bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Micromechanical modeling and experimental analysis of yarn separation type sewing damage on continuous filament fabrics
Authors: Cui Lina , Weng Chengwu , Liu Gui , Huang Canyi , Liu Fanxizi , Zhang Yinjia , Qiu Yiping , Zhang Chuyang
Published: January 2023

Fabrics with weaves of low interlacing density and smooth yarns such as continuous cuprammonium filaments are often susceptible to sewing damage of cracks perpendicular to the sewing line, seriously influencing the aesthetics of the finished garment. To understand how the important factors such as yarn modulus, yarn bending stiffness, sewing needle radius, yarn-on yarn-friction, fabric counts and fabric weaves act on the crack length of such a fabric, a micromechanical model is proposed, and the experimental results are compared with the theoretical prediction. Single yarn pull-out tests and single yarn axial compression tests are performed to estimate yarn-on-yarn friction and yarn bending stiffness, respectively. The model indicates that the sewing crack length is positively proportional to the yarn tensile modulus, yarn bending stiffness and the needle radius and is negatively proportional to the fabric count and the inter-yarn friction. The model predicted crack lengths are within the range of the experimental results in warp direction while the predicted value is substantially larger than the observed crack lengths in weft direction due to the high compressibility of the weft yarn, which decreased yarn tension, bending stiffness and increased yarn cover power. For a given fabric, increasing yarn-on-yarn friction and raising yarn compressibility is an effective way to control the crack lengths.
Sustainable Adaptation Planning for Cultural Heritage in Coastal Tourism Destinations Under Climate Change: A Mixed-Paradigm of Preservation and Conservation Optimization
Authors: Xiao Xiao , Li Peizhe , Seekamp Erin
Published: January 2023

Fragmented guidance and unbalanced climate adaptation efforts for tangible and intangible cultural heritage are challenging the long-term sustainability of coastal tourism destinations. Conceptualizing and quantifying adaptation paradigms that optimize cultural heritage preservation from multi-faceted perspectives under fiscal constraints is highly prioritized by coastal tourism destinations. Informed by the Modern Portfolio Theory, this study developed, tested, and evaluated four adaptation paradigms using machine-learning approaches to optimize the historical significance, tangible, and intangible values of multi-type cultural heritage in Gulf Island National Seashore across a 30-year planning horizon under varying fiscal constraints. Results indicated that adaptation paradigms can provide transformative and flexible preservation portfolios to preserve tangible and intangible uses when facing degradation or loss from inadequate funding and intensifying climate threats. The mixed-paradigm framework optimizes preservation efforts between tangible and intangible cultural heritage quantitatively and can be generalized to coastal tourism destinations globally as a sustainable climate adaptation decision support tool.
The Effects of Rating Designs on Rater Classification Accuracy and Rater Measurement Precision in Large-Scale Mixed-Format Assessments
Authors: Guo Wenjing , Wind Stefanie A.
Published: January 2023

In standalone performance assessments, researchers have explored the influence of different rating designs on the sensitivity of latent trait model indicators to different rater effects as well as the impacts of different rating designs on student achievement estimates. However, the literature provides little guidance on the degree to which different rating designs might affect rater classification accuracy (severe/lenient) and rater measurement precision in both standalone performance assessments and mixed-format assessments. Using results from an analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, we conducted simulation studies to systematically explore the impacts of different rating designs on rater measurement precision and rater classification accuracy (severe/lenient) in mixed-format assessments. The results suggest that the complete rating design produced the highest rater classification accuracy and greatest rater measurement precision, followed by the multiple-choice (MC) + spiral link design and the MC link design. Considering that complete rating designs are not practical in most testing situations, the MC + spiral link design may be a useful choice because it balances cost and performance. We consider the implications of our findings for research and practice.
The Economization of Early Life: Human Capital Theory, Biology, and Social Policy
Authors: Griffen Zachary Webster
Published: January 2023

The US government response to the coronavirus pandemic has prompted renewed debate about the size and structure of the welfare state. Particular attention has been paid to prenatal and early childhood policy, domains in which the US safety net is less robust than those of its peer countries. Contra claims that the so-called care economy constitutes a sharp break with the neoliberal consensus, this article argues that the shift in social policy focus toward early life is consistent with changes in economic ideas about the best environment in which to grow “human capital”: the economization of early life. Building on insights about “critical periods” of development drawn from diverse fields including epigenetics and neurobiology, economists estimate that human capital gains are greatest when “investments in people” occur before the age of five. This article traces the history of how this research was brought to the attention of federal policy makers in the United States. While much human capital–focused social policy traditionally placed the burden of risk on the private family (e.g., with student loan debt or health insurance), in recent years, economists have instead argued that social programs dedicated to early childhood development are more “efficient” sources of public investment.
Alt-right and authoritarian memetic alliances: global mediations of hate within the rising Farsi manosphere on Iranian social media
Authors: Khosravi Ooryad Sama
Published: January 2023

