bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Influence of Educational Level on Polypharmacy and Inappropriate Drug Use: A Register‐Based Study of More Than 600,000 Older People
Authors: Haider Syed Imran , Johnell Kristina , Weitoft Gunilla Ringbäck , Thorslund Mats , Fastbom Johan
Published: November 2008

OBJECTIVES:To investigate whether low educational attainment is associated with polypharmacy and potential inappropriate drug use (IDU) in older people.

DESIGN:Cross‐sectional register‐based study.

SETTING:Sweden.

PARTICIPANTS:Older people aged 75 to 89 who, filled at least one drug prescription between August and October 2005 and, consequently, were listed in the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register (SPDR) (N=626,258). Data were obtained from the SPDR, the inpatient register, and the education register.

MEASUREMENTS:The main outcome measures were polypharmacy (concurrent use of ≥5 drugs), excessive polypharmacy (concurrent use of ≥10 drugs), and potential IDU. Four quality indicators developed by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare were used for the assessment of potential IDU: concurrent use of three or more psychotropic drugs, prescription of long‐acting benzodiazepines, prescription of anticholinergics, and at least one clinically relevant potential drug–drug interaction (DDI). Comorbidity was measured using the Charlson Comorbidity Index.

RESULTS:Subjects with low education had a higher probability of polypharmacy (odds ratio (OR)=1.11, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.10–1.12), excessive polypharmacy (OR=1.15, 95% CI=1.13–1.17), and potential IDU (OR=1.09, 95% CI=1.07–1.17), after adjustment for age, sex, comorbidity, and type of residential area (urban or rural). Decreasing educational attainment was associated with a higher probability of using three or more psychotropic drugs and potential DDIs, whereas the opposite association was observed for anticholinergic drugs. Long‐acting benzodiazepines showed no association. Elderly women with low education were slightly more likely to have polypharmacy, excessive polypharmacy, and potential IDU than men with low education. Overall, the ORs were modest and statistically significant because of the large sample size.

CONCLUSION:Low educational attainment was associated with a greater likelihood of poypharmacy, excessive polypharmacy, and potential IDU in elderly Swedish persons, even after controlling for age, sex, place of residence, and comorbidity. Women with low education had slightly higher likelihood of receiving polypharmacy and potential IDU than men with low education. The recently established SPDR may be useful for continuous monitoring and for designing interventions to improve drug quality in low‐educated elderly people.
Impaired Endothelial Nitric Oxide Bioavailability: A Common Link Between Aging, Hypertension, and Atherogenesis?
Authors: Walsh Thomas , Donnelly Teresa , Lyons Declan
Published: November 2008

Endothelial‐derived nitric oxide (NO) is responsible for maintaining continuous vasodilator tone and for regulating local perfusion and systemic blood pressure. It also has significant antiproliferative effects on vascular smooth muscle and platelet anti‐aggregatory effects. Impaired endothelial‐dependent (NO mediated) vasorelaxation is observed in most animal and human models of healthy aging. It also occurs in age‐associated conditions such as atherosclerosis and hypertension. Such “endotheliopathy” increases vascular risk in older adults. Studies have indicated that pharmacotherapeutic intervention with angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitors and 3‐hydroxy‐3‐methyl‐glutaryl coenzyme‐A reductase inhibitors may improve NO‐mediated vasomotor function. This review, evaluates the association between impaired endothelial NO bioavailability, accelerated vascular aging, and the age‐associated conditions hypertension and atherogenesis. This is important, because pharmacotherapy aimed at improving endothelial NO bioavailability could modify age‐related vascular disease and transform age into a potentially modifiable vascular risk factor, at least in a subpopulation of older adults.
Lack of Effect of Tai Chi Chuan in Preventing Falls in Elderly People Living at Home: A Randomized Clinical Trial
Authors: Logghe Inge H. J. , Zeeuwe Petra E. M. , Verhagen Arianne P. , Wijnen‐Sponselee Ria M. T. , Willemsen Sten P. , Bierma‐Zeinstra Sita M. A. , Van Rossum Erik , Faber Marjan J. , Koes Bart W.
Published: November 2008

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the effectiveness of Tai Chi Chuan in fall prevention in elderly people living at home with a high risk of falling.

DESIGN: Randomized controlled trial.

SETTING: Two industrial towns in the western part of the Netherlands.

PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred sixty‐nine elderly people (average age 77) living at home with a high risk of falling.

INTERVENTIONS: The intervention group received Tai Chi Chuan training for 1 hour twice a week for 13 weeks; the control group received usual care. Both groups received a brochure containing general information on how to prevent fall incidents.

