The humorous construction of disability: 'stand-up' comedians in the United States

We examine how stand-up [sic] comedy constructs, circulates, perpetuates and/or disrupts stereotypical images of disabled persons in the United States. We use disabled people, rather than people-first language, to remind readers that disability is an ill-defined, culturally imposed attribute. Although humor is culturally specific, we draw on works of an international cadre of humanities scholars and social scientists to ground our analyses. We conclude that disability humor constitutes an emerging, liberatory art form. Disabled and non-disabled comedians elicit thought-provoking laughter and present disability as an interesting way to live. However, disabling humor still perpetuates stereotyping and isolation.     

Four‐Month‐Olds' Discrimination of Voice Changes in Multimodal Displays as a Function of Discrimination Protocol

Past studies have found equivocal support for the ability of young infants to discriminate infant‐directed (ID) speech information in the presence of auditory‐only versus auditory + visual displays (faces + voices). Generally, younger infants appear to have more difficulty discriminating a change in the vocal properties of ID speech when they are accompanied by faces. Forty 4‐month‐old infants were tested using either an infant‐controlled habituation procedure (Experiment 1) or a fixed‐trial habituation procedure (Experiment 2). The prediction was that the infant‐controlled habituation procedure would be a more sensitive measure of infant attention to complex displays. The results indicated that 4‐month‐old infants discriminated voice changes in dynamic face + voice displays depending on the order in which they were viewed during the infant‐controlled habituation procedure. In contrast, no evidence of discrimination was found in the fixed‐trial procedure. The findings suggest that the selection of experimental methodology plays a significant role in the empirical observations of infant perceptual abilities.     

Complementary person-supervisor fit: An investigation of supplies-values (S-V) fit,leader-member exchange (LMX) and work outcomes

By applying the supplies-values (S-V) fit approach from the complementary person-environment (P-E) fit literature to the leader-employee perspective, and drawing upon social exchange theory, we examine how fulfillment of different work values is related to Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and work outcomes. First, polynomial regression analyses combined with response surface analysis of data collected at two time points (N = 316) showed that LMX (Time 2) was higher the more the leader fulfills the employee's work values (Time 1). Second, LMX (Time 2) was higher when leader supplies (Time 1) and employee work values (Time 1) were both high than when both were low. Third, analyses of data from a sub-sample of matched leader-employee dyads (N = 140), showed that LMX (Time 2) played a mediating role on the relation between S-V fit (Time 1) and work outcomes (Time 2). Specifically, we found eight out of 10 relationships between S-V fit (Time 1) and leader-rated task performance and OCB (Time 2) to be fully mediated by LMX (Time 2). LMX (Time 2) partially mediated the relation between S-V fit (Time 1) and job satisfaction (Time 2) as only two out of five relationships were fully mediated.     

Deep Uncertainties in Sea-Level Rise and Storm Surge Projections: Implications for Coastal Flood Risk Management

Sea levels are rising in many areas around the world, posing risks to coastal communities and infrastructures. Strategies for managing these flood risks present decision challenges that require a combination of geophysical, economic, and infrastructure models. Previous studies have broken important new ground on the considerable tensions between the costs of upgrading infrastructure and the damages that could result from extreme flood events. However, many risk-based adaptation strategies remain silent on certain potentially important uncertainties, as well as the tradeoffs between competing objectives. Here, we implement and improve on a classic decision-analytical model (Van Dantzig 1956) to: (i) capture tradeoffs across conflicting stakeholder objectives, (ii) demonstrate the consequences of structural uncertainties in the sea-level rise and storm surge models, and (iii) identify the parametric uncertainties that most strongly influence each objective using global sensitivity analysis. We find that the flood adaptation model produces potentially myopic solutions when formulated using traditional mean-centric decision theory. Moving from a single-objective problem formulation to one with multiobjective tradeoffs dramatically expands the decision space, and highlights the need for compromise solutions to address stakeholder preferences. We find deep structural uncertainties that have large effects on the model outcome, with the storm surge parameters accounting for the greatest impacts. Global sensitivity analysis effectively identifies important parameter interactions that local methods overlook, and that could have critical implications for flood adaptation strategies.     

Uncovering the Mystery of How Users Find and Use eBooks through Guerilla Usability Testing

Abstract

This case study focuses on user research that was conducted to enhance our users’ ebook discovery experience. We took an outward-facing approach by seeking the users’ perspectives. We wanted to know: How do users find ebooks? How do they perceive multiple records for the same title? Would users find additional metadata useful, such as download availability, file format, and chapter titles? We coordinated guerilla usability testing in our library lobby, inspired by low-overhead, high-impact user experience work at other academic libraries. The resulting data gave us a much-needed new perspective of ebook usage that supplements what we already know from our day-to-day work.     

Resource Distribution in Multiple Attacks with Imperfect Detection of the Attack Outcome

This article extends the previous research of consecutive attacks strategy by assuming that an attacker observes the outcome of each attack imperfectly. With given probabilities it may wrongly identify a destroyed target as undestroyed, and wrongly identify an undestroyed target as destroyed. The outcome of each attack is determined by a contest success function that depends on the amount of resources allocated by the defender and the attacker to each attack. The article suggests a probabilistic model of the multiple attacks and analyzes how the target destruction probability and the attacker's relative resource expenditure are impacted by the two probabilities of incorrect observation, the attacker's and defender's resource ratio, the contest intensity, the number of attacks, and the resource distribution across attacks. We analyze how the attacker chooses the number of attacks, the attack stopping rule, and the optimal resource distribution across attacks to maximize its utility.