bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cultural Play
Authors: Henricks Thomas S.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines what it means to play culturally, with particular emphasis on how cultural play can alter the relation between or bridge the gap between socially preferred forms of culture and the wider possibilities for thinking, feeling, and acting. It first considers the ways in which other fields of relationships both express and resist culture's patterning, along with play as childhood socialization. It then discusses three models of the play-culture interrelationships: first, people and groups play within culture; second, people play with or at culture; and third, culture itself is playing and people ad–pt an appropriate, playful style of relating to these processes. It also explores the theories of Roger Caillois, Mikhail Bakhtin, Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, Don Handelman, and Richard Schechner. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Jacques Derrida's thesis that cultural patterns can be read as texts containing widely diverging trails of meaning, along with Hans-Georg Gadamer's interpretive approach to play.
Urban Theater and Its Modern Crisis
Authors: Ng Wing Chung
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the downturn in the urban theater business from the late 1920s. It begins by considering the lull in theater activities during the sixteen-month-long boycott-strike in Hong Kong and the revival immediately thereafter. The two seasons from 1926 to 1928 were marked by strong competition and sustained profitability among the city companies. The ensuing downturn was stunning, to say the least; one disappointing season after another, long-established xiban gongsi closed down, opera troupes went bankrupt, and actors struggled with unemployment. Drawing on news reports and contemporary accounts provided in various entertainment publications, the chapter attempts to identify the sources of the problems confronting the Cantonese opera community in the late 1920s and the early 1930s and then examines its survival strategies.
The Cultural Politics of Theater Reform
Authors: Ng Wing Chung
Published: May 2017

This chapter seeks to place the cultural debates surrounding Cantonese opera in a broader context by examining the various impulses for reform and delineating their outcomes. Against the backdrop of the May Fourth Movement, as political leaders adopted modernist projects to remake the country and intellectuals sought progress via the transformative vehicles of literature and art, Cantonese opera was deemed ineffectual and its practitioners unworthy. The pressure was on for Cantonese opera to come to its own defense. With the troupes on the city circuits taking the lead, the Cantonese stage evolved through trial and adaptation. In the eyes of many, this seemingly inexhaustible capacity to incorporate novelties proved the genre's vitality in the urban arena. However, critics decried the same as mere symptoms of the immaturity of the art form, the shallowness of its performers, and the underlying vulgarity of a commercialized entertainment catering to the lowest tastes of the masses.
Theater and the Immigrant Public
Authors: Ng Wing Chung
Published: May 2017

This chapter delineates the history of Chinatown theater as a public space for social interaction and community building in migrant societies. With Chinese migrants living under highly circumscribed conditions without much access to resources and amenities in mainstream society, the theater acquired extra significance within the enclave. Especially noteworthy is the active involvement of traditional organizations in promoting Cantonese opera and cultivating patronage with the touring companies and itinerant actors. On the one hand, the close-knit personal and social networks, and the group affiliations and loyalties associated with these organizations, were critical ingredients for the success of the theater business. On the other hand, the theater personnel and the spectacle of the stage became available to aid the organizations and the leaders in furthering their agendas by gaining visibility and public support. On the overseas stage, the enthusiastic reception afforded to actresses unleashed interesting dynamics of gender in an overwhelmingly male population. Aside from an entertainment venue enjoyed by many, the immigrant theater was acted upon by those concerned as an important site for the negotiation and inscription of power relations, normative behaviors, and community politics in exclusion-era Chinatown.
The Proposed NBA/ABA Merger 1971–1972
Authors: Surdam David George
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the Congressional hearings of 1971–1972 that addressed the petition of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the American Basketball Association (ABA) for partial antitrust exemptions for their proposed merger. Yale Law School lawyers analyzed the proposed merger, comparing it with the professional football merger: “the concerted action produces efficiencies which arguably outweigh whatever restraints on competition are involved.” They suggested thinking of leagues as being similar to “law partnerships, a firm.” This chapter first considers the arguments presented by basketball owners to justify a merger before discussing the views of economists Robert Nathan, Roger Noll, and Benjamin Okner, along with other pieces of evidence presented at the hearings, regarding the owners' claims of losses. It also assesses the implications of the proposed NBA–ABA merger for player rights and concludes with an overview of Nathan, Noll, and Okner's recommendations about the proposed merger.
Research at the Intersection of Media and Medicine, 1957–1962
Authors: Siff Stephen
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores cross-fertilization between researchers and media figures in the late 1950s, as LSD spread from controlled trials to the black market. News reporters gravitated toward research documenting astonishing results with LSD, even as those studies were becoming further removed from the scientific consensus about the drug. Scholars James Coleman, Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel launched the study of the diffusion of tetracycline that resulted in the landmark Medical Innovation, cementing the idea that innovations spread through interpersonal relationships. Allowing for a role for media in informing physicians of the existence of new drugs, the scholars emphasized the apparent importance of social relationships in spreading the determination to actually use them.
Revising the Colonialism-as-Romance Metaphor
Authors: Caronan Faye
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how Esmeralda Santiago's América's Dream and Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters represent the rape of Puerto Rico and the Philippines through scattered references to United States bases, commodities, movie stars, and news. Although literary representations of rape in a colonial context often represented only the fear of foreign intrusion and the reality of conquest and colonialism, the chapter argues that Santiago and Hagedorn rewrite this narrative to capture the complexity of neocolonialism in Puerto Rico and the Philippines and to capture how global power has been rearticulated in the neocolonial era. Their novels also challenge the gendered assumption at the heart of this metaphor: women are the property of men.
Organizing into Blocs
Authors: Meyer Sabine N.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the politicization of Minnesota's temperance movement between the end of the Civil War and the passage of a High License Law in 1887. It shows how Minnesota's temperance activists pushed the temperance cause into the political arena, giving rise to a temperance politics that moved the temperance issue at the center of party, electoral, and state politics. It explains how the popularity of the temperance cause forced both Republicans and Democrats to engage with the arguments of both temperance reformers and opponents involving Irish and German Americans while also carefully negotiating their position within the legal battles about alcohol. It also considers how personal liberty emerged as a contentious issue in the High License debates. These debates led to an equilibrium between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and even provoked the founding of a third party solely geared toward the extinction of the liquor traffic, the Temperance Party of Minnesota. The chapter concludes with a discussion ofd the rise of a women's temperance movement during the period.
Service Providers as Digital Media Infrastructure
Authors: Harris Sarah
Published: May 2017