MEASUREMENTS: Primary outcome was the number of falls over 12 months. Secondary outcomes were balance, fear of falling, blood pressure, heart rate at rest, forced expiratory volume during the first second, peak expiratory flow, physical activity, and functional status.

RESULTS: After 12 months, no lower fall risk in the Tai Chi Chuan group was observed than in the control group (adjusted hazard ratio=1.16; 95% confidence interval=0.84–1.60), and there were no significant intervention effects on the secondary outcome measures.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest that Tai Chi Chuan may not be effective in elderly people at a high risk of falling who live at home.
Albumin, Apolipoprotein E‐ɛ4 and Cognitive Decline in Community‐Dwelling Chinese Older Adults
Authors: Ng Tze‐Pin , Niti Mathew , Feng Lei , Kua Ee‐Heok , Yap Keng‐Bee
Published: November 2008

OBJECTIVES: To examine the association between serum albumin and cognitive impairment and decline in community‐living older adults.

DESIGNS: Population‐based cohort study, followed up to 2 years; serum albumin, apolipoprotein E (APOE)‐ɛ4, and cognitive impairment measured at baseline and cognitive decline (≥2‐point drop in Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) score). Odds ratios were controlled for age, sex, education, medical comorbidity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiac disease, stroke, smoking, alcohol drinking, depression, APOE‐ɛ4, nutritional status, body mass index, anemia, glomerular filtration rate, and baseline MMSE.

SETTINGS: Local area whole population.

PARTICIPANTS: One thousand six hundred sixty‐four Chinese older adults aged 55 and older.

RESULTS: The mean age of the cohort was 66.0±7.3, 65% were women, mean serum albumin was 42.3±3.1 g/L, and mean MMSE score was 27.2±3.2. Lower albumin tertile was associated with greater risk of cognitive impairment in cross‐sectional analysis (low, odds ratio (OR)=2.30, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.31–4.03); medium, OR=1.59, 95% CI=0.88–2.88) versus high (P for trend=.002); and with cognitive decline in longitudinal analyses: low, OR=1.73, 95% CI=1.18–2.55; medium, OR=1.32, 95% CI=0.89–1.95, vs high (P for trend=.004). In cognitively unimpaired respondents at baseline (MMSE≥24), similar associations with cognitive decline were observed (P for trends <.002). APOE‐ɛ4 appeared to modify the association, due mainly to low rates of cognitive decline in subjects with the APOE‐ɛ4 allele and high albumin.

CONCLUSION: Low albumin was an independent risk marker for cognitive decline in community‐living older adults.
Cause of Death in Older Men After the Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer
Authors: Ketchandji Melanie , Kuo Yong‐Fang , Shahinian Vahakn B. , Goodwin James S.
Published: November 2008

OBJECTIVES: To compare survival and cause of death in men aged 65 and older diagnosed with prostate cancer and with survival and cause of death in a noncancer control population.

DESIGN: Retrospective cohort from a population‐based tumor registry linked to Medicare claims data.

SETTING: Eleven regions of the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Tumor Registry.

PARTICIPANTS: Men aged 65 to 84 (N=208,601) diagnosed with prostate cancer from 1988 through 2002 formed the basis for different analytical cohorts.

MEASUREMENTS: Survival as a function of stage and tumor grade (low, Gleason grade<7; moderate, grade=7; and high, grade=8–10) was compared with survival in men without any cancer using Cox proportional hazards regression. Cause of death according to stage and tumor grade were compared using chi‐square statistics.

RESULTS: Men with early‐stage prostate cancer and with low‐ to moderate‐grade tumors (59.1% of the entire sample) experienced a survival not substantially worse than men without prostate cancer. In those men, cardiovascular disease and other cancers were the leading causes of death.

CONCLUSION: The excellent survival of older men with early‐stage, low‐ to moderate‐grade prostate cancer, along with the patterns of causes of death, implies that this population would be well served by an ongoing focus on screening and prevention of cardiovascular disease and other cancers.
Profile of blood donors with serologic tests reactive for the presence of syphilis in São Paulo, Brazil
Authors: Neto Cesar de Almeida , Murphy Edward L. , McFarland William , Junior Alfredo Mendrone , Chen Sanny , Chamone Dalton A.F. , Sabino Ester C.
Published: November 2008

BACKGROUND: Syphilis screening of blood donors is a common practice worldwide, but very little is known about the meaning of a positive serologic test for syphilis in blood donors and the risk profile of these donors. The aim of this study was to determine the demographic characteristics and risk behaviors of blood donors with recent and past syphilis and their implications for blood bank testing and deferral strategies.

STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Demographic characteristics, category of donation, number of previous donations, sexual behavior, and history of sexually transmitted diseases were reviewed comparing blood donors with recent and past syphilis from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2003.

