2199 research outputs found
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Womenswear Well-being Warriors: A Content Analysis of Female-Targeted Activewear Brands on Instagram
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/10449/10620-thumbnail.jpgIn contemporary Western society, people are increasingly focused on well-being, with national well-being statistics reported by numerous developed economies. Wellness is now a consumer mindset, which has gone beyond a trend and become a lifestyle, described as individual, multi-dimensional and influenced by community and environment. Fashion is recognized as a powerful social force, capable of enhancing both physical and emotional well-being. The cultural shift toward prioritizing comfortable clothing and more casual dress has led to the rapid development of female sportswear as fashionwear, described as athleisurewear. This category has seen high levels of growth compared to slowing growth in the overall clothing market.
Existing studies on activewear focus on positivist paradigms and scientific testing, with few examining the sociological or fashion perspective, therefore this research adopts an interpretive, qualitative methodology. An exploratory literature review established several well-being categories related to fashion; safety, time, the body, community, confidence and colour, as well as hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Qualitative content analysis on four female-targeted activewear brands was completed, utilizing posts from each brand’s Instagram feed over a six-month period. Results were coded to the well-being categories established in the literature and critiqued using a Baumanian sociological lens. The findings reveal high levels of positivity, a strong sense of community, messages of female empowerment, and inclusivity, underpinning the value of female-targeted activewear brands to the well-being of the women who wear them, and the role of both activewear brands and social media in facilitating community.</p
Future-Proof Sustainability
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/10456/10627-thumbnail.jpgIn 2019, 181 CEOs from leading U.S. companies signed a Statement of Purpose proposing to lead their companies toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals. However, their aims still assume that markets will evolve over time to resolve socioeconomic and environmental challenges while still making a profit. Drawing on my past research, I show how sustainably-driven entrepreneurism can be used to review specific case studies (e.g., Nike). Through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in sustainable development, I clarify the relationships between environmental, social, and economic development.
Research suggests that standardized measurements across the fashion industry are actually narrowing business goals, by choosing key performance indicators that show eco-efficiency gains only in terms of environmental profit and loss accounting. My interviews with stakeholders confirmed that larger businesses and members of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition will have the most to gain from these measurement tools, namely the Higg Index, which seeks to bring about consumer-facing transparency by ranking apparel and footwear companies with simple aggregated scores. These potentially high-scoring corporations, such as Nike, fail to tackle the escalating problems of economic equity, such as a fair distribution between the hemispheres and the intergenerational inheritance of natural capital. They also ignore the need to curb demand for the consumption of goods.
Using Young and Tilley’s (2006) framework, I make recommendations for the future of international supply chains, production, and manufacturing. This concept paper investigates alliances, decentralized supply chains and co-operative economics as ways to create more profound change in the fashion industry.</p
Motivational Factors that Affect Participation in Collegiate-Based Town and Gown Choirs
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/10479/10849-thumbnail.jpgA popular form of lifelong musical involvement and education in the United States is choral singing. Community choirs represent one way that adults can participate in this artform. Collegiate town and gown choirs are a unique option for musical engagement that is always intergenerational. The purpose of this study was to determine the motivational factors that affect participation in collegiate-based town and gown choirs. Variables included participants’ demographics, musical backgrounds, motivational factors that affect participation, and how motivational factors for participation differ between college students and non-student community members. Motives for participation were determined using Boshier’s (1971) framework of deficiency- and growth-motivated learners in adult education. Participants were recruited from town and gown choirs at three midwestern university campuses. Data were collected using the Education Participation Scale developed by Boshier (2005) to measure motivation for participation in adult education. A typical profile for a town and gown singers was White, female, and well-educated. Most participants reported an increasing involvement in grade school music and being a member of a high school vocal ensembles. Top motivational factors for participation in town and gown ensembles were Cognitive Interest and Social Contact. Significant differences were found between college student and community choir members for three Social Contact motives and one related to Cognitive Interest. Cognitive Interest and Social Contact were interpreted to represent growth- and deficiency-motivated learning respectively.</p
Data safety monitoring during covid‐19: Keep on keeping on
