as with more positive attitudes about use of emergency contraceptive pills. This was true for health care workers, health educators, and social service providers. Social service providers had the least amount of knowledge prior to the training session, but had the same amount of knowledge as the other two groups after the training session. Social service providers also had the least positive attitudes about emergency contraception before and after the training session, when compared with the other two groups; however, positive attitudes of social service workers did significantly increase after the training session, which resulted in smaller differences between the groups at post-test. Conclusion: Among other educational and motivational tools to increase use of emergency contraception, training of human service professionals can increase the knowledge and attitudes necessary for informing their numerous clients about how to access emergency contraceptive pills as well as their safety and efficacy.
A Systematic Review of Scales That Measure Attitudes Toward Suicide
Authors: Kodaka Manami , Poštuvan Vita , Inagaki Masatoshi , Yamada Mitsuhiko
Published: April 2010

Background: Studies on attitudes toward suicide are of great interest to researchers worldwide. Although various instruments have been developed to measure attitudes toward suicide, psychometric properties of these instruments have not been systematically reviewed and organized.

Aim: We aimed to identify valid, reliable and feasible attitudinal scales by systematically reviewing published articles on scale development and validation studies. In particular, this study focused on scales used for a wide range of populations to measure multidimensional attitudes toward suicide and related issues.

Methods: Electronic searches of two databases, PubMed and PsychInfo, were performed. Scales with unique names were identified and listed after reviewing selected publications, and then evaluated for psychometric properties, multidimensionality and appropriateness for a wide range of populations.

Results: A total of 2,210 publications were identified by the first electronic search. In the final review process of the selected publications, three scales — the Suicide Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ), Suicide Attitude Questionnaire (SUIATT) and Attitudes Toward Suicide (ATTS) — were identified.

Conclusion: Each of these scales has its own characteristics and should be used in accordance with research purposes.
Psychological Distress Among Immigrants and Visible Minorities in Canada: a Contextual Analysis
Authors: Stafford Mai , Newbold Bruce K. , Ross Nancy A.
Published: April 2010

Background: Immigrants to Canada are less likely to report depression compared with the non-immigrant population. This healthy migrant effect has not so far been explained by demographic and socioeconomic determinants of health.

Aim: The present study examined whether the psychological health advantage of immigrants varied across Canadian health regions and investigated the hypothesis of immigrant density as a determinant of immigrant mental health advantage.

Methods: Data from the 2000—2001 Canadian Community Health Survey were used to build multi-level models estimating variation in depression within and between health regions by immigrant/visible minority status.

Results: Immigrant and visible minority residents were less likely to experience depression compared with the general population. Depression varied across health regions and the extent of variation was greater for visible minorities. The likelihood of depression decreased with increasing percentage of immigrants in the region among visible minority participants but not among whites.

Conclusions: The protection against depression afforded by immigrant and visible minority status in Canada appears to depend on contextual factors, notably the percentage of immigrants in the region. Future work should seek to better characterize the experiences of visible minorities in different settings.
A UK validation of the Stages of Recovery Instrument
Authors: Weeks Gavin , Slade Mike , Hayward Mark
Published: April 2010

Objective: There is considerable interest in the concept of recovery from psychosis. Consumers describe recovery as a process as opposed to a clinical outcome. However, measures of recovery have an important role in the development of recovery-based mental health services. This study sought to investigate the validity and reliability of the Stages of Recovery Instrument (STORI) (Andresen et al., 2006). This is an Australian instrument chosen as a promising measure of recovery developed from the perspectives of consumer accounts.

Method: A questionnaire design was used to investigate the following aspects of validity: face validity and feasibility; concurrent validity; construct validity; and test-retest reliability. Fifty (50) people from the caseloads of three specialist mental health teams in a London borough completed the STORI, the Recovery Assessment Scale (RAS) (Corrigan et al., 1999) and a feedback questionnaire. Twenty two (22) people completed the STORI a second time for the purposes of test-retest reliability exploration.

Results: Participants’ responses to the feedback questionnaire were mainly positive. This was seen as evidence of face validity and feasibility. Correlations between the STORI and the RAS provided evidence of concurrent validity. Cluster analysis revealed that the STORI items formed three clusters rather than five. Strong correlations between the first and second STORI administrations provided initial evidence for the test-retest reliability.