RESULTS: A total of 2439 interviews were reviewed, including 2161 (88.6%) donors with past and 278 (11.4%) with recent syphilis infection. Factors associated with recent infection included younger age (≤20 years odds ratio [OR], 36.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 15.8‐84.1), two previous donations (OR, 2.7; 95% CI, 1.9‐3.9), male‐male sex (homosexual OR, 8.2; 95% CI, 3.2‐20.8; and bisexual OR, 11.4; 95% CI, 3.6‐36.3), two or more partners in the past 12 months (OR, 2.3; 95% CI, 1.3‐4.0), symptoms for syphilis (OR, 4.5; 95% CI, 2.8‐7.1), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositivity (OR, 39.6; 95% CI, 4.6‐339.8). Community donors were also associated with recent syphilis infection (OR, 1.5; 95% CI, 1.2‐1.9) compared to replacement donors.

CONCLUSION: Sexual history, including male‐male sex and multiple partners, were strongly associated with recent syphilis infection, which in turn was strongly associated with HIV. Continuous and vigilant surveillance that includes assessing sexual history and other factors associated with syphilis are needed to guide blood safety policies.
Rethinking Research Ethics in Contemporary Applied Linguistics: The Tension Between Macroethical and Microethical Perspectives in Situated Research
Authors: KUBANYIOVA MAGDALENA
Published: November 2008

The prominent current tendency in applied linguistics to situate its theory and research has seen parallel shifts in the type of research methodologies being employed. Increasingly, decontextualized laboratory methodologies are giving way to more holistic approaches, and these, in turn, involve a significant shift in the researchers' roles, relationships, and ethical responsibilities. By providing examples of specific ethical dilemmas that arose in the process of a longitudinal classroom‐based research project, I aim to illustrate that adherence to general “macroethical” principles established in professional codes of ethics may be inadequate for ensuring ethical research in the situated era, which warrants the expansion of the ethical lenses and consideration of alternative microethical models. I conclude with a call for developing a more contextualized code of practice that would integrate both perspectives and recognize the ability to reflect on the ethical consequences of research practice as a core competence of applied linguists.
What Does Metalinguistic Activity in Learners' Interaction During a Collaborative L2 Writing Task Look Like?
Authors: GUTIÉRREZ XAVIER
Published: November 2008

This article examines the metalinguistic activity that arose in the interaction of 7 groups of bilingual learners writing collaboratively in their second language (L2), English. A microanalysis of this interaction reveals that metalinguistic activity comprises 3 types of oral production: comments, speech actions, and text reformulations. Text reformulations were the most frequent type of oral production in 4 of the 7 groups, whereas in the remaining 3 groups, comments were the most frequent. Moreover, the analysis shows that comments always constituted explicit metalinguistic activity, that speech actions always comprised implicit metalinguistic activity, and that text reformulations could contain either explicit or implicit metalinguistic activity. All groups in the study exhibited implicit metalinguistic activity more frequently than explicit metalinguistic activity. Based on these findings, this article shows the importance of implicit metalinguistic activity in collaborative interaction and argues that it is a significant component of attention to language that has largely been ignored in the literature. It also argues that implicit metalinguistic activity needs to be examined further to determine the language representations underlying this activity. The article concludes by outlining a working hypothesis about the nature of these representations.
Questions of Classroom Identity: What Can Be Learned From Codeswitching in Classroom Peer Group Talk?
Authors: ELLWOOD CONSTANCE
Published: November 2008

The article discusses relationships between codeswitching and identities in classroom peer group talk among students from a variety of Asian and European backgrounds who were studying English in Australia.1The article focusses on talk that, in being concealed from the teacher through codeswitching, allows expression of identities that are not normally acknowledged in the classroom. Three main acts of identity were in evidence in the codeswitching data. In the first, students expressed frustration with their own ignorance and demonstrated a desire to align or realign with the task. The second occurred when students were critical of the teacher's methods, choice of topics, or knowledge. The third was related to the desire to become a global, international person. Other, more idiosyncratic identities were also in evidence. Awareness of the variety of uses of codeswitching can draw teachers' attention to the relevance of student identity concerns in contemporary classrooms.
Pragmatic Comprehension in Japanese as a Foreign Language
Authors: TAGUCHI NAOKO
Published: November 2008