This article examines the rising Farsi ‘manosphere’ of Iran and the case of online misogynistic, anti-feminist and anti-queer mobilisations across social media platforms and messaging applications. It focuses on memes and memetic figures that are circulated on Iranian social media and proposes the term ‘memetic alliances’ to convey complicated and unforeseen mutations of today’s internet meme culture and online hate culture. Moreover, it unpacks the increasing convergences of seemingly conflicting online and political contexts. Drawing on digital ethnographic fieldwork on selected platforms as well as visual and conceptual analyses of memes, the article theorises that online figurations of hate have memeto-(micro)political qualities that allow for their propagation across numerous contexts. Furthermore, the case of Iran’s emergent Farsi manosphere is arguably not a totalitarian exception unique to the Middle East but is reconfiguring and standing in alliance with the global rise of the right and its online culture wars.
Exploring effects of multi-level factors on transitions of risk-taking behaviors among Bahamian middle-to-late adolescents
Authors: Guo Yan , Yang Yinmei , Deveaux Lynette , Dinaj-Koci Veronica , Schieber Elizabeth , Herbert Carly , Lee JungAe , Wang Bo
Published: January 2023

Adolescents experiment with risk behaviors, including delinquency, substance use, and sexual activity. Multi-level social factors, such as having high-risk peers, neighborhood risks, and parental monitoring, influence adolescents’ behaviors. We modeled transition patterns in Bahamian adolescents’ risk behaviors across three high school years and examined the effects of multi-level factors. We collected data from 2,564 Bahamian adolescents in Grade 10 and follow-ups through Grade 12. We used latent transition model to identify adolescents’ risk statuses. Further analyses used multinomial logistic regression to explore the effects of multi-level factors on assignment to those latent statuses and transitions. We identified four distinct statuses: “low risk” (47.9% of the sample at baseline), “alcohol use” (36.8%), “alcohol use and sexual activity” (5.5%), and “high risk” (9.8%). Males were more likely to be in higher-risk statuses at baseline and to transition from a lower-risk status in Grade 10 to a higher-risk status in Grade 11. Social risk factors were significantly associated with higher-risk statuses at baseline. Neighborhood risk and peer risk involvement continued to affect transitions from lower to higher risk; parental monitoring did not have a significant effect in later years. Our findings have important implications for developing targeted and developmentally appropriate interventions to prevent and reduce risk behaviors among middle-to-late adolescents.
Joint entity–relation extraction for natural disaster based on table filling
Authors: Cheng Cheng , Zeng Qingtian , Zhao Hua , Wang Shansong
Published: January 2023

In this article, we propose a joint extraction of entity–relation triplets in natural disaster cases based on word pair relation table filling. For computational accuracy concerns or other reasons, traditional works often do entity recognition and relation extraction separately; it might put less attention over the task connections and triplet global association. We propose the Global Table Attention GRU (GL-TGRU) model as a joint approach that uses sequence information encoding and table information encoding to jointly learn the representation and enhance the global association of entity and relation in table filling. We evaluated the proposed model on the public data set SciERC and the natural disaster data set SSD-HDS, respectively. The F1 scores of experimental results of the GL-TGRU model for entity identification and relation extraction achieved 65.81% and 37.30% on SciERC and achieved 93.89% and 84.06% on SSD-HDS. The results show our model helps to capture more global association relations of entity and relation, which can better identify the entity–relation triplet information.
Snippet-based result merging in federated search
Authors: Garba Adamu , Wu Shangli
Published: January 2023

In federated search, the central broker simultaneously forwards the search query to multiple resources. The returned results from those resources are then merged into a single ranked list. An autonomous resource in a federated search system usually does not provide scores for the retrieved documents; even if some of them do, scores from different resources are incomparable due to the heterogeneity in many aspects of those resource involved such as retrieval models and corpus statistics. Many results merging approaches have been proposed in the literature to deal with this problem. However, to the best of our knowledge, none of them has utilised snippets. This article proposes a snippet-based weighting scheme for the query terms involved. It quantifies the importance of each query term from two angles: the frequency of the term and the part in which the term occurs inside a snippet. Three parts – which are URL, title, and description – are given different weights. Experiments are conducted with the TREC 2013 FedWeb data set. The results show that the proposed methods consistently outperform several baseline models. We also find in many instances, a further small slight performance improvement is achievable by an extra measure of weighting each of the resources involved, which can be done in the phase of resource selection.
International Displacement and Family Stress in Latin America
Authors: Weitzman Abigail , Huss Katarina , Blanton Matthew , Swindle Jeffrey , Brenes Camacho Gilbert , Robles Arodys
Published: January 2023

