A content analysis of vaping advertisements on Twitter, November 2014

INTRODUCTION: Vaping has increased in popularity, and the potential harms and benefits are largely unknown. Vaping-related advertising is expected to grow as the vaping industry grows; people are exposed primarily to vaping advertisements on the Internet, and Twitter is an especially popular social medium among young people. The primary objective of our study was to describe the characteristics of vaping-related advertisements on Twitter. METHODS: We collected data on 403,079 English-language tweets that appeared during November 2014 and contained vaping-related keywords. Using crowdsourcing services, we identified vaping-related advertisements in a random sample of 5,000 tweets. The advertisement tweets were qualitatively coded for popular marketing tactics by our research team. We also inferred the demographic characteristics of followers of 4 Twitter handles that advertised various novel vape products. RESULTS: The random sample of 5,000 vaping-related tweets included 1,156 (23%) advertisement tweets that were further analyzed. Vape pens were advertised in nearly half of the advertisement tweets (47%), followed by e-juice (21%), which commonly mentioned flavors (42%). Coupons or price discounts were frequently observed (32%); only 3% of tweets mentioned vaping as a way to quit smoking or as an alternative to smoking. One handle had a disproportionately high percentage of racial/ethnic minority followers. CONCLUSION: Vaping poses a threat to smoking prevention progress, and it is important for those in tobacco control to understand and counter the tactics used by vaping companies to entice their consumers, especially on social media where young people can easily view the content

Creep Forming of Carbon-Reinforced Ceramic-Matrix Composites

A set of lecture slides describes an investigation of creep forming as a means of imparting desired curvatures to initially flat stock plates of carbon-reinforced ceramic-matrix composite (C-CMC) materials. The investigation is apparently part of a continuing effort to develop improved means of applying small CCMC repair patches to reinforced carbon-carbon leading edges of aerospace vehicles (e.g., space shuttles) prior to re-entry into the atmosphere of the Earth. According to one of the slides, creep forming would be an intermediate step in a process that would yield a fully densified, finished C-CMC part having a desired size and shape (the other steps would include preliminary machining, finish machining, densification by chemical vapor infiltration, and final coating). The investigation included experiments in which C-CMC disks were creep-formed by heating them to unspecified high temperatures for time intervals of the order of 1 hour while they were clamped into single- and double-curvature graphite molds. The creep-formed disks were coated with an oxidation- protection material, then subjected to arc-jet tests, in which the disks exhibited no deterioration after exposure to high-temperature test conditions lasting 490 seconds

Urban green grabbing : Residential real estate developers discourse and practice in gentrifying Global North neighborhoods

Altres ajuts: Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICUnidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MIn the movement towards building greener and more sustainable cities, real estate developers are increasingly embracing not only green building construction but broader strategies and action related to urban greening. To date, their motivations and role in this broader urban greening dynamic remains underexplored, yet essential to dissect how greening is sustained and real estate development legitimized in revitalizing neighborhoods. With an eye to better understand green urban capitalist development processes underway amidst financialized nature and urban growth, and the equity impacts they entail, we explore residential real estate developers urban greening discourses and practices. Through a novel dataset of 42 interviews with private and non-profit residential real estate developers in 15 mid-sized American, Western European and Canadian cities, we uncover three differentiated but interconnected discourses around (i) financial benefits, (ii) consumer- or investor-driven demand and (iii) social dimensions behind developers' interest in urban greening. We argue that developers embark on urban green grabbing through "green" discursive and material value appropriation and rent extraction strategies. Urban green grabbing is conceptually useful in depicting who benefits and how/when developers extract additional rent, surplus value, social capital and/or prestige from locating new residential projects adjacent to new or up-and-coming green amenities. Our work contributes to debates about urban greening's perceived position as a value-producing and rent-extracting good from both a political economy and political ecology perspectiv

A Developmental Study of the Neural Circuitry Mediating Motor Inhibition in Bipolar Disorder