This chapter documents the critical role of service providers in the development of today's digital media systems. It illustrates how an ethnographic approach to media infrastructures helps to connect hard infrastructural forms, such as wires, transmissions towers, and buildings, with soft infrastructural forms, including institutions, protocols, and social practices. It then focuses on circumvention practices in Turkey. The work of Turkey's cybercafé operators forms a key component of Internet infrastructure, critically shaping the social topography of media in the country. The cafés and their operators coordinate disparate technologies and communities and are sites where different protocols are negotiated. At the same time, in these locations, state infrastructural control, surveillance, and censorship can be undermined.
Contact Unwinding
Authors: Rugman Karin
Published: May 2017

In this chapter, the author examines kinesthetic correspondence and matching in Contact Unwinding, a Shin Somatics dance process which employs movement-based teaching through touch and is performed in an improvisational dance context. Contact Unwinding invites the inner self to instinctively express itself outwardly in a spontaneous unfolding of intuitive movement or dance, and in the process interweaves dance and somatics, connecting us intimately with our moving or dancing body. The discussion draws on the author’s personal experiences as a somatic educator and as a mover, combined with reflections from undergraduate dance students at Bath Spa University in the UK and students in somatic workshops. She highlights the educational and therapeutic aspects of Contact Unwinding, focusing on how knowledge is obtained through different modes of learning and especially how Contact Unwinding invites us to learn through experiencing, discovering, and communicating.
Waiting in the Garden of Broken Trees
Authors: Bueno-Hansen Pascha
Published: May 2017

This book examines how social inequality functions within Peru's transitional justice process by focusing on the gender-based violence that occurred during the internal armed conflict of 1980–2000. It considers how Peruvian human rights and feminist movements, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Committee (PTRC), and a feminist nongovernmental organization—the Estudio por la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer, or Study and Defense of Women's Rights (DEMUS)—negotiated between implementing international human rights law and holistically addressing gender-based violence. It also explores how gender norms influence what violations the Peruvian human rights movement, and later the PTRC, prioritize; how gender norms influence dominant representations of women in the PTRC public hearings and sexual violence legal cases; and how the temporally bound nature of transitional justice exists in tension with the continuum of violence. Finally, the book discusses the influence of other social factors, such as ethnicity, language, class, and culture, on gender-based violence during the internal armed conflict.
“Some Finely Tuned Spring-Release Trap”
Authors: Campney Brent M. S.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses myriad incidences of failed lynchings, upending the widespread perceptions lynchings were like a “spring-release trap,” positing that lynch mobs, once spurred to action, were some inexorable force. It recounts the largely neglected history of defiance and resistance to lynchings as black Kansans organized themselves and prevented lynchings with jailhouse defenses. Examining lynchings as a process and establishing the frequency of successful interventions into the process, this chapter shows that there were eighty-seven lynchings-in-the-making in Kansas between 1890 and 1916, nine of them completed and seventy-eight of them prevented by jailhouse defenses, police interventions, some combination of both, or other variables.
Like Tereshkova in the Cosmos
Authors: Merchant Tanya
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how women perform post-Soviet nationalism using the canon of European classical music by focusing on a project designed to produce Uzbek Western art music, one that retains prominence in independent Uzbekistan. The project has involved getting composers engaged in the creation of a sense of Uzbek style in composition. In Uzbekistan, from remarkably early in the Soviet period, women have been important figures in the performance and promulgation of Uzbek compositions. The chapter first provides a historical overview of Western art music in Soviet Uzbekistan and compares it with Western art music in independent Uzbekistan. It then considers how women's performances support a construction of national identity that began in the Soviet era and continues today. The chapter features interviews with Dilbara Abdurahmanova, the first female director of the Alisher Navoiy State Opera, and prominent pianist and former conservatory director Ofeliya Yusupova. By far the most pervasive musical style heard in Tashkent, popular music, known as estrada, provides audiences with a glamorous construction of Uzbek femininity.
Gateways, 1970–1987
Authors: Page Michael R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Frederik Pohl's literary output as a science fiction (SF) writer during the period 1970–1987, including Gateway and The Way the Future Was. After stepping down from Galaxy, Pohl went into a funk and did not write. Having turned fifty at the close of 1969, Pohl claims that he was experiencing a midlife crisis. Instead of buckling down and writing fiction, he took time to travel with his family, embarking on trips to London and Paris, Bermuda, and Japan and also to Eastern Europe. At this time his marriage to wife Carol was beginning to show signs of trouble. Moreover, Pohl was getting involved in grassroots politics, working in 1968 on the Eugene McCarthy campaign in New Jersey. His political experiences are articulated in his first book of the 1970s, Practical Politics 1972. Pohl contributed to anthologies about the craft of SF writing as well. This chapter also considers the shift in Pohl's work in 1987 for a variety of reasons, including the conclusion of the Heechee saga.
Introduction
Authors: Pardue Derek
Published: May 2017

