Rural Resentment and LGBTQ Equality

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges settled a decades-long national debate over the legality of same-sex marriage. Since Obergefell, however, local and state legislatures in conservative and mostly rural states have proposed and passed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills. Obergefell may have ended the legal debate over same-sex marriage, but it did not resolve the cultural divide. Many rural Americans, especially in predominately white communities, feel that they are under attack. Judicial opinions and legislation protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination are serious threats to rural dwellers because they conflict with several core tenets of rural identity: community solidarity, self-reliance, and compliance with religiously informed gender and sexual norms. This conflict is amplified by the relative invisibility of gay and transgender people who live in rural areas, and the predominantly urban media representations of gay and transgender people. In several respects, the conflict is merely perceived and is not real. It is at these junctures of perceived conflict that we can draw important lessons for bridging the cultural divide, thereby protecting LGBTQ people across geographic spaces. This Article examines the sources and modern manifestations of rural LGBTQ resentment to provide foundational insights for the ongoing fight to protect all vulnerable minorities. Pro-LGBTQ legislation and judicial opinions symbolize a changing America in which white rural inhabitants see their identities disappeqaring, devalued, and disrespected. The left, popularly represented in rural America as a group of urban elites, characterizes anti-LGBTQ views a bigoted, and many people in small towns feel victimized by this criticism. Drawing on a robust body of social science research, this Article suggests that these feelings of victimization lead to resentment when outside forces, like federal judges and state and big-city legislators, tell rural Americans how to act, think, and feel. Rural Americans resent undeserving minorities who have gained rights and recognition, in contrasts to the identities of, and at the perceived expense of, white, straight, working-class prestige. They resent that liberal, largely urban outsiders are telling them that they must change who they are to accomodate people they perceive as unlike them. Opposing LGBTQ rights is thus one mechanism to protect and assert rural identity. It is important to unearth and pay attention to white rural anti-LGBTQ resentment in the post-Obergefell era because it is part of a larger force animating conservation politics across the United States

The Charles C. Wise Library : a retrospective

The Charles C. Wise Library: A Retrospective presents the fascinating story of the “tremendous setting for learning” and contains beautiful photographs documenting the library’s growth from 1931 to 2006

Dignity, Inequality, and Stereotypes

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage bans violate the Equal Protection Clause for two primary reasons. First, they subordinate; they send the message that lesbians and gays are inferior to heterosexuals. Second, they unequally deny lesbian and gay individuals the liberty to make fundamental decisions about identity and self. These two conjoined themes—anti-group subordination and pro-individual liberty—comprise the two pillars of “equal dignity” that anchor Obergefell’s holding. This Article proposes that these pillars also support the Court’s anti-stereotyping jurisprudence, and equal dignity is thus one important aspect of what the Equal Protection Clause protects. To illustrate: in sex discrimination cases, courts reject state stereotyping when it perpetuates ideas about men’s and women’s roles and reinforces women’s inferior social status; in transgender and sexual orientation discrimination cases, courts have begun to protect LGBTQ individuals from state demands for conformity to normative stereotypes about how to be a man or woman. Protecting individuals’ equal dignity can sometimes become complicated when the reasons for addressing a group’s purported needs elide individual concerns and attachments. For example, the government sometimes relies on normative and statistical information about groups to combat group-associated health and poverty risks, to remedy individual disparate treatment, and to prevent wholesale group exclusion from opportunities and civic duties. Addressing these group-based needs, however, may effectively perpetuate stereotypes about what group membership means. Individual group members may object to the identitarian implications of the government’s help. Not all stereotyping both subordinates a group and denies individuals the liberty to be and express who they are. Accordingly, stereotyping is not wrong in and of itself; how the government uses stereotypes should determine whether state action violates the Equal Protection Clause. Counterintuitively, stereotyping can sometimes promote rather than deny equal dignity. While any state reliance on stereotypes risks essentializing identity, an absolute stereotyping prohibition exacerbates certain forms of race, sex, and sexual orientation blindness. Groups are important, and the government requires some flexibility to address group-based needs