Conclusions: The STORI can be used to measure recovery concepts in the UK. However, it does not measure the five-stage model on which it was based. A three-stage model of recovery might best form the basis of future recovery research.
Cultural Model of Vulnerability to Distress: The Role of Self-Construal and Sociotropy on Anxiety and Depression Among Asian Americans and European Americans
Authors: Mak Winnie W. S. , Law Rita W. , Yue Teng
Published: April 2010

The present study tested a structural equation model of the association between self-construal, sociotropy, anxiety, and depression across two ethnic groups ( n = 212 for Asian Americans and n = 202 for European Americans). The results provided support for a unified model that was applicable in explaining distress experiences among both ethnic groups. Interdependent self-construal predisposes a person to develop sociotropy and consequent depression via a heightened level of anxiety. Despite this indirect pathway from interdependent self-construal to depression, however, interdependent self-construal in and of itself was found to be negatively related to depression. On the other hand, independent self-construal protects a person from developing sociotropy and subsequent distress experiences. The findings provided support to the link between anxiety and depression. Implications to person-environment fit are discussed.
The Dynamics of Face Loss Following Interpersonal Harm for Chinese and Americans
Authors: Yuan Liao  , Bond Michael Harris
Published: April 2010

Face concerns arise in any encounter where one’s credibility as a social actor is questioned by the flow of interpersonal exchanges. Being the target of another’s harmful acts raises the question of one’s deservingness for that harm, thereby bringing one’s face into question. The present study tests whether Hong Kong Chinese are more sensitive to the consequent loss of their own face than are Americans, when targeted during interpersonal encounters. It addresses this question by assessing whether two factors predicting face loss are universal or culturally specific in their impacts. The factors are loss of relative power following the harm doing and degree of norm violation characterizing the harm doing. The results showed that loss of relative power in the relationship by the target vis-à-vis the perpetrator predicted face loss for Americans, but not for Hong Kong Chinese. Although greater norm violation led to more face loss in both groups, the linkage between the two constructs was stronger for Hong Kong Chinese than for Americans. The culturally derived personality variables of horizontal-vertical individualism-collectivism were, however, unable to unpackage either cultural difference in linkage strength. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed, and suggestions are offered for increasing the scope of this basic model in explaining face loss following interpersonal harm.
The Activity-tracking paradigm in discrete-event modeling and simulation: The case of spatially continuous distributed systems
Authors: Muzy Alexandre , Jammalamadaka Rajanikanth , Zeigler Bernard P , Nutaro James J
Published: April 2010

From a modeling and simulation perspective, studying dynamic systems consists of focusing on changes in states. According to the precision of state changes, generic algorithms can be developed to track the activity of sub-systems. This paper aims at describing and applying this more natural and intuitive way to describe and implement dynamic systems. Activity is defined mathematically. A generic application case of diffusion is experimented with to compare the efficiency of quantized state methods using this new approach with traditional methods which do not focus computations on active areas. Our goal is to demonstrate that the concept of activity can estimate the computational effort required by a quantized state method. Specifically, when properly designed, a discrete-event simulator for such a method achieves a reduction in the number of state transitions that more than compensates for the overhead it imposes.
Usefulness of Collagen IV Immunostaining for Diagnosis of Canine Epidermolysis Bullosa Acquisita
Authors: Olivry T. , Dunston S. M.
Published: April 2010

In dogs, autoimmune subepidermal blistering diseases (AISBDs) encompass several distinct entities that exhibit varying clinical signs, microscopic characteristics, prognosis, and response to treatment. The identification of targeted autoantigens is usually required to make the diagnosis, but immunological tests to determine these antigens are not commercially available. Epidermolysis bullosa acquisita (EBA) is an AISBD characterized by the production of autoantibodies against collagen VII in sublamina densa anchoring fibrils. This article reports on the usefulness of collagen IV immunostaining on paraffin-embedded skin biopsies as an aid to diagnose EBA in dogs. In this disease, collagen IV, which forms the fibrous 2-dimensional network of lamina densa, is detected more commonly above subepidermal vesicles than below. In other canine AISBDs, this is rarely the case. Collagen IV immunostaining therefore offers an inexpensive means to help making a suggestive diagnosis of EBA in the absence of serological determination of the targeted autoantigen.
Systemic Sarcocystosis in a Striped Skunk (Mephitis mephitis)
Authors: Burcham G. N. , Ramos-Vara J. A. , Vemulapalli R.
Published: April 2010