This book examines the history of rap music expressed in Cape Verdean Kriolu in Portugal. Kriolu is a hybrid language spoken by all Cape Verdeans, either native to the archipelago or located in diasporic communities. It emerged in the late fifteenth century through Portuguese colonialism in West Africa and as a result of the Iberian expulsion of Jews and Muslims under the purview of the Spanish Inquisition. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book offers an account of Kriolu rappers in Lisbon and their roles in challenging and potentially transforming metropolitan Portuguese identities. It extends Christian Joppke's interpretation of citizenship in terms of migration by making the encounter the theoretical focus. To this end, the book highlights Creole and grounds the theory in the unique experiences and histories of Cape Verdeans. Through its study of Kriolu rappers in Lisbon, the book illustrates the importance of creolization to identity formation and cultural production.
War, Fiction, and Truth
Authors: Mariani Giorgio
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the correlation between the Vietnam War and literary postmodernism in Tim O'Brien's “How to Tell a True War Story,” one of the short stories in the collection The Things They Carried. It considers the main structural weakness in O'Brien's narrative utopia as well as the paradoxes of war in the story. It shows how O'Brien's search for “truth” allows him to explore in a meandering though compelling way many of the rhetorical and moral dilemmas of the would-be anti-war writer. It argues that the story occupies an uncomfortable position between a postmodernist uneasiness with “truth,” on the one hand, and a rational commitment to rules for distinguishing between truth and falsehood, on the other. It suggests that O'Brien's imagination is a cognitive resource and, therefore, ultimately a political tool capable of unveiling the cowardice hidden behind what many call heroism, as well as the way even love can feed the monster of war.
Introduction
Authors: Corzine Nathan Michael
Published: May 2017

This book charts the history of drug and alcohol use in Major League Baseball (MLB). It aims to recover the story of baseball and drugs from the tyranny of baseball mythology by analyzing the perceived problem of drug use, with particular emphasis on illegal recreational and performance-enhancing drugs, in MLB. It examines how the drug testing movement, for two decades the persona non grata of professional baseball, surged to the forefront of Major League thought following the congressional hearings of 2005, culminating in the 2006 establishment of the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program between the league and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). The new testing protocols were buoyed by the findings of the Mitchell Report, which explicitly warned against retroactive punishment—the league could not slash and burn its way to integrity by torching past transgressions—and instead focused on the need for diligence in the future.
Coming Out and Tutor-Text Performance in Jane Chambers’s Lesbi-Dramas
Authors: Cantrell Jaime
Published: May 2017

