The Sticking Out Parts: A Content Analysis of Print and Website Advertisements on Breast and Penis Augmentation

Breast and penis augmentations are century old processes of body modification continuing in development and practice today. This Masters thesis is a content analysis of breast and penis augmentation print and internet advertisements to explore one facet of augmentation discourse presented in public space. Relevant theoretical literature includes fetish discourse and medical discourse as existing frameworks that conceptualize augmentation predominantly as a process of body fragmentation. After reviewing this literature, I expand to blend together perspectives from three body theorists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, as an alternate framework for embodiment. I then use content analysis to examine the data collected from 21 print sources and 27 internet sources. The data indicates fetish discourse, focusing on body fragmentation, is the dominant content in breast and penis augmentation advertisements; however, I argue in the conclusion that incorporating elements of embodiment into fetish discourse is a better perspective for future research

Organizational Strategy Under Institutional Pluralism: A Latent Variable Analysis Of Institutional Effects On Organizational Behavior In The United States Pharmaceutical Industry

The United States pharmaceutical industry is a dynamic organizational system populated by organizations pursuing different strategies to reach different goals. The aim of this dissertation is to examine the organizational field of the pharmaceutical industry to determine if categories of pharmaceutical organizations exist based on organizational strategy. This project applies the theoretical constructs of organizational fields and institutional logics developed by institutional theorists to examine the institutional effects on organizational strategies. This is a mixed methods project using historical analysis, latent class analysis, and case studies to evaluate the drug development process. The findings of this study show field level institutions do affect organizational strategy and contribute to organizational diversity within a field. However, the findings suggest the influence of institutional logics is neither straightforward nor without organizational costs. The general findings of my research show organizations benefit when their dominant logic aligns with the dominant logic of the field; while, misaligned logics require organizations to pursue alternative tactics to legitimize their strategies

Athletes' experiences of social support during their transition out of elite sport: An interpretive phenomenological analysis

Objectives The sources and types of social support that athletes receive during the transition out of sport have been well documented. However, less is known about how athletes perceive, mobilise, and manage supportive relationships. This study aimed therefore to gain a more comprehensive insight into the ways that social support may influence how athletes adjust to life following retirement from elite sport. Design The study was designed according to the principles of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Method Eight former British elite athletes (four male and four female) from eight different Olympic sports were recruited using criterion-based purposive sampling strategies. Data collected using semi-structured interviews were analysed to explore subjective experiences of social support during transition. Results Participants' perception of feeling cared for and understood enabled support to be effective. There were variations in participants' ability to seek out and ask for support and those who found this difficult also found transition a more distressing experience. As transitions progressed, the adjustment process was closely linked to the participant's evolving sense of self. New social relationships and social roles fostered a sense of feeling supported, as well as providing opportunities to support others (e.g., other retired athletes). Providing support helped the participants to experience a sense of growth that facilitated adjustment to life after sport. Conclusions The content of support was largely dependent on context; that is, perceptions of supporters were just as important, if not more so, than specific support exchanges. Stigma around asking for help was a barrier to support seeking

Athletes’ retirement from elite sport: A qualitative study of parents and partners’ experiences

Objectives Athletes’ experiences of transition out of elite sport have been well documented. Less is known, however, about how the family members of athletes experience the process of transition. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of parents and partners’ experiences and the way that they managed and interpreted their role in the process of transition. Method Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with the parents and partners (two male and five female) of seven retired elite athletes from the UK. Data were analysed according to the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results Parents and partners experienced their own transition as they navigated uncertainty and upheaval in their own lives when the athletes retired. Parents and partners had to renegotiate their identity as they adjusted to changing roles and dynamics in their close relationships. Providing support to the former athletes was complicated by parents and partners’ own difficulties during transition and they often felt unsure about their role as a supporter. Parents and partners often experienced difficulties in their relationship with the athletes during their transition, but things improved as time went by. This was due to better communication and a willingness to share their feelings about their experiences. This helped parents and partners to gain a positive perspective on their transition and a sense that their relationship with the athletes had strengthened and grown. Conclusions Transition is often a shared experience and the findings of the present study underline the value of exploring transition at the level of the family or partnership as well as the individual