A striped skunk with neurological signs was euthanized and examined via necropsy. Histologically, protozoa were found in multiple tissues. Protozoal schizonts measured 15 to 25 μm in diameter and contained 4 to 6 μm crescent-shaped merozoites. Protozoa were associated with necrosis and inflammation in the lung, brain, liver, and nasal epithelium. Immunohistochemistry labeled protozoa strongly positive for Sarcocystis neurona. Polymerase chain reaction–amplified products from the protozoan were 99.6% identical to the corresponding portion of the nuclear small subunit ribosomal RNA gene of S neurona. S neurona origin was further confirmed by amplifying a 451–base pair DNA fragment from the skunk lung, which differed by just 2 or 3 base pairs from the small subunit ribosomal RNA gene of S neurona. Striped skunks act as intermediate and aberrant hosts for S neurona; however, S neurona has rarely been found in extraneural tissues in any species, and systemic sarcocystosis has not been reported in skunks. Additionally, canine distemper virus infection was confirmed with histopathology and immunohistochemistry. Concurrent canine distemper suggests that immunosuppression may have played a role in S neurona infection in this skunk.
Managing for Social Outcomes: Diverse Value Rationalities and Financial Control
Authors: Ciancanelli Penny
Published: April 2010

This article evaluates the use of monetary accounting and other financial management tools in the governance of nonprofit organizations. Drawing on Weber’s insights on monetary accounting, the article elaborates structural differences in the financial management of nonprofit and business organizations. The article demonstrates that the accounting and budgeting technologies used by business cannot offer substantively rational guidance to managers of nonprofit organizations. It is argued that managing for social outcomes requires nonprofits to experiment with organizational structures and processes that promote coherence between the diverse value rationalities which underpin their service aims and the allocation of the unit’s financial resources.
The Commodification of Information and Social Inequality
Authors: Adair Stephen
Published: April 2010

The commodification of information has contributed to the growth in social inequality over the last 30 years. An ideal type of an information commodity describes the features of a political, social, cultural, and legal apparatus that became institutionalized in the mid to late 1970s. This apparatus permitted the collection of rents, established a new mode of capital accumulation, and diminished the apparent importance of labor, especially abstract labor, in the making of exchange value. The proliferation of celebrity, conceptualized as excessively valorized labor, is also a consequence of the apparent change in the commodity form.
The Use of Queueing and Simulative Analyses to Improve an Overwhelmed Pharmacy Call Center
Authors: Day T. Eugene , Li W. Max , Ingolfsson Armann , Ravi Nathan
Published: April 2010

Like many others, the St. Louis Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC) Pharmacy help desk receives far more calls than can be processed by current staffing levels. The objective of the study is to improve pharmaceutical services provided by the call center, by using queueing theory and discrete event dynamic simulation to analyze incoming telephone traffic to the help desk. Queueing and simulation models using both archival and hand-gathered data over a 1-year period were created, compared, and presented in order to determine the minimum quantities of staff needed to reach the desired service threshold. The simulation model was validated in comparison with real-world data. Results suggest that telephone traffic congestion in this setting may be alleviated by increasing the number of staff responsible for telephone services from 2 to 6 throughout the week, with an additional one serving on Monday. Both queueing and simulative models can be used to improve overwhelm pharmacy call centers, by determining the theoretical minimal staff needed to reach a service threshold.
Hormone Therapy for the Management of Menopausal Symptoms
Authors: Woodis C. Brock
Published: April 2010

Nearly 50 million women each year are projected to reach menopause by 2030. Many of these women will experience vasomotor symptoms such as night sweats and hot flashes as they enter the menopausal transition. Up until the release of the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) studies, women were frequently prescribed hormone therapy (HT) to alleviate bothersome and sometimes debilitating menopausal symptoms as well as to prevent osteoporosis and coronary heart disease (CHD). Although the WHI studies were the first large, randomized, controlled trials that contradicted what was historically believed about the benefits of HT in postmenopausal women, important limitations including baseline demographics of WHI participants and investigation of only one HT strength/dosage form exist. HT may be a reasonable pharmacotherapy option for the management of menopausal symptoms following complete patient evaluation by experienced clinicians. Updated recommendations addressing management of menopausal symptoms, a new HT product containing the spironolactone-analogue drospirenone (DRSP), and discontinuation methods of HT are also discussed in this review.
Regret, Remorse and the Work of Remembrance: Official Responses to the Rwandan Genocide
Authors: McMillan Nesam
Published: April 2010