This chapter traces the phenomenon of feminist drama through three overtly lesbian plays by Jane Chambers: A Late Snow (1974), Last Summer at Bluefish Cove (1980), and My Blue Heaven (1981). Through a combination of surface and close readings, it argues that these plays function as especially explicit tutor-texts, because instances of lesbian hypervisibility in these works, are, in fact, performed. In this way, the plays concretize visually and aurally what the script conveys, and, in so doing, they require the audience to process and understand codes and meanings at a moment's notice—while, perhaps, calling into question the theatergoer's beliefs or values. Through the performance of these plays a sort of visual imaginary is communicated to the audience: discourses within the scripts advocate for lesbian social justice at the national level, intersecting with social politics and public identification.
Hybrid Local Animation’s Global Appeal
Authors: Jin Dal Yong
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Korea's animation industry, which has not been a major cultural form in Hallyu research. It investigates the historical, cultural, and economic forces that have shaped Korea's animation characters in the context of the debates on globalization utilizing the framework of hybridity. It analyzes the texts of a few animation characters, including Pororo the Little Penguin, in order to understand the major reasons for the sudden growth of the Korean animation industry. In particular, it maps out the hybrid nature of Korean animation, which is the politicization of local popular culture. By using Korea's animations, it challenges the notation of the depoliticization of popular culture. Finally, given that American and Japanese animation characters have exerted a huge influence since the early development of Korean animation, and taking into account the inclusion of elements of hybridization in production, the chapter discusses the ways in which the domestic animation industry has become popular in the global market.
Afterword
Authors: Leck Ralph M.
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter discusses how underlying the choice of Ulrichs as a symbol of resistance to Prussian–Nazi politics resulted to growing popular recognition of sexual politics as a vital feature of modern history. In this vein, Minister Einem's expulsion of homosexuals from the German officer corps reveals the cultural affinity between the rise of mass armies in the nineteenth century and the construction of modern masculinity. This affinity was a core cultural–political continuity between Prussian authoritarianism and the Nazi dictatorship. Indeed, the aspect of Nazi ideology that most closely resembled the fascist archetype was its gender politics. The choice of Ulrichs as a replacement for Einem, then, symbolizes rising acknowledgment that reactionary sexual politics was the greatest moral–cultural appeal of fascist populism.
The Better America Federation and Big Business’s War on Labor
Authors: Fischer Nick
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the role of the Better America Federation (BAF), a business lobby headquartered in Los Angeles, in promoting the doctrine and practice of anticommunism during the interwar period. BAF and other business lobbies harnessed the passion and the infrastructure of the Red Scare to promote their economic and industrial agenda. They used anticommunism (and generous financial inducements) to revitalize and reorient urban police “Radical and Anarchist Squads.” This chapter first considers the open shop movement's fight against communism before discussing big business' domination of of economic and industrial policy during the 1920s. It then looks at the rise of the BAF and its use of the Red Squad and the California Criminal Syndicalism Act as instruments of labor suppression. It also describes the BAF's cultural war against Bolshevism, along with the scandal involving the BAF as well as the federation's demise and resurrection. The chapter shows that the BAF dominated anticommunism on the Pacific Coast from around 1920 until well into the Cold War as part of the Anticommunist Spider Web.
Keeping Faith with John Q. Public
Authors: O’leary James
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Porter's Seven Lively Arts (1944). Few shows rivaled this revue in terms of sumptuousness, expense, and hype. However, most historians have described this revue as a disappointment. In fact, Billy Rose, the show's producer, early on in the rehearsal process, seemed convinced that “music, ballet, theater, opera, movies, radio, and modern painting were arty and lively enough for a good show theme.” But as opening night approached he changed his mind, as if he realized that Seven Lively Arts, under a veil of comedy and spectacle, toyed with some kind of taboo by crossing between high and low. The chapter presents the story of this unusual collaboration between high and low artists. First, it examines the manner in which Porter's music specifically undermined the “lively”/“arty” divide. It then analyzes the critical reaction to the show, revealing not only some of the ways in which postwar composers and critics negotiated these cultural territories but also what was at stake in crossing between them.
National Incompletion
Authors: Kim Christine
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how the figure of the Asian is currently positioned within the project of Canadian multiculturalism in order to discern how differently racialized bodies experience affective and political citizenship. It critiques the assumption that Asian Canadian publics demand recognition in multicultural terms by turning to two contemporary Asian Canadian texts that explore the unfinished nature of these conversations about race: Theatre Replacement's 2007 production, Bioboxes, and Joy Kogawa's 1995 novel, The Rain Ascends. These texts, as they call for intimacy, demand recognition in different ways: the first forces the audience to be physically conscious of the racialized body with which it shares a confined space, and the second uses the genre of the confessional novel to compel the reader to witness the most mundane and personal details of the narrator's story.
Introduction
Authors: Yesil Bilge
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to provide a systematic analysis of Turkey's media system, its reconfiguration under domestic and international dynamics, the political and cultural tensions it harbors, and the trajectories it shares with other media systems around the world. The book highlights the push-pull forces of a centralized state authority and its democratization demands, the interpenetration of state and capital, and the overlapping of patronage structures with market imperatives. The remainder of the chapter discusses Turkey's media industry, its political system, and its authoritarian neoliberal order. These are followed by descriptions of the scope of the present study, the theoretical framework and methods, and an overview of the subsequent chapters.
Modern Events Resumed Online
Authors: Barnhurst Kevin G.
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes the impact of online news on news reporting. In the first decade of the 2000s, the “what” in accident, crime, employment, and political stories first began reporting more events in stories, reversing decades of declines. But by 2010, the references to current events within stories had declined to the levels of the 1990s, with political stories concentrating even more than other topics on a single current event. The changes in the “what” echo earlier patterns of modern news, when practitioners responded to then-new technologies by reverting to established ways. Online, the news outlets again moved together, a pattern that suggests a missed opportunity. News practice might have escaped from conventional constraints, pushing to a linked perspective on what happens. The general public was using interconnectivity to cope with the flow of information in the new century, a third of them sharing news stories on social media, half relying on word of mouth, and more than three-quarters using email links. Instead of finding ways to stay in tune with public habits, news practitioners pushed back, closing ranks around modern truth.
Social Values Enabled Change
Authors: Barnhurst Kevin G.
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers changes in U.S. news over the last century. It shows that reports grew longer in mainstream news, but few seemed to notice. The “who,” “what,” or “where” all declined in different ways. But the other two Ws, the “when” and “why,” did expand the connotative, modern dimension. While references to the present remained fairly constant in stories, the past grew more important along with the future and change over time. The pattern of explaining how and why events happened also expanded but shifted in particular ways that opened space within news for opinions and judgments, especially in broadcast and online.
Introduction
Authors: Rider Toby C.
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter captures in brief the strained relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the years following World War II. In particular it looks at the Olympic Games, indicating that, for U.S. officials, the war would also largely be fought in the trenches of public opinion. And in order to win what has so frequently been called a “battle for hearts and minds,” U.S. policymakers increasingly deployed techniques of persuasion that they referred to as propaganda or psychological warfare, which manifested in the way the U.S. employed culture against the Soviet Union—among them, sports. The chapter goes on to emphasize the significance of sports and the Olympics in understanding a facet of these Cold War relations, and lays out further contextual details as well as the thematic groundwork for the rest of this volume.
The Cold War, Propaganda, and the State–Private Network
Authors: Rider Toby C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter traces the reemergence of the U.S. psychological warfare apparatus—particularly propaganda—during the Cold War. Though widely deployed during the Second World War, these methods were initially held back in its aftermath. Nevertheless, the machinery for psychological warfare was designed, built, and refined under the presidency of Harry S. Truman and eagerly molded by his successor, Dwight Eisenhower. That both administrations decided to pour time and energy into propaganda also reveals much about the history of the twentieth century. This chapter maps out the United States' use of propaganda and psychological warfare in the years leading up to and during the Cold War. In addition, it also examines the U.S. government's use of private businesses, groups, and organizations to support U.S. foreign policy objectives.
A “Well-Filled Melting Pot”
Authors: Bégin Camille
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides an ethnographic reading of New Deal food writing to understand the centrality of ethnic taste in 1930s sensory economies. Federal Writers' Project workers described ethnic food using well-known keywords such as “the melting pot” or “cosmopolitanism”—given the topic at hand and the pressing need to produce material, these were tempting tropes. Still, New Deal food writing coming from midwestern and western rural and industrial areas updated the paradigmatic metaphors and described a sensory cosmopolitanism where culinary encounters and working-class solidarities combined to create a cultural pluralist version of the melting pot. The chapter focuses on nodes of sensory trade such as workplaces, grocery stores, and ethnic restaurants, from foreign-themed nightclubs to working-class establishments and multiethnic diners.
Introduction
Authors: Milkman Ruth
Published: May 2017

