International Trade and Economic Development Strategy: Can Foreign Direct Investment Be Predicted?

This study identifies factors that might be used by the state to better target foreign industries and countries that are more likely to be seeking investment opportunities in the U.S

Service-Level Barriers To Accessing Support Following Intimate Partner Violence For Men Who Have Sex With Men: Service Provider Perspectives

Background: Research indicates that intimate partner violence occurs in male same-sex relationships at a similar or higher rate than in heterosexual relationships and is associated with significant distress and adverse physical and mental health outcomes. However, dominant understandings of intimate partner violence take a traditional feminist approach based on patriarchy and gender power imbalance; a framework which does not fit for male same-sex relationships. There is little understanding of the barriers which may impact men who have sex with men’s ability to seek help and the ways in which services contribute to these barriers, particularly in the UK. Aims: To explore mental health professionals’ views and experiences of the service-level barriers that face men who have sex with men who have experienced intimate partner violence as well as what services in the UK could be doing to better support them, in the hope that this will lead to improvements in support and services. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mental health professionals and covered participants’ experiences of working with men who have sex with men who have experienced intimate partner violence, their views on the barriers to accessing support and what services could be doing to better serve this community. Results: Thematic analysis from a critical realist perspective identified three overarching themes, each with their own subthemes: ‘Confined to within’ (‘Bound by abuse’, ‘Silenced by shame’), ‘The system says ‘no’’ (‘Toxic hetero-patriarchal lens’, ‘Intersecting layers of oppression’, ‘Not the ‘right’ client’) and ‘Minority becoming majority’ (‘Mainstream services exclude’, ‘Making the inaccessible accessible’, ‘Unlearning and re-learning’). Conclusions: Results from the analysis are discussed in the context of relevant theory, in particular the Barriers Model to Help-Seeking (St Pierre & Senn, 2010), and previous research. The study highlighted the importance of a nuanced understanding of intimate partner violence in male same-sex relationships as well as the importance of the socio-political context, including discourses of anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice, heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity, in the setting up of structural barriers to accessing support

International trade and economic development: Can foreign direct investment be predicted?

It would appear obvious that not all countries and industries are equally good business recruitment targets for the state’s economic development efforts. However, partly due to data limitations, little detailed research has been done to clarify how a state might direct its recruitment strategies to those industries and countries more likely to be seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities within the United States. This paper is a move toward rectifying this deficiency.

Team Dinners: Considering Trends, Traditions, and Impacts beyond Sport

Team dinners persist as an enduring tradition merging sport and food. Encompassing sportsmanship, superstition, and sometimes even classically trained chefs, team dinners are enjoyed by youth and professional athletes alike worldwide. However, the role and impacts of such rituals remain poorly understood. This paper contends that team dinners represent a unique gastronomic phenomenon that has lasting effects beyond sport. Given that sport and food are often both culturally entrenched and emotionally bound, team dinners are likely influential in molding adolescence athletes’ notions of nutrition, food choice, and acceptable dining behaviors. In the U.S., pre- and post-game dinners are used as a means of recruiting student-athletes to elite collegiate teams and some programs have even constructed facilities dedicated to the procurement, production, and distribution of meals to athletes in turn shaping supply-lines and campus skylines and introducing students to elevated food experiences likely not had before. At the professional level, some of the most decorated athletes adhere to pre-game meal superstitions, while others use the meals to tout their status. In short, team dinners are seemingly significant to both sport and food in a myriad of ways. Thus, they deserve further academic consideration and offers avenues for future scholarly exploration

Sara Liza: a Pant Suit and a Paint Brush

I am a painter who seeks more for my art business and career than that of a “starving artist.” Trading the Pant Suit for a Paint Brush is a business plan that serves as my blueprint and foundation for becoming a well-known artist, owning a personal studio and maintaining significant gallery presence across the country. I am to accomplish this through intentional customer targeting and production mastery. My target market is not specific to a certain demographic but instead a psychographic – original art enthusiasts and collectors. I am specifically targeting those who appreciate the value of original paintings through physical galleries, an online gallery, a monthly newsletter and social media. My evolving plan is split by stages – starting with an online gallery to later holding a large physical gallery presence and owning a studio – which encompass both short and long-term goals and milestones. I am to be consistent in continually researching artists in order to mold my product, informing my community and audience of new works and accomplishments, and adapting my business plan as I learn more about the market and where I fit. Each artist fits a niche based on whom they inspire, or emotionally touch, with their work – which is what I have found to be the primary motivator of purchasing original artwork. My goal is to become a successful, full-time painter through creating original, inspiring pieces that speak to others in a unique way