Africa Rising in an Emerging World: An International Marketing Perspective

Purpose: The primary goal of this introductory article is to highlight important contemporary themes in international marketing strategy from the perspective of Sub-Saharan African firms. Design/methodology/approach: The approach adopted is a review and synopsis of the existing body of research on international marketing research in Sub-Saharan African, and a discussion of the manuscripts included in the special issue. Findings: International marketing in Sub-Sahara Africa is growing steadily, driven largely by rapid changes in socio-economic and demographic characteristics of consumers in this market. The growing appetite of multinational enterprises to explore new growth opportunities on this continent and the increasing intra-Africa cross-border transactions is driving unique approaches to international marketing that are predicated on using non-traditional means to produce, communicate and distribute products and services. Research limitations/implications: While the international marketing opportunities and challenges discussed in this article are not exhaustive, the paper highlights important research themes that need consideration regarding international marketing research in Sub-Saharan Africa. Originality/value: This introductory article emphasizes the unique international business landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa and discusses its international marketing strategy implications. The article further draws attention to a number of unanswered research questions that require additional research, and thus bring Sub-Saharan Africa to international marketing scholarly enquiry

Reconciling multiple societal objectives in cross-scale marine governance: Solomon Islands’ engagement in the Coral Triangle Initiative

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Environmental governance aims to reconcile an expanding set of societal objectives at ever-larger scales despite the challenges that remain in integrating conservation and development at smaller scales. We interrogate Solomon Islands’ engagement in the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security to contribute new insight on the scalar politics of multi-level marine governance. We show how regional objectives are re-interpreted and prioritized as they translate into national policy and practice. Our data suggest that enhanced coordination of finances and activities, integration of objectives in shared protocols and priority geographies, and a subtle shift in power relations between the state, donors, and implementation partners have resulted from processes of re-scaling. We discuss important procedural adjustments in cross-level and cross-scale governance across jurisdictional, institutional, and sectoral scales. We also reflect on the changing role of national governments in shifts toward large-scale, multi-national initiatives.LE acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. PJC and DB undertook this work as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agrifood Systems (FISH). Funding support for this study was provided by an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research grant (FIS/2012/074)

Elucidating the role of matrix porosity and rigidity in glioblastoma type IV progression

The highly infiltrating nature of glioma cells is the major cause for the poor prognosis of brain malignancies. Motility, proliferation, and gene expression of cells in natural and synthetic gels have been analyzed by several authors, yet quantitative studies elucidating the role of matrix porosity and rigidity in the development of whole malignant masses are missing. Here, an experimental\u2010computational framework is introduced to analyze the behavior of U87\u2010MG cells and spheroids in compact hyaluronic acid gels (HA), replicating the brain parenchyma; and fibrous collagen gels (COL), resembling the organized structures of the brain. Experimentally it was observed that individual U87\u2010MG cells in COL assumed an elongated morphology within a few hours post inclusion (p.i.) and travelled longer distances than in HA. As spheroids, U87\u2010MG cells rapidly dispersed into COL resulting in infiltrating regions as large as tumor cores ( 48600 \u3bcm, at 8 days p.i.). Conversely, cells in HA originated smaller and denser infiltrating regions ( 48300 \u3bcm, at 8 days p.i.). Notably, COL tumor core size was only 20% larger than in HA, at longer time points. Computationally, by introducing for the first time the effects of matrix heterogeneity in our numerical simulations, the results confirmed that matrix porosity and its spatial organization are key factors in priming the infiltrating potential of these malignant cells. The experimental\u2010numerical synergy can be used to predict the behavior of neoplastic masses under diverse conditions and the efficacy of combination therapies simultaneously aiming at killing cancer cells and modulating the tumor microenvironment

Memory effect in silicon time-gated single-photon avalanche diodes

We present a comprehensive characterization of the memory effect arising in thin-junction silicon Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) when exposed to strong illumination. This partially unknown afterpulsing-like noise represents the main limiting factor when time-gated acquisitions are exploited to increase the measurement dynamic range of very fast (picosecond scale) and faint (single-photon) optical signals following a strong stray one. We report the dependences of this unwelcome signal-related noise on photon wavelength, detector temperature, and biasing conditions. Our results suggest that this so-called "memory effect" is generated in the deep regions of the detector, well below the depleted region, and its contribution on detector response is visible only when time-gated SPADs are exploited to reject a strong burst of photons

A parametric study of a multiphase porous media model for tumor spheroids and environment interactions

Computational models for tumor growth provide an effective in silico tool to investigate the different stages of cancer growth. Recently, a series of computational models based on porous media theory has been proposed to predict tumor evolution and its interactions with the host tissue. In addition, a specialization of the original models, adapted for tumor spheroids, has been proposed and validated experimentally. However, due to the complexity of the modeling framework, a systematic understanding of the role of the parameters governing the equations is still lacking. In this work, we perform a parametric analysis on a set of fundamental parameters appearing in the model equations. We investigate the effects of a variation of these coefficients on the spheroid growth curves and, in particular, on the final radii reached by the cell aggregates in the growth saturation stage. Finally, we provide a discussion of the results and give a brief summary of our findings