This book examines the historical and contemporary intersections of class and gender inequalities in the U.S. labor market, as well as efforts to challenge those inequalities. Drawing on four decades of research that dates back to the 1970s, it investigates the dynamics of job segregation by sex—the linchpin of gender inequality. It considers the relationship between women workers and labor unions and the American labor movement more generally. It also discusses union responses to workforce feminization, along with the sexual division of labor in the automobile industry during World War II. After explaining how the growing class inequality among women has contributed to employment growth in paid domestic labor and assessing these growing class inequalities in the context of work–family policy, the book concludes with an analysis of class-based disparities among women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by comparing the gender dynamics of the Great Depression of the 1930s and those of the Great Recession associated with the 2008 financial crisis.
The Rise of the Shamateur
Authors: Llewellyn Matthew P. , Gleaves John
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the rise of the “shamateur” during the postwar years. The steady postwar globalization and growth of the Olympic Movement necessitated that the International Olympic Committee revisit its position on amateurism. A larger, more representative Olympics, comprising athletes from North Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, exposed some of the harsh socially exclusive realities of existing amateur polices. For these new Olympic entities, the cultural nuances and ideological beliefs and practices of amateurism were simply alien. Lacking an established professional sporting structure (and thus a clear distinction between amateurism and professionalism), far removed from the chivalric, muscular Christian virtues of Anglo-Saxon moral superiority, these new Olympic nations considered class-based exclusionary policies—as well as prohibitions against travel and living expenses, broken-time payments, and financial prizes—as jejune and outdated.
Canadian NCLEX-RN outcomes: A two-year cross-sectional exploratory study in Ontario
Authors: Sears Nancy A. , Othman Maha , O'Neil Leah , Hopman Wilma M.
Published: May 2017

