Child Sexual Abuse, Moral Panic, and the Mass Media: A Case Study in the Social Construction of Deviance

This is a case study of newswork in a moral panic. Specifically, Stanley Cohen\u27s concept of moral panic is used to examine the practices of a group of reporters who covered a widely publicized case of alleged child sexual abuse in a day-care center. Moral panics occur when a perceived threat to the social order emerges with such force, and with such little overt warning, that routine discourse about right and wrong gives way to a flood of indignation about an extraordinary breach of normal moral boundaries. Suspending normal rules governing social control, officials rush to crack down on the newly discovered menace. This study examined the role played by newsworkers in the social construction of a moral panic. For over three years, the case of alleged abuse was covered by three newspapers and several television and radio stations. Friends and family fiercely proclaimed the innocence of the defendants. Supporters of the alleged victims insisted that the children were telling the truth. In the middle of this maelstrom were the reporters, whose news accounts were closely scrutinized by all the parties to the case. The case study revealed that the reporters–working in an intensely competitive environment–effectively allowed the prosecution to define the case against the defendants and, more generally, to define child sexual abuse as a fundamental threat to social order. Specifically, the case study revealed the special role played by anonymous sources during moral panics. Anonymity provided official sources with an opportunity to favor sympathetic reporters, ignore others, and strategically release information likely to support the prosecution. Further, the case study revealed the central role of language in the social construction of a moral panic. Highly charged words and symbols became the linguistic representations of the evil that was threatening the community. And the choices made by the newsworkers as to how they would describe the alleged acts, often the result of substantial internal conflict within the newsgathering organizations, were a fundamental means by which the deviant threat was constructed. Finally, the case study revealed that, while the reporters were expected to maintain at least an appearance of emotional distance, they faced the same challenge as everyone else in a community seized by moral panic: Confronting a relatively new threat, they needed to understand the threat and cope with their own feelings of anger and revulsion. While they struggled to maintain at least a veneer of objectivity, these powerful emotions–felt most intensely when they heard the children testify–often led them to construct news accounts suggesting that the children were telling the truth

Estimation of groundwater consumption by phreatophytes using diurnal water table fluctuations: A saturated-unsaturated flow assessment

This is the published version. Copyright American Geophysical Union[1] Groundwater consumption by phreatophytes is a difficult-to-measure but important component of the water budget in many arid and semiarid environments. Over the past 70 years the consumptive use of groundwater by phreatophytes has been estimated using a method that analyzes diurnal trends in hydrographs from wells that are screened across the water table (White, 1932). The reliability of estimates obtained with this approach has never been rigorously evaluated using saturated-unsaturated flow simulation. We present such an evaluation for common flow geometries and a range of hydraulic properties. Results indicate that the major source of error in the White method is the uncertainty in the estimate of specific yield. Evapotranspirative consumption of groundwater will often be significantly overpredicted with the White method if the effects of drainage time and the depth to the water table on specific yield are ignored. We utilize the concept of readily available specific yield as the basis for estimation of the specific yield value appropriate for use with the White method. Guidelines are defined for estimating readily available specific yield based on sediment texture. Use of these guidelines with the White method should enable the evapotranspirative consumption of groundwater to be more accurately quantified

Spatial connectivity in a highly heterogeneous aquifer: From cores to preferential flow paths

This is the published version. Copyright American Geophysical Union[1] This study investigates connectivity in a small portion of the extremely heterogeneous aquifer at the Macrodispersion Experiment (MADE) site in Columbus, Mississippi. A total of 19 fully penetrating soil cores were collected from a rectangular grid of 4 m by 4 m. Detailed grain size analysis was performed on 5 cm segments of each core, yielding 1740 hydraulic conductivity (K) estimates. Three different geostatistical simulation methods were used to generate 3-D conditional realizations of the K field for the sampled block. Particle tracking calculations showed that the fastest particles, as represented by the first 5% to arrive, converge along preferential flow paths and exit the model domain within preferred areas. These 5% fastest flow paths accounted for about 40% of the flow. The distribution of preferential flow paths and particle exit locations is clearly influenced by the occurrence of clusters formed by interconnected cells with K equal to or greater than the 0.9 decile of the data distribution (10% of the volume). The fraction of particle paths within the high-K clusters ranges from 43% to 69%. In variogram-based K fields, some of the fastest paths are through media with lower K values, suggesting that transport connectivity may not require fully connected zones of relatively homogenous K. The high degree of flow and transport connectivity was confirmed by the values of two groups of connectivity indicators. In particular, the ratio between effective and geometric mean K (on average, about 2) and the ratio between the average arrival time and the arrival time of the fastest particles (on average, about 9) are consistent with flow and advective transport behavior characterized by channeling along preferential flow paths

