A\u27s from Zzzz\u27s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents

Recent sleep research finds that many adolescents are sleep-deprived because of both early school start times and changing sleep patterns during the teen years. This study identifies the causal effect of school start time on academic achievement by using two policy changes in the daily schedule at the US Air Force Academy along with the randomized placement of freshman students to courses and instructors. Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation. (JEL I23, J13

Hunt the Wizard! Race, Immigration, and British Tabloid Coverage of David Duke’s 1978 Tour

Drawing on a range of material from the British Newspaper Archives, the University of Northampton, the Institute of Race Relations, and other institutions, this article sheds new light on a widely overlooked British tour by American Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 1978. Duke’s arrival was a cause célèbre for the British press and for the British tabloids in particular, which eagerly kept readers up-to-date on police efforts to ‘hunt the wizard.’ While such coverage sought to cast Duke as an outsider and political extremist, it played directly into the Klansman’s talents for media manipulation and helped to disseminate his racist ideologies to a wide audience. As this article demonstrates, by focusing on Duke’s ‘good-for-a-laugh’ encounters with law enforcement, the tabloids minimised both longstanding efforts to establish a Klan presence in Britain and a more recent surge in Klan-inspired attacks. Duke’s arrival was not simply an isolated visit by an American extremist. It was connected to the broader emergence of a ‘post-war Anglo-American far right’ and can be understood as a direct response to heightened racial tensions in Britain—tensions that the tabloids themselves had helped to cultivate and exacerbate

Johnson Publishing Company and the Search for a White Audience

Johnson Publishing Company, the publisher of Negro Digest and Ebony, made efforts to expand its white audience during the 1940s and early 1950s. Johnson Publishing aggressively sought “to sell white readers the idea that a Negro magazine is worth buying,” through the regular publication of letters from “white” readers, consistent references to its influence among whites, fundraising and subscription drives to circulate its magazines among white readers and within white institutions, advertising campaigns in major national publications, and other projects and editorial content. This study argues that these efforts can be situated within both a longer history of white readership of Black periodicals and are connected to a broader turn toward Black literature by white Americans during—and immediately following—World War II. In doing so, Johnson was able to position his publications as both recognizably Black periodicals and the “interracial magazine[s] that America needs.

Searching for Black Santa: The Contested History of an American Holiday Tradition

This article explores the contested history and complex politics of the Black Santa in the United States from the antebellum period to the present day. For white journalists and entertainers during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the blackface Santa reinforced white dominance and the supposed inferiority of Black people. From the 1910s into the 1950s, Black educators and civic reformers saw the ‘Negro Santa Claus’ as a way of elevating Black self-esteem and countering racist versions of the character. For some activists and business leaders, the ‘Civil Rights Santa’ that emerged in parallel with the postwar African American freedom struggle could promote ‘good interracial feelings in the community’, and for others he belonged on the frontlines of the battle for racial equality. The Black Power Santa or ‘Soul Santa’ who came in his wake served as a symbol of Black cultural pride and economic self-determination. Finally, the modern Black Santa works to reconcile the more confrontational politics of earlier iterations with a celebration of American multiracialism and corporate responsibility. Across time and space, these different versions of the Black Santa embody competing and, at times, contradictory racial ideologies and representational politics, providing an important window into the relationship between civil rights, cultural politics, and consumer capitalism in the modern United States

“Getting on the Negro History Bandwagon”: Selling Black History from World War II to the Dawn of Black Power

Drawing on a diverse range of archival material, oral histories, market research literature, and Black periodicals, this article sheds new light on the development of Black history–themed advertising and public outreach campaigns by White-owned corporations from World War II to the dawn of Black Power. While not universally celebrated, corporate Black history campaigns often received tremendous public support and played an important role in promoting better relations between White-owned businesses and Black America. Indeed, when measured against the continued neglect of Black history within the nation’s educational, political, and popular culture, such projects can be argued to have played an intriguing, if largely understudied, role in efforts to relocate Black history from the margins to the mainstream of American society. Nevertheless, through “celebrating” Black history, white businesses also helped to curate it in ways that reinforced gender disparities in historical representation and reified the perceived connections between racial progress and consumer capitalism. Most significantly, these early Black history advertising campaigns set the groundwork for widespread corporate engagement with, and commercialization of, the African American past

Digital Collection: 40 Years of Advertising the MLK Holiday

Building on the sample of advertisements featured in the accompanying Advertising & Society Quarterly article "His Light Still Shines: Corporate Advertisers and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday," this digital collection provides a cross-section of MLK Daythemed or inspired advertisements from 1981 to the present found largely in Black magazines. Collectively, these adverts and advertising features showcase the multivalent ways in which American companies—from multinational corporations to local businesses and commercial vendors—have attempted to walk the tightrope between commemorating and commercializing King, and between acknowledging and appropriating his activism and political legacy

MAPPING THE ANKLE JOINTS PASSIVE MOTION AND MEASURING THE EFFECT OF INJURY ON LIGAMENT CONSTRAINT AT THE ANKLE JOINT

Lateral ankle sprain is one of the most common sports injuries, and having a better understanding of how ligament constraint changes after injury can assist in accurately diagnosing ankle laxity, prevention, and recovery. The objective was to map out the range of motion of the ankle under constant torque loading, and to examine the effect of a lateral ankle sprain level 2 and 3. Nine cadaveric ankles were run through a range of motion where a 6 degree of freedom load cell was used to collect force and torque loads and an Optotrak scanner collected the position of the tibia, talus, and calcaneus. The ankle saw more motion in abduction and inversion than adduction and eversion in the talocrural joint, and the ankle joint complex. The subtalar joint saw no change in inversion or eversion, or adduction, but there was less than four degrees of motion in adduction while the foot was plantarflexed. In general the foot was insensitive to varying torque levels with or without injury except in the talocrural joint where inversion and eversion saw a three to four degree difference after a sprain level 3. It was observed that when ABAD torques were applied the ankle was free to move in INEV, but when INEV torques were applied there was a constraint that limited the motion of the ankle in the ABAD direction. The results from this study show the range of motion of the ankle intact, and with a level 2 and level 3 sprain in the subtalar joint, the talocrural joint, and the ankle joint complex. With knowledge of the ankle's envelope of motion and quantitative assessment of the Taylor tilt test could be created, as well during a total ankle replacement different mid-flexion assessments could be made to create better outcomes for patients

Rotationally actuated prosthetic helping hand

A prosthetic device has been developed for below-the-elbow amputees. The device consists of a cuff, a stem, a housing, two hook-like fingers, an elastic band for holding the fingers together, and a brace. The fingers are pivotally mounted on a housing that is secured to the amputee's upper arm with the brace. The stem, which also contains a cam, is rotationally mounted within the housing and is secured to the cuff, which fits over the amputee's stump. By rotating the cammed stem between the fingers with the lower arm, the amputee can open and close the fingers

Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors

It is difficult to measure teaching quality at the postsecondary level because students typically "self-select" their coursework and their professors. Despite this, student evaluations of professors are widely used in faculty promotion and tenure decisions. We exploit the random assignment of college students to professors in a large body of required coursework to examine how professor quality affects student achievement. Introductory course professors significantly affect student achievement in contemporaneous and follow-on related courses, but the effects are quite heterogeneous across subjects. Students of professors who as a group perform well in the initial mathematics course perform significantly worse in follow-on related math, science, and engineering courses. We find that the academic rank, teaching experience, and terminal degree status of mathematics and science professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous student achievement, but positively related to follow-on course achievement. Across all subjects, student evaluations of professors are positive predictors of contemporaneous course achievement, but are poor predictors of follow-on course achievement.