Family stress theories posit that individual family members are positioned to adapt to external stressors differently and that these differences can strain family systems. Analyzing in-depth interviews with a diverse sample of migrant mothers in Costa Rica, we investigate how families adjust to the stressors of international displacement. Three stages of family stress adjustment emerged from our analysis: (1) parents’ prioritization of safety, (2) parents’ and children’s grappling with new legal, economic, and social circumstances, and (3) parents’ protracted uncertainty in one or more of these realms concomitant with children’s feeling resettled. A fourth stage of (4) convergent parent and child resettling also emerged, but only among select families who enjoyed stable financial or emotional support from extended kin or local institutions in Costa Rica. Parents’ perceptions of their security, and social, economic, and legal circumstances contributed to the progression between stages of stress adjustment.
The Dynamic Nexus Between International Tourism and Environmental Degradation in Top Twenty Tourist Destinations: New Insights From Quantile-on-Quantile Approach
Authors: Ozturk Ilhan , Sharif Arshian , Godil Danish Iqbal , Yousuf Adnan , Tahir Iram
Published: January 2023

Tourism is one of the important factors that can affect the environmental and economic situation of any economy. This study investigates the relationship between tourist arrivals and CO2 emission in the top 20 tourist destinations using data from quarterly observations from 1995 to 2018. A unique technique via quantile-on-quantile regression and Granger causality in quantiles was used. In particular, how the quantiles of tourist arrivals impact quantiles of CO2 emission was analyzed. The empirical results suggest a combination of both positive and negative effects of tourist arrivals and CO2 emission in most tourist destinations. Predominantly, at both high and low tails, in the USA, Spain, Hong Kong, and Austria, tourist arrival has a positive effect on CO2 emission, whereas in the case of Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, and Malaysia, the association was negative. On the other hand, China, Greece, Russia, Japan, Italy, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey have both positive and negative effects of tourism on CO2 emissions at low and high tails. Tourism can be an important factor while formulating policy for environmental and climate aspects.
Investigating functional visual loss in children and adolescents
Authors: Schraauwers Robin , Ketelaar Maaike E , Sterkenburg Paula S
Published: January 2023

Patients with a functional neurological disorder (FND) experience a lower psychological quality of life and have more mental health concerns. These patients deserve to be treated with a treatment that is evidence-based and proven effective. However, when we look children or adolescents with functional visual disorder (FVD; a subgroup of FND), we see that there is not much evidence for the effectiveness of their treatments. Possible reasons for this lack of evidence and the difficulties in studying children and adolescents with FVD are discussed in this article. This article concludes with possible ways of persuading children and adolescents with FVD in participating in research.
Towards a new sophistication in vocabulary assessment
Authors: Read John
Published: January 2023

Published work on vocabulary assessment has grown substantially in the last 10 years, but it is still somewhat outside the mainstream of the field. There has been a recent call for those developing vocabulary tests to apply professional standards to their work, especially in validating their instruments for specified purposes before releasing them for widespread use. A great deal of work on vocabulary assessment can be seen in terms of the somewhat problematic distinction between breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge. Breadth refers to assessing vocabulary size, based on a large sample of words from a frequency list. New research is raising questions about the suitability of word frequency norms derived from large corpora, the choice of the word family as the unit of analysis, the selection of appropriate test formats, and the role of guessing in test-taker performance. Depth of knowledge goes beyond the basic form-meaning link to consider other aspects of word knowledge. The concept of word association has played a dominant role in the design of such tests, but there is a need to create test formats to assess knowledge of word parts as well as a range of multi-word items apart from collocation.
Test design and validity evidence of interactive speaking assessment in the era of emerging technologies
Authors: Jung Youn Soo
Published: January 2023

As access to smartphones and emerging technologies has become ubiquitous in our daily lives and in language learning, technology-mediated social interaction has become common in teaching and assessing L2 speaking. The changing ecology of L2 spoken interaction provides language educators and testers with opportunities for renewed test design and the gathering of context-sensitive validity evidence of interactive speaking assessment. First, I review the current research on interactive speaking assessment focusing on commonly used test formats and types of validity evidence. Second, I discuss recent research that reports the use of artificial intelligence and technologies in teaching and assessing speaking in order to understand how and what evidence of interactive speaking is elicited. Based on the discussion, I argue that it is critical to identify what features of interactive speaking are elicited depending on the types of technology-mediated interaction for valid assessment decisions in relation to intended uses. I further discuss opportunities and challenges for future research on test design and eliciting validity evidence of interactive speaking using technology-mediated interaction.
Reflections on the past and future of language testing and assessment: An emerging scholar’s perspective
Authors: Burton J. Dylan
Published: January 2023

