Environmental Messages in Boating Magazines: A Content Analysis of Recreational Power Boating Articles

This paper presents the results of a study analyzing the editorial content of consumer power boating magazines for messages of environmental responsibility. It presents evidence of a cause and effect relationship between recreational power boating and damage to the marine environment, and cites arguments that power boating in its currently popular form, involving high speeds and heavy fuel consumption, is inherently unfriendly to the environment. The paper describes a chain of influence through which boat manufacturers, in their role as advertisers, influence the editorial content of consumer boating magazines through the tactics of marketing public relations. A hypothesis is developed which states that publishers\u27 commercial interests behoove them to publish editorial material generally supportive of their advertisers, hence promoting consumer behaviors that damage the environment through profligacy of fuel consumption leading to excessive engine emissions. Three magazines are selected for analysis, based on their high levels of influence and visibility within the consumer boating market: Boating, Motor Boating & Sailing, and Power & Motoryacht. These magazines maintain the largest circulation figures of all North American consumer power boating magazines, with a combine monthly circulation totaling more than one half million issues and a substantial pass-along readership. The hypotheses is tested using methods of content analysis. Separate tests are employed to analyze five different types of editorial content: textual content of boat test feature articles; photographic content of boat test feature articles; topical content of how to articles on two specific subjects (boat handling, and maintenance); topical content and slant of opinion columns; and topical content of feature articles explicitly addressing environmental issues. Test results fail to support the hypothesis, suggesting that special-interest consumer publishing in the recreational power boating niche maintains a degree of editorial independence from advertisers, and that environmental topics are treated in a reasonably balanced manner

Translocator protein in late stage Alzheimer\u27s disease and Dementia with Lewy bodies brains

OBJECTIVE: Increased translocator protein (TSPO), previously known as the peripheral benzodiazepine receptor (PBR), in glial cells of the brain has been used as a neuroinflammation marker in the early and middle stages of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD) and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB). In this study, we investigated the changes in TSPO density with respect to late stage AD and DLB. METHODS: TSPO density was measured in multiple regions of postmortem human brains in 20 different cases: seven late stage AD cases (Braak amyloid average: C; Braak tangle average: VI; Aged 74-88, mean: 83 ± 5 years), five DLB cases (Braak amyloid average: C; Braak tangle average: V; Aged 79-91, mean: 84 ± 4 years), and eight age-matched normal control cases (3 males, 5 females: aged 77-92 years; mean: 87 ± 6 years). Measurements were taken by quantitative autoradiography using [ RESULTS: No significant changes were found in TSPO density of the frontal cortex, striatum, thalamus, or red nucleus of the AD and DLB brains. A significant reduction in TSPO density was found in the substantia nigra (SN) of the AD and DLB brains compared to that of age-matched healthy controls. INTERPRETATION: This distinct pattern of TSPO density change in late stage AD and DLB cases may imply the occurrence of microglia dystrophy in late stage neurodegeneration. Furthermore, TSPO may not only be a microglia activation marker in early stage AD and DLB, but TSPO may also be used to monitor microglia dysfunction in the late stage of these diseases

Planetary camera observations of the central parsec of M32

Analysis of V band HST Planetary Camera images of the elliptical galaxy M32 shows that its nucleus is extremely dense and remains unresolved at even the HST diffraction limit. A combined approach of image deconvolution and model fitting is used to investigate the starlight distribution into limiting radii of 0".04 (0.14 pc at 700 kpc). The logarithmic slope of the brightness profile smoothly flattens from y= -1.2 at 3.4 pc to y= -0.5 at 0.34 pc; interior to this radius the profile is equally consistent with a singular µ(r)∝ r,^(-1/2) cusp or a small nonisothermal core with r_c<0.37 pc. The isophotes maintain constant ellipticity into tlle center, and there is no evidence for a central point source, disk, dust, or any other substructures. The cusp model implies central mass densities p_0 > 3 X 10^7 M_☉ pc^(-3) at the resolution limit and is consistent with a central M_• = 3 X 10^6 M_☉ black hole; the core model implies p_0≈4 X 10^6 M_☉ pc^(-3). From the viewpoint of long-term stability, we argue that a starlight cusp surrounding a central black hole is the more plausible interpretation of the observations. A core at the implied density and size without a black hole has a relaxation time of only ~7 X 10^7 yr and a short stellar oollision timescale implying wholesale stellar merging over the age of the universe. The core would be strongly vulnerable to collapse and concomitant runaway stellar merging. Collapse may lead to formation of a massive black hole in any case if it cannot be reversed by formation of a binary from high-mass merger products. Regardless of the ultimate fate of the core, however, structural evolution of the core will always be accompanied by strong evolution of the core population-the constant isophote shape and absence of a central color gradient appear to show that such evolution has not occurred. In contrast, the high velocities around a black hole imply long relaxation and stellar collision times for the cusp population compared to the age of the universe

