Ethical issues in the marketing of skin lightening products

Skin lightening products are used medically for the treatment of a range of skin disorders, however a major market has developed in their use for cosmetic purposes, particularly in countries where darker skin tones are prevalent. Many major multinational brands are active in the sector and high percentages of women reportedly use the products daily. In this paper we analyse a number of serious product safety issues relating to this sector, such as the use of mercury and other toxic substances in some products. We discuss a wide range of ethical issues relating to the marketing of products in the sector and the need for more consistent and effective regulation of the sector overall

Queer Vulnerability and Disaster Situations

The appropriateness of branding certain disaster events as a natural disaster continues to be academically debated, given that few disasters are solely the result of uncontrollable forces of nature, and are instead anthropogenic in their creation, or exacerbated by the relationship humans have with actual and potential hazards. Therefore, this socially constructed nature of disasters also makes groups that are marginalized within society, such as queer people, more vulnerable to these disasters. Utilizing a Bourdieusian framework, the field of disaster preparedness, management, and recovery is examined for queer vulnerability, which is deconstructed here as a product of global and local cultures, in their distribution of economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital away from queer people. The concepts of habitus and subsidiary concepts of ethos and doxa are deployed to understand the ingrained ways of doing and being that perpetuate discrimination against queer individuals through said inequitable distributions of capital. It is argued that the field is privileged for heteronormative lives, thus leading to heteronormative assumptions and actions that further marginalize queer experiences before, during, and after disasters during disasters. In light of this, we call for a more social justice informed approach to disaster risk reduction and relief, in which heteronormativity is consciously decentered to ensure all groups are kept safe from disasters, which can arguably never be natural

Queer vulnerability & resilience to natural disasters

So-called “natural disasters” have devastating impacts on society, and the increase in the frequency and intensity of these disasters due to climate change means the impact of these are an increasingly salient concern to all. However, previous research has shown the disproportionate impacts of said disasters on marginalised populations, including the queer community, who are vulnerable to these impacts before, during and after. Through the framework of social constructionism, this paper explores how we as a society create inequity for queer people, respond to disasters without inclusion and recover from them with exclusion is what makes them a disaster, and an unnatural one at that. The paper also looks to the queer community and their acts of resilience as a lever to recast them from the role of victim, whilst acknowledging the limitations and sometimes harmful impact of expecting individuals and groups to be resilient in the face of such disasters

"Olá! Estás a ouvir-me?" An exploration of health information seeking and likely comprehension of Internet-based health information in Portuguese and English // "Olá! Estás a ouvir-me?" Estudo exploratório da informação de saúde e da sua compreensão, com base em fontes da Internet em português e inglês

[English] This paper focuses on health literacy and readability analysis as a guide for enhancing health information. Based on a selection of internet-derived health and wellbeing materials, we show that the information available in both Portuguese and English is at a level likely to be too complex for the general population to understand. We also show a possible formula for adapting enabling the SMOG readability analysis tool so that it can be applied to information written in Portuguese and conclude the paper with a research agenda to help inform practice and policy debate. [Portuguese] Este artigo centra-se na literacia em saúde e na análise de legibilidade como um guia para a melhoria da informação de saúde. Com base numa seleção de materiais sobre a saúde e o bem-estar, provenientes da Internet, mostramos que a informação disponível, tanto em português como em inglês, está escrita num nível de complexidade provavelmente superior ao entendido pela população em geral. Ao mesmo tempo, propomos um ajuste ao modelo de análise de legibilidade SMOG, para que possa ser utilizado em informação escrita em português. Concluímos o artigo com uma agenda de pesquisa para informar a prática e o debate político

