Challenging the Darwin Skeptics: Examining Proevolutionist Media Persuasion

The socio-religious skirmishes known as the Evolution Wars may have major implications for global religion, education, and popular perceptions of science. These so-called wars have witnessed the rise of several media-vocal proevolutionist organizations, which have sought to challenge Darwin-skeptic ideas and enterprises. Such proevolutionist organizations include the atheistic Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, the religiously neutral National Center for Science Education, and the BioLogos Foundation Christian advocacy group. This study executes a content analysis of media produced by these leading proevolutionist organizations from 2009 to 2011 and gauges the occurrence rates of several persuasive cues associated with the Elaboration Likelihood Model. This exercise reveals ways in which certain persuasive elements are articulated throughout proevolutionist media, and juxtaposes these observations with data previously gathered concerning Darwin-skeptic materials.     

Towards a sociology of risk work: A narrative review and synthesis

In this article, we define the concept of “risk work,” which aims to make visible working practices to assess or manage risk, in order to subject these practices to sociological critique. This article reviews and synthesizes existing published literature to identify components of risk work: (a) translating risk into different contexts, (b) minimizing risks in practice, and (c) caring in the context of risk. We argue that these three components of risk work raise important tensions for workers that have been inadequately explored in the literature to date. We propose that future research should additionally focus on practitioner subjectivity and identity in risk work. In addition, we argue that comparative research—across type of risk and different contexts—and methodological and theoretical diversity would enhance this emerging field of research.     

诗歌、歌曲和舞蹈的数字人类学根据及其美学意义

诗歌、歌曲和舞蹈作为交流的工具,超越了音乐的诸多限制.它们在传达某种信息上所需要的那种转换,实质上是以数字来表示的.本文所介绍的诗歌、歌曲和舞蹈的数字原则的应用,极好地说明了它们有着明确规定的数字人类学根据以及美学意义.     

Standard Container Size Discounts and the Single-Period Inventory Problem*

This paper analyzes the problem of choosing the optimal order quantity and its associated number of standard containers making up the order for single-period inventory models under standard container size discounts. A range is determined that contains the optimal order quantity. Two algorithms are presented. The first algorithm solves the general case in which there is no restriction on the types of containers included in an order. The second algorithm solves a more restricted policy that requires the buyer to accept the order with successively smaller container sizes.     

Opting out of workers’ compensation: Non-subscription in Texas and its effects

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - Texas is the only state that does not mandate that employers carry workers’ compensation (WC) insurance coverage. In place of traditional WC, companies can...     

Rurality and Income Inequality in the United States, 1975–2015

Recent events have focused attention on the perceived widening of the economic divide between urban and rural areas, and on the continued rise of national income inequality. We demonstrate that, in fact, the average income gap between urban (metropolitan) and rural (nonmetropolitan) households has not risen over the past 40 years, and makes virtually no contribution to national income inequality. Rising national inequality is driven by rising inequality within both urban and rural America, not by an urban/rural divergence. As is well known, the growing dispersion of household money income is partly driven by rising wage inequality, particularly in urban areas. Less well recognized is the role played by other income sources. We show that a decline in the progressivity of the distribution of social security payments and cash transfers, and an increase in the regressivity of the distribution of retirement incomes, have jointly made a comparably large contribution to rising income inequality. At the same time, the share of income from self-employment has declined, particularly in rural America, and because self-employment income is very unequally distributed, its diminution has retarded the growth of rural inequality. In 2014–15, however, rural inequality increased, cutting the urban/rural inequality gap in half.     

Reconciling care and justice in contesting social harm through performance and arts practice with looked after children and care leavers

The proportion of young people taken into the care of the state has increased recently and there is evidence that this social group suffer negative long‐term outcomes that might be conceptualised by the emergent criminological category of ‘social harm’. Debates in social work around an ethics of care and justice offer different ways of thinking about responding to social harm. This paper reports findings from an innovative arts‐based intervention with Looked After Children and young people and concludes that holding these competing value sets in creative tension is central to the success of the programme in helping young people to cope with and contest social harm.     

Deepwater Horizon oil spill exposure and child health: a longitudinal analysis

Population and Environment - The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DHOS) created widespread concern about threats to health among residents of the Louisiana Gulf Coast. This study uses data from the...     

Bringing Japanese Continuous Improvement Approaches to U.S. Manufacturing: The Roles of Process Orientation and Communications*

Continuous improvement (CI) has played a key role in Japan's quality management. U.S. companies have begun to adopt CI in recent years. This paper studies the implementation of CI in seven U.S. manufacturing companies. We view values as the core concept of culture that impacts CI effectiveness. Using both qualitative and quantitative data with a sample of seven companies, we observe empirically a relationship between process-oriented values and CI effectiveness. We also find that communications involving workers is strongly associated with CI effectiveness. Finally, we find an association between process orientation and communication frequency, and argue that communications act as an intervening variable between process orientation and effectiveness.     

Corruption and the ‘Paradox of Redistribution’

The existing literature on the determinants of income redistribution has identified a ‘paradox’. Namely, that countries with a high degree of market income inequality redistribute little, which is in disagreement with the median voter theorem. In a first step, this paper outlines several mechanisms that explain why government corruption might be partially responsible for this ‘paradox’. In a second step, different corruption perception indices and an instrumental variable approach are used to provide empirical evidence that indicates a significant negative impact of corruption on redistribution levels for a sample of 148 developing and developed countries. This finding suggests that, next to political and need factors, government corruption explains to some extent the ‘paradox of redistribution’. This is especially true for many developing countries, given that they typically have relatively high degrees of corruption and low levels of redistribution.