OBJECTIVE: Despite increased interest in the developmental trajectory of the pathophysiology mediating bipolar disorder (BD), few studies compare adults and youths with BD. Deficits in motor inhibition are thought to play an important role in the pathophysiology of BD across the age spectrum. Here we compare neural circuitry mediating this process in youths vs. adults with BD and healthy volunteers. METHOD: fMRI data from 89 subjects (16 BD youth, 23 BD adults, 21 healthy children, 29 healthy adults) were acquired while subjects performed the stop-signal task. RESULTS: During failed inhibition, an age group x diagnosis interaction manifested in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), with child BD participants showing hypoactivation relative to healthy children and adult BD, and adult BD showing hyperactivation relative to healthy adults. During successful inhibition, a main effect of diagnosis emerged in the right nucleus accumbens and left ventral prefrontal cortex, with bipolar individuals, irrespective of age, showing less activation than healthy participants. CONCLUSIONS: Child BD and adult BD both show ACC dysfunction during failed motor inhibition, although the nature of that dysfunction differs between groups. Adults and youth with BD show similar deficits in nucleus accumbens and ventral prefrontal cortex activation during successful inhibition. Therefore, while subcortical and VPFC hypoactivation is present in BD across the lifespan, ACC dysfunction varies developmentally, with reduced ACC activation in child BD and increased activation in adult BD during failed inhibition. Longitudinal fMRI studies on the developmental trajectory of the neural circuitry mediating motor inhibition in BD are warranted

New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban 'green turn' mean and where is it going?

Digital object identifier for the 'European Research Council' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781) ; Digital object identifier for 'Horizon 2020' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007601)Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Scholars in urban political ecology, urban geography, and planning have suggested that urban greening interventions can create elite enclaves of environmental privilege and green gentrification, and exclude lower-income and minority residents from their benefits. Yet, much remains to be understood in regard to the magnitude, scope, and manifestations of green gentrification and the forms of contestation and resistance articulated against it. In this paper, we propose new questions, theoretical approaches, and research design approaches to examine the socio-spatial dynamics and ramifications of green gentrification and parse out why, how, where, and when green gentrification takes place

Foundations for Esports Curricula in Higher Education

Esports has generated an industry of increasing economic and cultural importance. In recent years, universities and other higher education institutions have responded to its growth by establishing programmes of study which aim to satisfy the needs of innovators operating in the area. However, there is not yet consensus on what an esports curriculum should include. Despite being a technology-driven sector with ethical and professional dimensions that intersect computing, current ACM and IEEE curricula do not mention esports. Furthermore, existing courses tend to provide teaching and training on a wide variety of topics aside from those traditionally in computer science. These include: live events management; psychological research; sports science; marketing; public relations; video (livestream) production; and community management; in addition to coaching and communication. This working group examined the requirements for developing esports studies at universities with a focus on understanding career prospects in esports and on the challenges presented by its interdisciplinary complexity. Thereby, paving the way for a framework to support the design of esports curricula in higher education

Gentrification and health in two global cities : a call to identify impacts for socially-vulnerable residents

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552In global cities, the impacts of gentrification on the lives and well-being of socially vulnerable residents have occupied political agendas. Yet to date, research on how gentrification affects a multiplicity of health outcomes has remained scarce. While much of the nascent quantitative research helps to identify associations between gentrification and determined health outcomes, it tends to draw from static datasets collected for other studies to draw a posteriori and non-longitudinal conclusions. There is little attention in traditional public health research to purposely understand the health impacts of the complex, multi-layered, and rapid change produced by gentrification. Moreover, few studies examine the pathways and socio-spatial dynamics of the association between gentrification and health. In response, we use qualitative data collected in Boston and Barcelona to comprehensively identify how the health and well-being of long-term residents may be affected by gentrification and to call for new multi-methods research. In this initial assessment, we find a range of potential detrimental factors and potential pathways associated with gentrification, including individual-level physical and mental health outcomes such as obesity, asthma, chronic stress, and depression; neighborhood-level health determinants such as safety and new drug-dealing/use; and institutional-level health determinants such as healthcare precarity and worsened school conditions