This study developed an original instrument that measures pragmatic comprehension in Japanese as a foreign language (JFL). It examined the ability to comprehend implied meaning encoded in conventional and nonconventional features and the effect of proficiency on comprehension. There were 63 college students of Japanese at 2 proficiency levels who completed a listening test measuring their ability to comprehend 3 types of implied meaning: indirect refusals, conventional indirect opinions, and nonconventional indirect opinions. Comprehension was analyzed for accuracy (scores on a multiple‐choice measure) and comprehension speed (average time taken to answer items correctly). There was a significant effect of item type on accuracy but not on comprehension speed. A proficiency effect was observed on accuracy but not on comprehension speed. Analyses of error data and introspective verbal reports revealed the nature of comprehension difficulty among JFL learners.
Using Explicit Positive Assessment in the Language Classroom: IRF, Feedback, and Learning Opportunities
Authors: WARING HANSUN ZHANG
Published: November 2008

Within the framework of sociocultural theory, learning is conceptualized as participation rather than acquisition (Donato, 2000). Given the governing metaphor of changing participation as learning (Young & Miller, 2004), an important contribution conversation analysis can make to the study of second language acquisition is to detail the instructional practices that either create or inhibit the opportunities for participation (Lerner, 1995), and by extension, the opportunities for learning. This study focuses on one such practice in English as a second language classrooms—the use of explicit positive assessment—and its relevance to learning opportunities. I argue that within certain contexts these assessments tend to suppress the opportunities for voicing understanding problems or exploring alternative correct answers, both of which are the stuff that learning is made of. The analysis suggests that what is sequentially and affectively preferred may be pedagogically and developmentally dispreferred.
When Deterrence and Death Mitigation Fall Short: Fantasy and Fetishes as Gap-Fillers in Border Regulation
Authors: Fan Mary D.
Published: November 2008

Drawing on fieldwork and political theory with Lacanian psychoanalytic influences, this article analyzes how fantasy and fetishes help sustain strategies shown to be no solution to U.S. border control problems. More than a decade after the official launch of the border control paradigm of “prevention through deterrence,” predicated on the assumption that ramping up walls, barriers, policing, and the human costs of border crossing would deter, there has been scant evidence of deterrence and much evidence of diversion of migrants to more dangerous crossing points where death rates have soared. Attempts to mitigate the cost to life have also proved ineffective but have persisted alongside the policy of diversion. The article is based on research in a region where the reality of diversion and death instead of deterrence was lived but where people still pursue projects of barrier-building and death mitigation that they know to be ineffective. The article analyzes how fantasy fuels action despite knowledge and occludes a traumatic element around which the symbolic order of border law is structured: the foundation of “good life” with its bounty of rights, privileges, and opportunity on the exclusion of basic life denuded of the entitlements that make the good life sweet. The article also examines how fetishes are used to cope with unrealized hopes and to diffuse the impact of the traumatic knowledge that good life is undergirded by the exclusion and even death of basic life.
“It's Just Black, White, or Hispanic”: An Observational Study of Racializing Moves in California's Segregated Prison Reception Centers
Authors: Goodman Philip
Published: November 2008

This article takes as its launching point a 2005 U. S. Supreme Court case,Johnson v. California(543 U.S. 499), which ruled that the California Department of Corrections' unwritten practice of racially segregating inmates in prison reception centers is to be reviewed under the highest level of constitutional review, strict scrutiny. Relying on observational data from two California prison reception centers, this research is grounded in an interactionist perspective and influenced by Smith's work on “institutional ethnography.” I examine how racialization occurs in carceral settings, arguing that officers and inmates collaborate to arrive at a “negotiated settlement” regarding housing decisions. They do so working together (but not always in agreement) to shape how an inmate is categorized in terms of ‘race’/ethnicity and gang/group affiliation, within a framework established by official Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation paperwork and related institutional understandings of housing needs. The findings demonstrate that administrators, officers, and inmates alike have influence over the process by which people are categorized and ‘race’ is produced, even as they derive their power from different sources and are both enabled and constrained by the relationship between them. I conclude that California prisons are, as Wacquant has put it, “the main machine for ‘race making’” (2005:128), and that the fuel for that machine—a series of patterned, negotiated settlements—happens in real time, “on the ground,” and with important consequences for inmates, officers, and administrators.
Globalization as Boundary-Blurring: International and Local Law Firms in China's Corporate Law Market
Authors: Liu Sida
Published: November 2008

The worldwide expansion of international law firms has generated regulatory battles and workplace conflicts in advanced market economies as well as developing countries. This article uses the case of China to explore the changing global–local relationship in the globalization of the legal profession and to understand the role of the government in constituting the corporate law market. The author argues that the globalization of the Chinese corporate law market is a process of boundary-blurring and hybridization, by which local firms become structurally global-looking and global firms receive localized expertise. Boundary-blurring occurs in law firms' workplaces, in lawyers' career trajectories, and in state regulatory policies. It has produced a localized expertise that can be diffused conversely from local firms to global firms and has partially changed their relationship from collaboration to competition. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult for the government to make or enforce any substantive policy to clarify the market boundary between these two types of law firms.
Bilateral Investment Treaties, Credible Commitment, and the Rule of (International) Law: Do BITs Promote Foreign Direct Investment?
Authors: Yackee Jason Webb
Published: November 2008