No full textThis article discusses data safety monitoring during Covid‐19. the pandemic of Covid‐19 has created the imperative for new treatments and a vaccine, countless clinical trials already in progress have still needed oversight. With the emergence of Covid-19, studies needed to quickly adapt because what it meant to protect study participants wasn’t the same as it had been weeks earlier. One of the primary roles of DSMBs is to evaluate interim data to ensure that participants aren’t at additional risk by virtue of being randomized to a study arm found to have more risks or fewer benefits than other arms. Stopping a study early when it falls out of equipoise is the most monumental task a data safety monitoring boards (DSMB) is charged to perform. The pandemic brought with it risks that changed many studies’ risk-benefit calculus. In some cases, merely attending a visit to report symptoms, check progress, verify pill counts, or report adverse events posed additional risk. Participants in placebo arms are typically expected to experience little benefit, and certainly not greater harm, than participants in the active therapy group. Suddenly, participating in even the most innocuous placebo arm might result in unforeseen harm. DSMBs’ primary responsibility is to protect research participants, but if data is compromised, then the benefit of the study will never outweigh the risks to participants. Thus, protecting the integrity of data collection was also foremost in the minds of DSMB members. Researchers, representatives from the National Institutes of Health, and DSMB members were in constant communication about trials already in progress.</p
The use of digital poetry to inform preservice teacher education and in-service teacher professional development during COVID-19
No full textDigital poetry has been an important and innovative genre in many disciplines. This paper describes two separate tools (Emerge and Thread) that were used to support teacher professional development during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results suggest that within one month, over 120 poems at each of two separate schools were created, showing both a willingness of the teachers to engage in this form of professional development and a desire of the students to share their knowledge. The paper includes an invitation to freely collaborate in both the use of and research studies on digital poetry for teacher education.</p
Risks and benefits of high flow nasal cannulas in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/10696/11456-thumbnail.jpgNovel and unconventional strategies continue to emerge in response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19). One recent innovative response is high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) use for adults experiencing the respiratory effects of COVID-19. HFNC provides warmed, humidified oxygen at higher fractions of inspired oxygen (FiO2) levels and flow rates than conventional oxygen therapy, potentially reducing the number of patients requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation. Increased HFNC use stems from an attempt to mitigate the virus’s devastating pulmonary effects, including alveolar inflammation that leads to scarring and respiratory compromise, which persist after the virus has been treated.
However, HFNC is controversial because of limited and inconsistent research and the risk for aerosolization of virus particles. This article discusses the delivery of HFNC, its benefits and risks, and nursing considerations. </p
Practical Guidance on the Use of the MMPI Instruments in Remote Psychological Testing
No full textThe coronavirus-2019 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States on March 13, 2020. The disruptions resulting from subsequent unprecedented mitigation efforts have limited and, in some cases. eliminated the ability of psychologists to meet in person with their patients, clients, and examinees. This has led to a broad and sudden reliance on synchronous (live) videoconferencing (also commonly referred to as telehealth, telepsychological practice. and telepractice) to deliver clinical services. A vital component of psychological practice involves the administration of psychological testing, particularly in clinical settings and specialties that rely heavily on the use of assessment instruments. Remote administration of psychological testing presents challenges that cannot be ignored, even in a crisis, without risking the violation of ethical standards and without compromising the reliability and interpretability of test results and the security of test instruments. With these considerations in mind, we provide practical guidance for remote test administration, using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory instruments.</p
Literacy in Lockdown: Learning and Teaching During COVID-19 School Closures
No full textAcross the globe, students have been away from schools and their teachers, but literacy learning has continued. In many countries, students’ literacy proficiency is often measured via high‐stakes assessment tests. However, such tests do not make visible students’ literacy lives away from formal learning settings, so students are positioned as task responders, rather than as agentive readers and writers. The authors explore the fluidity and diversity of literacy events and practices for students and their teachers observed during the recent period of COVID‐19 lockdown restrictions. In this piece for The Inside Track, we consider how schools in the United States have been educating the very youngest students to how colleges of teacher education are grappling with a transition to a new shelter in place at home and virtual teaching and learning during the global pandemic. This contrasts to the emergence of public environmental literacy events observed in the United Kingdom, specifically in the South of England.