In 1994, countries and institutions across the world failed to prevent, or stop, the Rwandan genocide. Since then, however, many national and international officials have travelled to Rwanda to express their remorse and regret regarding the international failure to halt the genocide. Their statements of regret constitute the official response to the international failure from the governments and institutions that have been implicated in this occurrence. This article analyses the three most well-known of these political speeches, in order to explore how they come to terms with the international failure. Departing from existing analyses that focus on the apologetic character of these speeches, in this article, I focus on their confessional elements. Understanding these speeches as confessional acts draws attention to their self-interested nature as attempts by these political leaders to configure the international failure as their personal ‘sin’ and then confess its occurrence in order to demonstrate their enlightenment and secure their redemption. In highlighting the self-focused nature of these official responses to the international failure, I demonstrate how they ultimately display the same indifference to the suffering of the Rwandan Tutsis as signified by the international failure itself.
Governing Permanence: Trans Subjects, Time, and the Gender Recognition Act
Authors: Grabham Emily
Published: April 2010

The UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 contains a provision requiring that transgender applicants intend to remain in their acquired gender ‘until death’. While apparently a straightforward administrative demand within a piece of archetypal New Labour legislation, this article argues that the requirement is unnecessary on the legislation’s own terms. Focusing instead on the temporal work that the provision performs in relation to gender recognition, I situate it in relation to New Labour’s ‘social cohesion’ rhetoric in the areas of immigration and race relations and argue that the permanence requirement is a temporal mechanism that links the supposedly linear development of trans bodies with racialized cultural and national integration.
Leg-Robot with MR Clutch to Realize Virtual Spastic Movements
Authors: Kikuchi Takehito , Oda Kunihiko , Yamaguchi Sayo , Furusho Junji
Published: April 2010

In this study, we propose a leg-shaped robot (Leg-Robot) with a magnetorheological fluid clutch (MRFC) to demonstrate virtual haptic of spastic movements of brain-injured patients. The MRFC installed in this system makes it safer than conventional direct-driven robots. At the same time, the MRFC also improves quality of haptic to mimic the human-like reactions. This system is useful to learn diagnosis methods of physical therapy for its trainees. In this article, basic structure and mechanism of the Leg-Robot are explained. Then, control methods and experimental results of three types of spastic movements are described.
The Paradox of Redistricting: How Partisan Mapmakers Foster Competition but Disrupt Representation
Authors: Yoshinaka Antoine , Murphy Chad
Published: April 2010

The authors examine constituency changes induced by redistricting and ask three questions:What explains the amount of instability and uncertainty induced by redistricting? Does uncertainty affect legislators’ career choices? How do these changes affect election outcomes? The authors show that partisan redistricting plans are able to produce significant instability between elections, especially for opposing-party incumbents. Their findings have important implications for representation: through redistricting, strategic actors can disrupt the stability that many theorists would consider paramount for the operation of a democratic republic. The authors show that the effects of redistricting go beyond the simple examination of changes in each district’s underlying partisanship.
Contradictory Calculi
Authors: Singh Shane
Published: April 2010

Existing theories of turnout model individuals’ decisions to vote as a function of the utility they would gain from their favored party’s election, the costs of voting, and the intrinsic benefits associated with democratic participation. This project shows that such utility calculations are conditional on electoral rules. In electoral systems with low incentives for strategic behavior, the traditional model of voter turnout is accurate. However, in plurality systems, in which there are stronger incentives for individuals to abandon their true preferences, less importance is placed on the utility associated with the possible success of favored parties.
Data Usage in Quantitative Comparative Politics
Authors: Schedler Andreas , Mudde Cas
Published: April 2010