In its 40th year, Language Testing journal has served as the flagship journal for scholars, researchers, and practitioners in the field of language testing and assessment. This viewpoint piece, written from the perspective of an emerging scholar, discusses two possible future trends based on evidence going back to the very first issue of this journal. First, this paper outlines past efforts to describe and define the construct of second language communication, noting that much work has yet to be done for a more complete description in terms of interactional competence and nonverbal behavior. The second trend highlights the growing movement in applied linguistics toward research transparency through Open Science practices, including replication studies, the sharing of data and materials, and preregistration. This paper outlines work to date in Language Testing that encourages open practices and emphasizes the importance of these practices in assessment research.
Future challenges and opportunities in language testing and assessment: Basic questions and principles at the forefront
Authors: Brunfaut Tineke
Published: January 2023

In this invited Viewpoint on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the journal Language Testing, I argue that at the core of future challenges and opportunities for the field—both in scholarly and operational respects—remain basic questions and principles in language testing and assessment. Despite the high levels of sophistication of issues looked into, and methodological and operational solutions found, outstanding concerns still amount to: what are we testing, how are we testing, and why are we testing? Guided by these questions, I call for more thorough and adequate language use domain definitions (and a suitable broadening of research and testing methodologies to determine these), more comprehensive operationalizations of these domain definitions (especially in the context of technology in language testing), and deeper considerations of test purposes/uses and of their connections with domain definitions. To achieve this, I maintain that the field needs to continue investing in the topics of validation, ethics, and language assessment literacy, and engaging with broader fields of enquiry such as (applied) linguistics. I also encourage a more synthetic look at the existing knowledge base in order to build on this, and further diversification of voices in language testing and assessment research and practice.
Rhetorical question comprehension by Italian–German bilingual children
Authors: Geiss Miriam , Ferin Maria F , Marinis Theo , Kupisch Tanja
Published: January 2023

This study investigates for the first time the comprehension of rhetorical questions (RhQs) in bilingual children. RhQs are non-canonical questions, as they are not used to request information, but to express the speaker’s belief that the answer is already obvious. This special pragmatic meaning often arises by means of specific prosodic and lexical-syntactic cues. Being childhood learners, children have to acquire the concept of rhetoricity, but being bilinguals, they further need to acquire the different cues marking RhQs in their two languages. We tested 85 bilingual children (aged 6–9 years) with Italian as heritage language (HL) and German as majority language (ML) in both of their languages, using a forced-choice comprehension task. Our results show that RhQ comprehension improves with age in both languages. Bilingual children are able to exploit prosodic and syntactic cues to comprehend RhQs in their ML and HL with a slight advantage in the ML. This advantage could be either an effect of the cues used in the experiments in the two languages or of a higher proficiency in the ML. In addition, our results point to a later acquisition of prosodic rhetorical cues, which has implications for bilingual acquisition of non-canonicity in general.
The Effects of Parental Nurturance, Harsh Discipline, and Inter-Parental Conflict on Empathy Development in Early Adolescence
Authors: Goering Marlon , Mrug Sylvie
Published: January 2023

Parents play an important role in adolescents’ development of empathy. However, less understood is what dimensions of parental behavior predict changes in empathy during early adolescence and whether effects of parental behavior are moderated by pubertal timing or differ by sex. This study used data from an ethnically diverse sample of 704 youth who reported on their parents’ nurturance, harsh discipline, and inter-parental conflict at age 11; on their own empathy at ages 11 and 13; and on their pubertal timing at age 13. The results showed that only parental nurturance uniquely predicted more empathy at age 13 and that this effect was stronger in females. Harsh discipline and inter-parental conflict were only concurrently associated with lower empathy at age 11. Pubertal timing did not moderate the links between parental nurturance, harsh discipline, or inter-parental conflict at age 11 and empathy at age 13.
The Influences of Children’s and Maternal Childhood Adversity on Externalizing Problems in Early Adolescence
Authors: Lee Jungeun Olivia , Yoon Yoewon , Duan Lei , Oxford Monica L. , Cederbaum Julie A.
Published: January 2023

