“I’ve Always Identified with the Women:” How Appalachian Women Ballad Singers’ Repertoire Choices Reflect Their Gendered Concerns

This thesis explores how contemporary Appalachian women’s gendered experiences influence their choices of ballad repertoire. This inquiry is pursued through a feminist analysis of interviews with six women ballad singers from Madison County, North Carolina. In evaluating the women’s choices of ballads and their commentary on the songs, this thesis draws upon narratological theories as well as concepts from Appalachian traditional music studies. This study finds that women’s repertoire preferences reveal contemporary female concerns for physical safety and political agency. The singers also extract hidden transcripts from ballad texts and use ballads to educate audiences about women’s historic oppression. However, some singers find other factors, such as a song’s tune, or its significance as a part of regional heritage, to be more significant than the narrative content of the songs. This work affirms the contemporary influences of gendered concerns in ballad singing communities

Impact of Small Group Size on Neighborhood Influences in Multilevel Models

Objective: Although there is a growing body of literature on sample size in multilevel or hierarchical modeling, few studies have examined the impact of group sizeMultilevel, Neighborhood, Body Weight, Obesity, Sample Size

Studying the Learning Environment of EL Newcomer Students in the Schooling Process

In this study, we examined the schooling process of newcomer students in secondary urban schools involving survey research with newcomers and other ELs (n=268). Additionally, we conducted focus groups with students (n=10) and educators (n=12). Through qualitative measures, we examined: (a) grade level placement, (b) content area placement, and (c) academic challenges confounded by L1 proficiency, previous academic experiences, and socio-cultural experiences among newcomers. We employed quantitative methods (e.g., Descriptive, Chi Square, Factor Analysis) to detect group differences in regard to perceptions of the classroom learning environment as a function of time in the United States. In general, the Principal Component Factor analysis yielded ten factors that accounted for 66.8% of the variance. These factors provide insight into key components for the development of effective classroom learning environments in order to serve EL newcomers in the schooling process. The implications for teaching and learning practices within the classroom and school learning environments of EL newcomers are discussed

Affective equality: love matters

The nurturing that produces love, care, and solidarity constitutes a discrete social system of affective relations. Affective relations are not social derivatives, subordinate to economic, political, or cultural relations in matters of social justice. Rather, they are productive, materialist human relations that constitute people mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially. As love laboring is highly gendered, and is a form of work that is both inalienable and noncommodifiable, affective relations are therefore sites of political import for social justice. We argue that it is impossible to have gender justice without relational justice in loving and caring. Moreover, if love is to thrive as a valued social practice, public policies need to be directed by norms of love, care, and solidarity rather than norms of capital accumulation. To promote equality in the affective domains of loving and caring, we argue for a four-dimensional rather than a three-dimensional model of social justice as proposed by Nancy Fraser (2008). Such a model would align relational justice, especially in love laboring, with the equalization of resources, respect, and representation

The Truth About Honesty: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Trait of Honesty

In both the psychological and philosophical literature, there is little time devoted to a robust understanding of the character trait of honesty. The trait of honesty is often used as an example of a beneficial or good character trait, yet the gap in the literature raises a vexing question: what is honesty? This poster reports ongoing work aimed at identifying folk theories of honesty. We argue that an understanding of these theories can illuminate a principled understanding of this character trait in both psychology and philosophy. Currently, we are using qualitative surveys to develop an operational definition of honesty. This will allow us to develop a quantitative measure in order to assess the strength of the trait in particular individuals. The quantitative data will be used to classify and categorize the trait of honesty within the Five Factor Model of personality and to generalize the construct of virtuous traits within virtue ethics in philosophy. If honesty is shown to be distinct from existing categories of traits in psychology or if its characteristics are shown to be incompatible with situationist ethics in philosophy, then we will formulate a new research program in order to better understand the relationship between the trait of honesty and each theory. This poster sketches some approaches to these possible outcomes that we find plausible

Situationism, Honesty, and the Folk

This project aims at finding a widespread folk theory of honesty in order to construct an accurate account of the philosophical nature of honesty as a character trait. Our research process involves gathering responses from the folk, then combining and interpreting the responses. Our broad goal is to discover a solid case for the existence of character traits that can be used against the recent situationist attacks being seen in psychology. Proponents of situationism reject the existence of broad character traits, arguing that behaviour is driven by situational factors and that humans posess no significant character traits at all (Harmon, 1999, 2000 and Doris 1998, 2002). Research in psychology has been used to support situationism, but skepticism arises about the interpretation of study results. For example, Kamtekar notes that “[I]t is noteworthy that the experiments appealed by situationists for the most part assume that subjects share the experimenter’s construal of the situation” (2004, p. 471). Our research aims to provide a single, agreed-upon basis for evaluating action in terms of character traits

Analysing the role of complexity in explaining the fortunes of technology programmes : Empirical application of the NASSS framework