Background/Objective: In January 2015, 10 of 12 registered nurse regulators in Canada began using the National Council Licensure Exam for Registered Nursing (NCLEX-RN) as the entry-to-practice examination. We examine the NCLEX-RN performance of BScN graduates from three sites of one program across the first 2 years of its use. We aim to investigate the relationship between undergraduate academic performance and NCLEX-RN performance, and to determine predictors of success and/or failure on the exam.Methods: A total of 215 graduates who wrote the 2015 or 2016 NCLEX-RN participated in the study. Course grades, final program percentage grade and GPAs, and students’ time to complete the program are examined against pass/fail performance on the NCLEX-RN. Student’s t test and Chi Square tests are used for comparative analysis. Logistic regression identified the odds ratio and associated 95% confidence interval for each one-unit increase in GPAs as a predictor of success.Results: Overall, 141 of 215 (66%) graduates passed NCLEX-RN and 74 (34%) failed, with no significant difference between the two years. Time to complete the program is significantly lower (p = .002) and graduating GPA is significantly higher (p < .001) among those who passed the NCLEX-RN compared to those who failed. With one exception, all course grades are significantly higher for students who passed, compared to those who failed. The odds of passing the NCLEX-RN increase by 10 (95% CI 4.5, 22.6) for each one-point increase in GPA. At a GPA of 4.0, zero failures on NCLEX-RN are observed.Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first Canadian systematic institutional based study examining the relationship between NCLEX-RN performance and academic factors. The study concludes high academic performance remains a strong predictor for NCLEX-RN success. Future, preferably multicenter larger studies, could further the understanding of the performance on this exam in Canada and support practices enhancing students’ success on the NCLEX-RN.
Strategic Marketing Issues for an Emerging Market Firm to go Global
Authors: Kanagal Nagasimha Balakrishna
Published: May 2017

Emerging markets, as of recent times, are going through phases of liberalization towards market economies, increasing privatization, and are witnessing an emphasis of emerging markets’ governments towards globalization. There has been a rise in the contribution of emerging market firms to the economies of emerging markets. A study with a purpose to conceptualize strategic marketing issues for an emerging market firm to go global is significant, given that success in overseas marketing ventures is critical to sustain the phases of globalization. The challenge is to enter, obtain market share, and sustain in advanced economies and other emerging markets. This paper attempts to address the conceptualization and the challenge. The method of the study is to (i) define strategic marketing, outline and distinguish the different types of firms marketing overseas – international, multinational, and transnational / global; and (ii) analyze using extant literature, the aspects and issues of global entry and implementation of global marketing strategy. The study, post analysis, conceptualizes and postulates three moderating success factors, wherein consideration of these factors will aid the emerging market firm in improving its performance (i) acculturation processes in global businesses; (ii) achievement of global marketing synergies; and (iii) the importance of overcoming global negatives. Given that conditions for global entry and implementing global marketing strategy are met, and the three success moderating factors are addressed, the study recognizes that it is necessary to address the competitive forces in the global environment to be able to obtain an optimal share of the market. The study includes a discussion based on an in-depth interview with a leading garment exporter in Bangalore, India, to understand global entry and global marketing strategy implementation. In conclusion, it can be stated that that (i) an explicit process to address global negatives is required to overcome the perceptual gap of emerging market firms on deliverables; (ii) explicit attention to the achievement of global market synergies has to be given by global marketing strategists.
An Empirical Investigation of Islamic Calendar Effect in Global Islamic Equity Indices
Authors: Shah Nida , Qureshi Muhammad Nadeem , Aslam Yasra
Published: May 2017

This study aims to explore the effect of Islamic Months specifically Ramadan and Zil-Haj on the stock returns and volatility of the Islamic Global Equity Indices. For the said purpose, the data on three Global Equity Islamic Indices including; Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index, MSCI ACWI Islamic Index, and S&P Global BMI Shariah Index are collected from 5th Jan 2011 (1st Muharram 1432 A.H.) to 12th November 2015 (30th Muharram 1437 A.H.). Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and GARCH (1,1) regression methods are applied to analyze the impact of the Islamic months on global stock returns and volatility respectively. Empirical results reveal significant negative impact of Zil-Haj on returns and volatility of Islamic Global Equity Indices. However, no significant impact of Ramadan on returns and volatility of Islamic Global Equity Indices are revealed. These findings will be fascinating and of utmost interest amidst the researchers, investors and practitioners.
Challenges for New Teachers and Ways of Coping with Them
Authors: Dias-Lacy Samantha L. , Guirguis Ruth V.
Published: May 2017