The quantitative study of comparative politics is often described as a data-driven enterprise. Employing an original dataset of comparative politics articles published in leading academic journals between 1989 and 2007, this article offers the first empirical analysis of data usage in comparative research. Tracing potential biases induced by data dependence, it assesses the structure of quantitative comparative research (by year, research design, geographic focus, and subject area), the use of country-specific and region-specific datasets, the introduction of original data, and the degree of concentration in data usage. Its empirical findings question cherished assumptions about the structure of the discipline.
Forecasting U.K. Inbound Expenditure by Different Purposes of Visit
Authors: Shuang Cang  , Hemmington Nigel
Published: April 2010

Accurately forecasting U.K. inbound expenditure by purpose of visit plays an important role in tourism planning and policy making. Forecasting U.K. inbound expenditure at the disaggregated level is studied in this article. Disaggregating is done on the basis of purpose of visit: holiday, business, study, visit friends or relatives (VFR), and miscellaneous. The most robust two time series forecasting models, seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Winters's multiplicative exponential smoothing (WMES), are applied in this article. The Naïve 2 forecasting model is used as a benchmark to compare with the ARIMA and WMES models. The outcomes of the forecasting results show that the ARIMA model outperforms the WMES model, but it is not statistically superior to the WMES model. The ARIMA and WMES models are both statistically superior to the Naïve 2 model for this U.K. inbound expenditure data set. The ARIMA model forecasts a higher increasing trend for expenditure than the WMES model for the business purpose, whereas the WMES model forecasts a higher increasing trend for expenditure than the ARIMA model for miscellaneous purpose. It is recommended that combining the values from the ARIME and the WMES models is used as forecasting values on these business and miscellaneous purposes.
Analysis of multiple candidate genes in association with phenotypes of multiple sclerosis
Authors: Sombekke Madeleine H , Arteta David , van de Wiel Mark A , Crusius J Bart A , Tejedor Diego , Killestein Joep , Martínez Antonio , Peña A. Salvador , Polman Chris H , Uitdehaag Bernard MJ
Published: April 2010

Multiple sclerosis is a heterogeneous neurological disease with varying degrees of severity. The common hypothesis is that susceptibility to multiple sclerosis and its phenotype are caused by a combination of environmental and genetic factors. The genetic part exerts its effect through several genes, each having modest effects.

We evaluated whether disease severity could be predicted by a model based on clinical data and data from a DNA chip. The DNA chip was designed containing several single nucleotide polymorphisms in 44 genes, previously described to be associated with multiple sclerosis.

A total of 605 patients with multiple sclerosis were included in this analysis, using gender, onset type and age at onset as clinical covariates. We correlated 80 single nucleotide polymorphisms to the degree of disease severity using the following three outcome measures: linear Multiple Sclerosis Severity Score, dichotomous Multiple Sclerosis Severity Score (using a cut-off point of 2.5) and time to reach Expanded Disability Status Scale score 6.

Sixty-nine single nucleotide polymorphisms were included in the analysis. No individual single nucleotide polymorphism showed a significant association; however, a combination of single nucleotide polymorphisms significantly improved the prediction of disease severity in addition to the clinical variables. In all three models the Interleukin 2 gene was included, confirming a previously reported modest effect on disease severity. The highest power was obtained using the dichotomized Multiple Sclerosis Severity Score as outcome.

Several single nucleotide polymorphisms showed their added predictive value over the clinical data in the predictive models. These results support our hypothesis that disease severity is determined by clinical variables and genetic influences (through several genes with small effects) in concert.
Always More than One: The Collectivity of a Life
Authors: Manning Erin
Published: April 2010

This article explores the idea that affect is collective. By emphasizing that affect does not rest in the individual, a theory of affect is foregrounded that is in conversation with Gilbert Simondon’s concept of individuation, and, more specifically, the concept of the preindividual. The preindividual, in Simondon, is aligned with what Gilles Deleuze calls ‘a life’ — the force of living beyond life itself. This force of life, I suggest, is the resonant field of life’s outside, the more-than of human life where the body is but one verging surface on the field of experience, where the body is always more than One. The more-than-Oneness of the body is always already collective, cutting as it does between life-welling and life-living. It is here, at this virtual-actual juncture, that the force of affect resides, activating the body-becoming.
Embodying Affect: Voice-hearing, Telepathy, Suggestion and Modelling the Non-conscious
Authors: Blackman Lisa
Published: April 2010

