11,394 research outputs found
Internet support for dealing with problematic alcohol use: a survey of the Soberistas online community
No full textAims: advances in technology have led to an increased range of possibilities for forms of mutual aid in addictions, and patient empowerment in the management of long-term conditions. However, the effective processes involved may be different online than for those that meet in person. Soberistas is a ‘social network site for people who are trying to resolve their problematic drinking patterns’. We aim to describe the population, component parts and processes that define this online community, and consider potential mechanisms of action for future research.Methods: cross-sectional online survey through an advert embedded within the Soberistas website. Participants were asked questions about themselves, their alcohol use and use of the website.Results: four hundred and thirty-eight people completed the survey, primarily women, 50% of whom lived with their children. Over 60% described having problematic alcohol use for over 10 years and 46.5% had not tried any form of previous support. Participants accessed the site at different stages of change; over half still drinking alcohol, cutting down or recently stopped. Over 18% reported abstinence of over 1 year. Anonymity, the ability to be honest, being a source of trusted information, and ongoing support were all cited as reasons for continued membership.Conclusion: Soberistas offers a form of mutual aid primarily for women who have often not engaged with other treatment or support. This preliminary study suggests that the online, flexible, platform affords members an accessible and anonymous community to address their difficulties and encourages a positive ‘alcohol free’ identity.Short summary: Soberistas is ‘an online community of people who are trying to resolve their problematic drinking patterns’. Preliminary data suggest that it offers a flexible platform for mutual aid primarily for women who have often not engaged with other treatment or support, by encouraging a positive ‘alcohol free’ identity
Impact of antidepressant drugs on sexual function and satisfaction
No full textPleasurable sexual activity is important in many human relationships and can provide a sense of physical, emotional and social well-being. Depressive symptoms and depressive illness are associated with impairments in sexual function and sexual dissatisfaction in untreated and treated patients. Most currently available antidepressant drugs are associated with development or worsening of sexual dysfunction in a substantial proportion of patients. Sexual difficulties during antidepressant treatment often resolve as depression lifts, but can persist over long periods, reducing self-esteem and affecting mood and relationships adversely. Sexual difficulties during antidepressant treatment typically have many possible causes but the incidence and nature of dysfunction varies between drugs. Many interventions can be considered when managing sexual dysfunction associated with antidepressants but no approach is ‘ideal’. Because treatment-emergent sexual difficulties are less frequent with certain drugs, presumably related to differences in pharmacological properties, and since current interventions are suboptimal, a lower incidence of sexual dysfunction is a relevant tolerability target when developing novel antidepressant
Interview with Nicholas Christopher, author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City
Get PDFInterview with Nicholas Christopher, author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American Cit
Matt Christopher Papers - Accession 1309
Get PDFThe collection includes letters written by the children’s book author, Matt Christopher, to his son, Marty Christopher. Many of the letters also contain newspaper articles of interest to Matt Christopher, which deal with local sports teams, his writing career, his participation in an exhibition baseball game against the New York Giants in 1938, and other of general interest. Most of the letters are personal in nature, however, a majority of the letters delve into Matt Christopher’s writing career, personal interests, the author’s health, as well as his family life.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/2649/thumbnail.jp
Matt Christopher Papers - Accession 1221
Get PDFMatt Christopher (1917-1997) was a prolific author of children’s books having written over 100 books as well as over 300 short stories, articles, poems, and screenplays. Most of his writings dealt with sports themes, but he also wrote fantasy and mystery themed stories as well. The Matt Christopher Papers consist of both published and unpublished manuscripts, articles, and short stories. Also included are personal and business correspondence, biographical information, scrapbooks, photographs, and memorabilia.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/manuscriptcollection_findingaids/1976/thumbnail.jp
Dr. Christopher von Rueden – Faculty Author Interview
No full textDr. Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist and Assistant Professor in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, discusses a recent article entitled, “Men’s status and reproductive success in 33 non-industrial societies: Effects of subsistence, marriage system, and reproductive strategy,” which he co-authored with Dr. Adrian Jaeggi, an anthropologist at Emory University. Their findings were recently published in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
ESP Across Cultures
No full textThis present volume constitutes the third online edition of ESP Across Cultures.
The decision to change from a paper-based to an online edition has undoubtedly
been beneficial in terms of enjoying greater visibility within the international academic
community. One thing that has not changed over the years, however, since
the inception of the journal in 2004, has been the policy of double-blind peer reviewing,
which means that only a selected number of the papers submitted end up as
being published.
There are seven papers in the current issue, each one analysing a particular aspect
of English for Specific Purposes from a cross-cultural perspective.
The first paper, by Hmoud S. Alotaibi, focuses on research article introductions
in Arabic, analysing the extent to which scholars writing in Arabic in the sphere of
education adhere to the CARS (Create A Research Space) model delineated by John
Swales which was elaborated in particular with regard to the academic conventions
widely adopted in the English-speaking world. Instead of restricting the investigation
to the introductory section as past studies in this field did, the author examines
all of the subheadings and he concludes that all introductions include Move 2 in a
subheading entitled the Problem of the Study, a result that contradicts previous
findings where the paucity of Move 2 was common in non-English RAs, and especially
in Arabic ones.
Patrizia Anesa analyses the websites of the main arbitration centres operating in
Asia from a textual perspective to define how they are discursively constructed and
can be used as promotional tools, thereby helping us to evaluate the importance assumed
by internationalization processes or by local cultural elements in promoting a
particular centre as a seat for international arbitration. She concludes that while
some scholars argue that we are witnessing the ‘Asianization’ of arbitration, with
the increasing bargaining power of Asian parties, on the other hand a phenomenon
of ‘Universal Arbitration’ is also emerging, i.e. a form of convergence of how disputes
are resolved so that parties of any nationality can operate in the same way
with ever fewer language barriers.
