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Significant reduction in the emissions of organic hazardous air pollutants (HAP) associated with surface coating operations was demonstrated through the application of an innovative and low cost biofiltration system. A laboratory‐scale biofilter employing yard waste compost filter media was successful in reducing the methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) airborne concentrations to levels that consistently exceeded the regulatory performance standards mandated for surface coating air emissions control technologies. During Phase I, the biofilter reduced the influent airborne MEK concentration from 184ppmv (parts per million – volume basis) to zero, an operational performance that corresponded to a HAP removal rate of 1,084.2g/m³−d. Similarly, in Phase II, when the steady state influent airborne MEK concentration was increased to 608ppmv, the biofilter maintained an average effluent MEK concentration of 26.1ppmv, which reflected a HAP removal rate of 3,429.1g/m³−d or a 95.7 percent control efficiency.

Performance feedback about whether responses are correct or incorrect provides valuable information to help guide learning. Although feedback itself has no extrinsic value, it can produce subjective feelings similar to “rewards” and “punishments.” Therefore, feedback can play both an informative and a motivational role. Over the past decade, researchers have identified a neural circuit that processes reward value and promotes reinforcement learning, involving target regions of dopaminergic input (e.g., striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Importantly, this circuit is engaged by performance feedback even in the absence of reward. Recent research suggests that feedback-related brain activity can be modulated by motivational context, such as whether feedback reflects goal achievement, whether learners are oriented toward the informative versus evaluative aspect of feedback, and whether individual learners are motivated to perform well relative to their peers. This body of research suggests that the brain responds flexibly to feedback, based on the learner’s goals.

In a diverse society, empathy would intuitively seem to represent a powerful force for social good. In particular, we expect empathic people to tolerate (rather than reject) attitudes that might be different from their own, and to resolve and/or avoid (rather than escalate) potential disagreements with others. Some research supports this benign view of empathy, but somewhat surprisingly, there is a “dark” side to empathy, one that can sometimes exacerbate attitudinal conflict. That is, empathy can often be parochial, in the sense that people are inclined to reserve their compassion for others only when they are deemed to be worthy of such support. In this chapter we review classic and contemporary research on the light and dark side of empathy, and consider its implications for the kinds of dynamics that could potentially emerge when people encounter people and ideas that are different from their own.

Purpose – This chapter examines how prison spaces are depicted in fictional contexts built around icons of popular music. Given that both icons and inmates occupy spaces that the majority of the population does not observe or experience, I am interested in the degree to which prisons serve as stagings for queer expression, even when inhabited by mainstream music stars.

Design/methodology/approach – The lyrical content and visual texts of Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock,” Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us,” Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” as well as material from mainstream musicals like Chicago, are closely analyzed and linked to other scholarly work on prison narratives.

Findings – In addition to binding the power of pop iconicity to the experience of incarceration, the musical numbers and cultural artifacts examined here also reveal differing manifestations of queer motifs in their visual and lyrical construction. Mainstream representations of prisons’ unique and liminal social orders are therefore considered to be open to queer renderings of affection and provocation.

Originality/value – Although prison sexuality is intensely studied by human rights organizations and criminologists, the possibilities for queer expression within fictional prison contexts have not been explicitly linked to the pop personas of music superstars and their creative projects.

Using archival data from the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri and current data from Fatal Encounters (FE), this study descriptively compared concentrated incidents of fatal police shootings of civilians in St. Louis, Missouri at two points in time – 1970 to 1980 and 2000 to 2010. This study also explored connections to race and income by mapping the composition of Black residents and levels of concentrated economic disadvantage using 1980 and 2010 United States Census data. Geographic Information Systems (GISs) results revealed noticeable similarities in the sites of fatal police shootings of civilians across the two time periods. Specifically, most of the incidents occurred in the northern and southeastern sectors of St. Louis City in neighborhoods with a higher number of Black residents and impacted by economic disadvantage. All of the individuals shot and killed by the police were male, and a majority were 22 years old or younger, and armed during the incident. Results from police perceptions studies from the 1970s and early to mid oughts are also discussed to posit that a persistence of police violence historically and presently may help offer key insights into how legal estrangement may ensue.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This conceptual article presents a schematic for use with extended cybernetic recursion in living systems and applies it to the issue of hyper vigilance as a demonstration of its utility.

The test-operate-test-exit (TOTE) schematic of Miller et al. (1960) is critically evaluated along with other schematics, including those of ordered cybernetics, and a new schematic is proposed, a recursive test-operate-test (rTOT), which emphasizes teleological purpose and hierarchical structure. The background psychophysiology of trauma is reviewed and then rTOT is applied to hyper vigilance, a cardinal component of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Once the schematic was developed, it was applied to the behavior of hyper vigilance. Other applications are suggested.

As demonstrated, the rTOT schematic has potentially wide application because of its pragmatic and detailed structure.

The rTOT requires careful consideration of teleological purposes for its application and is simple enough, but also complex enough, for relevant utilization. Its compact nature and adjustable hierarchy scope are good mini-max complexity solutions for cybernetic, information modeling schematics.

The revealed teleological purpose of the trauma adaptation of hyper vigilance presents significant alternative formulation options for prevention and intervention.

While the rTOT schematic is derived from previous schematics, it is original in its emphasis on information processing, the teleological aspects of extended recursion and on the provision of a hierarchical structure for those recursions. It is considerably more compact than other schematics associated with the ordered cybernetics literature. The explication of the adaptation model for post-trauma consequences is significantly enhanced by the rTOT application.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.