From the national context to its margins : when the world used literature to respond to the Great War

By shedding light on some original responses to the Great War that are today hardly known, and by asking the same questions of many works written in contexts which were radically different, this STTCL special issue advocates for a genuinely comparative approach to this literature. Born in a context of nationalist withdrawal, these cultural objects also had a paradoxically wide circulation (due to early translations, commentaries, literary reactions, and so on), which is why study of these apparently isolated writers is so valuable

Behaviors That Eliminate Health Disparities for Racial and Ethnic Minorities: A Narrative Systematic Review

Within the health care provider-health care recipient relationship the communication must be culturally competent to eliminate barriers to equitable health care for all Americans. This assertion has conceptual grounding in Public Law 106-129 (the Health Care Research and Quality Act of 1999) and Public Law 106-525 (the Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education Act of 2000). This narrative systematic review examines this assertion by using selection and exclusion criteria to gather interventions, assessments, and testimonies conducted from 2000-2007. Reports that were not eliminated via these criteria were analyzed to determine the effect of specific practices that were undertaken in interventions, assessments, and testimonies. Which practices does research propose as indispensable to efforts to eliminate health disparities for racial and ethnic minority health care recipients? Findings indicate that culturally competent behaviors by providers and recipients promote effective intercultural communication that eliminates health care disparities, and removes obstacles to care

‘Homeless Monopoly’: Co-Creative Community Engagement Model for Transmedia Educational Game Design

This paper traces the research and development of a prototype transmedia game designed to raise awareness in young people of the issues surrounding homelessness. In Coventry the number of people in temporary accommodation has doubled in the 12 months up to March 2018 and those accepted as homeless has risen by over 50% to 964. Across the UK, homelessness is on the sharp increase and Shelter note a 59% increase in the number of homeless children in the past five years. This research project, positioned in relation to Coventry’s status as City of Culture 2021, addresses the question of how gamification and methodologies from artistic practice can provide capacity to intervene in the representational apparatus attached to those living on the margins of society and cast as ‘social abjects’. From its inception during a workshop with students to address social issues via gamification, this transmedia research project innovates mechanisms by which to place the agency of target communities at the centre of the design and production process. Through a partnership instigated with local charity Coventry Cyrenians, creative focus groups were used to collect real-life testimonies from Coventry’s homeless and ex-homeless. Secondary school students engaged, via Cyrenian outreach, in the early stages of development and subsequently to user-test the prototype games. University students also made significant contributions to the project development.The author will discuss the nature of collaboration and the emergent forms of co-creative participation within the project, and how such engagement informed the game mechanics, components and strategies of play as well as providing content for the game. Findings will be presented from the initial testing of prototype board- game, evaluated via a mixed methods approach. The model of engagement offers affordances for re-use as a transcontextual and transdisciplinary tool in games development.A concluding discussion will assess the impact to date and potential for future development as traditional board-game with educational resource pack, and hybrid forms of personal or group game that may be delivered via mobile or web-based technologies.<br/

Exploration of audiovisual heritage using audio indexing technology

This paper discusses audio indexing tools that have been implemented for the disclosure of Dutch audiovisual cultural heritage collections. It explains the role of language models and their adaptation to historical settings and the adaptation of acoustic models for homogeneous audio collections. In addition to the benefits of cross-media linking, the requirements for successful tuning and improvement of available tools for indexing the heterogeneous A/V collections from the cultural heritage domain are reviewed. And finally the paper argues that research is needed to cope with the varying information needs for different types of users

Tort Reform, Disputes and Belief Formation

We experimentally study the effects of the split-award tort reform, where the state takes a share of the plaintiff's punitive damage award, on litigants' beliefs and bargaining outcomes. In addition, we study the formation of litigants' beliefs in a strategic environment. Our results provide support for coherence-based reasoning theories: coherence shifts in litigants' background beliefs (elicited before a role is assigned and after commitment to a choice at the pretrial bargaining stage) suggest bi-directionality between choices and beliefs. Our findings also suggest role-specific bias in the updating of plaintiffs' beliefs about firm's negligence. Finally, our findings indicate that split-awards affect plaintiffs' beliefs about fairness and lower out-of-court settlement amounts.Tort Reform; Belief Formation; Split-Award Statute; Coherence-Based-Reasoning; Role-Specific Bias; Self-Serving Bias; Motivated Reasoning; Settlement; Litigation; Experiments; Debiasing through Law

Country reports Clean Clothes Campaign – November 2003 – February 2004

A compilation of country reports on the activities of the various European Clean Clothes Campaigns from November 2003 to February 2004

Stigma in youth with Tourette's syndrome: a systematic review and synthesis

Tourette's syndrome (TS) is a childhood onset neurodevelopmental disorder, characterised by tics. To our knowledge, no systematic reviews exist which focus on examining the body of literature on stigma in association with children and adolescents with TS. The aim of the article is to provide a review of the existing research on (1) social stigma in relation to children and adolescents with TS, (2) self-stigma and (3) courtesy stigma in family members of youth with TS. Three electronic databases were searched: PsycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science. Seventeen empirical studies met the inclusion criteria. In relation to social stigma in rating their own beliefs and behavioural intentions, youth who did not have TS showed an unfavourable attitude towards individuals with TS in comparison to typically developing peers. Meanwhile, in their own narratives about their lives, young people with TS themselves described some form of devaluation from others as a response to their disorder. Self-degrading comments were denoted in a number of studies in which the children pointed out stereotypical views that they had adopted about themselves. Finally, as regards courtesy stigma, parents expressed guilt in relation to their children's condition and social alienation as a result of the disorder. Surprisingly, however, there is not one study that focuses primarily on stigma in relation to TS and further studies that examine the subject from the perspective of both the 'stigmatiser' and the recipient of stigma are warranted

The Correlation of Dental Arch Width and Ethnicity

This study sought to demonstrate a correlation between arch width, ethnic background, individual height, weight, and whether orthodontic treatment had been rendered. Conclusions revealed that arch widths were significantly larger (p= 0.002 for the mandible and p= 0.008 for the maxilla) in non-Whites than in Whites. In addition, arch widths of the mandible were significantly larger in individuals who had had orthodontic treatment compared to those who had not (p=0.005). This did not carry through to those arch widths in the maxilla of orthodontic versus nonorthodontic care (p=0.258)