The first year of a teacher’s career can determine their longevity within the field of education. The issues of first year teachers were analyzed through a grounded theory qualitative research analysis. The results of this study indicate that a first year teacher may feel stress, lack appropriate support, and may feel unprepared to handle behavioral and academic issues among their students. Based on the literature review, the implementation of mentoring programs between new and experienced teachers not only benefited novice teachers but guided them to cope and face the anxieties during the first year in the classroom. Further implications are presented in the regarding some mentoring programs and the impact for first year teachers when not implemented due to limited funding and/or lack of administrative support.
System Size Can Determine Water Loss Control Challenges
Authors: Van Arsdel John H.
Published: May 2017

Gathering data for a water audit and implementing a water loss control program for a utility of any size can be tough, but it's important for all utilities to quantify water loss volumes.
What Is Membrane Bioreactor Technology's Role in Water Reuse?
Authors: Katz Stephen , Owerdieck Carsten , Arntsen Brian
Published: May 2017

It's growing more difficult to find adequate freshwater sources to meet demands. Membrane bioreactor technology is a well‐established way to enable wastewater reuse for a variety of applications.
Optimize Perimeter Defense for Utility Security
Authors: Wallace Tom
Published: May 2017

Water and wastewater facilities are critical components of any country's infrastructure. Knowledge of potential threats and technology limitations are essential to designing an effective perimeter security system.
Robust Sampling and Lab Prep Bolster Incident Response
Authors: Hedrick Elizabeth , Miller Rod
Published: May 2017

Early detection of distribution system contamination, combined with effective response actions, can mitigate a community's public health and economic consequences. Sampling and analysis is one of the earliest utility‐led response actions performed when contamination is suspected ‐ and is continued if contamination is confirmed.
Evaluation of Raised-Bed and Conventional Irrigation Systems for Yield and Water Productivity of Wheat Crop
Authors: Ashifa Soomro  , Muhammad Nauman  , Shakeel Ahmed Soomro  , Ahmed Ali Tagar  , Shoukat Ali Soomro  , Mahmooda Buriro  , Allah Wadhayo Gandahi  , Aneela Hameem Memon
Published: May 2017

A study was conducted at Drainage and Reclamation Institute of Pakistan (DRIP), Tandojam in a clay loam soil. The treatments include raised-bed irrigation system (T1) and conventional irrigation system (T2). The experiment was laid down using randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The total area under experiment for each treatment and replication was 1004.65 m2 and 334.88 m2 respectively. Groundwater quality of experimental sight was slightly saline. Results of the experiment showed that there was highly significant difference in volume of water applied, yield and water productivity of wheat crop under the raised-bed and conventional irrigation systems. Both water saving (50.73%) and water productivity (54.37%) of wheat crop was higher under raised-bed irrigation system. The raised-bed irrigation system obtained 24.65% higher yield compared to conventional irrigation system. All other parameters were also higher under the raised-bed irrigation system. Thus raised-bed irrigation system is recommended to achieve higher yield and water productivity of wheat crop and to save water particularly in a clay loam soil.
Screening of Different Varieties of Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) against Sucking Insect Pests
Authors: Fahad Nazir Khoso  , Naeem UL Haq Shah  , Agha Mushtaque Ahmed  , Bhai Khan Solangi  , Arfan Ahmed Gilal  , Muhammad Ishaque Mastoi  , Ghulam Mujtaba Khushk
Published: May 2017

The screening of different varieties is one of the key strategies used in Integrated Pest Management to control the insect population and to escape the use of synthetic insecticides. This study was aimed to screen different okra varieties against sucking insect pest complex such as thrip, jassid, aphid, whitefly and mealybug. The experiment was conducted at Agriculture Research Institute Tandojam. The varieties such as Rama Krishna, Silky-460 and Bharat Kawairi were cultivated in RCBD layout and each treatment was replicated five times. The results revealed that the most infested variety was Bharat Kaiwari followed by Silky-460 and Rama Krishna throughout the experimental period. The highest mean population of the sucking insect pests (thrip, jassid, aphid, whitefly and mealybug) was 9.61±0.35, 3.22±0.13, 18.33±0.50, 3.25±0.15 and 3.75±0.19 respectively was observed on Bharat Kaiwari and the lowered on Rama Krishna. However, the attack of aphid was prominent on all okra varieties and overall pest attack was higher in the month of June. Similarly, the co-efficient correlation analysis showed a positive relationship of temperature and humidity (r= 0.012; r = 0.128) with thrip population whereas there was a negative relationship between temperature and humidity with remaining sucking pests. Both jassid and mealybug population indicated a significant difference with temperature. Similarly, relative humidity displayed a significant impact on population of mealybug (r = 0.365) and aphid (r = -0.096). Thus, it could be concluded based on the results that Rama Krishna is the most resistance against sucking insect pests as compared to Silky-460 and Bharat Kaiwairi.
Veiksniai, darantys įtaką kultūrinio agrarinio kraštovaizdžio pokyčiams Lietuvoje
Authors: Aleknavičius Pranas
Published: May 2017

