Shakin\u27 Exploitation: Black Female Bodies in Contemporary Hip-Hop and Pornography

Through a methodological framework consisting of historical analysis, pop culture analysis, and hip-hop feminist theory, this paper will explore the complex intersections of race, gender, and agency in contemporary hip-hop and adult entertainment. The first section, Look Back at Me: Jezebel, the Black Lady and Constructions of Black Female Sexuality Identity , will consist of a historical overview of images of Black women constructed since enslavement into the late 20th century and highlight the links between these stereotypes and the sexualized images that exist of Black female identity in contemporary hip-hop. The politics of respectability will also be discussed and how the concept aided in the construction of the dominant Black female sexual scripts. The second section, Mic Check: The Rise of Women in Hip-hop , will examine the evolution of women in hip-hop from the mid-1980\u27s to the present, analyzing how the rise in popularity of hip-hop music has affected the portrayal of Black women\u27s bodies in the sexual marketplace. The third section, Hip-Hop Pornography will speak to the influence of visual culture in rap music and how it has created intersections between hip-hop and the adult entertainment industry. It will examine ways Black women who participate in these industries view their images and how they exercise and conceptualize agency while dealing with the hyper-masculinity inherent in their fields. The fourth and final section of my paper will present my conclusions and plans for further research. In sum, Black women are challenging stereotypes through the mediums of hip-hop and adult entertainment that have been subjugating their sexuality for decades. To a certain extent, this freedom is liberating because they are embracing a pro-sex framework and breaking deeply engrained silences that have been present surrounding Black female sexuality. Conversely, there are ways that these \u27erotic revolutionaries\u27, to borrow a term from Shayne Lee, re-entrench some of the ideals that have made the policing of Black female sexuality by other Black women exist in the first place

Increasing Client Adherence to a Health and Wellness Lifestyle: Applications of Exercise Psychology for Professionals

Although, physical activity has been called the best medicine in America today, outperforming almost every prescribed medication in the country in terms of overall impact on health, as a whole, few engage in sufficient exercise. According to the CDC, physical activity helps in weight control, reduces risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome, and strengthens bones and muscle. It has a profound effect on mental health and mood and will even reduce the risk of some types of cancer, particularly colon and breast cancers. Not only does an active lifestyle have such a significant effect of reducing and preventing many of these types of health related issues, but physical inactivity actually exacerbates and increases them. It stands to reason, then, that people’s health and well-being are robustly affected by lifestyle factors which involve behaviors that are potentially controllable by the individual.However, as many in the health-related fields have observed, it seems to be immensely more difficult to change one’s lifestyle than simply making a decision. There are many psychological components, such as the power of habit, that impact an individual’s ability to adhere to an exercise. The following is a survey of peer-reviewed research, articles and literature on theories in exercise psychology and their application to exercise adherence. The information presented is an in-depth look at how these theories may be applied by health professionals in order to help their patients and clients adopt a health and wellness lifestyle, particularly in the exercise domain

ATTITUDE AWARE SMARTPHONES FOR TELE-OPERATED ROBOT CONTROL

The U.S. military has increasingly turned to unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to assist in the most dull, dirty, and dangerous missions. Their presence on the battlefield is redefining how war is waged, expanding opportunities for reconnaissance and surveillance while minimizing soldier mortality. Robotic systems have gotten ever smaller, many now being man-packable. Soldiers may now carry, deploy, and control their own robotic assistant, many with limited formal training. Unfortunately, UGVs add significantly to a soldier's standard load of water, ammunition, armor, and supplies, making weight and portability top concerns. One way to ease the soldier burden is to adopt smartphones for use as robot operator control units (OCUs). Their small, lightweight frame combined with processing power and adaptable software backbone may enable intuitive controls on a device well-suited for other military missions.Field operations are often conducted when users are gloved and/or dirty, making common smartphone touch interfaces problematic. By using proprioceptive device inputs related to attitude, smartphones can be used for control in ways that minimize that touch interface. To test this, an attitude aware smartphone controller (using the device's accelerometers and gyroscope) for a small, tele-operated, ground robot was developed and assessed via a multi-phase usability experiment. The controller's motion algorithm made use of quaternion mathematics to simplify motion handling and the user interface.Twenty-five users were recruited to assess usability of attitude aware controls, testing their suitability for driving and camera manipulation tasks. Participants operated a small tracked robot on an indoor course with controllers using either virtual joystick or tilt-based controls while metrics regarding performance, mental workload, and user satisfaction were collected. They were also exposed to customizable controls, identifying modes and settings which contributed most heavily to the controller's usability. Results indicate that attitude-based controls are suitable for tele-operated reconnaissance and surveillance, as 64% of users preferred tilt-based driving controls while performing equally as well as the alternative. Customized configurations showed 60% of users preferred tilt for driving tasks when throttle sensitivity and controller responsiveness could be manipulated. The inherent usability of attitude aware controls optimistically exhibit how smartphones can be leveraged for robotic control, even in harsh environments by gloved users

