The Whiteness of Silence: A Critical Autoethnographic Tale of a Strategic Rhetoric

Nakayama and Krizeck’s essay, “A Strategic Rhetoric of Whiteness” offers an understanding of Whiteness as cultural praxis operating beyond the narrow understanding of mere skin color. While scholars have added valuable contributions to the study of Whiteness, the discussion of the “strategic rhetoric” still lacks examples of embodiment. This essay seeks to demonstrate the deployment of Whiteness by describing a specific moment in which I was complicit in the deployment of Whiteness using the strategy of silence. This essay enumerates the machinations of Whiteness hidden in a seemingly mundane performance and contributes to an ongoing conversation about problematizing Whiteness

Intergroup Dialogue as Praxis for Engaging the Intercultural World

Intergroup Dialogue (IGD) is a formalized program that centers dialogue among students in the classroom. The IGD program uses Martin Buber’s (1970) concept of dialogue, and this semester-long project situates dialogue as a useful addition to an Intercultural Communication course. Bringing components of a formal dialogue program into the classroom as a part of a course allows students to engage with difficult topics, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability, among others, in a way that helps students process and better understand perspectives different from their own. This essay provides specific opportunities for meaningful dialogue and concludes an evaluation of our semester-long project and the lessons learned along the way

The Tools and Technologies of Transdisciplinary Climate Change Research and Community Empowerment in Barbuda

Focusing on the smaller sister-island of Barbuda, part of the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, a group of collaborating anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, education specialists, geographers, and environmental scientists are studying long-term human ecodynamics, the relationship amongst people, place, and the environment from the beginning of the peopling of a place through modern day. Our transdisciplinary approach brings together various field methods, tools and technologies from each field and crosses the boundaries of conventional science. This approach furthers our knowledge of climate change and facilitates practical and sustainable solutions for vulnerable populations

A Deep-to-Shallow Transition in the Fort Payne Formation (Lower Mississippian), Kentucky Highway 61, Cumberland County, Kentucky

The Fort Payne Formation of the Cumberland Saddle region of south-central Kentucky and north-central Tennessee is part of a vast marine sedimentation system that extended over much of North America during the Early Mississippian Period; broadly similar facies reached from Georgia through Tennessee and Kentucky, into western Illinois and Missouri, and into New Mexico and the northern Rockies (Pryor and Sable, 1974). Throughout North America the Fort Payne and its equivalents overlie a black shale (in Kentucky called the Chattanooga Shale) and underlie thick carbonates (in Kentucky, the Warsaw Formation and younger middle Mississippian limestones). Six miles south of Burkesville, Ky., on Kentucky Highway 61, a complete section of the Fort Payne, from the top of the Chattanooga Shale well into the overlying Warsaw Formation, is exposed in 11 outcrops (Figs. 1-3). The Fort Payne is approximately 270 feet thick in this section and is composed of basal wackestone mounds; distinctive, fossiliferous, green clay shales associated with the mounds; detrital crinoidal packstones; argillaceous dolosiltstones, the most common lithology in the Fort Payne; and a dark, organic-rich shale, which caps a persistent coarsening-upward packstone unit

Effects of Changes in Adiposity and Physical Activity on Preadolescent Insulin Resistance: The Australian LOOK Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND In a previous longitudinal analysis of our cohort as 8 to 10 year-olds, insulin resistance (IR) increased with age, but was not modified by changes in percent body fat (%BF), and was only responsive to changes in physical activity (PA) in boys. We aimed to determine whether these responses persisted as the children approached adolescence. METHODS In this prospective cohort study, 256 boys and 278 girls were assessed at ages 8, 10 and 12 years for fasting blood glucose and insulin, %BF (dual energy X-ray absorptiometry); PA (7-day pedometers), fitness (multistage run); and pubertal development (Tanner stage). RESULTS From age 8 to 12 years, the median homeostatic model of IR (HOMA-IR) doubled in boys and increased 250% in girls. By age 12, 23% of boys and 31% of girls had elevated IR, as indicated by HOMA-IR greater than 3. Longitudinal relationships, with important adjustments for covariates body weight, PA, %BF, Tanner score and socioeconomic status showed that, on average, for every 1 unit reduction of %BF, HOMA-IR was lowered by 2.2% (95% CI 0.04-4) in girls and 1.6% (95% CI 0-3.2) in boys. Furthermore, in boys but not girls, HOMA-IR was decreased by 3.5% (95%CI 0.5-6.5) if PA was increased by 2100 steps/day. CONCLUSION Evidence that a quarter of our apparently healthy 12 year-old Australians possessed elevated IR suggests that community-based education and prevention strategies may be warranted. Responsiveness of IR to changes in %BF in both sexes during late preadolescence and to changes in PA in the boys provides a specific basis for targeting elevated IR. That body weight was a strong covariate of IR, independent of %BF, points to the importance of adjusting for weight in correctly assessing these relationships in growing children.Financial support was provided by the Commonwealth Education Trust (London, UK), the Board of Trustees and The Canberra Hospital Salaried Staff Specialists Private Practice Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

The well-being benefits of person-culture match are contingent on basic personality traits

People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and—as a driver of migration—carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examined whether the person-culture match effect is moderated by basic personality traits—the Big Two and Big Five. We relied on self-reports from 2,672,820 people across 102 countries and informant reports from 850,877 people across 61 countries. Communion, agreeableness, and neuroticism exacerbated the person-culture match effect, whereas agency, openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness diminished it. People who possessed low levels of communion coupled with high levels of agency evidenced no well-being benefits from person-culture match, and people who possessed low levels of agreeableness and neuroticism coupled with high levels of openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness even evidenced well-being costs. Those results have implications for theories building on the person-culture match effect, illuminate the mechanisms driving that effect, and help explain failures to replicate it

IL-7 immunotherapy in a nonimmunocompromised patient with intractable fungal wound sepsis

A nonimmunocompromised patient developed life-threatening soft tissue infection wit