Search results

This chapter explores knowledge practices around the subject of capital punishment. Capital sentencing jurisprudence and certain strands of academic scholarship on the death penalty have certain resonances with recent developments in reflexive cultural anthropology. Using the notion of productive unraveling, this chapter seeks to reinforce relations between these various knowledge practices by conceiving of them as situated on the same ground, already interwoven with one another. This chapter presents itself as both an example of and a call for the development of interconnections between these various kinds of expert knowledges concerning the death penalty.

This paper evaluates the modern baseline presumption of nonconsent in sexual assault (rape) cases in light of different theories of sexuality (feminism on the one hand and sex positivism/queer theory on the other) and in light of how sexuality manifests itself in the lives of contemporary young women. The authors analyze social science literature on contemporary heterosexual practices such as sexting and hook-ups, as well as contemporary media imagery, to inform a contemporary understanding of the ways in which young people perceive and experience sex. Using this evidence as a foundation, the authors reconsider the ongoing utility of a baseline presumption of nonconsent in sexual assault cases. This paper demonstrates the complex relationship between women’s sexual autonomy, the contemporary culture’s encouragement of women’s celebration of their own sexual objectification and the persistence of high rates of unwanted sex. In the end, it demonstrates why a legal presumption against consent may neither reduce the rate of nonconsensual sex, nor raise the rate of reported rapes. At the same time, it shows how the presumption itself is unlikely to generate harmful consequences: if it deters anything, it likely deters unwanted sex, whether consented to or not.

Examines the interaction between Western leader ship and authority practices and those of a non Western culture (Nigeria) in their managerial and or ganisational context. Data concerning the experience of an organisational change in a non‐Western cultural context fail to confirm some of the ideas advanced in the convergence and divergence theses. An alternative framework for conceptualising the process of interaction and outcome of organisational development in situations of cross‐cultural transfer and application of management practices is proposed.

Seekers who visit professional virtual communities (PVCs) are usually motivated by knowledge-seeking, which is a complex cognitive process. How do seekers search for knowledge, and how is their search linked to prior knowledge or PVC situation factors? From the cognitive process and interactional psychology perspectives, this study investigated the three-way interactions between seekers’ expertise, task complexity, and perceptions of PVC features (i.e. knowledge quality and system quality) on knowledge-seeking strategies and resultant outcomes.

A field experiment was conducted with 119 seekers in a PVC using a 2 × 2 factorial design of seekers’ expertise (i.e. expert versus novice) and task complexity (i.e. low versus high).

The study reveals three significant insights: (1) For a high-complexity task, experts adopt an ask-directed searching strategy compared to novices, whereas novices adopt a browsing strategy; (2) For a high-complexity task, experts who perceive a high system quality are more likely than novices to adopt an ask-directed searching strategy; and (3) Task completion time and task quality are associated with the adoption of ask-directed searching strategies, whereas knowledge seekers’ satisfaction is more associated with the adoption of browsing strategy.

We draw on the perspectives of cognitive process and interactional psychology to explore potential two- and three-way interactions of seekers’ expertise, task complexity, and PVC features on the adoption of knowledge-seeking strategies in a PVC context. Our findings provide deep insights into seekers’ behavior in a PVC, given the popularity of the search for knowledge in PVCs.

Unwanted intrusive thoughts (UITs) are a major public health concern (Nock et al., 2008; Bentum et al., 2017), and they are key to the development of a variety of dysregulated behaviours (Jungmann et al., 2016; Bergen et al., 2012). Thus, this study aims to investigate reductive mechanisms for unwanted intrusive thoughts by analysing aspects of affectivity in clinical and non-clinical samples.

Quantitative means of data collection and analysis were used to explore UITs and affectivity. In total, 530 adults took part in this study (236 males, 253 females and 15 transgenders). Participants consisted of clinical (N = 168) and non-clinical samples (N = 336) who completed the Midlife in the United States sense of control scale (Lachman and Weaver, 1998), 20-item neuroticism scale (Goldberg, 1999), self-compassion scale (Neff, 2003a), flourishing scale (Diener et al., 2009), Positive and Negative Affect Schedule - Negative Scale (Watson et al., 1988), generalised anxiety disorder seven-item (Spitzer et al., 2006) and repetitive thinking questionnaire-10 (McEvoy et al., 2010).

Participants who experienced high levels of psychological flourishing, emotional stability, self-compassion, perceived control and affective well-being were prone to experience minimal UITs. Anxiety was positively related to UITs. These findings suggest that these aspects of affectivity may aid the reduction or management of clinical and non-clinical unwanted intrusive thoughts.

