Creating High‐Technology Growth: High‐Tech Employment Growth in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1988–1998*

Objective. Growth in the share of high‐technology employment is critical to discussions of the postindustrial transition. Do new state and local technology policies create growth in the share of high‐technology employment? This article examines this question along with the effects of location and agglomeration advantages, identifying sources of qualitative growth in the U.S. economy. Methods. We examine change in the share of high‐technology employment in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States between 1988 and 1998. High‐technology employment is measured from the BLS Current Employment Statistics Survey. The scale of state and local technology policies are measured from a comprehensive survey of state and local technology programs. A generalized linear model (GLM) estimates the effects of technology policies along with regional proximity, location, and agglomeration factors. Results. Technology grant and loan programs and research parks have direct effects on the share of high‐technology employment, along with private venture capital firms and military R&D. Research parks also magnify the effects of private venture capital firms, while public venture programs and technology development policies compensate for agglomeration deficits. Rapid population growth provides a more conducive context for these policies but does not directly influence growth in the share of high‐technology jobs. Conclusion. State and local technology policies compensate for and magnify the effects of agglomeration advantages, indicating that state and local government can play a strategic role in high‐technology development.     

Unmaking the Middle Eastern working classes: labour and the politics of historiography

This article surveys recent developments in academic approaches to the history of the working classes in the modern Middle East and argues that the decline of scholarly interest in Middle Eastern labour history is a product of the confluence of political, cultural and disciplinary transformations. Labour history thrived among historians of the Middle East in the late 1970s and 1980s but produced only a small handful of important texts in the following two decades. The marginalization of organized labour by post-populist authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the sudden rise of political Islam as the dominant paradigm of political opposition to the state, and the general abandonment of class analysis by historians in the wake of the ‘cultural turn’ have all contributed to this decline of academic interest in the lives of Middle Eastern workers. These problems have been exacerbated by the political instability of the region and the corresponding difficulty of accessing state archives. The political spark provided by labour activism and agitation in the years preceding and following the ‘Arab Spring’, however, is once again bringing questions of labour and class to the attention of historians.     

Contested Rights: The Pedagogy and Logistics of Hosting Constitution Day

Research in global education has turned toward global citizenship education and the fostering of a more critical reading of the tenets of “soft” global education laid out over four decades ago in Hanvey's (1976) “An Attainable Global Perspective.” Interested in skill building and informed application of concepts forwarded within critical approaches to global education, this article brings the NCSS C3 inquiry arc together with standards for Global Competence Education within social studies education. Using food insecurity as an example, the conceptualization provided demonstrates how coupling the C3 with the Global Competence standards creates a framework that social studies educators can use to prepare students to participate as informed, responsible, and critically minded change agents within complex and unequal global systems.     

Conflict of Interest Mitigation Procedures May Have Little Influence on the Perceived Procedural Fairness of Risk‐Related Research

Two between‐subject experiments explored perceived conflict of interest (COI)—operationalized as perceived procedural unfairness—in a hypothetical public–private research partnership to study the health risks of trans fats. Perceived fairness was measured as subjects’ perceptions that health researchers would be willing to listen to a range of voices and minimize bias (i.e., COI) in the context of a research project. Experiment 1 (n = 1,263) randomly assigned research subjects to a partnership that included (1) a combination of an industry partner, a university partner, and a nongovernmental organization (NGO) partner; and (2) one of three processes aimed at mitigating the potential for COI to harm the quality of the research. The procedures included an arm's‐length process meant to keep the university‐based research team from being influenced by the other partners, an independent advisory board to oversee the project, and a commitment to making all data and analyses openly available. The results suggest that having an industry partner has substantial negative effects on perceived fairness and that the benefit of employing a single COI‐mitigation process may be relatively small. Experiment 2 (n = 1,076) assessed a partnership of (1) a university and either an NGO or industry partner and (b) zero, one, two, or three of the three COI‐mitigation procedures. Results suggest there is little value in combining COI‐mitigation procedures. The study has implications for those who aim to foster confidence in scientific findings for which the underlying research may benefit from industry funding.     

