Solving the Problems of Iowa Food Deserts: Food Insecurity and Civic Structure*

Abstract Rural regions include places where food sources are not evenly distributed, leading to areas of concentration and food deserts—places where few or no grocery stores exist. Individuals are hypothesized to depend on personal connections and the civic structure of where they live to help them solve the problem of food insecurity. We find that residents living in poor rural counties with few grocery stores and perceptions of high civic structure are significantly less likely to be food insecure. A great deal of food giving and receiving is reported, but these personal connections do not decrease the odds of being food insecure. Lower incomes and being younger increase the odds of food insecurity. Our findings suggest that investments in strengthening the social structure of rural communities along with strategies that increase incomes can help households solve the problem of food insecurity.     

Parenting style,competence, social network and attachment in mothers with mental illness

Severe mental illnesses (SMIs) can affect parents' ability to provide an adequate environment for their children. Little has been written about the different factors that affect these abilities in individuals with SMI. In this study, we explored a number of relationships that have been found in the literature to be related to parenting styles. Our main hypotheses were that the participants' secure attachment with their parents is positively correlated with high levels of social support; social support is positively correlated with the experience of having good parental competency; lack of parental competency is negatively correlated with problematic parenting styles. This correlational and cross‐sectional study was conducted with 60 mothers with SMI. Results suggest a strong relationship between parental style, sense of parental competency, social support and attachment style of the parent. Negative parental styles were found to be negatively correlated with parental competence. Overactive and hostile parenting styles were found to be correlated with the interviewees' parental overprotecting attachment style. Positive correlations were found between parental competence and high social support. The results of the study may help in developing future multidimensional interventions for parents with SMI, to improve their parenting skills and reduce any negative influence on their offspring.     

Grave fraudulence in medical device research: a narrative review of the PIN seeding study for the Pinnacle hip system

In 2001, DePuy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (J&J/DePuy), initiated a seeding study called the “Multi-center, Prospective, Clinical Evaluation of Pinnacle Acetabular Implants in Total Hip Arthroplasty” (PIN Study). J&J/DePuy designed this study to develop new business opportunities during the launch of their Pinnacle Hip System (PHS) and generate survivorship data for marketing. This article, the first review of a seeding trial for a medical device, examines internal company documents relating to the PIN Study; the analysis herein focuses on the integrity of J&J/DePuy’s research practices in conception, implementation, and analysis. J&J/DePuy violated the study protocol and manipulated data; consented participants in violation of standards protecting human subjects; and did not secure Institutional Review Board approval for all study sites. J&J/DePuy used PIN Study results as the “fundamental selling point” for the PHS. Medical device seeding trials are distinct from previously-documented pharmaceutical seeding trials because companies can profit directly from device sales and because these studies may be the first clinical evaluation of the device (as was the case for the PIN Study). Seeding trials are malleable marketing projects, not rigorous scientific studies. Regulatory bodies, physicians, and others should be vigilant for persuasive marketing accounts disguised as science.     

Tasting off-flavors: food science,sensory knowledge and the consumer sensorium

Abstract

In food science and technology, understanding off-flavors has a significance with both technical and commercial implications. In the food industry in the United States, it is a widely held truism that consumers will not buy a product if they do not like the way it tastes or if it contains unpleasant flavors. But how can science determine when food is off putting, and how do scientists learn to address bad tastes in their experimental and technical practice? Based on ethnographic work with food scientists in the United States, this paper is a reflexive account of learning to taste off-flavors, a form of sensory learning that utilizes the scientist’s own body as a kind of instrument. The paper argues that a particular understanding of the consumer sensorium emerges through food scientists’ approach to off-flavors. This is an image of the consumer as a chemically receptive sensory system that is highly sensitive to compounds at trace levels. By utilizing the sensitivity of their own senses, food scientists exploit the relationship between distaste, memory and sensory perception as a form of training to produce future aesthetic memories of off-flavors that can be deployed in a technical context.     

The importance of discourse in homelessness policy for young people: an Australian perspective

Homelessness among young people remains an ongoing critical issue across the globe, despite numerous targeted policies attempting to address the issue. Research demonstrates that the way policies represent social problems influences policy solutions. Drawing on Australian policy, this research investigates how policy discourses construct homeless young people, and how these constructions influence the support services developed. The study involves a critical discourse analysis of Australia’s most recent national inquiry report on homelessness among young people. The analysis suggests that the values and assumptions present throughout this policy largely reflect neoliberal political contexts, emphasising the importance of individual and community responsibility. However, there exists a disconnect between policy expectations of young people’s autonomy and the construction of their capacity for autonomy. This suggests that young people require greater levels of participation in policy development to create an effective balance between their own need for self-determinism and the support they require to transition out of homelessness.     

‘Risky’ representation: the portrayal of women with mobility impairment in twenty-first-century advertising

Representations of disability and gender in advertising have been traditionally confined by narrow ideals surrounding body image. Recently, portrayals of disabled women in advertising have substantially grown in volume and variety. This research applies a feminist disability studies critique to the exploration of women with mobility impairments as ‘risky’ in twenty-first-century advertising. Feminist disability studies recognises culture as a key site in which disabled women have been historically misrepresented. While existing research dominantly focuses on textual analyses of advertisements, this study presents empirical data collected via semi-structured interviews with disabled women. Some women believe that the link between disabled women and riskiness sustains stereotypical attitudes and suggest that women with mobility impairments are included in advertisements as a form of ‘safe quirkiness’. However, others welcome provocative portrayals of women with mobility impairment and suggest that such representations challenge presumptions of disabled women as passive. The results of this research show how disabled women use their life experiences and personal beliefs to explore advertisements that supposedly represent them.     

Coming-Out Confessions: Negotiating the Burden of Lesbian Identity Politics in South Africa

For lesbians, “coming out” or disclosing one’s sexual orientation has come to be seen as a marker of self-acceptance, actualization, and the imperative first step in the authentication of a liberated subjectivity and social identity. However, other critical schools of thought, largely informed by Foucault’s middle writings, have argued that “coming out” is merely a confessional response to an incitement to discourse about sex. This study explored constructions of coming out by a group of self-identified lesbians in South Africa. Data were collected via eight semistructured interviews and subjected to discourse analysis. Although the coming-out stories appear to conform to some discursive practices characterizing confessional modes of response to incitements to speak, they are also de-emphasized as central to the constitution of selfhood. The changing conditions of possibility for the production of sexual subjectivity in contemporary South Africa seem to disrupt understandings of coming out as either solely a confessional or liberatory practice.