First-Year Students\u27 Use of Social Network Sites to Reduce the Uncertainty of Anticipatory Socialization

This study surveyed 399 incoming first-year students at two colleges in the Midwest on their use of social network sites before college entry and its impact on various dimensions of the first-year experience. Significant correlations were found for two pairs of variables: (a) students who used social network sites before arriving on campus reported greater roommate compatibility than students who did not use such sites and (b) students who rated the information on social network sites as high in accuracy also reported a high match between their first-year expectations and experiences. Implications for student affairs administrators are discussed

Good Working Mothers as Jugglers: A Critical Look at Two Work-Family Balance Films

We examine the portrayals of two good working mothers in popular work–family balance films—Melanie in One Fine Day (1996) and Kate in I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011). Using a critical standpoint, we build on communication work–family/life scholarship to extend theoretical understanding of underlying ideological notions of the good working mother. In particular, we analyze Melanie and Kate’s performances that reflect the underlying cultural ideologies of being an ideal worker, a true domestic woman, and an intensive mother. Further, we explicate how this juggling of identities portrays good working mothers as perpetually defensive. We go beyond the analysis of ideologies to lay out some of the consequences of the performance portrayals of the good working mother, in that she should (a) accept “punishments” from her children, (b) conceptualize fathers as secondary parents, (c) solve problems on her own, and (d) choose family over work.Citation: Kirby, E. L., Riforgiate, S. E., Anderson, I. K., Lahman, M. P., & Lietzenmayer, A. M. (2016). Good Working Mothers as Jugglers: A Critical Look at Two Work-Family Balance Films. Journal of Family Communication, 16, 76-93. doi:10.1080/15267431.2015.111121

Gambling with the nation : heroines of the Japanese yakuza film, 1955–1975

A revamped period-drama film genre surfaced after the Allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), featuring androgynous comic heroines who cross-dressed to perform male and female yakuza roles. By the late 1960s, they had been replaced by increasingly sexualized figures, and later by the ‘pink’ violence of the ‘girl boss’ sub-genre. Yet masculine themes in the ‘nihilistic’ yakuza films of the late 1960s and 1970s have been the focus of most scholarship on the genre, with scant attention paid to the female yakuza film. This article offers an iconographic reading of the heroines of the yakuza genre, arguing that the re-imagining of a postwar ‘Japaneseness’ was conducted as much through the yakuza genre’s heroines as its heroes. Through analysis of key visual motifs, narrative tropes, and star personae, the image of the female yakuza can be read as a commentary on social conditions in postwar Japan. We can see the rapid social and political changes of postwar Japan reflected and mediated through the changing image of the female yakuza heroine during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s

The Bacterial Fimbrial Tip Acts as a Mechanical Force Sensor

The subunits that constitute the bacterial adhesive complex located at the tip of the fimbria form a hook-chain that acts as a rapid force-sensitive anchor at high flow

Uses and Gratifications of Online Guestbooks: A Study of CaringBridge

This study investigated how online care pages help people connect with others and gain social support during a health care event. It reports the results of a survey of 1035 CaringBridge authors who set up personalized web pages because of hospitalization, serious illness, or other reasons, regarding the uses and gratifications obtained from their sites. Four primary benefits were found to be important to all authors of CaringBridge sites: providing information, receiving encouragement from messages, convenience, and psychological support. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed significant effects for six demographic and health-related variables: gender, age, religiosity, Internet usage, the purpose for which the site was set up, and sufficiency of information received from health care providers. Support was obtained for the perspective that online care pages provide new media gratifications for authors, and that health-related antecedents of media use may affect media selection and gratifications. The implications of this study forCommunication researchers and support services like CaringBridge are also discussed

Alternative viewership practices in Kyoto, Japan

Cinema attendance and domestic production is once more on the rise in East Asia. At the same time, Japanese cinema is enjoying a domestic boom. This chapter takes as a case study alternative viewership practices in the city of Kyoto from 2014 to 2017, where Shōwa era (1926–1989) classics were screened twice a day at the Kyōto Bunka Hakubutsukan (City Culture Museum), while just streets away younger audiences viewed art house and independent films at the Rissei “squatter cinema.” Combining ethnographic materials including interviews, questionnaires, and participant observation with analysis of venue spaces and programming, this chapter analyzes the attractions of alternative cinema spaces for viewers in Kyoto

A test of community reassembly using the exotic communities of New Zealand roadsides in comparison to British roadsides

1 Competing theories of community assembly are very difficult to test. Four main theories exist. The Stochastic theory sees species assembly as being random. The Humpty Dumpty/Alternative Stable States (ASS) theory suggests that a community may be unable to reassemble itself from its constituent species. The Deterministic theory suggests there will be convergence to one stable state. The Pre-adaptation theory is similar to the Deterministic theory but emphasizes that many species fit the stable state because of characters acquired elsewhere. 2 The reassembly of a flora into new communities in a different country, or its assimilation as a major component of such communities, offers a means to test these theories. The invasion of British plant species into New Zealand, and their reassembly into roadside communities there, is a good example of such a natural experiment. 3 Plant communities of NZ roadsides were compared to the communities of the British National Vegetation Classification (NVC). British roadside communities were also compared to the NVC as a control. New Zealand roadside communities provided a fit to the NVC communities of only 54.7% on average. After excluding species that are not present in NZ, and therefore could not possibly reassemble, the fit increased to 61.1%. British roadsides gave a 65.8% fit. The NZ figures are similar to the fit obtained with random data (58.7%), indicating that the NZ communities bear little relation to the ones formed by the same species in Britain. 4 Similarity between roadside communities in NZ and Britain was low, forming two almost distinct sets of communities. 5 Some of the predictions of the Stochastic, Humpty Dumpty/ASS and Deterministic models are borne out, but others are not. It is concluded that British species have reassembled into communities in NZ most of which are new, i.e. distinct from those that occur in the native range of the species in Britain. The evidence points to a process of community assembly by pre-adaptation

Thirty-two new cases with small supernumerary marker chromosomes detected in connection with fertility problems: detailed molecular cytogenetic characterization and review of the literature

Thirty-two patients with fertility problems were identified as carriers of small supernumerary marker chromosomes (sSMC). Molecular cytogenetic techniques were used to characterize their chromosomal origin. Together with the other cases available in the literature 111 sSMC cases have now been detected in connection with fertility problems in otherwise clinically healthy persons and characterized for their genetic content. According to this study, in 60% of the cases the sSMC originated from chromosomes 14 or 15. Euchromatic imbalances were caused by the sSMC presence in 30% of the cases. Notably, in 53% of infertile sSMC carriers, the sSMC was parentally transmitted. As we found indications of an as yet unknown mechanism for the elimination of sSMC from the human gene pool, sSMC could also play a role in elucidating the process of chromosome gain and loss during evolution. Nonetheless, further detailed molecular analysis will be necessary in the future to characterize the mechanisms and genetic basis for this phenomenon