Flint’s Children: Narratives on Hope

Hope plays an important role in resiliency, well-being, and buffering against adversity. To explore children’s experiences with hope while developing in low-income communities, we conducted interviews with twenty-one children residing in Flint, Michigan, ages 9-12 years. Research questions focused on the specific hopes children have, the importance they ascribe to different hopes, and their experiences of feeling hopeful or less hopeful about desired outcomes. Children expressed interrelated hopes across multiple social-ecological domains, including hopes for themselves, hopes for their interpersonal relationships, and hopes for the community. Children placed particular importance on their hopes of helping others, which included providing for their families and aiding others in the community. Children, however, expressed uncertainty regarding their hopes related to career aspirations, academic achievement, financial stability, and obtaining basic needs. Our findings expand upon what is known about children’s internal dialogues with feeling hopeful or less hopeful about desired outcomes in low-income communities. These findings can enhance community and school-based programming so they further align with the specific hopes that children have, and attune to areas in which children in impoverished communities are most in need of hope-engendering strategies

Angular momentum dependence of complex fragment emission

Large fragment (A>4) production at high angular momentum is studied via the reaction, 200 MeV 45Sc + 65Cu. Comparisons of the fragment yields from this reaction (high angular momentum) to those from 93Nb + Be (low angular momentum) are used to verify the strong angular momentum dependence of large fragment production predicted by equilibrium models. Details of the coincident [gamma]-ray distributions not only confirm a rigidly rotating intermediate but also indicate that the widths of the primary L-wave distributions decrease with increasing symmetry in the decay channel. These data are used to test the asymmetry and L-wave dependence of emission barriers calculated from a rotating, finite range corrected, liquid drop model.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26579/1/0000118.pd

Ethnographic understandings of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods to inform urban design practice

The aim of this paper is to inform urban design practice through deeper understanding and analysis of the social dynamics of public outdoor space in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods. We hypothesise that findings from ethnographic research can provide a resource that improves cultural literacy and supports social justice in professional practice. The primary method is a meta-synthesis literature review of 24 ethnographic research papers, all of which explore some dimensions of public open space use and values in UK urban contexts characterised by ethnic and racial diversity. We summarise thematic understandings and significance of neighbourhood places of shared activity, parks, spaces of passing-by and of retreat. We evaluate the implications for intercultural social dynamics, exploring the spatial and temporal dimensions of conviviality and racism in public open space. We then argue that it is possible to develop principles for urban design practice informed by this work, and propose four for discussion: maximising straightforward participation, legitimising diversity of activity, designing in micro-retreats of nearby quietness and addressing structural inequalities of open space provision. We conclude that ethnographic research can provide detailed insights into the use of the public realm and also inform a more nuanced understanding of outdoor sociality relevant for an increasingly diverse society. The challenge is two-fold: for ethnographers to become less cautious in engaging with decisions and priorities regarding how cities change, and for urban designers to explicitly embed informed understandings of difference into their broad desire for inclusive public space

Young masculinities, purity and danger: Disparities in framings of boys and girls in policy discourses of sexualisation

One of the reasons why it is ‘hard to explain’ the lack of attention to boys in discourses in sexualisation is that approached head-on, it appears that the focus on girls has no logic and is merely accidental. One might point to the research that is beginning to emerge on the increased visibility of the male body in visual cultures (e.g. Gill, 2009) and to boys’ fashion and embodiment (e.g. Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2013). However, we propose that the tendency towards a problematisation of girls’ fashion and deportment and the invisibility of boys within policy and media discourses on ‘sexualisation’ is a systemic effect of constructions of gender and sexual subjectivity. In our society, we argue, signifiers of feminine purity operate as a form of symbolic capital, a construction that is not attributed to boys and which is integral scaffolding for the depiction of a subject as threatened by sexualisation. To illustrate our theorising regarding the ‘sexualisation of boys’, we shall examine an apparent exception to the rule: the Papadopoulos Review (2010), which explicitly attends to the sexualisation of boys and ends up re-emphasising rather than analysing the gendered and classed discourses of sexualisation. The Papadopolous Review indicates a moment at which a problematisation of the sexualisation of boys could have been triggered – since attention to both boys and girls was specifically part of the remit of the review – but was not, for specific sociological reasons to do with which subjects are assessed against the criterion of innocence

Clinical effects of cannabis compared to synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists (SCRAs): a retrospective cohort study of presentations with acute toxicity to European hospitals between 2013 and 2020.

INTRODUCTION Cannabis is the most common recreational drug worldwide and synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists are currently the largest group of new psychoactive substances. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical features and outcomes of lone acute cannabis toxicity with lone acute synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist toxicity in a large series of presentations to European emergency departments between 2013-2020. METHODS Self-reported drug exposure, clinical, and outcome data were extracted from the European Drug Emergencies Network Plus which is a surveillance network that records data on drug-related emergency department presentations to 36 centres in 24 European countries. Cannabis exposure was considered the control in all analyses. To compare the lone cannabis and lone synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist groups, univariate analysis using chi squared testing was used for categorical variables and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U- testing for continuous variables. Statistical significance was defined as a P value of < 0.05. RESULTS Between 2013-2020 there were 54,314 drug related presentations of which 2,657 were lone cannabis exposures and 503 lone synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist exposures. Synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist presentations had statistically significantly higher rates of drowsiness, coma, agitation, seizures and bradycardia at the time of presentation. Cannabis presentations were significantly more likely to have palpitations, chest pain, hypertension, tachycardia, anxiety, vomiting and headache. DISCUSSION Emergency department presentations involving lone synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist exposures were more likely to have neuropsychiatric features and be admitted to a psychiatric ward, and lone cannabis exposures were more likely to have cardiovascular features. Previous studies have shown variability in the acute toxicity of synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists compared with cannabis but there is little comparative data available on lone exposures. There is limited direct comparison in the current literature between lone synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonist and lone cannabis exposure, with only two previous poison centre series and two clinical series. Whilst this study is limited by self-report being used to identify the drug(s) involved in the presentations, previous studies have demonstrated that self-report is reliable in emergency department presentations with acute drug toxicity. CONCLUSION This study directly compares presentations with acute drug toxicity related to the lone use of cannabis or synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists. It supports previous findings of increased neuropsychiatric toxicity from synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists compared to cannabis and provides further data on cardiovascular toxicity in lone cannabis use