Straipsnyje apibūdinti kaimiškojo agrarinio kraštovaizdžio elementai, išnagrinėtos jų pokyčius lemiančios priežastys. Pagrindinės priežastys – valstybės vykdyti esminiai žemės ūkio naudmenų pagerinimo darbai, valstybės skatinama žemės naudotojų veikla ir demografiniai procesai. Didžiausi pokyčiai formuojant stabilius agrarinio kraštovaizdžio elementus vyko 1960– 1990 m. Mažiau stabilių kraštovaizdžio elementų – žemės naudmenų plotų kaita vyksta nuolat, per 1946–2016 m. žemės ūkio naudmenų plotas Lietuvoje sumažėjo 19,8 %, miškų plotas padidėjo 82,8 %. Formuojant kultūrinį kaimiškąjį kraštovaizdį svarbią reikšmę turi teritorijų planavimo dokumentai. Vadovaujantis šių dokumentų sprendiniais, nustatomi žemės naudojimo apribojimai bei sąlygos tam tikrai kraštovaizdį keičiančiai veiklai. Straipsnyje pateikiami pasiūlymai, kad planuojant agrarines teritorijas turėtų būti panaudojami Žemės įstatyme numatyti kaimo plėtros žemėtvarkos projektai. Projektuose būtų kompleksiškai sprendžiamos priemonės, pagerinančios techninę infrastruktūrą, dirbamos žemės laukų ir miško sklypų formavimą, apleistų ir dirvonuojančių žemės plotų tolesnį panaudojimą, taip pat priemonės, padidinančios ekologinę įvairovę. Šių projektų panaudojimas kraštovaizdžio tvarkymui reguliuoti užtikrintų racionalų žemės naudojimą ir leistų išvengti vertingų kraštovaizdžio elementų nykimo.
Studentų požiūris į studijas VU meteorologijos ir hidrologijos bakalauro studijų programoje (2014–2016 m. tyrimas)
Authors: Valiuškevičius Gintaras
Published: May 2017

Studentų požiūris į savo pasirinktą studijų programą – svarbus rodiklis, lemiantis studijų rezultatus, leidžiantis parinkti tinkamiausią studijų organizavimo metodiką ir programos struktūrą. Siekiant išsiaiškinti VU meteorologijos ir hidrologijos bakalauro studijų programos studentų nuomonę apie studijas, 2014–2016 m. buvo organizuota anoniminė 1 ir 4 kurso studentų apklausa. Apklausos rezultatų apibendrinimas rodo, kad daugeliu klausimų šios studijų programos studentų nuomonė panaši į daugumos Lietuvos aukštųjų mokyklų bakalaurantų požiūrį, išryškėjusį visoje šalyje vykdytų apklausų metu. Iš atsakymų į anketos klausimus galima spręsti, kad studijuojantieji meteorologiją ir hidrologiją labiausiai tikisi gauti daugiau profesinių žinių. Duomenys rodo, kad 1 kurso studentai pozityviau nusiteikę pasirinktos studijų programos atžvilgiu nei 4 kurso studentai.
Identification of demographic factors and health problems that affect the acceptance of disease and health behaviors of patients with osteoarthritis
Authors: Sierakowska Matylda , Wysocka-Skurska Izabela , Kułak Wojciech
Published: May 2017

Introduction

Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common causes of musculoskeletal system’s ailments. In the prevention of the disease and in its comprehensive treatment, proper health-related behavior becomes an extremely important factor for maintaining an optimal health condition. The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between the reported pain and the disability level, and the health-related behaviors undertaken by OA patients as well as their acceptance of the disease.

Materials/Methods

The study group consisted of 198 patients with diagnosed OA, according to ACR criteria (1988). The method used in the study employed a Pain VAS (0-10), Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index (HAQ DI 0-3), Acceptance of Illness Scale (AIS 8-40) and Health and Behavior Inventory (IZZ 24-120).

Results

The average age among respondents with OA has been 59.16 years of age (±15.87), duration of disease 5.5 years (±4.32). Pain experienced both during movement (rs = 0.319, p < 0.001) and at rest (rs = 0.382, p < 0.001) correlated positively with physical disability (HAQ DI). Studies indicated a positive linear correlation between the age and physical disability (rs = 0.200, p = 0.005). Acceptance of the disease (AIS) depends mostly on age (rs =  − 0.325, p < 0.001), on pain in motion (rp =  − 0.209, p < 0.001) and at rest (rp =  − 0.218, p < 0.001) and on the disability levels (rp =  − 0.353, p < 0.001). Analysis of the health-related behaviors (IZZ) indicates that the average severity of declared behavior is statistically significant with physical disability (HAQ DI) (p = 0.029).

Conclusions

The acceptance of illness is significantly reduced with age and progressive levels of disability as well as with the severity of pain. The progressive levels of disability and the younger age of the respondents motivate them to engage in health beneficial behavior.