A long line of research, beginning with Macaulay's (1963) well-known study of “Non-Contractual Relations in Business,” suggests that the formal trappings of domestic law often have effects on private behavior that are, at best, “indirect, subtle, and ambiguous” (Macaulay 1984:155). Law and society scholars have spent somewhat less time exploring whether international law's effects on behavior are similarly attenuated. In this article I examine whether foreign investors take the presence of strong formal international legal protections into account when deciding where to invest. I focus on whether the presence of bilateral investment treaties, or BITs, meaningfully influences investment decisions. I present results from a statistical analysis that examines whether the formally strongest BITs—those that guarantee investors access to international arbitration to enforce investors' international legal rights—are associated with greater investment flows. I find no clear link between treaty protections and investment, a finding consistent with past law and society research but in tension with claims common in the BIT literature that the treaties should have dramatic effects on investor behavior.
Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance
Authors: McAdams Richard H. , Nadler Janice
Published: November 2008

In situations where people have an incentive to coordinate their behavior, law can provide a framework for understanding and predicting what others are likely to do. According to the focal point theory of legal compliance, the law's articulation of a behavior can sometimes create self-fulfilling expectations that it will occur. Existing theories of legal compliance emphasize the effect of sanctions or legitimacy; we argue that, in addition to sanctions and legitimacy, law can also influence compliance simply by making one outcome salient. We tested this claim in two experiments where sanctions and legitimacy were held constant. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a mandatory legal rule operating in a property dispute influenced compliance only when there was an element of coordination. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a default rule in a contract negotiation acted as a focal point for coordinating negotiation decisions. Both experiments confirm that legal rules can create a focal point around which people tend to coordinate.
Campaigning for the Bench: The Corrosive Effects of Campaign Speech?
Authors: Gibson James L.
Published: November 2008

A new era has emerged in the ways in which candidates for state judicial office campaign. In the past, judicial elections were largely devoid of policy content, with candidates typically touting their judicial experience and other preparation for serving as a judge. Today, in many if not most states, such campaigns are relics of the past. Modern judicial campaigns have adopted many of the practices of candidates for other types of political office, including soliciting campaign contributions, using attack ads, and even making promises about how they will decide issues if elected to the bench.

Not surprisingly, this new style of judicial campaigning has caused considerable consternation among observers of the courts, with many fearing that such activity will undermine the very legitimacy of legal institutions. Such fears, however, are grounded in practically no rigorous empirical evidence on the effects of campaign activity on public evaluations of judicial institutions.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effects of campaign activity on the perceived legitimacy of courts. Using survey data drawn from Kentucky, I use both post hoc and experimental methods to assess whether public perceptions of courts are influenced by various sorts of campaign activity. In general, my findings are that different types of campaign activity have quite different consequences. For instance, policy pronouncements by candidates do not undermine judicial legitimacy, whereas policy promises do. Throughout the analysis, I compare perceptions of courts and legislatures, and often find that courts are far less unique than many ordinarily assume. I conclude this article with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the contemporary debate over the use of elections to select judges to the high courts of many of the American states.
No Race in Any Direction: State Welfare and Income Regimes
Authors: Rodgers Harrell R. , Beamer Glenn , Payne Lee
Published: November 2008

This paper has two objectives. First, we examine state adoption and implementation of income support policies under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. We develop a composite measure of income support that includes welfare programs that scholars traditionally investigate and adds optional policies that encourage independence through work. Second, we engage a substantive focus on the administrative ability and willingness of states to adopt and implement sophisticated income support policies. We investigate the extent to which state government professionalism, ideology, economic resources, and racially based policies have shaped state policy. We find that the percentage of the state population is liberal; state racial demographics and governmental professionalism are critical determinants of state welfare and income support regimes. Significantly, we find no evidence that states are converging toward high‐quality, effectively financed welfare policies or income regime policies to help the poor move into and economically survive in the job market.
Expert‐Based Information and Policy Subsystems: A Review and Synthesis
Authors: Weible Christopher M.
Published: November 2008