Over the course of the first six weeks of lockdown, the affordances of the range of these events and the influence of the specific, local cultures (Street, 1984) were documented, highlighting how the immediate physical and virtual environments appear to have become more significant during the COVID‐19 pandemic. As students and their teachers respond and react to new literacy experiences, we hope to expose potential points of intersection where students, with encouragement from their teachers, crafted new and hybrid literacy practices appropriated and recontextualized within new communicative space(s) (Dyson, 2001). Writing instructional practices across the world vary to some extent; in the United States, there are many similarities to what are considered best practices, despite each state holding different standards for writing instruction (Lacina, 2018). Teachers in the United States focus much more of their instructional time in the area of reading, instead of writing (Edwards, 2003; Puranik, Al Otaiba, Sidler, and Greulich, 2014). However, much has been written about teacher planning and instruction with process writing instruction, such as writers\u27 workshop (Troia, Lin, Cohen, & Monroe, 2011). Within a writers\u27 workshop classroom, the teacher uses literature as a model for writing (Lacina & Espinosa, 2010); the teacher teaches minilessons and scaffolds the teaching of writing. Researchers also have noted the importance of teaching writing within the content areas (Fisher & Frey, 2020) and the need to teach using the new literacies (Lacina & Block, 2012). Researchers who study writing instructional practices have found that there is great variance between teachers’ writing instructional practices (Cutler & Graham, 2008); with such variance, there are also connections between teachers’ writing instructional practices and their beliefs about teaching writing. Students out‐of‐school literacy lives often demonstrate a broader conceptualization of writing than is displayed in their school writing (Chamberlain, 2019; Dyson, 2020). Current definitions of literacy appear to mean reading, not writing. It is easier to test, measure, and compare reading proficiency than writing accomplishments. However, writing is better positioned as purposeful in the lives of students and reflected through sociocultural and situated identities where writing is framed as a mode of social or personal action (Prior, 2006; Rowsell & Pahl, 2007). The National Literacy Trust’s recent research based on over 4,000 questionnaire responses (Clark, Picton, & Lant, 2020) of children and young people in the United Kingdom suggested that new and positive writing habits have been developed during this time of lockdown. Educators have studied students’ consumption and production of texts through a framework of multimodality in both in‐ and out‐of‐school contexts (Lenters, 2016, 2018). Studying a framework of multimodality in the area of literacy has helped educators rethink the way literacy is instructed in school spaces (Kendrick & McKay, 2004; Kress, 1997; Lenters, 2018). However, rather than polarizing the literacies acquired in different settings, those of school and away from school, which serves only to limit our understanding of such encounters, the learnings from the examples in this piece aim to make visible the unique nature of students\u27 interactions with their writing (Reder & Davilla, 2005) when schooled literacy (Cook‐Gumperz, 2006) is not an option.</p
Digging the rabbit hole, COVID-19 edition: anti-vaccine themes and the discourse around COVID-19
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/11174/32448-thumbnail.jpgThis article draws on a broadcast popular among the anti-vaccine community to map out six themes used by the broadcast to mislead viewers about COVID-19. The themes are the claim that “they” – government and pharma – are lying to you, claims that COVID-19 is an excuse to remove civil liberties, viewing everyone as an expert, claiming that science cannot save us, skewing the science, and a claim that “they” are out to harm the viewers. The article points out that similar themes are used to mislead followers with anti-vaccine information. It highlights the concern that these themes will not only mislead people who are already anti-vaccine about the pandemic, but may draw in people who are not anti-vaccine but are seeking information about COVID-19, and suggests some options for dealing with the misinformation. Scientists benefit from understanding these claims, as we are often tasked with providing rebuttals to this misinformation.</p
Lead (Pb) Spatial Distribution and Speciation in Akron, Ohio.
No full texthttps://kent-islandora.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/node/10098/10221-thumbnail.jpgThroughout the history of the United States Lead (Pb) has been used in a wide range of domestic and industrial products such as gasoline, paint, smelting, glass making, and tire vulcanization. Although new inputs of Pb to soils ceased in the 1990s, legacy Pb continues to be a risk to human health, particularly children, through ingestion and/or inhalation of Pb-bearing particles. Current practices regarding the risk of exposure to soil Pb do not address and remediate high Pb exposure areas until exposure has occurred. This work aims to determine how Pb speciation and distribution relate to each other at the neighborhood-level in an urban environment. A total of 82 soil samples were collected in Akron, OH; 30 from the Summit Lake neighborhood (Fall 2018), and 52 from Akron Public School students residences (Summer 2019). Total Pb was measured by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) and potential bioaccessible Pb was determined using two methods: (1) a nitric acid solution and (2) a simulated gastric fluid. Extracted Pb was measured using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). Solid phase characterization will also be performed on samples to determine soil particle mineralogy and morphology through X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Total Pb values ranged from 34.6 mg/kg to 1969.6 mg/kg +/- 335.1, with an average value of 227 +/- 335.1 mg/kg. Bioaccessible Pb values for the nitric acid solution ranged from below the detectable limit (BDL) to 24.79 +/- 3.93 ppm, with an average of 2.50 +/- 3.93 ppm per sample. For Bioaccessible Pb from the simulated gastric fluid values ranged from BDL to 15.86 +/- 2.46 ppm, with an average value of 1.38 +/- 2.46 ppm. Total and Bioaccessible Pb values will be used to create, the first of its kind, neighborhood-level Pb speciation and distribution map for Akron, OH., which could aid in determining focus areas for remediation efforts.</p