Gender Monstrosity

Deadgirl (2008) is based around a group of male teens discovering and claiming ownership of a bound female zombie, using her as a sex slave. This narrative premise raises numerous tensions that are particularly amplified by using a zombie as the film's central victim. The Deadgirl is sexually passive yet monstrous, reifying the horrors associated with the female body in patriarchal discourses. She is objectified on the basis of her gender, and this has led many reviewers to dismiss the film as misogynistic torture porn. However, the conditions under which masculinity is formed here—where adolescent males become “men” by enacting sexual violence—are as problematic as the specter of the female zombie. Deadgirl is clearly horrific and provocative: in this article I seek to probe implications arising from the film's gender conflicts.     

Environmental Hazards,Migration, and Race

This study contributes to our understanding of the association between internal migration patterns and environmentally hazardous facilities, with a focus upon race-specific outmigration at the county-level, nationwide. Among research suggesting inequalities with regard to the social distribution of environmental risk, selective migration is often implied to be a key dynamic leading to differential exposure to proximate environmental hazards. Nonetheless, the models presented here provide no evidence of differential migratory response by race to environmentally hazardous facilities, net of a wide array of socioeconomic controls for labor force opportunity, climate, and demographic structure. Future research should consider these associations at more precise geographies and/or at the individual level.     

Uncertainties in Pharmacokinetic Modeling for Perchloroethylene: II. Comparison of Model Predictions with Data for a Variety of Different Parameters

In this paper we compare expectations derived from 10 different human physiologically based pharmacokinetic models for perchloroethylene with data on absorption via inhalation, and concentrations in alveolar air and venous blood. Our most interesting finding is that essentially all of the models show a time pattern of departures of predictions of air and blood levels relative to experimental data that might be corrected by more sophisticated model structures incorporating either (a) heterogeneity of the fat compartment (with respect to either perfusion or partition coefficients or both) or (b) intertissue diffusion of perchloroethylene between the fat and muscle/VRG groups. Similar types of corrections have recently been proposed to reduce analogous anomalies in the fits of pharmacokinetic models to the data for several volatile anesthetics.^(17-20) A second finding is that models incorporating resting values for alveolar ventilation in the region of 5.4 L/min seemed to be most compatible with the most reliable set of perchloroethylene uptake data.     

Codes of ethics and firm size: A stakeholder approach to strategic planning

A firm's capital budgeting and strategic planning decisions have the potential to affect many groups of people called stakeholders. A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the firm's objectives. This study examines whether the presence of a code of ethics that specifically addresses capital budgeting/strategic planning decisions will significantly raise the awareness of social responsibility during the long-run planning process. This study also examines whether firm size is associated with the awareness of social responsibility during the long-run planning process. Support was found that a code of ethics that addresses long-range planning is associated with higher awareness during the planning process. Firm size was not found to be statistically different.     

The Evolution of Organizations: Suggestions from Complexity Theory About the Interplay Between Natural Selection and Adaptation

There has been much debate in the managementliterature between neo-Darwinists (who believe in thenatural selection of populations of organizations) andadaptationists (who contend that changes in organization structure and behavior occur in response to theenvironment). The general thesis of neo-Darwinism isthat species are blindly selected for survival by theenvironment. The latest empirical support for the dominant neo-Darwinism perspective adopted bymost biologists is based primarily on the experimentsconducted by Salvador Luria who claims to haveconclusively demonstrated that genes mutate randomly.Recently, however, biologists have re-examined Luria sresearch methods and, after replications of hisexperiments, now question some aspects of the validityof his results. Moreover, there is now new researchwhich provides support for the earlier adaptationistposition, namely, the existence of evolutionary driversand directors existing within self-organizing systems.Of particular importance to the present study is the experimental indication thatself-organizing systems play a conscious role in theirown evolution. We propose that similar mechanisms orprocesses operate in organizational adaptation, thuspointing toward a theoretical modification ofneo-Darwinism that embraces both adaptation and naturalselection in a general, unified theory.     

Barriers to Training for Disabled Social Work Students

Disabled people wishing to enter Higher Education are confronted with a number of barriers, yet relatively little research has been carried out to identify the level and nature of such obstacles. The short study reported here was designed to examine policy and practice within a number of social work training institutions in Scotland. Interviews were held with disabled students and ex-students, course tutors and practice teachers. Barriers to training are identified in five main areas: first, the disabling physical environment; secondly, problems of typification (whereby global assumptions of impairment are made about individuals); thirdly, failure of equal opportunities policies; fourthly, the practice of treating all students in the same way, resulting in discrimination against a few; and, finally, self-censorship on the part of students. It is argued that the reluctance of some students to 'declare' an impairment is a rational response to the disabling policies pursued, albeit inadvertently, by institutions. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed.     

Portfolio assessment in a collaborative program evaluation: the reliability and validity of a family literacy portfolio

Evaluations increasingly use open-ended assessments, such as portfolios, to gather information about program impact. Portfolios, however, present challenges in achieving acceptable levels of reliability and often lack evidence to support validity. This article describes the components of a portfolio assessment system developed in a collaborative evaluation of a family literacy program. Staff of a family literacy program and two evaluators collaborated to develop the assessment and the tools that frame the review of the portfolios. Rubrics, exemplar portfolios, portfolio logs, and lists of ‘look-fors’ were developed to guide raters in the scoring and to improve the reliability of scores and validity of decisions about the program. Inter-rater reliability for the portfolio assessment was 0.79 for holistic scores and 0.74 for analytic scores. With respect to validity, holistic and analytic scores correlated with criterion measures from 0.50 to 0.59, providing initial evidence of a common construct.