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Exploring the Impact of Technology Dominance on Audit Professionalism through Data Analytic-Driven Healthcare Audits
Get PDFArtificial intelligence (AI)-enabled tools and analytics hold the potential to radically alter audit processes by disseminating centralized audit expertise. We examine this potential in the context of data analytic-driven audits mandated to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in a government-sponsored healthcare program. To do so, we draw on semistructured interviews with healthcare providers (i.e., auditees) subject to healthcare audits. Our work shows how use of paraprofessional auditors guided by AI-enabled tools and analytics reflects a very different audit environment. Specifically, auditees’ experiences suggest paraprofessional auditors lack specific expertise and credentials to conduct data-driven audits, apply judgment in deference to technology, and disregard the impact of AI-driven decisions on the public interest. Such experiences raise potential concerns for all audits over unbridled use of AI-enabled tools and analytics by novice-level auditors/paraprofessionals, but even more for audits conducted in contexts where adherence to professional norms is essential to minimizing public interest consequences
Being Real: Gen-Z, Self-Presentation, and Authenticity on Social Media
Get PDFWhat does it mean to truly be real? This question of authenticity is one that scholars have been asking for years, and it is now echoed by members of Generation-Z as they trailblaze a new frontier for media through social media platforms that encourage authenticity. Considering this shift in social media practices, Gen-Z users appear to be implementing a ‘realer’ approach to social media than previous generations’ edited and filtered content. However, does this ‘real’ content actually feel real to the users creating and consuming it? The abstract nature of the concept of authenticity creates a significant amount of ambiguity surrounding one singular definition and suggests that there is consistent development occurring in terms of Generation Z’s perception of authenticity, as well as their expectation of this characteristic from their peers on social media. Although authenticity is important to Gen-Z, research shows that members of this group can also be likely to shift their self-presentation dramatically based on the social media platform they are using, and follow practices of conformity with their own peers (Darr, 2022). The new social media platform BeReal offers a new opportunity for users to self-present authentically and could change the way that users define authenticity as a whole. In this study, Gen-Z social media users underwent in-depth qualitative interviews examining their perceptions and definitions of authenticity in order to offer commentary on how much Gen-Z is prioritizing authenticity on social media, and how well social media platforms are measuring up to their expectations
Jinn Discourses in America
Get PDFThe scholarly literature shows that jinn are important in the analysis of the formation of Islam in Muslim diasporas in the West. Jinn discourses in America reveal how American Muslims negotiate their religious beliefs in relation to American conceptions of modernity and secularism, as well as highlights competing Islamic epistemologies that result from these negotiations. Imams emphasize the Qur’an and the Sunnah as the only sources of legitimate knowledge, while lay American Muslims and scholars of Islam see personal experience as a way to approach Islam
Desire, difference, and productivity: reflections on “The perverse child” and its continued relevance
Get PDFThis article is concerned with the relationships through which children have been born, raised, and made into Amahuaca people over the past 75 years, and within contemporary Native Communities on the Inuya River since their formation beginning in the 1980s. The process of making children into kin among Amahuaca people is similar to that described throughout much of lowland South America. The production, preparation, and sharing of proper food (manioc, plantains, fish, and game) as well as manioc beer are central aspects of sociality and the formation of specific kinds of bodies. While the processes of sharing substances, demonstrating care, and living together are central for making kin out of Others (such as foreigners or other Indigenous Peoples), this article focuses on children, and specifically children whose “biological fathers” are either not known or have little to no role in parenting. Moreover, this process of making children into kin, into Amahuaca people, is often put into the hands of elder Amahuaca women, which is a practice that has been ongoing for at least the past 80 years. The point I want to make is that the identity, ethnicity, or Otherness of a “biological relative” is not always relevant for the processes of making children into Amahuaca people
Indigenous transformations in the comunidad nativa: rethinking kinship and its limitations in an expanding resource frontier
Get PDFIn Of Mixed Blood, Peter Gow sets out an account of the transformations of kinship and the construction of social relations among Indigenous, mainly Yine (Piro), people of the Bajo Urubamba valley in the early 1980s, when Peru’s “Comunidades Nativas” (“Native Communities”) were receiving their new official titles. We revisit Peter’s proposition by comparing it our more recent ethnographic engagements with Indigenous Asháninka/Ashéninka communities in the region. While tracing continuities from his observations, we also show how social relations now play out in different ways, as certain important resources have become scarcer and the need for money is increasingly central for people’s wellbeing. This new context is framed by the expansion of the extractive frontier, a different legal regime of access to land and resources in Comunidades Nativas, and expanding Indigenous groups living in smaller and increasingly degraded areas. In this context, we see not the embracing of new forms of overarching solidarity linked to Comunidades, but rather the shrinking of familial units within these titled territories. The article reflects on Peter’s propositions through vignettes that show how processes of making and unmaking social relations and creating new identities play out in different settings while still maintaining an internal coherence
Marginal to Whom? Reflections on Gow\u27s Purús Song
No full textThis paper constitutes a personal exploration of the impact of the work of Peter Gow on my own attempts to think through specific ethnographic problems, both in the Mapuche communities of Southern Chile and the Gaelic communities of Western Scotland. I focus in particular on how Gow’s lesser-known essay “Purús Song” inverts received wisdom about the relationships between center and periphery, and between nation-state and Indigenous people. I see this as one iteration of Gow’s broader aim of letting ethnographic realities transform theoretical complacencies
Oxytocin Attenuates Yohimbine-Induced Reinstatement of Alcohol-Seeking in Female Rats via the Central Amygdala
Get PDFAlcohol use disorder is a significant public health concern, further exacerbated by an increased risk of relapse due to stress. In addition, factors such as biological sex may contribute to the progression of addiction, as females are especially susceptible to stress-induced relapse. While there have been many studies surrounding potential pharmacological interventions for male stress-induced ethanol reinstatement, research regarding females is scarce. Recently, the neuropeptide oxytocin has gained interest as a possible pharmacological intervention for relapse. The present study examines how oxytocin affects yohimbine-induced reinstatement of ethanol-seeking in female rats using a self-administration paradigm. Adult female rats were trained to press a lever to access ethanol in daily self-administration sessions. Rats then underwent extinction training before a yohimbine-induced reinstatement test. Rats administered with yohimbine demonstrated significantly higher lever response indicating a reinstatement of ethanol-seeking behavior. Oxytocin administration, both systemically and directly into the central amygdala, attenuated the effect of yohimbine-induced reinstatement of ethanol-seeking behavior. The findings from this study establish that oxytocin is effective at attenuating alcohol-relapse behavior mediated by the pharmacological stressor yohimbine and that this effect is modulated by the central amygdala in females. This provides valuable insight regarding oxytocin’s potential therapeutic effect in female stress-induced alcohol relapse
The Disappeared: Stories
No full textA collection of stories that trace the threads of loss and displacement running through all our lives, by the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Theory of Light and Matter
A husband and wife hear a mysterious bump in the night. A father mourns the closeness he has lost with his son. A friendship with a married couple turns into a dangerous codependency. With gorgeous sensitivity, assurance, and a propulsive sense of menace, these stories center on disappearances both literal and figurative—lives and loves that are cut short, the vanishing of one\u27s youthful self. From San Antonio to Austin, from the clamor of a crowded restaurant to the cigarette at a lonely kitchen table, Andrew Porter captures each of these relationships mid-flight, every individual life punctuated by loss and beauty and need. The Disappeared reaffirms the undeniable artistry of a contemporary master of the form.https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/mono/1189/thumbnail.jp