This article takes a genealogical approach to the problem of affective communication that we find coalescing around the phenomenon of ‘affective transfer’ identified in experiences such as voice-hearing, telepathy and hypnotic suggestion. These experiences breach the boundaries between the self and other, inside and outside, and material and immaterial, and make visible some of the central issues that are important in re-thinking affect, relationality and embodiment. The article will attempt to re-engage the problematic of subjectivity by asking what a turn to affect entails within such technologies of listening and attention. This is particularly important when such turning or opening to affect engenders a conversation with traumatic memories, albeit a conversation that does not occur primarily in a verbal register. The key focus will be on the marginalized status of telepathic modalities of affective transfer throughout the histories of the development of the psychological sciences. The article uses this as a platform to consider the connections between what is occluded or excluded from the psychological sciences, and what is being silenced within work on affect taking form across the humanities. Taking us back to the practice of telepathy in the 19th century and the problem of hypnotic suggestion in the mid 20th century (the Macy Conferences), the article discloses how both function as carriers of what is being overlooked and silenced in the engagement by many affect scholars with the knowledge-practices of the psychological and neurosciences.
Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture
Authors: Featherstone Mike
Published: April 2010

This article is concerned with the relationship between body, image and affect within consumer culture. Body image is generally understood as a mental image of the body as it appears to others. It is often assumed in consumer culture that people attend to their body image in an instrumental manner, as status and social acceptability depend on how a person looks. This view is based on popular physiognomic assumptions that the body, especially the face, is a reflection of the self: that a person’s inner character or personality will shine through the outer appearance. The modification and cosmetic enhancement of the body through a range of regimes and technologies can be used to construct a beautiful appearance and thereby a beautiful self. The article begins by examining body images in consumer culture and their relation to photography and moving images. This is followed by an examination of the consumer culture transformative process through a discussion of cosmetic surgery. The article then questions the over-simplistic logic that assumes that transformative techniques will automatically result in a more positive and acceptable body image. The new body and face may encourage people to look at the transformed person in a new way. But the moving body, the body without image, which communicates through proprioceptive senses and intensities of affect, can override the perception of the transformed appearance. A discussion of the affective body follows, via a closer examination of the body without image, the opening of the body to greater affect and indeterminacy. The affective body image and its potential greater visibility through new media technologies are then discussed through some examples taken from digital video art. The article concludes by examining some of the implications of these shifts within consumer culture and new media technologies.
The Vibrations of Affect and their Propagation on a Night Out on Kingston’s Dancehall Scene
Authors: Henriques Julian
Published: April 2010

This article proposes that the propagation of vibrations could serve as a better model for understanding the transmission of affect than the flow, circulation or movement of bodies by which it is most often theorized. The vibrations (or idiomatically ‘vibes’) among the sound system audience (or ‘crowd’) on a night out on the dancehall scene in Kingston, Jamaica, provide an example. Counting the repeating frequencies of these vibrations in a methodology inspired by Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis results in a Frequency Spectrogram. This ranges from the sociocultural frequencies of nightly, weekly and seasonal cycles and circulations of musical style and fashion, to the material frequencies of the amplitudes and timbres of sound itself, with reggae’s signature low-pitched bass-line, to the corporeal frequencies of the flesh and blood of the dancehall ‘crowd’, pulsating with heartbeats and kinetic dance rhythms. The vibration model then addresses the intensities of affect in terms of auditory amplitudes, as with sonic dominance; feelings as frequencies; and the distinctive meaning of affect as timbre. This aims to encourage the radical impulse of the idea of affect to abandon the traditional envelope of the autonomous, self-consistent, rational individual. The meaning of affect is thus located in the ratio, proportions and patterning of vibrations, that is, outside the discourse of emotions or representation of feelings.
Ned Kelly
Authors: Tranter Bruce , Donoghue Jed
Published: April 2010

Myths associated with outlaws or ‘social bandits’ are important elements of national identity in many countries. Long after his death the outlaw Ned Kelly lives on in Australian culture through various media, ensuring his enduring symbolic importance for national identity. National survey data indicates Kelly’s salience for a majority of Australians, although attitudes regarding his status as hero or villain vary considerably. Younger, left-leaning, working-class Australians and consumers of popular culture view Kelly as important, while tertiary-educated, political conservatives tend to downplay his significance. Perceptions of Kelly’s character also influence attitudes regarding his national significance. The lack of foundation heroes in a nation built not only by free settlers but also by English convicts and Irish rebels goes some way to explaining why a 19th-century outlaw is one of the few historical figures recognized by a majority of Australians.
Marking understanding versus receipting information in talk: Achso. and ach in German interaction
Authors: Golato Andrea
Published: April 2010