© The Author(s). 2018 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Failures and partial successes are common in technology-supported innovation programmes in health and social care. Complexity theory can help explain why. Phenomena may be simple (straightforward, predictable, few components), complicated (multiple interacting components or issues) or complex (dynamic, unpredictable, not easily disaggregated into constituent components). The recently published NASSS framework applies this taxonomy to explain Non-adoption or Abandonment of technology by individuals and difficulties achieving Scale-up, Spread and Sustainability. This paper reports the first empirical application of the NASSS framework. Methods: Six technology-supported programmes were studied using ethnography and action research for up to 3 years across 20 health and care organisations and 10 national-level bodies. They comprised video outpatient consultations, GPS tracking technology for cognitive impairment, pendant alarm services, remote biomarker monitoring for heart failure, care organising software and integrated case management via data warehousing. Data were collected at three levels: micro (individual technology users), meso (organisational processes and systems) and macro (national policy and wider context). Data analysis and synthesis were guided by socio-technical theories and organised around the seven NASSS domains: (1) the condition or illness, (2) the technology, (3) the value proposition, (4) the adopter system (professional staff, patients and lay carers), (5) the organisation(s), (6) the wider (institutional and societal) system and (7) interaction and mutual adaptation among all these domains over time. Results: The study generated more than 400 h of ethnographic observation, 165 semi-structured interviews and 200 documents. The six case studies raised multiple challenges across all seven domains. Complexity was a common feature of all programmes. In particular, individuals' health and care needs were often complex and hence unpredictable and 'off algorithm'. Programmes in which multiple domains were complicated proved difficult, slow and expensive to implement. Those in which multiple domains were complex did not become mainstreamed (or, if mainstreamed, did not deliver key intended outputs). Conclusion: The NASSS framework helped explain the successes, failures and changing fortunes of this diverse sample of technology-supported programmes. Since failure is often linked to complexity across multiple NASSS domains, further research should systematically address ways to reduce complexity and/or manage programme implementation to take account of it.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Co-occurrence of pathogen assemblages in a keystone species the common cockle Cerastoderma edule on the Irish coast

Despite coinfections being recognized as the rule in animal populations, most studies focus on single pathogen systems. Pathogen interaction networks and the drivers of such associations are lacking in disease ecology studies. Common cockle Cerastoderma edule populations are exposed to a great diversity of pathogens, thus making them a good model system to investigate. This study examined the diversity and prevalence of pathogens from different taxonomic levels in wild and fished C. edule on the Irish coast. Potential interactions were tested focussing on abiotic (seawater temperature and salinity) and biotic (cockle size and age, and epiflora on shells) factors. No Microsporidia nor OsHV-1μVar were detected. Single infections with Haplosporidia (37.7%) or Vibrio (25.3%) were more common than two-pathogen coinfected individuals (9.5%), which may more easily succumb to infection. Fished C. edule populations with high cockle densities were more exposed to infections. Higher temperature and presence of epiflora on cockle shells promoted coinfection in warmer months. Low seawater salinity, host condition and proximity to other infected host species influenced coinfection distribution. A positive association between two Minchinia spp. was observed, most likely due to their different pathogenic effect. Findings highlight the major influence that ecological factors have on pathogen interactions and host–pathogen interplay

Biotic and abiotic factors influencing haplosporidian species distribution in the cockle Cerastoderma edule in Ireland

The Phylum Haplosporidia consists of four genera (Minchinia, Haplosporidium, Urosporidium and Bonamia) that are endoparasitic protists of a wide range of marine invertebrates including commercial bivalve species. Characterization of haplosporidian species remains a challenge due to their patchy spatial and temporal distributions, host-restricted occurrence, and poorly known life cycles. However, they are commonly associated with significant mortality events in bivalves. Due to the recent sporadic mortality events that have occurred in cockles in Europe, the objectives of this study were to determine the diversity, distribution and seasonality of haplosporidian species in Cerastoderma edule populations at several Irish sites. The role of abiotic (temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen in water) and biotic (cockle size and age) factors as drivers or inhibitors of haplosporidian infection were also assessed. Cockles (n = 998) from the intertidal were sampled from April/July 2018 to April 2019 at three sites with no commercial fishing activity on the south coast (Celtic Sea) and one site on the northeast coast (Irish Sea) with an active commercial fishery. Screening of the cockles by molecular techniques (PCR, Sanger sequencing) and by histopathology was carried out. Two species were identified and confirmed in Irish C. edule for the first time, Minchinia mercenariae -like (14.8%) and Minchinia tapetis (29.6%). Similar to other haplosporidian parasites, the Minchinia spp. detected in our study were present year-round at all sites, except for M. tapetis in Youghal Bay (Celtic Sea). Coinfection of both Minchinia species was only observed in Cork Harbour (Celtic Sea) and Dundalk Bay (Irish Sea), where Minchinia spp. showed a higher presence compared to Youghal Bay and Dungarvan Harbour (Celtic Sea). Moreover, haplosporidians detected with generic primers, were present at all of the sample sites throughout the year but had a higher occurrence during the winter months and were positively correlated with dissolved oxygen. Likewise, smaller and older C.edule seemed to be more vulnerable to the haplosporidian infection. Furthermore, haplosporidian distribution displayed spatial variability between and within sample sites, with the highest presence being observed in cockles at one of the commercially fished Dundalk beds, while the lowest presence was observed in cockles at the second Dundalk bed that was more influenced by freshwater runoff when the tide was out. Findings from this study provide additional information on the distribution and seasonal presence of novel haplosporidian species and their potential abiotic and biotic drivers/inhibitors of infection