Hubble Space Telescope Planetary Camera images of R136

The Planetary Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to obtain broad and narrowband images ofR136, the core of the massive star cluster 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud. R136a, the brightest component ofR136, is shown to have at least 12 separate components, including the eight originally identified by speckle interferometry. Three of the 12 components are previously unidentified close companions of the speckle components. The stars within R136a are found to have luminosities and colors of normal evolved (Wolf-Rayet and blue supergiants) and zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS) massive stars. A narrowband He II filter was used to investigate the Wolf-Rayet stellar population. We find that three stars in R136a are of the Wolf-Rayet type; of the two identified from ground-based data, one is now resolved into two components. We present color-magnitude diagrams and a luminosity function of the stars within the larger region (~2 pc) defined as R136. We find that the stars in R136 are similar in color and luminosity to those of cluster members that lie outside that crowded inner region. The lower end of the color-magnitude diagram corresponds to ZAMS spectral type B3. No red supergiants have been detected within R136. The luminosity per unit area in the inner 1" (0.25 pc) of R136 is ≥ 50 times that of the center of Orion for a comparable area and seven times that of the core of NGC 3603. The luminosity per unit area of all of R136 is comparable to that of Orion but is sustained over 130 times the area. An F336W surface brightness profile is constructed for R136 based on the stellar photometry. The distribution is found to be consistent with a pure power law with l(r}ɑ r^y with y=-1.72±0.06 or with a small core with r_c 5 X 10^4 M_☉ pc^(-3). The implied upper limit on the relaxation time for the cluster is much smaller than the age of 3.5 X 10^6 yrs required by the presence of Wolf-Rayet stars. This suggests that relaxation effects have been very important in determining the observed structure of the cluster unless a large population of lower mass stars is also present

The core of the nearby S0 galaxy NGC 7457 imaged with the HST planetary camera

We have observed the nearby S0 galaxy NGC 7457 with the Planetary Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope. Spatial structure is observable at the diffraction-limited resolution of the 2.4 m HST primary despite the effects of spherical aberration. The central distribution of starlight appears consistent with a y ~ -1.0 power law for r 3 x 10^4 L_☉ pc^(-3) (V band). This is now the second densest core known after M32. From the ground, NGC 7457 resembles any number of unresolved elliptical galaxies, which suggests that compact dense cores may be common. The images of NGC 7457 demonstrate that HST can still provide unique and astrophysically interesting information on the central structure of galaxies

The Postcollapse core of M15 imaged with the HST planetary camera

We have obtained U-band images of the M15 core with the Planetary Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope. We are able to resolve stars down to the main-sequence turnoff (m_v≈ 19.4) into the cluster center. We use crowded field photometry techniques to decompose M15 into bright resolved stars and a residual component consisting of stars at turnoff brightness or fainter. The residual component comprises 59% of the cluster light and follows a y = -0.71 power-law distribution for r > 1". The residual component flattens off interior to this radius and has a large core with r_c = 2".2 = 0.13 pc. The core size may reflect postcollapse core expansion. The resolved stars have a slightly shallower distribution (y = - 0.53) but have an abrupt overdensity for r < 1".5, which accounts for the unresolved surface brightness cusp at ground resolution. The bright stars do not become more highly concentrated at still smaller radii, however; neither the bright stars nor the residual component form a cusp at subarcsecond resolution. The total central density of light in all components is 8 x 10^5 L_☉ pc^(-3) (U-band). The Peterson, Seitzer, and Cudworth central velocity dispersion implies a high core M/L ≈ 8 (U-band). The existence of a core rather than a cusp at the 0.1 pc scale may imply that the centrally deduced dark matter is in a diffuse form rather than a massive black hole