Forgotten Glory: African American Civil War Soldiers and Their Omission from Civil War Memory

African American soldiers were a central aspect of the Union Army’s effort to defeat the Confederate Army in the Civil War, yet their contributions were forgotten by white American society in the fifty years following the end of the conflict. Their contributions were absent in the various forms of commemoration that were performed and constructed after the war, including monuments, Memorial Day services, and veterans’ reunions. Through examining these forms of commemoration, as well as Emancipation Day celebrations, certain trends become apparent. African American veterans were excluded from Civil War memory through physical segregation both physically and in the language used in these forms of commemoration. Reunification, or “the Union cause,” was remembered by white American society as the dominant outcome of the Civil War, while white Americans ignored the Emancipation cause that African American soldiers fought for and achieved. African American soldiers were left out of white America’s public memory of the Civil War through ignoring the Emancipation causem as well as their segregation from avenues of commemoration. Ultimately, Civil War memory was a segregated memory

Everything Happens for a Riesling: A Case Study of Wine Tasting Experience Design at Claiborne & Churchill Winery

Time is one of the most valuable commodities, and many tourists and wine enthusiasts turn to wine tasting as a way to spend this resource. Wineries have developed unique experiences to showcase the varietals they specialize in and utilize this opportunity to connect with their consumers through the tactic of experience design. The purpose of this study was to holistically examine the wine tasting experience at Claiborne & Churchill Winery. A case study was conducted on this winery using an instrument developed by the researcher to analyze the components of the total wine tasting experience, a holistic examination of their practices and strategies. The findings concluded that the people-focused hospitality implemented fulfills the needs of the consumer. Recommendations include adding specialized element to elevate the experience design depending on the purpose of the consumer’s visit

Constructing Womanhood and the Female Cyborg: A Feminist Reading of Ex Machina and Westworld

Female cyborgs have occupied the collective imagination since 1927’s iconic science fiction film Metropolis, reappearing in various popular films and television shows since Metropolis. Some feminist critics argue that depictions of female robots and cyborgs in earlier film and television reinforce sexist norms about female characters in film and television through imagining gendered robots and cyborgs in the form of an “ideal” female body and robots programmed by male scientists for their own purpose; others, however, argue that these same cyborg depictions disrupt traditional binaries of male/female and the biological/technological. How do more recent cinematic and televisual texts’ portrayals of female cyborgs extend or complicate these critiques, especially as the representational strategies of texts such as Ex Machina and Westworld draw from contemporary cultural anxieties about gender, labor, and technology reflected in popular narratives about “the end of men” or the displacements of an increasingly technologized American work force? Attending to the complex ways in which gender, race and sexuality are articulated in these recent fictional texts through a human/robot distinction they both reinscribe and unsettle, and drawing primarily from feminist film studies, cyborg studies, and feminist theory, I argue that Ex Machina’s and HBO’s Westworld’s female cyborgs ultimately re-purpose a trope that conventionally and ostensibly re-entrenches gender and racial norms toward a feminist critique of how U.S. popular culture generally negotiates the perceived promise and peril of new technologies through “old” technologies of race and gender

Optimal battery charge/discharge strategies for prosumers and suppliers

We discuss the application of classical variational methods to optimal charging/discharging strategies for a prosumer or storage supplier, where the price of electrical power is known in advance. We outline how a classical calculus of variations approach can be applied to two related problems: (i) how can a prosumer minimise the cost of charging/discharging a battery, when the price of electrical power is known throughout the charging/discharging period? and (ii) how can an electricity supplier incentivise desired prosumer/storage supplier behaviour by adjusting the price