This study has addressed gaps in knowledge and the literature on UITs by demonstrating that psychological flourishing, emotional stability, self-compassion, perceived control and affective well-being as aspects of affectivity can be implemented as a reductive mechanism for UITs, and such implementation may have a high probability of effective reduction or management of clinical and non-clinical unwanted intrusive thoughts.

Logistical facility location decisions can make a crucial difference in the success or failure of a company. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have recently become a very popular decision support system to help deal with facility location problems. However, until recently, GIS methodologies have not been fully embraced as a way to deal with new facility location problems in business logistics. This research makes a framework for categorizing empirical facility location problems based on the intensity of the involvement of GIS methodologies in decision making. This framework was built by analyzing facility location models and GIS methodologies. The research results revealed the depth of the embracement of GIS methodologies in logistics for determining new facility location decisions. In the new facility location decisions, spatial data inputs are almost always coupled with the visualization of the problems and solutions. However, the usage of GIS capability solely (i.e. suitability analysis) for problem solving has not been embraced at the same level. In most cases, the suitability analysis is used together with special optimization models for choosing among the multiple alternatives.

Research examining the experiences of women in the workplace has, to a large extent, neglected the unique stressors pregnant employees may experience. Stress during pregnancy has been shown consistently to lead to detrimental consequences for the mother and her baby. Using job stress theories, we develop an expanded theoretical model of experienced stress during pregnancy and the potential detrimental health outcomes for the mother and her baby. Our theoretical model includes factors from multiple levels (i.e., individual, interpersonal, sociocultural, and community) and the role they play on the health and well-being of the pregnant employee and her baby. In order to gain a deeper understanding of job stress during pregnancy, we examine three pregnancy-specific organizational stressors (i.e., perceived pregnancy discrimination, pregnancy disclosure, and identity-role conflict) that are unique to pregnant employees. These stressors are argued to be over and above the normal job stressors experienced and they are proposed to result in elevated levels of experienced stress leading to detrimental health outcomes for the mother and baby. The role of resilience resources and learning in reducing some of the negative outcomes from job stressors is also explored.

The acceleration of Opioid deaths over the last decade has made it a serious national public health crisis. Alabama has not been immune to this epidemic, with dramatically increased age-adjusted drug overdose death rates. These increases have occurred in a state with limited resources for Opioid health prevention, treatment, and recovery services. This chapter introduces the term “o-CHIL” in order to better understand the multi-factorial layers of intertwining health injustices (in the plural) experienced in Alabama’s communities and their embedded public libraries. It highlights the complexities in Opioid consumer health information literacies, the culturally situated dimensions of the Opioid crisis in Alabama, and the uniquely relevant consumer health literacies in its public libraries. Findings are based on an empirical assessment of representative information support services identified in February 2020 on the websites of the 230 public libraries listed as members of the Alabama Public Library Service. The exploratory study applies website content analysis to identify seven examples of information offerings and to class offerings into three categories: (1) information sources (collections, resources); (2) information policy and planning (assigned Opioid-related role, strategic representation); and (3) connections (internal, external, news and events). The discussion potentially provides new directions, approaches, and opportunities to build collaborations of sharing within Alabama’s network of public libraries and beyond for them to better serve their local and regional communities impacted by the Opioid crisis.

This paper seeks to review the literature on methods for solving the radiative transfer equation (RTE) and integrating the radiant energy quantities over the spectrum required to predict the flow, the flame and the thermal structures in chemically reacting and radiating combustion systems.

The focus is on methods that are fast and compatible with the numerical algorithms for solving the transport equations using the computational fluid dynamics techniques. In the methods discussed, the interaction of turbulence and radiation is ignored.

The overview is limited to four methods (differential approximation, discrete ordinates, discrete transfer, and finite volume) for predicting radiative transfer in multidimensional geometries that meet the desired requirements. Greater detail in the radiative transfer model is required to predict the local flame structure and transport quantities than the global (total) radiation heat transfer rate at the walls of the combustion chamber.

The RTE solution methods and integration of radiant energy quantities over the spectrum are assessed for combustion systems containing only the infra‐red radiating gases and gas particle mixtures. For strongly radiating (i.e. highly sooting) and turbulent flows the neglect of turbulence/radiation interaction may not be justified.

Methods of choice for solving the RTE and obtaining total radiant energy quantities for practical combustion devices are discussed.

The paper has identified relevant references that describe methods capable of accounting for radiative transfer to simulate processes arising in combustion systems.