This article reviews and synthesizes the uses of expert‐based information in policy subsystems. The review begins by summarizing the different uses of information in the multiple streams theory, the punctuated equilibrium theory, the social construction theory, and the advocacy coalition framework. Three uses of expert‐based information are identified as instrumental, learning, and political. The three uses of expert‐based information are then compared across unitary, collaborative, and adversarial policy subsystems. This article synthesizes the findings in a set of propositions about the use of expert‐based information in policy subsystems and about the factors that contribute to shifts from one policy subsystem to another.
Optimal Bayesian Design for Patient Selection in a Clinical Study
Authors: Buzoianu Manuela , Kadane Joseph B.
Published: November 2008

Summary Bayesian experimental design for a clinical trial involves specifying a utility function that models the purpose of the trial, in this case the selection of patients for a diagnostic test. The best sample of patients is selected by maximizing expected utility. This optimization task poses difficulties due to a high‐dimensional discrete design space and, also, to an expected utility formula of high complexity. A simulation‐based optimal design method is feasible in this case. In addition, two deterministic algorithms that perform a systematic search over the design space are developed to address the computational issues.
The Adoption of State Climate Change Policies and Renewable Portfolio Standards: Regional Diffusion or Internal Determinants?
Authors: Matisoff Daniel C.
Published: November 2008

This paper draws upon policy innovation literature and quantitatively explains the adoption of state climate change policies, leading to a broader question—what makes states more likely to adopt policies that provide a global public good? First, existing empirical evidence relating to state climate change policy adoption is reviewed. Following this brief discussion, several analytic approaches are presented that test specific hypotheses derived from the internal determinants and regional diffusion models of policy adoption. Policy diffusion is tested as a function of the motivations, resources, and obstacles of policy change. Motivations for policy innovation include environmental conditions and demands of citizens. Resources include state financial and geographic resources, such as wind and solar potential. Obstacles include a state's reliance on carbon‐intensive industries such as coal and natural gas. The results show that internal factors, particularly citizens' demands, are stronger predictors of states' policies than are diffusion effects from neighboring states.
Comparing Implementation of Internet Diffusion in the United States and France: Policies, Beliefs, and Institutions
Authors: Amougou Jules , Larson James S.
Published: November 2008

Comparing Internet diffusion policies in the United States and France from an implementation perspective brings to light institutional and historical differences, even though both countries used the same top‐down approach. We find that France not only followed the technological lead of the United States in information technology but also emulated some of its more business‐oriented approaches in the implementation of the Internet, despite its own longstanding tradition of government intervention in industrial and commercial matters. This policy shift appears to be spurred by the global economy. Traditionally state‐controlled national economies are now increasingly leveraging private interests for successful industrial policy. When applying Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith's advocacy coalition framework to the American and French diffusion of the Internet, we find policy communities actually expanding to private and public actors, including industry captains, legislators, and civil servants. These subsystems work together through classic lawmaking and lobbying under technological and economic constraints.
Mendel's Ark: Conservation Genetics and the Future of Extinction
Authors: Fletcher Amy L.
Published: November 2008

Amid the current biodiversity crisis and the ongoing threat of mass extinctions caused by modern anthropogenic factors such as industrialization, poaching and habitat destruction, conservation genetics provides tools (such as somatic‐cell nuclear transfer) that could help to ensure the survival of species and ecosystems. Yet as conservation genetics shifts from the laboratory and scientific communities into mainstream awareness, numerous political questions arise. For example, which species should be priorities for research and restoration via expensive biotechnology interventions? Does the increasing availability of biotechnological tools alter our perception of the biodiversity crisis and the natural world? Why are some stakeholders so opposed to using advanced biotechnology in conservation? Finally, and perhaps most controversially, what are the realistic outer limits of such tools with respect to the idea of “conquering extinction”?
Learning from Others: What South Korean Technology Policy Can Teach the U.S.
Authors: Weber Eric T.
Published: November 2008

I have recently traveled to South Korea, where Seoul National University hosted the XXII World Congress of Philosophy, the first time the congress has been hosted in Asia. I was astonished by the pervasive use of many of the latest technological advancements. Among the most impressive changes were environmental. The methods employed in hotels and at the University for minimizing unnecessary consumption of electricity were exemplary. Given the great need America has now for developing its economy, and preferably in a way that does not easily lend itself to outsourcing, South Korea can serve as a model for change implemented through the development and manufacturing of advanced technological tools including high‐speed internet access, which will be the focus of the present paper. Some changes have begun already in some arenas of industry and responsiveness to environmental forces, such as in Toyota's decision to move from making SUV's in its new factory coming to Tupelo, Mississippi, to making only the Prius. But Americans have let the governmental incentives for a number of environmentally preferable products run out, and have not lead the way in the propagation of new renewable energy source technologies. Also, America's common approach to the propagation of technological and business development with the use of tax‐incentives is fundamentally different far less forceful than the South Korean approach I will discuss.
Metasemiotic Regimentation in the Standardization of Nepali Sign Language
Authors: Hoffmann‐Dilloway Erika
Published: November 2008