Childhood adversities have been linked to externalizing problems in adolescence. However, studies focusing on early adolescence are rare. Even less empirical attention has been given to the unique and joint influences of children’s and maternal childhood adversity on children’s externalizing behavior, particularly with a keen focus on the nature of adversities. This study examined the influences of children’s and maternal childhood adversities on children’s externalizing problems in early adolescence, delineating domains of childhood adversities. The data came from a longitudinal study of teen mothers and their children ( N = 495). The findings reveal children’s childhood maltreatment experience was associated with externalizing problems in early adolescence. Further, maternal childhood maltreatment functioned as an additive risk source for target adolescents’ externalizing problems. These findings support the need to delineate adversity domains to further clarify the link between childhood adversity and externalizing problems. Our findings also support a multigenerational approach in pediatric settings.
The inflammatory cytokine profiles and ocular biometric characteristics of primary angle-closure glaucoma
Authors: Zeng Hong-Bo , Jiang Jun-Di , Li Rong , Li Jian , Zeng Wen-Juan , Li Xiong-Kai , Hu Bin , Zhou Fei , Yu Hai-Ying , Xie Jian-Guo , Ning Zhi-Neng , Wang Xian
Published: January 2023

Objective

To investigate the pathogenesis of primary angle-closure disease (PACG) by measuring the anatomical structures of the anterior and posterior segments of the eye and inflammatory markers in the peripheral blood.

Methods

This case–control study enrolled patients diagnosed with acute PACG (APACG) and chronic PACG (CPACG). It also enrolled control subjects without PACG. The anterior and posterior anatomical features were measured in all study participants. The levels of interleukin (IL)-6, tumour necrosis factor-α and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in the peripheral blood were measured.

Results

This study analysed a total of 99 eyes: 34 eyes from 34 patients with APACG, 28 eyes from 28 patients with CPACG and 37 eyes from 37 control patients with senile cataract. The axis length, corneal diameter, anterior chamber depth and anterior chamber volume were significantly smaller in the APACG and CPACG groups compared with the controls. The level of IL-6 in the peripheral blood of patients with PACG was significantly lower than that of the controls. The NLR in the peripheral blood of patients with PACG was significantly greater than that of the controls.

Conclusions

Changes in the ocular anatomy and some inflammatory markers might be involved in the pathogenesis of PACG.
The double movement and the triple-helix: Divestment, decommodification, and the Dakota Access Pipeline
Authors: Horowitz Leah S
Published: January 2023

This paper investigates divestment movements’ attempts to influence investment decisions. I use the example of #DefundDAPL, which targeted private-sector funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), an oil conduit crossing the Missouri River a half-mile from the Standing Rock Reservation. I analyze activists’ engagements with banks as a manifestation of Karl Polanyi's second movement, that is, resistance to environmental destruction and human rights violations that accompany “commodification” (the subordination of social relations to the economy). I identify divestment as a “withdrawing” type of decommodification that restrains free-market dominance by defunding environmentally and socially destructive projects. Next, I explore how investment practices can be analyzed as a “triple-helix” comprised of three intertwined strands—ideologies, power dynamics, and private-sector policies—that pull one another toward commodification and/or decommodification as they coproduce each other in dynamic tension, creating a constantly evolving investment environment. Applying this framework to #DefundDAPL, I examine how activists’ success in mobilizing societal ideologies to paint DAPL as an unethical investment was informed by banks’ concerns about project profitability as well as by place-based conditions and relationships between banks and pipeline companies. Further, I find that private-sector policy changes in response to the DAPL controversy were prompted by evolving societal ideologies yet constrained by interbank power relations. In conclusion, I argue that a triple-helix lens helps unpack the black box of decommodification by revealing complex interactions among ideologies, power relations, and policy-making and demonstrates limits to private-sector initiatives’ ability to impose adequate restrictions on environmentally and socially harmful investment practices.
Modal characterization of crack network development in an MgO containing refractory castable
Authors: Sciuti Vinicius Fiocco , Vargas Rafael , Canto Rodrigo Bresciani , Hild François
Published: January 2023

Damage due to MgO hydration in castables has been studied by bar resonance and recently by Digital Image Correlation (DIC). The hydration reaction kinetics was studied via principal component analyses (PCA) applied to DIC results of images acquired during 60 h of curing and drying of an MgO containing refractory castable. The experiment was carried out in a in-house climatic chamber at 50°C and 50% of relative air humidity. The displacement and maximum eigen strain fields were obtained via DIC. Their PCA revealed the crack network as the most relevant component, with a temporal development of a sigmoidal curve where a two-parameter Weibull law was satisfactorily fitted. The reaction duration was virtually identical for both fields, and only a time shift in reaction initiation and saturation was attributed to the choice of field. The approach allows the need for user-defined thresholds to be avoided for crack quantification.
The vibration of a gold nanobeam under the thermoelasticity fractional-order strain theory based on Caputo–Fabrizio’s definition
Authors: AL-Lehaibi Eman
Published: January 2023

