The volume and source of cyberabuse influences victim blame and perceptions of attractiveness

Cyberabuse is an escalating problem in society, as opportunities for abuse to occur in online public domains increase. Such acts are often defined by the frequency of abuse, and in many cases multiple individuals play a part in the abuse. Although consequences of such acts are often severe, there is typically little public sympathy/support for victims. To better understand perceptions of victims of abusive online acts, we manipulated the Volume (low, high) and Source (same-source, multi-source) of abusive posts in artificially-manipulated Facebook timelines of four fictitious ‘victims’. One hundred and sixty-four participants [United Kingdom-based; aged 18–59] rated ‘victims’ on measures of direct victim blame (DVB) and perceived social-, physical- and task-attractiveness. Results revealed significant Volume × Source interactions on DVB and social-attractiveness ratings. Few abusive posts authored by a single source yielded higher DVB and lower social-attractiveness ratings. Strong correlations between attractiveness and DVB were observed. We propose that our results could be due to an observer desensitization effect, or that participants interpreted the posts as indicative of friendly ‘teasing’ or ‘banter’ within an established social relationship, helping to explain why victims of online abuse often receive little sympathy or support

Tenth Amendment Challenges After Bond v. United States

In its recent decision in Bond v. United States, the Supreme Court explained that because the Tenth Amendment secures the freedom of the individual, private parties who otherwise satisfy Article III\u27s standing requirements and other prudential requirements may challenge federal laws as violating the Tenth Amendment. In so doing, the Court reversed the majority of circuit courts that have addressed the issue and removed a significant categorical bar to individual Tenth Amendment challenges. This Article explains Bond\u27s holding and explores its implications for future Tenth Amendment challenges by private parties. Although Bond contains some expansive language regarding the role of Tenth Amendment in protecting individual liberties, it should not be read too broadly. Bond clarified that the Tenth Amendment protects individual liberties and thus prudential, third-party standing principles do not prevent individuals from bringing a Tenth Amendment challenge against federal statutes that impair their liberties. But Bond also made clear that individual Tenth Amendment challenges must satisfy traditional Article III standing requirements and that not every violation of the Tenth Amendment automatically entails an impairment of individual liberty that supports standing. As a result, Article III standing requirements will hinder many individual Tenth Amendment challenges, and many individual challenges will not succeed without the support of states. Thus, despite the breadth of the Court\u27s language in Bond, states may significantly influence whether private parties can successfully assert the states\u27 sovereign interests in a Tenth Amendment challenge. Litigants must understand these limitations as they attempt to use Bond to challenge federal statutes that, until this point, have been protected from individual suits by the bar that most courts of appeals have imposed on private-party Tenth Amendment standing. Put succinctly, while Bond rightly removed the prudential bar to individual Tenth Amendment challenges, it did not confer Article III standing to each and every litigant alleging a Tenth Amendment injury. Litigants will still need to separately satisfy the Article III requirements, blunting the impact of Bond and likely insulating many federal statutes from individual Tenth Amendment challenges

Cataract surgery and quality of life implications

Cataract surgery in the developed world has undergone a revolution over the last 20 years. An operation which used to require a stay in hospital and long visual rehabilitation is now a quick day-case procedure with immediate benefits. As with any surgery there is an associated morbidity, but there is now the potential to provide cataract surgery at an earlier stage of cataract maturation and save patients from a period of severe visual impairment. This article reviews the new techniques available to measure the impact that cataracts have not only on a patient’s visual acuity but also their general physical health, function, cognition, and emotional well-being. New research is described that takes into account these more holistic tests and how they can be used to judge the best time to refer and operate on a patient with cataracts

Learning Agility: In Search of Conceptual Clarity and Theoretical Grounding

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92376/1/j.1754-9434.2012.01444.x.pd

Dim Light Exposure or Melatonin Ingestion Lowers a Type 2 Diabetic\u27s Blood Glucose Removal Rate: A Single Case

International Journal of Exercise Science 12(2): 1161-1168, 2019. The purpose of this case study isto compare a Type 2 diabetic\u27s postprandial glucoregulatory ability under two different room lighting conditions. The subject was a 56-year-old physically active male with well controlled blood glucose levels (HbA1c ≤ 6% for 5 y) from a combination of diet, exercise, and medication. Two hours post evening meal (380 kcal, 18 g fat, 44 g carbohydrate, 12 g protein), a 45 g carbohydrate challenge was given, and blood glucose was measured every 30 minutes for 2.5 hours under three conditions: dim light (\u3c50 lux) (DL), bright light (\u3e40000 lux) (BL), and bright light plus 6 mg melatonin (BLM). Each condition was repeated 3 times over a period of 6 months with each trial a minimum of seven days apart. The area under the average glucose concentration vs.time plot was different between the three conditions (BL = 909 +76; DL = 1078 +106; and BLM = 1130 +45 mmol∙min∙l-1). Visual inspection of the average blood glucose vs.time plot suggested that DL and BLM displayed very similar patterns and magnitude, with both DL and BLM having the blood glucose concentrations at each time point that are noticeably greater than BL. Additionally, the average (± standard deviation) blood glucose concentrations for DL (8.8 ± 0.9 mmol∙l-1) and BLM (9.1 ± 1.1 mmol∙l-1) were respectively 18% and 22% greater than BL (7.5 ± 0.5 mmol∙l-1). Melatonin and/or dim light can reduce a Type 2 diabetic\u27s glucoregulatory ability

Control of Plasma Flux Composition Incident on TiN Films during reactive Magnetron Sputtering and the Effect on Film Microstructure

A hybrid plasma enhanced physical vapor deposition (PEPVD) system consisting of an unbalanced dc magnetron and a pulsed electron beam-produced plasma was used to deposit reactively sputtered titanium nitride thin films. The system allowed for control of the magnitudes of the ion and neutral flux, in addition to the type of nitrogen ions (atomic or molecular) that comprised the flux. For all deposition experiments, the magnitude of the ion flux incident on the substrate was held constant, but the composition of the total flux was varied. X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy showed that crystallographic texture and surface morphology of the films were affected by the plasma flux composition during growth

Einstein Cluster Alignments Revisited

We have examined whether the major axes of rich galaxy clusters tend to point toward their nearest neighboring cluster. We have used the data of Ulmer, McMillan, and Kowalski, who used position angles based on X-ray morphology. We also studied a subset of this sample with updated positions and distances from the MX Northern Abell Cluster Survey (for rich clusters ($R \geq 1$) with well known redshifts). A Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test showed no significant signal for nonrandom angles on any scale $\leq 100h^{-1}$Mpc. However, refining the null hypothesis with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, we found a high confidence signal for alignment. Confidence levels increase to a high of 99.997% as only near neighbors which are very close are considered. We conclude there is a strong alignment signal in the data, consistent with gravitational instability acting on Gaussian perturbations.Comment: Minor revisions. To be published in Ap