A Case Study Evaluating the Risk of Infection from Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS‐CoV) in a Hospital Setting Through Bioaerosols

Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, an emerging viral infection with a global case fatality rate of 35.5%, caused major outbreaks first in 2012 and 2015, though new cases are continuously reported around the world. Transmission is believed to mainly occur in healthcare settings through aerosolized particles. This study uses Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment to develop a generalizable model that can assist with interpreting reported outbreak data or predict risk of infection with or without the recommended strategies. The exposure scenario includes a single index patient emitting virus‐containing aerosols into the air by coughing, leading to short‐ and long‐range airborne exposures for other patients in the same room, nurses, healthcare workers, and family visitors. Aerosol transport modeling was coupled with Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the risk of MERS illness for the exposed population. Results from a typical scenario show the daily mean risk of infection to be the highest for the nurses and healthcare workers (8.49 × 10^?4 and 7.91 × 10^?4, respectively), and the lowest for family visitors and patients staying in the same room (3.12 × 10^?4 and 1.29 × 10^?4, respectively). Sensitivity analysis indicates that more than 90% of the uncertainty in the risk characterization is due to the viral concentration in saliva. Assessment of risk interventions showed that respiratory masks were found to have a greater effect in reducing the risks for all the groups evaluated (>90% risk reduction), while increasing the air exchange was effective for the other patients in the same room only (up to 58% risk reduction).     

The Mediating Role of Secular Coping Strategies in the Relationship Between Religious Appraisals and Adjustment to Chronic Pain: The Middle Road to Damascus

Despite an outgrowth in research examining associations between religiosity and health outcomes, there has been a lack of empirical focus on the relationship between religiosity and adjustment to chronic pain. This study investigated specific secular coping strategies that mediate the proposed relationship between religious appraisals and pain-related outcomes. Twenty-nine chronic pain patients completed measures assessing pain-related coping strategies, pain severity, disability, depression, positive and negative affect, trait anger and three types of religious appraisals- benevolent God appraisals, punishing God appraisals, and demonic appraisals. A significant positive relationship was found between punishing God appraisals and depression, with catastrophizing mediating this relationship. Demonic appraisals were significantly related to disability. Benevolent religious appraisals were related to positive affect. Benevolent religious appraisals were significantly related to the secular coping strategies of diverting attention, ignoring pain sensations, reinterpreting pain sensations and using coping self-statements, but these coping strategies did not mediate the relationship between benevolent religious appraisals and positive affect. While this study provides no evidence that religious appraisals influence pain perception, data suggest that both positive and negative religious appraisals are related to mental health outcomes in a chronic pain population.     

An Archaeological Critique of ‘Evidence‐based Management’: One Digression After Another

Fundamental problems remain with evidence‐based management. We argue that, rather than being addressed, these problems are treated as digressions. One explanation for this is an ongoing incoherence: the evidence‐based approach relegates narrative to a ghetto category of knowledge, but it is itself a narrative. Moreover, while this narrative is becoming more polished through repetition and selective assimilation of critique, it is also becoming simplified and less interesting. A Foucauldian, archaeological analysis accounts for this development by locating evidence‐based management in a broader historical context. This analysis shows how the roots of incoherence can be informed by older exchanges between evidence and narrative.     

Giving,Saving, Spending: What Would Children Do with £1 Million?

This article explores children's responses to a single question: ‘If someone gave you £1 million today, what would you do with it?’ Although such an exploration might seem trivial, we argue that their responses provide important insights into children's values and priorities. One‐third intend to spend it all, one quarter to save it. But the largest group claim that they would give all or some of the money away. Their responses highlight the divergent ways in which children use money to foster particular forms of social relations and social standing. Against the prevalent discourse of consumer society, the dominant theme of giving may indicate that the individualism of neoliberalism is less pervasive than is often feared, but also suggest that further research is needed into the social contexts and processes which encourage children to be ‘givers’, ‘savers’ or ‘spenders’.