Chronic media worlds: Social media and the problem of pain communication on Tumblr

This paper explores dynamics of pain communication in the social media platform Tumblr. As a device of health communication, the Tumblr platform brings together a network of behaviors, technologies and media forms through which pain experience is reimaged through and against mainstream biomedical frameworks. The article develops an interpretative approach to analyze how, as social media platforms reorganize affective, emotional, physical and temporal frames of experience, communication about chronic pain and illness is reimagined in its capacity to create, and subvert, pain worlds. Drawing on ethnographic theory to reimagine the relation between politics and poetics in pain communication, the article explores the issue- and world-making capacities of social media

Sidewalk Cross-Slope Design: Analysis of Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities

Current and proposed Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines offer no specific guidance on acceptable maximum cross slopes where constraints of reconstruction prohibit meeting the 2-percent maximum cross-slope requirement for new construction. Two types of sidewalk test-section data across a sample of 50 individuals were collected, combined with an earlier sample of 17 individuals, and analyzed here, with an emphasis on cross slopes. These examined heart-rate changes and user perception of discomfort levels, and they relied on a random-effects model and an ordered-probit model, respectively. Model estimates were used to deduce critical or unacceptable cross slopes for critical conditions and critical populations of persons with disabilities. Predicted values for the most severe or constrained cases ranged from 5.5 to 6 percent cross-slope. These cases included 5 percent primary slope (main grade) and 45ft long sections; and they were traversed by cane/crutch/brace and manual wheelchair users up to 80 years of age. When primary slopes were reduced to 0 percent in the perception estimates, the critical cross slopes for the critical case rose to 6 percent. For most other persons with disabilities, the critical cross slopes ranged from 6 to 9 percent or more. These value