For the first time, numerical solutions were computed using fractional-order strain considerations in the current study. For an isotropic and homogeneous nanobeam, the thermoelasticity with one relaxation time and fractional-order strain theory based on Caputo–Fabrizio’s definition of fractional derivative was examined. With thermal loading and in simply supported boundary conditions, the Laplace transformations have been used upon the governing equations and its inversion was computed using the Tzou technique approximation. The numerical calculations for a thermoelastic rectangular gold (Au) nanobeam have been validated as a model where ramp-type heat is considered. The computational solutions have been depicted in two-dimensions graphs for several situations to investigate the impact of the fractional-order and ramping heat parameters on all of the functions studied. The temperature increment distribution, lateral vibration, deformation, tension, and energy density are all influenced by fractional-order and ramp-time heat parameters. The ramp-time heat parameter might be utilized to regulate nanobeam vibration and energy damping in thermoelastic nanobeams.
‘Precarious parents’ in Italy: A study on gendered and racialised labour-power
Authors: Ba’ Stefano
Published: January 2023

This research explores the conditions of parents in precarious employment in Italy (European Union) with an emphasis on (but not confined to) mothers from non-European Union countries of origin. The aim is to construct a critical understanding of the material conditions of workers and parents in precarious employment and their everyday struggles to achieve employment and income security, when this income security can be achieved only through the sale of labour-power in gendered and racialised labour markets. Their everyday lives are marked by their conditions of bearers of labour-power and crucially these precarious social conditions produce a pressure which tends to reduce precarious workers’ lives to ‘bare life’. Bare life is connected to the ‘bare minimum’ that these participants get in terms of income. This study aims to give a new interpretation to the concept of bare minimum through which precarious parents must arrange their lives. Gendered and racialising processes take place through the struggles around this ‘minimum’.
Situating platform gig economy in the formal subsumption of reproductive labor: Transnational migrant domestic workers and the continuum of exploitation and precarity
Authors: Yin Siyuan
Published: January 2023

In conversation with critical platform and labor studies, which tend to focus on drivers and food delivery workers, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the platform gig economy from the perspective of reproductive labor and migrant domestic workers. The exploitation of women’s unpaid and low-paid reproductive work has persisted throughout various stages of capitalist development. Migrant domestic workers’ underpaid reproductive labor becomes an essential site for primitive capital accumulation and the production of the labor force in the contemporary neoliberal global economy. Building upon analyses of the historical and contemporary circumstances of transnational migrant domestic workers in Canada, I argue that digital labor platforms become a technology-enabled, capital-driven force in the larger commodification and exploitation process of migrant workers’ reproductive labor, and such processes are underpinned by entangled structural and institutional forces of the uneven capitalist development, racism, patriarchy, and the state’s discriminatory (im)migration and labor policies. The article suggests that understanding the seeming prevalence of platform work should be situated in the continuous formal subsumption of reproductive labor and the class immobility of migrant domestic workers, and labor activism and movements should contest the entwined power dominations beyond merely demanding regulations over platforms.
Data Fusion Approach to Identify Distribution Chain Segments in Freight Shipment Databases
Authors: Mohammed Raeed Ali , Nadi Ali , Tavasszy Lórant , Bok Michiel de
Published: January 2023

Understanding the logistic determinants of freight trips is an important goal in freight transport modeling. Freight shipments move between nodes in the supply chain for different logistic purposes, including production, storage, transshipment, and consumption. A key problem with data availability is that databases generally do not identify these purposes, given the commercial sensitivity of the data. In addition, including information on senders and receivers of the shipments is often prohibitively costly. Therefore, one of the challenges of transport data analysis is to identify freight trip purposes using data fusion, linking information about the main function of logistics nodes to trips in existing databases. This paper proposes a data fusion approach to enrich big truck shipment databases with firm registry data. We use the national freight shipment micro-database from the Netherlands which includes shipment, vehicle, and tour information. Although our presentation here uses formats and methods of accounting for freight data used in the Netherlands, it can be readily replicated for conditions in other countries, as long as similar data sets on shipment data and firm registry are available. The enriched, new database contains transport and firm data for more than 2 million observed trips with information on the vehicle used, shipments carried, and sender/receiver firm. An initial descriptive analysis provides unique empirical insights into the logistic determinants of freight trips. These include the share of national trips that use intermediate nodes, typical changes in shipment sizes, and the role of distribution centers for (de)consolidation of shipments.
Total-delay-based Max Pressure: A Max Pressure Algorithm Considering Delay Equity
Authors: Liu Hao , Gayah Vikash V.
Published: January 2023