This conversation analytic study contrasts the German particles ach and achso. and discusses their form, function and interactional trajectory. It extends Golato and Betz’s (2008) work on ach and achso. in third positions of repair sequences to other positions and actions, and compares it to work on English oh (Heritage, 1984, 1998, 2002, 2005; Local, 1996). Based on the analysis of over 200 instances, I argue that ach so. is used to explicitly mark understanding of a prior action or of the import of the speaker’s own actions while ach functions as a change-of-state token marking the receipt of information without explicitly marking understanding. I discuss the implications of the findings with regard to conversation and cognition and issues of translatability.
First-year law students’ construction of professional identity through writing
Authors: Maclean Rod
Published: April 2010

While there is a considerable body of research on law student identity construction based on interviews and transcripts of classroom talk, there is very little work based on student written texts. In this article two letters of advice written by beginning law students are analysed, using Ivanic and Camps’s (2001) framework, as an example of identity formation. Legal identity is argued to be formed by students’ attempts to accommodate a dynamic, partial, practitioner role of provider of advice to the traditional analytic focus of the law student. The process of accommodation is evident in the language of the letters, which show disfluencies resulting from attempts to combine different roles into a coherent legal identity. Comparison with a professionally written letter suggests that, rather than seeking to shape a coherent position, lawyers are able simultaneously to hold incompatible perspectives, concealing the tensions by foregrounding some perspectives and backgrounding others.
The rhetorical organization of the Textbook genre across disciplines: A ‘colony-in-loops’?
Authors: Parodi Giovanni
Published: April 2010

This article identifies and describes the rhetorical organization of the Textbook genre, based on a corpus-based approach and on part of PUCV-2006 Corpus of Academic Spanish. This subcorpus includes 126 textbooks collected from four scientific disciplines at undergraduate university programmes: Social Work, Psychology, Construction Engineering and Industrial Chemistry. In order to fulfil the goals, the article determines and describes the communicative purposes of each of the moves and steps identified, and gives examples from the four disciplinary domains. A new macro-level to fully account for the analysis is introduced and justified, which turned out to be essential for a better description of an extensive textual unit as these texts are (200,000 words). This is named as macro-move. The main findings reveal a well-organized organization directed towards educational instruction. The genre fundamental nucleus is formed by the macro-move Conceptualization and Exercising, which is repeated as many times as the contents are displayed. By the end of the article, the question appearing in the title is answered and arguments are offered to explain why the genre’s rhetorical organization is described as a ‘colony-in-loops’.
Cautious morality: Public accountability, moral order and accounting for a conflict of interest
Authors: Tileagă Cristian
Published: April 2010

This article draws upon discursive psychology to explore the organization of public accountability in accounting for an alleged conflict of interest in journalism. The analysis focuses on the published record of an interview given by the editorial director of one of the major Romanian daily newspapers on the issue of an assumed conflict of interest involving a senior editor of the same newspaper. The analysis shows how a moral order is constituted by the use of various discursive resources: role and professional incumbency discourse, disposition avowals and doing being fair/ democratic. This is a moral order where adherence to personal ethical principles, professional incumbencies and responsibilities are practically managed in dialogue and publicly displayed. Acting in-role, reporting a general disposition to engage in moral courses of action and making reference to the values of citizenship and democracy are all publicly available discursive resources used in this context to express a cautious moral judgement bounded and constrained by both personal and professional accountability perspectives.
Left ventricular hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction in children with sickle cell disease are related to asleep and waking oxygen desaturation
Authors: Johnson Mark C. , Kirkham Fenella J. , Redline Susan , Rosen Carol L. , Yan Yan , Roberts Irene , Gruenwald Jeanine , Marek Jan , DeBaun Michael R.
Published: April 2010