Marketing Communications

With the proliferation of digital and social media, there has never been a more dynamic time to engage with marketing communications - and never has the integration of marketing communications (marcoms) principles into a strategic marketing plan been more challenging. Even the best product in the world won't sell without the right reach to your potential customers and the right message to engage them. This textbook applies a uniquely practical approach to the topic so that, whilst a structured overview of planning, development, implementation and evaluation of marketing communications is in place, the detailed cases made available by the Institute for Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) show how actual challenges faced by professionals in the field were addressed. This book will help you to develop the skills you need to turn theory into the right integrated communication plan, in order to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment. Aided by a veritable wealth of pedagogical features, Marketing Communications will be essential reading for both students and professionals in marketing, communications and public relations. This textbook also benefits from a companion website which includes a comprehensive instructor's guide with PowerPoint slides, testbank questions and answer checklists

A model and test for coordinated polygenic epistasis in complex traits

Interactions between genetic variants—epistasis—is pervasive in model systems and can profoundly impact evolutionary adaption, population disease dynamics, genetic mapping, and precision medicine efforts. In this work, we develop a model for structured polygenic epistasis, called coordinated epistasis (CE), and prove that several recent theories of genetic architecture fall under the formal umbrella of CE. Unlike standard epistasis models that assume epistasis and main effects are independent, CE captures systematic correlations between epistasis and main effects that result from pathway-level epistasis, on balance skewing the penetrance of genetic effects. To test for the existence of CE, we propose the even-odd (EO) test and prove it is calibrated in a range of realistic biological models. Applying the EO test in the UK Biobank, we find evidence of CE in 18 of 26 traits spanning disease, anthropometric, and blood categories. Finally, we extend the EO test to tissue-specific enrichment and identify several plausible tissue–trait pairs. Overall, CE is a dimension of genetic architecture that can capture structured, systemic forms of epistasis in complex human traits

Hybrid Lattice-Boltzmann-Potential Flow Simulations of Turbulent Flow around Submerged Structures

We report on the development and validation of a 3D hybrid Lattice Boltzmann Model (LBM), with Large Eddy Simulation (LES), to simulate the interactions of incompressible turbulent flows with ocean structures. The LBM is based on a perturbation method, in which the velocity and pressure are expressed as the sum of an inviscid flow and a viscous perturbation. The far- to near-field flow is assumed to be inviscid and represented by potential flow theory, which can be efficiently modeled with a Boundary Element Method (BEM). The near-field perturbation flow around structures is modeled by the Navier–Stokes (NS) equations, based on a Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) with a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) of the turbulence. In the paper, we present the hybrid model formulation, in which a modified LBM collision operator is introduced to simulate the viscous perturbation flow, resulting in a novel perturbation LBM (pLBM) approach. The pLBM is then extended for the simulation of turbulence using the LES and a wall model to represent the viscous/turbulent sub-layer near solid boundaries. The hybrid model is first validated by simulating turbulent flows over a flat plate, for moderate to large Reynolds number values, Re ∈ [3.7×104;1.2×106]; the plate friction coefficient and near-field turbulence properties computed with the model are found to agree well with both experiments and direct NS simulations. We then simulate the flow past a NACA-0012 foil using a regular LBM-LES and the new hybrid pLBM-LES models with the wall model, for Re = 1.44 x 106. A good agreement is found for the computed lift and drag forces, and pressure distribution on the foil, with experiments and results of other numerical methods. Results obtained with the pLBM model are either nearly identical or slightly improved, relative to those of the standard LBM, but are obtained in a significantly smaller computational domain and hence at a much reduced computational cost, thus demonstrating the benefits of the new hybrid approach

Freedom through marketing is not double speak

The articles comprising this thematic symposium suggest options for exploring the nexus between freedom and unfreedom, as exemplified by the British abolitionists’ anti-slavery campaign and the paradox of freedom. Each article has implications for how these abolitionists achieved their goals, social activists’ efforts to secure reparations for slave ancestors, and modern slavery (e.g., human trafficking). We present the abolitionists’ undertaking as a marketing campaign, highlighting the role of instilling moral agency and indignation through rehumanizing the dehumanized. Despite this campaign’s eventual success, its post-emancipation phase illustrates a paradox of freedom. After introducing mystification as an explanation for the obscuring rhetoric used to conceal post-emancipation violations of freedom during the West’s colonial phase, we briefly discuss the appropriateness of reparations. Finally, we discuss the contributions made by the articles in this thematic symposium