This paper proposes a novel decentralized signal control algorithm that seeks to improve traffic delay equity, measured as the variation of delay experienced by individual vehicles. The proposed method extends the recently developed delay-based max pressure (MP) algorithm by using the sum of cumulative delay experienced by all vehicles that joined a given link as the metric for weight calculation. Doing so ensures the movements with lower traffic loads have a higher chance of being served as their delay increases. Three existing MP models are used as baseline models with which to compare the proposed algorithm in microscopic simulations of both a single intersection and a grid network. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm can improve the delay equity for various traffic conditions, especially for highly unbalanced traffic flows. Moreover, this improvement in delay equity does not come with a significant increase to average delay experienced by all vehicles. In fact, the average delay from the proposed algorithm is close to—and sometimes even lower than—the baseline models. Therefore, the proposed algorithm can maintain both objectives at the same time. In addition, the performance of the proposed control strategy was tested in a connected vehicle environment. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other baseline models in both reducing traffic delay and increasing delay equity when the penetration rate is less or equal to 60%, which would not be exceeded in reality in the near future.
Role of Temperature Gradient and Soil Thermal Properties on Frost Heave
Authors: Sadiq Md Fyaz , Naqvi Mohammad Wasif , Cetin Bora , Daniels John
Published: January 2023

In cold regions, the soil temperature gradient and depth of frost penetration can significantly affect roadway performance because of frost heave and thaw settlement of the subgrade soils. The severity of the damage depends on the soil index properties, temperature, and availability of water. While nominal expansion occurs with the phase change from pore water to ice, heaving is derived primarily from a continuous flow of water from the vadose zone to growing ice lenses. The temperature gradient within the soil influences water migration toward the freezing front, where ice nucleates, coalesces into lenses, and grows. This study evaluates the frost heave potential of frost-susceptible soils from Iowa (IA-PC) and North Carolina (NC-BO) under different temperature gradients. One-dimensional frost heave tests were conducted with a free water supply under three different temperature gradients of 0.26°C/cm, 0.52°C/cm, and 0.78°C/cm. Time-dependent measurements of frost penetration, water intake, and frost heave were carried out. Results of the study suggested that frost heave and water intake are functions of the temperature gradient within the soil. A lower temperature gradient of 0.26°C/cm leads to the maximum total heave of 18.28 mm (IA-PC) and 38.27 mm (NC-BO) for extended periods of freezing. The maximum frost penetration rate of 16.47 mm/hour was observed for a higher temperature gradient of 0.78°C/cm and soil with higher thermal diffusivity of 0.684 mm2/s. The results of this study can be used to validate numerical models and develop engineered solutions that prevent frost damage.
The Problem of Infinite Regress: A Stopping Rules Approach
Authors: Verghese Ajay
Published: January 2023

How can social scientists uncover the root causes of contemporary outcomes? Many scholars have assumed that a problem associated with identifying root causes—the problem of infinite regress—poses a central impediment to this endeavor. However, few have attempted to clearly conceptualize infinite regress or offer more than solutions in passing. This article undertakes the challenge. I begin by conceptualizing infinite regress as the potentially endless cycle initiated when assessing the relative weight of proximate versus antecedent causes in a causal chain. Next, how do we weigh causes in such causal chains? I build on Mahoney, Kimball, and Koivu’s “sequence elaboration” method, and argue that this method is best suited to approach the problem. Yet, sequence elaboration cannot tell us when to stop our search. How do we know we have arrived at a root cause? I evaluate six potential “stopping rules” using various historical examples and suggest that three of these offer coherent possible solutions: the “critical juncture stopping rule,” the “necessary and sufficient cause stopping rule,” and the “mechanism stopping rule.”
Leading with Local Knowledge: Climate Adaptation, Local Knowledge, and Participation in Austin, Texas’ Network of Plans and the Co-Designed Climate Navigators’ Tool and Process
Authors: Lieberknecht Katherine
Published: January 2023

Planning theory scholars and practitioners have identified the need to include residents most affected by climate change in the development of climate adaptation planning, for reasons of justice and effectiveness. This article investigates whether Austin, Texas’ network of plans includes participation by residents and incorporation of local knowledge into climate adaptation. This research finds that these plans contain limited material about participation, engagement, equity, and local knowledge. In response to this gap, the article presents a case study of the Dove Springs Climate Navigators, a residents-nongovernmental organization-municipal-university collaboration working to co-create an online portal, training system, and process to incorporate local knowledge into adaptation planning.
“We’re not anti-police…We’re anti-police brutality”: An Exploration of Black College Freshmen’s Perception of Police Brutality on Social Media
Authors: McLeroy Amanda M. , Wang Yudan C.
Published: January 2023