Both the linguistic forms attended to and the ways in which they are linked to the social vary within and across language standardization projects. In addition, it cannot be assumed that people will notice the same indexical connections between linguistic forms and social structures or rationalize them in the same ways. An analysis of the project to standardize Nepali Sign Language highlights the fact that it is therefore necessary to account for the processes by which standardization projects attempt to reduce variation not only in the formal properties of language but also in the wider semiotic interpretations of those forms.[Nepal, d/Deaf, standardization, language ideologies, semiotic indeterminacy]
Building Publics, Shaping Public Opinion: Interanimating Registers in MalagasyKabaryOratory and Political Cartooning
Authors: Jackson Jennifer L.
Published: November 2008

This article discusses socially productive aspects of register shifts in political oratory(kabary politika)and political cartoons of the urban capital province of Madagascar, Imerina. In their daily mediated interactions, politicians and cartoonists interanimate varying registers associated with different social fields, effectively framing and navigating particular publics for particular interests. In this context, the article will explore the semiotic process in which registers drawn from different speech contexts—the proverbs ofkabary,Christian sermons, and Western political and international development rhetoric—discursively circulate to hearken toward or contest imaginaries of community belonging and solidarity undergirding these publics, the agency of participant roles they presuppose, and the public opinion they entail. [Madagascar, oratory, political cartoons, linguistic variation, publics]
Hermeneutic Algebra: Solving for Love, Time/Space, and Value in Putin‐Era Personal Ads
Authors: Lemon Alaina
Published: November 2008

This article explores claims about how to understand others. It does so through ethnography of ways cultural producers and their apprentices struggled and colluded over what constitutes a true reading or empathic performance of another's words. The linguistic forms up for interpretation were those in Russian personal ads. Like many other forms in the region, personal ad texts are vulnerable to shallow readings as mere market imports, and so the article first unpacks Transition and Cold War ideologies in order then to discuss interactions that lay out alternate formulae for reading the ads. These latter hermeneutics are no less ideological—their makers also separate, condense, and combine “variables” to ratify the reality of categories (e.g., generation, nation, sentiment). Still, to examine how they do so does undermine Cold War paradigms and moreover suggests how people ground meta‐discourse about misunderstanding itself. The article draws from fieldwork at the Russian Academy for the Theatrical Arts in Moscow in 2002–3 and 2005, as well as from other field, archival, and media work in Russia since 1988. [hermeneutics, intertextuality, performance, sentiment, Russia]
Speaking like a Model Minority: “FOB” Styles, Gender, and Racial Meanings among Desi Teens in Silicon Valley
Authors: Shankar Shalini
Published: November 2008

This article discusses what it means to be a “model minority” linguistically by examining how language ideologies, class, and gender shape language use for Desi (South Asian American) teenagers in a Silicon Valley high school. Upper middle‐class Desi teens follow monolingual norms while middle‐class Desi teens construct heteroglossic “FOB styles” that incorporate Punjabi, Desi Accented English, California slang, and hip‐hop lexicon. Style construction is influenced by gendered community norms that also prevail at school, and boys and girls variably regard school spaces as public or private. Nonnormative, gendered ways of speaking are contrasted to “model” ones and analyzed for their racializing consequences. [race, gender, youth, style, South Asian American]
How Niqula Nasrallah Became John Jacob Astor: Syrian Emigrants Aboard the Titanic and the Materiality of Language
Authors: Bier Jess
Published: November 2008

In this article, I explore the physical afterlife of one victim of the 1912 Titanic disaster, the Syrian American businessman Niqula Nasrallah, whose remains would widely be identified as those of the famous multimillionaire John Jacob Astor. Syrian emigrants constituted 10–20 percent of the Titanic's third‐class passengers, and their names were overwhelmingly altered as casualty lists were transmitted via an early form of radio. Such transformations only served to reinforce linguistic barriers, in direct contrast to widespread assertions that new technologies would enable instantaneous worldwide communication. A discussion of the substitution of Astor for Nasrallah thus allows insight into the production of confusion that resulted from the development of wireless technology as a linguistic medium. [migration, technology, materiality of language, globalization, Lebanon, Syria]
Ruled by records: The expropriation of land and the misappropriation of lists in Islamabad
Authors: HULL MATTHEW S.
Published: November 2008

