Introduction

Even if one does not teach interpretive methods in particular, all those who teach methods can learn something from these four symposium contributions as the essays provide grist for reflection on pedagogical strategies and goals

The methods café: An innovative idea for methods teaching at conference meetings

Interpretive research methods of various sorts have long been used to study "the political," but the full range of such methods is not widely known, and many are curious about what they entail. Others, who begin to use one or another of them, have questions about how to proceed. For those just learning about these methods, questions may be as basic as: "What does ethnomethodology mean?" "What is semiotic analysis?" "Are these approaches recognized as legitimate in political science?" Scholars engaging, or perhaps teaching, these methods might ask, e.g., "How do ethnographers overcome problems of accessing their field site, talking to strangers, and turning a year's worth of observational and interview notes into concise text?"

Timing of ibuprofen use and musculoskeletal adaptations to exercise training in older adults

AbstractProstaglandins (PGs) increase in bone in response to mechanical loading and stimulate bone formation. Inhibition of cyclooxygenase (COX), the enzyme responsible for PG synthesis, by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) impairs the bone formation response to loading in animals when administered before, but not after, loading. The aim was to determine whether the timing of ibuprofen use (400mg before versus after exercise sessions) is a significant determinant of the adaptive response of BMD to exercise training in older adults. We hypothesized that taking ibuprofen before exercise would attenuate the improvements in total hip and lumbar spine BMD in response to 36weeks of training when compared with placebo or with ibuprofen use after exercise. Untrained women and men (N=189) aged 60 to 75years were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatment arms: placebo before and after exercise (PP); ibuprofen before and placebo after exercise (IP); and placebo before and ibuprofen after exercise (PI).The difference between groups in the change in BMD was not significant when IP was compared with either PP (hip, −0.5% (−1.4, 0.4); spine, 0.1% (−0.9, 1.2)) or PI (hip, 0.3% (−0.6, 1.2); spine, 0.5% (−0.5, 1.5)). Ibuprofen use appeared to have more adverse effects on BMD in women than men. The study demonstrated that ibuprofen use did not significantly alter the BMD adaptations to exercise in older adults, but this finding should be interpreted cautiously. It had been expected that the inhibition of bone formation by ibuprofen would be more robust in men than in women, but this did not appear to be the case and may have limited the power to detect the effects of ibuprofen. Further research is needed to understand whether NSAID use counteracts, in part, the beneficial effects of exercise on bone

What is the value of security? Contextualising the negative/positive debate

Review of International Studies has seen a debate over the value of security. At its heart this is a debate about ethics: concerning the extent to which security is a ‘good’ and whether or not security politics produces the kind of world we want. More recent contributions focus on the extent to which security is ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. However, this article argues that the existing debate is limited and confusing: key authors use the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ in different, and, at times, contradictory ways. The article clarifies the roots of the existing debate, and then draws out two different uses of the terms positive and negative: an analytic frame and a normative frame. In response, it proposes a pragmatist frame that synthesises the existing uses, drawing on pragmatism and practice-centred approaches to analyse the value of security in context. The contribution of the article is thus twofold: it both clarifies the existing debate and suggests a solution. This is key because the debate over the value of security is crucial to thinking about how we want to live

Introduction: Interpreting British European Policy

Britain has had particular problems reconciling itself to the idea of being a ‘European’ actor and a wholehearted member of the EEC/EU since 1973. Now, potentially, the ‘awkward partner’, is edging towards the exit door of the EU because a membership referendum is an increasingly likely prospect in the coming years. The aim of this special issue is to consider how we can account for the present state of affairs by adopting an interpretivist perspective on British European policy over the past four decades. The article begins with a comprehensive review of the extant literature on Britain and Europe, and an elaboration of the ‘traditions and dilemmas’ framework within which the contributors have studied the empirical material in their articles. It then explains the major themes that connect the articles and suggests how future research might build on the agenda proposed in this special issue

Thermographic Imaging of the Space Shuttle During Re-Entry Using a Near Infrared Sensor

High resolution calibrated near infrared (NIR) imagery of the Space Shuttle Orbiter was obtained during hypervelocity atmospheric re-entry of the STS-119, STS-125, STS-128, STS-131, STS-132, STS-133, and STS-134 missions. This data has provided information on the distribution of surface temperature and the state of the airflow over the windward surface of the Orbiter during descent. The thermal imagery complemented data collected with onboard surface thermocouple instrumentation. The spatially resolved global thermal measurements made during the Orbiter s hypersonic re-entry will provide critical flight data for reducing the uncertainty associated with present day ground-to-flight extrapolation techniques and current state-of-the-art empirical boundary-layer transition or turbulent heating prediction methods. Laminar and turbulent flight data is critical for the validation of physics-based, semi-empirical boundary-layer transition prediction methods as well as stimulating the validation of laminar numerical chemistry models and the development of turbulence models supporting NASA s next-generation spacecraft. In this paper we provide details of the NIR imaging system used on both air and land-based imaging assets. The paper will discuss calibrations performed on the NIR imaging systems that permitted conversion of captured radiant intensity (counts) to temperature values. Image processing techniques are presented to analyze the NIR data for vignetting distortion, best resolution, and image sharpness. Keywords: HYTHIRM, Space Shuttle thermography, hypersonic imaging, near infrared imaging, histogram analysis, singular value decomposition, eigenvalue image sharpnes

Mechanisms of micro-terror? Early career CMS academics’ experiences of ‘targets and terror’ in contemporary business schools

In this article, we apply the concept of ‘targets and terror’, previously used in the healthcare sector, to the audit culture within business schools. We explore to what extent terror, or the inculcation of fear through processes of domination, is identifiable in the micro-level experiences of early career academics. Drawing on an international study of 38 Critical Management Studies early career academics from 15 countries, we develop a theoretical framework combining Bourdieu’s modes of domination and Meyerson and Scully’s Tempered Radicalism, which helps us identify top-down and horizontal processes of micro-terror and bottom-up processes of micro-terrorism, specifically self-terrorisation and counter-terrorisation. In extending the study of ‘targets and terror’ cultures to contemporary business schools, we develop a clearer understanding of how domination plays out in the everyday processes of management and self-management. From Bourdieu’s modes of domination, we discern a dark picture of institutional and interpersonal overt and symbolic violence in the name of target achievement. The Tempered Radicalism lens helps us to understand early career academic challenges that can lead to self-terrorisation but also brings possible ways forward, showing early career academics how to resist mechanisms of micro-terror through their own small acts of counter-terrorisation, providing some hope specifically as the basis for collective resistance