Lack of Agreement in Pediatric Emergency Department Discharge Diagnoses from Clinical and Administrative Data Sources

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75409/1/j.1553-2712.2007.tb01852.x.pd

High-Throughput SHAPE Analysis Reveals Structures in HIV-1 Genomic RNA Strongly Conserved across Distinct Biological States

Replication and pathogenesis of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is tightly linked to the structure of its RNA genome, but genome structure in infectious virions is poorly understood. We invent high-throughput SHAPE (selective 2′-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension) technology, which uses many of the same tools as DNA sequencing, to quantify RNA backbone flexibility at single-nucleotide resolution and from which robust structural information can be immediately derived. We analyze the structure of HIV-1 genomic RNA in four biologically instructive states, including the authentic viral genome inside native particles. Remarkably, given the large number of plausible local structures, the first 10% of the HIV-1 genome exists in a single, predominant conformation in all four states. We also discover that noncoding regions functioning in a regulatory role have significantly lower (p-value < 0.0001) SHAPE reactivities, and hence more structure, than do viral coding regions that function as the template for protein synthesis. By directly monitoring protein binding inside virions, we identify the RNA recognition motif for the viral nucleocapsid protein. Seven structurally homologous binding sites occur in a well-defined domain in the genome, consistent with a role in directing specific packaging of genomic RNA into nascent virions. In addition, we identify two distinct motifs that are targets for the duplex destabilizing activity of this same protein. The nucleocapsid protein destabilizes local HIV-1 RNA structure in ways likely to facilitate initial movement both of the retroviral reverse transcriptase from its tRNA primer and of the ribosome in coding regions. Each of the three nucleocapsid interaction motifs falls in a specific genome domain, indicating that local protein interactions can be organized by the long-range architecture of an RNA. High-throughput SHAPE reveals a comprehensive view of HIV-1 RNA genome structure, and further application of this technology will make possible newly informative analysis of any RNA in a cellular transcriptome

Stroke Recurrence within 2 Years after Ischemic Infarction

We Prospectively Studied Stroke Recurrence in 1,273 Patients with Ischemic Stroke Who Were Entered into the Stroke Data Bank. Median Follow-Up Was 13 Months. the 2-Year Cumulative Recurrence Rate among These Patients Was 14.1%. Age, Sex, Race, History of Hypertension, Atrial Fibrillation, or Transient Ischemic Attacks, and Stroke Location Were Not Associated with a Higher Risk of Stroke Recurrence. Patients with an Elevated Blood Pressure, an Abnormal Initial Computed Tomogram, or a History of Diabetes Mellitus Were at a Higher Risk of Stroke Recurrence. in Contrast, Patients with an Infarct of Unknown Cause Were at a Lower Risk of Stroke Recurrence Than Patients with a Denned Stroke Mechanism, Such as Lacune, Embolism, or Atherosclerosis. Amultivaria Te Model Suggests that Patients at the Lowest Risk for Stroke Recurrence Have a Low Diastolic Blood Pressure, No History of Stroke, No History of Diabetes Mellitus, and an Infarct of Unknown Cause. © 1991 American Heart Association, Inc

Radiation Performance of 1 Gbit DDR SDRAMs Fabricated in the 90 nm CMOS Technology Node

We present Single Event Effect (SEE) and Total Ionizing Dose (TID) data for 1 Gbit DDR SDRAMs (90 nm CMOS technology) as well as comparing this data with earlier technology nodes from the same manufacturer