Effect of a mobile app intervention on vegetable consumption in overweight adults: a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Mobile applications (apps) have been heralded as transformative tools to deliver behavioral health interventions at scale, but few have been tested in rigorous randomized controlled trials. We tested the effect of a mobile app to increase vegetable consumption among overweight adults attempting weight loss maintenance. METHODS: Overweight adults (n=135) aged 18-50 years with BMI=28-40 kg/m2 near Stanford, CA were recruited from an ongoing 12-month weight loss trial (parent trial) and randomly assigned to either the stand-alone, theory-based Vegethon mobile app (enabling goal setting, self-monitoring, and feedback and using "process motivators" including fun, surprise, choice, control, social comparison, and competition) or a wait-listed control condition. The primary outcome was daily vegetables servings, measured by an adapted Harvard food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) 8 weeks post-randomization. Daily vegetable servings from 24-hour dietary recalls, administered by trained, certified, and blinded interviewers 5 weeks post-randomization, was included as a secondary outcome. All analyses were conducted according to principles of intention-to-treat. RESULTS: Daily vegetable consumption was significantly greater in the intervention versus control condition for both measures (adjusted mean difference: 2.0 servings; 95% CI: 0.1, 3.8, p=0.04 for FFQ; and 1.0 servings; 95% CI: 0.2, 1.9; p=0.02 for 24-hour recalls). Baseline vegetable consumption was a significant moderator of intervention effects (p=0.002) in which effects increased as baseline consumption increased. CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate the efficacy of a mobile app to increase vegetable consumption among overweight adults. Theory-based mobile interventions may present a low-cost, scalable, and effective approach to improving dietary behaviors and preventing associated chronic diseases. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01826591. Registered 27 March 2013

Adaptive sampling method to monitor low-risk pathways with limited surveillance resources

The rise of globalisation has led to a sharp increase in international trade, with high volumes of containers, goods and items moving across the world. Unfortunately, these trade pathways also facilitate the movement of unwanted pests, weeds, diseases, and pathogens. Each item could contain biosecurity risk material, but it is impractical to inspect every item. Instead, inspection efforts typically focus on high risk items. However, low risk does not imply no risk. It is crucial to monitor the low risk pathways to ensure that they are and remain low risk. To do so, many approaches would seek to estimate the risk to some precision, but the lower the risk, the more samples needed to estimate the risk. On a low-risk pathway that can be afforded more limited inspection resources, it makes more sense to assign fewer samples to the lower risk activities. We approach the problem by introducing two thresholds. Our method focuses on letting us know whether the risk is below certain thresholds, rather than estimating the risk precisely. This method also allows us to detect a significant change in risk. Our approach typically requires less sampling than previous methods, while still providing evidence to regulators to help them efficiently and effectively allocate inspection effort.Comment: 12 + 2 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

ALEGRA-MHD : Version 4.0.

ALEGRA is an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian finite element code that emphasizes large distortion and shock propagation in inviscid fluids and solids. This document describes user options for modeling magnetohydrodynamic, thermal conduction, and radiation emission effects

Legitimating space: art and the politics of place

Rock art, graffiti, and other emplaced works of art bring people together at specific places. This type of art allows for encounters between people in their absence, and thus presents a range of possibilities for making statements about specific places and those who occupy or visit. This opens the possibility for issues of legitimation to become implicitly or explicitly articulated. However, the legitimate use of space, and the legitimate employment of art, can vary drastically across different contexts. Here, the paper discusses a range of different strategies of art and legitimation in three case studies from India, California, and Spai

Bimodal Presentation Speeds up Auditory Processing and Slows Down Visual Processing

Many situations require the simultaneous processing of auditory and visual information, however, stimuli presented to one sensory modality can sometimes interfere with processing in a second sensory modality (i.e., modality dominance). The current study further investigated modality dominance by examining how task demands and bimodal presentation affect speeded auditory and visual discriminations. Participants in the current study had to quickly determine if two words, two pictures, or two word-picture pairings were the same or different, and we manipulated task demands across three different conditions. In an immediate recognition task, there was only one second between the two stimuli/stimulus pairs and auditory dominance was found. Compared to the respective unimodal baselines, pairing pictures and words together slowed down visual responses and sped up auditory responses. Increasing the interstimulus interval to four seconds and blocking verbal rehearsal weakened auditory dominance effects, however, conflicting and redundant visual cues sped up auditory discriminations. Thus, simultaneously presenting pictures and words had different effects on auditory and visual processing, with bimodal presentation slowing down visual processing and speeding up auditory processing. These findings are consistent with a proposed mechanism underlying auditory dominance, which posits that auditory stimuli automatically grab attention and attenuate/delay visual processing