Insights into Adolescent Online Conflict through Qualitative Analysis of Online Messages

Given adolescents’ widespread use of online messaging and social media, as well as the prevalence of cyberbullying, analyzing adolescents’ online message-based communication topics and patterns is relevant to public health. To better describe conflict in adolescent online communication, this paper analyzes patterns of conflict in a dataset of adolescent online messages. We describe a qualitative methodology for analyzing these complex data, to expand understanding of adolescents’ online conversations, and to identify how best to categorize conflict within online media datasets. In this study, 14,239 messages from 20 adolescents in the Northeast United States (of which 1,911 were coded) were analyzed using thematic analysis. Several distinct kinds of conflict and responses were identified. Conflict was either direct or indirect, serious or non-serious; it most often was indirect and serious, referenced either insults or romantic contacts, and was frequently related to in-person fights. Coding relied on understanding both textual contexts and referents

An Arabidopsis cell wall-associated kinase required for invertase activity and cell growth

The wall-associated kinases (WAK), a family of five proteins that contain extracellular domains that can be linked to pectin molecules of the cell wall, span the plasma membrane and have a cytoplasmic serine/threonine kinase domain. Previous work has shown that a reduction in WAK protein levels leads to a loss of cell expansion, indicating that these receptor-like proteins have a role in cell shape formation. Here it is shown that a single wak2 mutation exhibits a dependence on sugars and salts for seedling growth. This mutation also reduces the expression and activity of vacuolar invertase, often a key factor in turgor and expansion. WAKs may thus provide a molecular mechanism linking cell wall sensing (via pectin attachment) to regulation of solute metabolism, which in turn is known to be involved in turgor maintenance in growing cells. © 2006 The Authors

Mobile Health Intervention Development Principles: Lessons from an Adolescent Cyberbullying Intervention

Mobile health interventions are becoming increasingly popular, yet challenges in developing effective, user-friendly, evidence-based technology-augmented interventions persist. In this paper, we describe the process of developing an acceptable, evidence-based text messaging program for adolescents experiencing cyberbullying in hopes of addressing some of the challenges encountered by many researchers and developers in this area of intervention development. Participants were 23 adolescents with past-year histories of cyber-victimization and online conflict who enrolled in an hour long qualitative interview. Participants were asked to draw from personal experience to provide feedback on intervention content and design. Results focus on the main principles of intervention development for adolescents involved in cyberbullying: listening for the why in interviews, storyboarding to model abstract concepts, and strategies to develop acceptable theory and tone. Design process and final product design are described. The paper closes with final thoughts on the design process of mobile intervention development

The challenge of theorizing the voice in performance

There are several inter-connected challenges inherent in any attempt to theorize vocal performance. Traditionally, the prior written text has taken precedence over the performed sound when performances are being critiqued and analysed. The language of visualism has contributed to misconceptions concerning the nature and function of the voice, while confusion regarding the differences among language, voice, and speech are bound up with the nature of perception itself. This article examines these challenges and argues that, since the performing voice constitutes the sound of the unique individual who is the actor, it contains within its fluctuations and nuances the character who emerges from the actor's engagement with the text. Voice, therefore, is the site of identity, unstable yet uniquely embodied, of the actor who is the character. It is proposed that actor training would be greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a theoretical appreciation of the nature of the voice in performance