BLS Spotlight on Statistics: Employer-Sponsored Healthcare Coverage Across Wage Groups

[Excerpt] In March of 2016, a little more than half of all private industry employees participated in employer-sponsored healthcare benefit plans. However, workers earning different wages often have markedly different experiences with healthcare benefits. This Spotlight on Statistics takes a closer look at the relationship between employee wages and access to, participation in, and costs of employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision care benefit plans

Debaters of the bedchamber: China reexamines ancient sexual practices

This article takes note of the revival of interest in China in the ancient art of the bedchamber (fangzhongshu). We survey traditional Chinese sex culture, the textual sources of the bedchamber arts, the development of sexology as an academic discipline, and a synopsis of the theory and practice of the art of the bedchamber itself. We present the various views, pro and con, regarding these practices as they are being debated today in academic journals, advice columns, talk shows, and online forums. Finally, we review the roles of Western scholars in reviving the topic in China and Chinese masters in transmitting the art to the West. Formally an aspect of elite culture, like poetry and calligraphy, the art of the bedchamber has reemerged today in the context of cultural nationalism and an exploration of Chinese identity. Moreover, universal literacy and media penetration have democratized the discourse to include the voices of women and ordinary citizens

Fighting words: Four new document finds reignite old debates in Taijiquan historiography

Martial arts historiography has been at the center of China’s culture wars and a cause célèbre between traditionalists and modernizers for the better part of a century. Nowhere are the stakes higher than with the iconic art of taijiquan, where, based on a handful of documents in the Chen, Wu, and Yang lineages, traditionalists have mythologized the origins of taijiquan, claiming the Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng as progenitor, while modernizers won official government approval by tracing the origins to historical figures in the Chen family. Four new document finds, consisting of manuals, genealogies, and stele rubbings, have recently emerged that disrupt the narratives of both camps, and, if authentic, would be the urtexts of the taijiquan ‘classics’, and force radical revision of our understanding of the art. This article introduces the new documents, the circumstances of their discovery, their contents, and the controversies surrounding their authenticity and significance, as well as implications for understanding broader trends in Chinese culture and politics

Informed Consent and Trisomy Screening: Delineating Parent and Professional Interests

The landmark decision of Montgomery established that patients’ right to self-determination and autonomy underpins the doctrine of informed consent. However, a growing body of medical research routinely conclude that consent for trisomy screening is less than informed. Consent for trisomy screening is not a ‘one-off event’: it is a multistage and multifaceted process, requiring the involvement and integration of interprofessional practices across the pathway. However, Mordel exposed systemic frailties and disconnects in terms of the processes for securing parent consent for trisomy screening: a dimension often missed by medico-legal studies in this field. With the recent introduction of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) and additional trisomies (Edwards’ and Patau’s Syndrome) to the traditional Down’s Syndrome screening programme, this has exacerbated existing concerns around parent decision-making and consent for screening. Using empirical methods, this study seeks to delineate parent and professional interests for providing and securing consent for trisomy screening

Not Angry but Angy: The Rhetorical Effects of Non-Standard Language in Memes

The use of non-standard language on the internet has long been a topic of controversy, as some believe its prevalence indicates carelessness or a lack of intelligence in the (mostly) younger generations who use it. Non-standard language can refer to spelling or grammar that deviates from preferred language conventions, and is popular in what are called internet “memes.” Though the definition of a “meme” can vary, the term can be used to refer to pieces of culture that are remixed and disseminated by internet users. This thesis identifies patterns of non-standard language in memes to demonstrate that these changes are not accidental, but follow their own set of conventions. Examples of these patterns were collected and documented by the types of change that standard language undergoes. They were then matched to existing rhetorical figures, or figures of speech, that have historically been used by authors and orators to create a desired rhetorical effect. These rhetorical figures could include changing the length of a vowel sound, or adding or cutting a syllable. It was found that for each pattern of change, there was a rhetorical figure that matched in both pattern and effect. This illustrates that the presence of non-standard language in memes is intentional, and that it is often used where text, rather than tone of voice or body language, is all that the user has at their disposal. The use of rhetorical figures in memes can also textually represent paralanguage, which includes pitch and tone of voice, in order to express a more nuanced message than could be conveyed through standard text alone

Supporting the DSL Spectrum

A language tailored to the problem domain can focus on its idioms and jargon, avoiding clumsy, overly general constructs needed to support general-purpose language. The leverage provided by DSLs over conventional programming languages is often extreme; application engineers may specify as little as 2% of the code that one would need to program the same thing in a conventional programming language! But commitment to a DSL approach can be rather expensive. It is often difficult to know when to invest in exactly how much infrastructure support for a product or product family. All of the concerns that are germane to generalpurpose programming language design and support may become important in the support of a specific DSL. At the same time, there is a wide spectrum of approaches to providing DSL support. This paper relates the various DSL design approaches to alternatives for tool support, providing a kind of “DSL tool support selection framework,” indicating where one might expect to need to invest heavily to obtain adequate support and illustrating the spectrum of tradeoffs and situations in which each is appropriate

Adolescent Mental Health in the United States

Adolescence is a critical period for mental, social, and emotional wellbeing and development. During adolescence, the brain undergoes significant developmental changes, establishing neural pathways and behavior patterns that will last into adulthood. Because their brains are still developing, adolescents are particularly receptive to the positive influences of youth development strategies, social and emotional learning, and behavioral modeling. But adolescents' developing brains, coupled with hormonal changes, make them more prone to depression and more likely to engage in risky and thrill-seeking behaviors than either younger children or adults. These and other factors underline the importance of meeting the mental, social, and emotional health needs of this age group. Mental health and social and emotional wellbeing — combined with sexual and reproductive health, violence and unintentional injury, substance use, and nutrition and obesity — form part of a complex web of potential challenges to adolescents' healthy emotional and physical development

GR-358 Impact of Avatar\u27s Behavioral Change with Quantity on Human Perception in Immersive Experiences

As virtual reality technology evolves, researchers have found that the characteristics of virtual avatars including appearance, representation, and proximity, can significantly influence the immersive experience of the user. This project investigates the impact of the number of avatars and their behavioral influence on the user in a simulated learning environment. We developed a virtual reality classroom system with Unity designed to elicit, track, and record the user’s behavioral changes including eye gaze, head, and hand movement using HTC VIVE Pro Eye and physiological signals including Heart Rate (HR) and Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), while the user delivers presentations to classrooms full of varying numbers of avatars. During the presentation, a fixed percentage of randomly chosen avatars perform an abnormal behavior, either a change in eye gaze or head movement. We hypothesized that the influence of this abnormal behavior on the user will be exponentially greater when the total number of avatars is larger, even though the percentage of avatars performing the abnormal behavior relative to the total number of avatars is held constant. In our research, we explore this phenomenon and use the results to design guidelines for the social VR experience