From Pulp Hero to Superhero: Culture, Race, and Identity in American Popular Culture, 1900-1940

Adventure characters in the pulp magazines and comic books of the early twentieth century reflected development in the ongoing American fascination with heroic figures. As established figures such as the cowboy became disconnected from everyday experiences of Americans, new popular fantasies emerged, providing readers with essentialist action heroes whose adventures stylized the struggle of the American everyman with a modern, industrialized, heterogeneous world. Popular characters such as Tarzan, Conan, the Shadow, and Doc Savage perpetuated the individualistic archetype Americans associated with the frontier cowboy and the struggles of manifest destiny while offering the fantastic adventure, exoticism, and escapism that modernity demanded. Fantasies developed further with the advent of Superman and other comic book superheroes, as confrontations with otherness transformed from frontier battles to struggles internalized within the American city. Despite these changes, the essential models of white male power provided by American heroes remained and continued to assert the racial and civil superiority of white Anglo-Saxon tradition. This paper explores the racial and civil ideas American sought to promote in early twentieth century and their evolution in the popular entertainment press

The Interrelationships Between Organizational Communication, Organizational Climate, and Job Satisfaction in a Local Government Agency.

The interrelationships between three multivariate concepts: Organizational communication, organizational climate, and job satisfaction were studied in a local government agency. Demographic data were also studied as they, as a group, related to the three multivariate concepts. Questionnaires were collected from 175 of the 220 employees. Canonical analysis was utilized to analyze the respondents\u27 perceptions of the three concepts and to determine their relationships to the demographic data set. Organizational climate significantly correlated (p \u3c 0.001) with job satisfaction. Only very small, but significant (p \u3c 0.01) redundancy was found between the two concepts. Organizational communication and organizational climate were significantly correlated (p \u3c 0.001). Redundancy analysis indicated that small to moderate redundancies are shared between the concepts for the sample under study. Organizational communication and job satisfaction also exhibited significant correlation (p \u3c 0.001). Redundancy analysis indicated that communication explains a small but significant (p \u3c 0.05) amount of the variance in job satisfaction. However, job satisfaction did not not explain a significant amount of the variance in the communication variable set. For each of the canonical analyses studied, some of the values of the loadings on the components possessed positive signs while others possessed negative signs. Thus, the direction of the relationships between the three concepts remains unclear. Canonical analysis of demographic data and each of the three multivariate concepts was undertaken to determine whether the demographic makeup of the sample was affecting the relationships between the concepts. No significant relationship was found between demographics and organizational climate at the p \u3c 0.05 level. Canonical correlations between the demographic data set and the communication data set were significant beyond p \u3c 0.01. Redundancy analysis indicated that demographics did not explain a significant amount of the variance in communication (p \u3c 0.05). The reverse relationship was significant at p \u3c 0.01, thus clouding the question of the importance of demographics in explaining variance in the communication set. Canonical analysis of the demographic/satisfaction relationship was also significant (p \u3c 0.01). Redundancies yielded similar mixed findings as in the demographics/communication relationship. Conclusions from the analysis were drawn. Limitations to the usefulness of the findings were discussed. Finally, suggestions for further research were made

The Effect of Subcutaneous German Cockroach Immunotherapy (SCIT) on Nasal Allergen Challenge (NAC) and Cockroach-specific Antibody Responses Among Urban Children and Adolescents

Rationale: Cockroach allergy contributes to asthma and rhinitis morbidity among many urban children. Treatment with cockroach SCIT could be beneficial. Methods: 8-17 year-old children with mild-moderate asthma from 11 urban sites participated in a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled SCIT trial using non-standardized, glycerinated German cockroach extract. Positive cockroach skin tests, cockroach-specific IgE, and nasal challenge response with total nasal symptom scores (TNSS) ≥6 or maximal sneeze scores of 3 during a graded NAC were required for enrollment. Following dose escalation, 0.4 ml of undiluted extract was targeted for maintenance dosing (∼7 mcg Bla g2/dose). The primary endpoint was change in NAC-induced mean TNSS from baseline to one year post randomization. Changes in cockroach-specific IgE (CRsIgE) and IgG4 (CRsIgG4) were also analyzed. Results: Mean TNSS did not significantly change from baseline in either group (placebo n=29, SCIT n=28). There was no significant difference in the change in mean TNSS between placebo and SCIT [−0.79±0.35 vs. −1.02±0.37, respectively, difference=0.2(−1.15, 0.70), p=0.63]. Baseline CRsIgE and CRsIgG4 didn’t differ between groups. Mean CRsIgE decreased in both groups following treatment: 3.6 to 2.3 kU/L (0.64 fold change), p=0.015 and 8.3 to 4.2 kU/L (0.51 fold change), p\u3c0.001 in placebo and SCIT respectively, but did not differ between groups [p=0.33]. Significant increases in CRsIgG4 post-treatment were observed among SCIT recipients only: 0.07 to 12.3 mg/L (176 fold change), p\u3c0.001. Conclusions: Cockroach SCIT increased CRsIgG4 levels but did not significantly alter NAC-induced TNSS responses. The extent to which NAC in these children may reflect clinical efficacy for rhinitis or asthma is uncertain

Do Social Bonds Matter for Emerging Adults?

The extent to which social bonds and turning points influence criminal activity has been the focus of much empirical research. However, there have been few empirical studies exploring social bonds and turning points and offending for those who have experienced emerging adulthood, a recently identified stage of the life course. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health we examined if indicators of social bonds and turning points were predictors of criminal offending. Several of the turning points and social bonds included in these analyses were found to influence decreases in criminal offending for a cohort of emerging adults. We extend previous research by examining the influence of social bonds and turning points on patterns of criminal offending during emerging adulthood