SB 106 Congressional and state legislative districts; standards and criteria

This report examines Senate Bill (SB) 106, introduced during the 2018 Virginia General Assembly session to address the criterion of redistricting and the specific impact on racial and ethnic minorities. This legislation is a direct response to previous legislative attempts to address gerrymandering and remains an evolving issue in the Commonwealth

Scaling-up an evidence-based intervention for osteoarthritis in real-world settings : a pragmatic evaluation using the RE-AIM framework

Scaling-up and sustaining effective healthcare interventions is essential for improving healthcare; however, relatively little is known about these processes. In addition to quantitative experimental designs, we need approaches that use embedded, observational studies on practice-led, naturally occurring scale-up processes. There are also tensions between having adequately rigorous systems to monitor and evaluate scale-up well that are proportionate and pragmatic in practice. The study investigated the scale-up of an evidence-based complex intervention for knee and hip osteoarthritis (ESCAPE-pain) within 'real-world' settings by England's 15 Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). A pragmatic evaluation of the scale-up of ESCAPE-pain using the RE-AIM framework to measure Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance. The evaluation used routine monitoring data collected from April 2014 to December 2018 as part of a national scale-up programme. Between 2014 and 2018, ESCAPE-pain was adopted by over 110 clinical and non-clinical sites reaching over 9000 people with osteoarthritis. The programme showed sustained clinical effectiveness (pain, function and quality of life) and high levels of adherence (78.5% completing 75% of the programme) within a range of real-world settings. Seven hundred seventy people (physiotherapists and exercise professionals) have been trained to deliver ESCAPE-pain, and 84.1% of sites have continued to deliver the programme post-implementation. ESCAPE-pain successfully moved from being an efficacious "research intervention" into an effective intervention within 'real-world' clinical and non-clinical community settings. However, scale-up has been a gradual process requiring on-going, dedicated resources over 5 years by a national network of Academic Health Science Networks (AHSNs). Whilst the collection of monitoring and evaluation data is critical in understanding implementation and scale-up, there remain significant challenges in developing systems sufficiently rigorous, proportionate and locally acceptable

Report on the Texas Legislature, 85th Session: An Urban Perspective-Criminal Justice Edition

In Texas, the legislature meets every 2 years and at the end of a regular legislative session, hundreds of passed bills will have been sent to the governor for approval. The large number of bills and the wide range of topics they cover can make it difficult to gain an understanding of all the new laws that were passed. At the close of each legislative session the Earl Carl Institute publishes, for the benefit of its constituents, highlights from the session in a bi-annual legislative report. In this year’s publication entitled Report on the Texas Legislature, 85th Session: An Urban Perspective the Institute attempted to cover matters that it believes to be of concern to the urban community, however, many of the highlights cover issues of particular concern to other traditionally disenfranchised communities as well. The legislation covered in these reports generally falls under such issues as Election, Criminal Justice (Human Trafficking, Criminal Procedure, Wrongful Convictions, Domestic Violence), Juvenile Justice, Family Law, Property, Education, Healthcare, Wills, Estate and Probate, Wealth and Litigation. We are pleased to present, via The Bridge: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Legal & Social Policy, an excerpt this year’s legislative report that highlights legislative actions in the area of criminal justice reform in the State of Texas. The full report, published in August 2017, can be accessed via the Institute’s website www.tsulaw.edu/centers/ECI/publications.html

Abuse of people with dementia by family carers: representative cross sectional survey

Objective To determine the prevalence of abusive behaviours by family carers of people with dementia

Spatial Orientation Aware Smartphones for Tele-operated Robot Control in Military Environments: A Usability Experiment

We report an experiment conducted to assess the usability of a smartphone-based controller for use by dismounted troops using unmanned ground vehicles for reconnaissance and surveillance. A virtual joystick controller is compared to a specially designed tilt-based controller intended to limit the device’s touch interface while providing intuitive control. Participants drove a small tracked robot on an indoor course using both controller options where metrics regarding performance, mental workload, and user satisfaction represented various measures of controller usability. Results indicate that the tilt controller is preferred by users and performs equally as well, if not better, on most performance metrics. These results support the development of a smartphone-based control option for military robotics, with a focus on gestural input methods which overcome deficiencies of current touch-based systems, namely lack of physical feedback, high attention demands, and unreliability in field environments.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Cocaine treatment and prenatal environment interact to disrupt intergenerational maternal behavior in rats.

The link between impaired maternal behavior (MB) and cocaine treatment could result from drug-induced decreases in maternal reactivity to offspring, prenatal drug exposure (PDE) in offspring that could alter their ability to elicit MB, or the interaction of both, which could subsequently impair MB of the 1st-generation dams. Following chronic or intermittent cocaine or saline treatment during gestation, rat dams rearing natural or cross-fostered litters were compared along with untreated dams for MB. Untreated 1st-generation females with differentially treated rearing dams and PDE were tested for MB with their natural litters. The authors report disruptions in MB in dams and their 1st-generation offspring, attributable to main and interaction effects of maternal treatment, litter PDE, and rearing experience