Premature death and cardiac abnormalities are described in individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD), but the mechanisms are not well characterized. We tested the hypothesis that cardiac abnormalities in children with SCD are related to sleep-disordered breathing. We enrolled 44 children with SCD (mean age, 10.1 years; range, 4-18 years) in an observational study. Standard and tissue Doppler echocardiography, waking oxygen saturation averaged over 5 minutes, and overnight polysomnography were obtained in participants, each within 7 days. Eccentric left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy was present in 46% of our cohort. After multivariable adjustment, LV mass index was inversely related to average asleep and waking oxygen saturation. For every 1% drop in the average asleep oxygen saturation, there was a 2.1 g/m2.7 increase in LV mass index. LV diastolic dysfunction, as measured by the E/E′ ratio, was present in our subjects and was also associated with low oxygen saturation (sleep or waking). Elevated tricuspid regurgitant velocity (≥ 2.5 m/sec), a measure of pulmonary hypertension, was not predicted by either oxygen saturation or sleep variables with multivariable logistic regression analysis. These data provide evidence that low asleep and waking oxygen saturations are associated with LV abnormalities in children with SCD.
Coexpression of the T-cell receptor constant α domain triggers tumor reactivity of single-chain TCR-transduced human T cells
Authors: Voss Ralf-Holger , Thomas Simone , Pfirschke Christina , Hauptrock Beate , Klobuch Sebastian , Kuball Jürgen , Grabowski Margarete , Engel Renate , Guillaume Philippe , Romero Pedro , Huber Christoph , Beckhove Philipp , Theobald Matthias
Published: April 2010

Transfer of tumor antigen–specific T-cell receptors (TCRs) into human T cells aims at redirecting their cytotoxicity toward tumors. Efficacy and safety may be affected by pairing of natural and introduced TCRα/β chains potentially leading to autoimmunity. We hypothesized that a novel single-chain (sc)TCR framework relying on the coexpression of the TCRα constant α (Cα) domain would prevent undesired pairing while preserving structural and functional similarity to a fully assembled double-chain (dc)TCR/CD3 complex. We confirmed this hypothesis for a murine p53-specific scTCR. Substantial effector function was observed only in the presence of a murine Cα domain preceded by a TCRα signal peptide for shuttling to the cell membrane. The generalization to a human gp100-specific TCR required the murinization of both C domains. Structural and functional T-cell avidities of an accessory disulfide-linked scTCR gp100/Cα were higher than those of a dcTCR. Antigen-dependent phosphorylation of the proximal effector ζ-chain–associated protein kinase 70 at tyrosine 319 was not impaired, reflecting its molecular integrity in signaling. In melanoma-engrafted nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient mice, adoptive transfer of scTCR gp100/Cα transduced T cells conferred superior delay in tumor growth among primary and long-term secondary tumor challenges. We conclude that the novel scTCR constitutes a reliable means to immunotherapeutically target hematologic malignancies.
Sex-related differences in COPD in five Latin American cities: the PLATINO study
Authors: Lopez Varela M.V. , Montes de Oca M. , Halbert R.J. , Muiño A. , Perez-Padilla R. , Tálamo C. , Jardim J.R.B. , Valdivia G. , Pertuzé J. , Moreno D. , Menezes A.M.B.
Published: April 2010

There is evidence to suggest sex differences exists in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) clinical expression. We investigated sex differences in health status perception, dyspnoea and physical activity, and factors that explain these differences using an epidemiological sample of subjects with and without COPD.

PLATINO is a cross-sectional, population-based study. We defined COPD as post-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s/forced vital capacity ratio <0.70, and evaluated health status perception (Short Form (SF)-12 questionnaire) and dyspnoea (Medical Research Council scale).

Among 5,314 subjects, 759 (362 females) had COPD and 4,555 (2,850 females) did not. In general, females reported more dyspnoea and physical limitation than males. 54% of females without COPD reported a dyspnoea score ≥2versus35% of males. A similar trend was observed in females with COPD (63%versus44%). In the entire study population, female sex was a factor explaining dyspnoea (OR 1.60, 95%CI 1.40–1.84) and SF-12 physical score (OR -1.13, 95%CI -1.56– -0.71). 40% of femalesversus28% of males without COPD reported their general health status as fair-to-poor. Females with COPD showed a similar trend (41%versus34%). Distribution of COPD severity was similar between sexes, but currently smoking females had more severe COPD than currently smoking males.

There are important sex differences in the impact that COPD has on the perception of dyspnoea, health status and physical activity limitation.