In this article, I investigate the ongoing battle between villagers on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, and the state development agency attempting to expropriate their land. This battle has been waged through the medium of documents, particularly lists, which villagers and colluding officials have used to defraud the Pakistani government of the equivalent of millions of dollars. Through this case study, I develop an approach to contemporary state governance as material practice, showing how government discourse is shaped by the material forms it takes and highlighting the issue of reference and predication (or how words relate to things). [governance, documents, state, semiotics, technology, materiality, South Asia, Pakistan]
Policing ambiguity: Muslim saints‐day festivals and the moral geography of public space in Egypt
Authors: SCHIELKE SAMULI
Published: November 2008

In this article, I explore how the festive culture of mulids, Egyptian Muslim saints‐day festivals, troubles notions of habitus, public space, and religious and civic discipline that have become hegemonic in Egypt in the past century and how state actors attempt to “civilize” mulids by subjecting them to a spectacular, representative order of spatial differentiation. I argue that habitus must be understood as a political category related to competing relationships of ideology and embodiment and that the conceptual and physical configuration of modern public space is intimately related to the bodily and moral discipline of its users. [veneration of saints, festivals, habitus, public space, state, Islam, Egypt]
When the state and your kidneys fail: Political etiologies in an Egyptian dialysis ward
Authors: HAMDY SHERINE F.
Published: November 2008

In this article, I describe how poor Egyptian kidney‐disease patients understand and experience their illness in terms of Egypt's larger social, economic, and political ills. The suffering that patients in end‐stage renal failure endure, as they articulate it, extends beyond the pathological kidney and implicates corrupt institutions, polluted water, the mismanagement of toxic waste, and unsafe food. End‐stage kidney failure patients in Egypt depend on state‐provided medical services, which they deeply mistrust. In this context, they understand the breakdown of their kidneys, their dialysis machines, and their bodies as a direct outcome of the breakdown of the welfare state. I argue that patients' perceptions of their disease and their mistrust of medical treatment and state service provision should make us reconsider how all etiologies are political. Further, the “political etiologies” in this case inform ethical decisions about kidney transplantation and maintaining life on dialysis. [bioethics, the body, kidney disease, organ transplantation, state welfare, neoliberalism, Egypt]
Memory in our body: Thick participation and the translation of kinesthetic experience
Authors: SAMUDRA JAIDA KIM
Published: November 2008

Anthropologists studying dance, sports, or other kinesthetic cultures may face the difficulty of rendering into analytic discourse those bodily practices consultants do not express verbally. Through thick participation, we may use our bodies to acquire shared cultural knowledge, but then we must translate our somatic experience into words. Encoding kinesthetic details, describing new sensations, and narrating physical training episodes are three different ways of writing about participatory experiences in the field to yield data that can then be compared with observations and life histories of consultant practitioners. Each approach provides distinctive avenues for investigating coherence across multiple bodies inhabiting the same kinesthetic culture, in this case, a Chinese Indonesian self‐defense and health movement system known as White Crane Silat. [body, kinesthetic culture, thick participation, ethnography, silat, martial art]
Take it from the top (down)? Rethinking neoliberalism and political hierarchy in Mexico
Authors: SCHWEGLER TARA A.
Published: November 2008

In this article, I unpack the relationship between neoliberalism as a policy framework and as a rationality of governance by examining the daily practices of Mexican technocrats with advanced academic degrees in neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is implicitly regarded as the transparent technical mechanism through which neoliberal ideas are transmitted to policy. In contrast, I approach neoclassical economics as a system of knowledge for analyzing how markets work that is constituted and negotiated as it is applied to policy. Whereas existing accounts suggest that neoclassical economics effectively sanitizes politics by rendering the political technical, I argue that technical struggles are embedded in and prefigured by political struggles. I take the negotiations between political teams as a starting point from which to interrogate deep‐seated assumptions about the rigidity of neoclassical economics, and I emphasize the role of what I call “anticipatory knowledge,” knowledge marshaled by political teams in anticipation of the knowledge claims of rival teams. [neoliberalism, economics, governmentality, expert knowledge, Mexico, policy]
Neoliberal associations: Property, company, and family in the Argentine oil fields
Authors: SHEVER ELANA
Published: November 2008

The transformation of Argentina's state‐owned oil company into a transnational joint‐stock corporation and a series of worker‐owned subcontracting microenterprises in northwestern Patagonia provides an example of an actually existing neoliberal project. In this article, I illustrate how this project was as much a process of sustaining affective relationality as it was a process of fostering calculative rationality. The privatization process generated corporate subjects attached through familial associations of property, company, and family. Kinship sentiment was also the crucial force that incorporated former state oil workers into the inequitable circuits of the global petroleum industry. I argue that this neoliberal process was effective inasmuch as it worked affectively. [neoliberal, kinship, property, affect, corporations, structural adjustment, petroleum, Argentina]