Guided by the critical race theory and the social identity theory, the present study aimed to explore the impact that exposure to police brutality on social media has on Black college freshmen’s perception of law enforcement and mental wellness. To explore this phenomenon, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 Black college freshmen (age range: 18–20). Participant narratives were coded using a thematic analysis. Findings revealed that participants depicted police brutality on social media as racially driven, which yielded behavioral changes and negative psychological responses, such as sleep disturbances, anger, and fear. Further, the oversaturation of police violence in the media significantly altered the participants’ views of the police and their practices. Our findings are consistent with previous literature concerned with the vicarious experiences of police brutality among youth and have implications for educators, counselors, and scholars.
The Relationship Between Parental Phubbing and Interpersonal Aggression in Adolescents: The Role of Rejection Sensitivity and School Climate
Authors: Zhao Jinzhe , Guo Zhen , Shi Huiyue , Yu Mengke , Jiao Liying , Xu Yan
Published: January 2023

The impact of parental phubbing has attracted the attention of researchers, especially concerning adolescents’ online behavior. However, limited research has studied the influence of parental phubbing on interpersonal aggression, including the underlying mechanism. Grounded in parental acceptance–rejection theory, the present study investigated the association between parental phubbing and interpersonal aggression as well as the mediating role of rejection sensitivity among adolescents. Additionally, school climate was explored as a moderator based on social ecological theory. The multiple questionnaires were completed by 914 Chinese adolescents ( M = 12.61; SD = 1.73; 49.78% girls). The results revealed a positive correlation between parental phubbing and aggression, which was mediated by rejection sensitivity. That is, adolescents who experienced parental phubbing were more likely to exhibit rejection sensitivity, which further triggered aggression. Moreover, school climate acted as a moderator in the model. Specifically, we found no significant moderating effect of school climate on parental phubbing and aggression. However, school climate moderated the relationship between rejection sensitivity and aggression. A positive school climate buffered the associations of rejection sensitivity and aggression. Additionally, school climate moderated the relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity. The relationship between parental phubbing and rejection sensitivity became nonsignificant when adolescents were in a negative school climate, and those adolescents reported higher rejection sensitivity whether they experienced parental phubbing or not. Parental phubbing was more strongly associated with adolescents’ rejection sensitivity in a positive school climate. With a lower level of parental phubbing, rejection sensitivity is sharply reduced. The results deepen our understanding of the relationship between parental phubbing and aggression and its underlying mechanisms. It also implicates preventative interventions to reduce the risk of parental phubbing in interpersonal aggression among adolescents.
Characterization of lignocellulosic glycyrrhiza glabra fibers as a potential reinforcement for polymer composites
Authors: Ovalı Sabih
Published: January 2023

This study is devoted to characterization of the Glycyrrhiza glabra (licorice root) fibers (GGFs) that have different uses in industrial areas, globally. For this purpose, several properties of GGFs were investigated to determine their suitability for natural fiber-reinforced composite production. Such properties include; physical, chemical, thermal, morphological, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, as well. As a result of these analyses, it was found that the GGFs are composed of cellulose (40.46%), hemicellulose (15.94%), lignin (12%), waxes (1.3%), moisture (9.93%), and others. The density of GGFs was measured as 1.43 g/cm3. Additionally, the existence of cellulose with a 35.86% crystal index, was also verified by the XRD characterization results of these fibers. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results showed that GGFs are thermally stable within the polymerization process temperature of 354.09°C. As a result, it was determined that GGFs have characteristics with significant potential as cellulose-based reinforcement fiber for industrial applications.
Global Appeal: Colorblindness, Neoliberalism, and Neighborhood Branding
Authors: Rabii Watoii
Published: January 2023

Using content analysis of Buffalo media and 20 semi-structured interviews, I document the use of immigrant entrepreneurialism as a neoliberal urban governance strategy. Racism evasiveness is central to this strategy. I observe that immigrants and refugees are treated as symbolic capital as part of a neighborhood branding strategy that involves parlaying diversity into material benefits. I call this strategy global appeal. Buffalo’s resurgence is a feel-good story that draws on neoliberal market logics, colorblindness, and diversity ideology. These stories allow Whites to evade racism when discussing neighborhood renewal and racist comments. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, Bell’s concept of neighborhood frames, and Beeman’s theory of racism evasiveness, I argue that immigrants and refugees are used as symbolic capital to construct a neighborhood brand. This is part of a strategy of roll out neoliberalism that relies on two neighborhood frames: revitalization and diversity. The revitalization frame credits immigrants and refugees with contributing to the neighborhood through homeownership, entrepreneurialism, and school enrollment. The diversity frame celebrates people of different races, cultures, and ethnicities coming together while both evading and obscuring racism.