In their paper, Mahmood Reza Atai and Fatemeh Asadnia examine the communicative
and promotional function of university homepages by looking at the ‘university
overview’, ‘university mission statement’, and ‘university introduction at a
glance’ genres, using a corpus of 210 texts selected from homepages of the top 500
universities ranked by the Academic Ranking of World Universities. The findings
demonstrated that the three genres shared communicative purposes, functional
units, certain moves and steps, socio-academic contexts, and discourse community
members that led to the formation of a genre set.
Gaetano Falco explores ways of using comics in an MA course on translation of
economic texts as a means of stimulating the interest of language students with no
economics skills in order to introduce economics-related lexis and improve thematic
competence in general. He observes that empirical research has shown that films
and comics can indeed be useful resources to teach economic translation to students
with no skills in economics. However, the author warns that the use of comics for
educational purposes may have its drawbacks, e.g. when students deal with complex
sign systems which embody complex economic concepts, where often the humorous
element is lost.
In her paper, Irina Khoutyz describes the differences in how scholars present
their findings in research articles (RA) in international journals in English and in
Beyza Björkman
Christian Burgers
Jan Chovanec
Anda-Elena Cretiu
Erika Dalan
John Douthwaite
Hanem El-Farahaty
Said Faiq
Silvia Ferreri
Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez
Pedro Fuertes-Olivera
Giuliana Garzone
Christoph Hafner
Ruba Khamam
Anna Loiacono
Geraldine Ludbrook
John McRae
Susan Petrilli
Silvia Pireddu
Tarja Salmi-Tolonen
Jeffrey Segrave
Charlotte Taylor
Margherita Ulrych
John Kenneth White
Jessica Williams
I hope you will enjoy the current issue of this journal and will make the most of
the free access to all past issues.
Christopher Williams
(Chief Editor)
6 FOREWORD
local journals in Russian. She then looks into the reasons for these differences, seeking
explanations from the sociocultural contexts in which these RAs were written,
as well as providing advice to local authors as to how to make their RAs more competitive
at the international level. The differences include the apparent lack of
structure of Russian RAs with respect to English RAs; the tendency in Russian authors
not to specify the purpose in writing a paper; and the tendency of Russian authors
to present the methodology used in less detail compared with English RAs.
Luisella Leonzini investigates the use of verbal and visual metaphors in economic-
media discourse within the context of the euro crisis by studying the correlation
between linguistic and pictorial metaphors and text-image intersemiotic relations.
The research is based on a cross-analysis of English and Italian editorial
articles published between 2009 and 2012. In both corpora, metaphorical realizations
frame the economic crisis which hit the single currency and the eurozone in
2009 as a partial collapse and hint at a possible return to stability in the form of a
recovery. The aim of this paper is to analyse the collapse/caduta and
recovery/ripresa metaphors across languages in the press.
Ian Robinson reports on using corpus linguistics to aid students in writing a creative
text. He looks at the available literature to help understand what is meant by
‘creativity’. A worksheet was prepared using a corpus linguistic analysis of modern,
English versions of the stories of the Brothers Grimm. This worksheet was constructed
with the use of a specialized corpus, and a stop-list was created which contained
single words as well as word clusters found in the tales. Students were then
asked to select some of these words and phrases to help them write stories which
were then analysed, and a follow-up questionnaire was used to elicit the students’
perceptions concerning creativity. The author concludes that creativity is essential
in EFL and that it is something to be fostered in students
Thermal and dynamic mechanical properties of blends of bitumen with metallocene catalyzed polyolefins
Get PDFA high penetration grade bitumen has been blended with up to 50 wt% of two different grades of metallocene catalyzed linear low density polyethylene (m-LLDPE) in order to investigate the potential of these and similar copolymers as a substitute for styrene butadiene styrene triblock copolymers in polymer-modified bitumens (PMB). A continuous polymer-rich phase was observed at m-LLDPE contents as low as 5-10 wt%, along with a significant decrease in the effective glass transition temperature of the PMBs with increasing polymer concentration, suggesting benefits for low temperature flexibility. The m-LLDPE-based PMBs also showed relatively low dynamic shear viscosities up to high polymer contents in the range of temperature and shear rate corresponding to typical PMB processing conditions. However, the presence of bitumen in the m-LLDPE-rich phase led to a significant reduction in the melting points of the m-LLDPE, and softening of the PMBs at temperatures as low as 40-50 degrees C, depending on the composition and the melting point of the pure polymer. PMBs based on the m-LLDPE with the higher melting point remained fully elastic in this temperature range, but at the expense of increased crystallinity and a higher glass transition temperature, which limit improvements in low temperature flexibility. On the other hand, the potentially broad composition and property windows associated with m-LLDPEs suggest considerable scope for the fine tuning of PMB properties by using combinations of different m-LLDPEs and/or other polyolefins as a means to optimize performance.LTC[Spadaro, Chiara; Plummer, Christopher J. G.; Manson, Jan-Anders E.] Ecole Polytech Fed Lausanne, Lab Technol Composites & Polymeres LTC, Stn 12, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Plummer, CJG (reprint author), Ecole Polytech Fed Lausanne, Lab Technol Composites & Polymeres LTC, Stn 12, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland [email protected] Document Delivery No.: 824CSCited Reference Count: 39Spadaro, Chiara Plummer, Christopher J. G. Manson, Jan-Anders E.Swiss Innovation Promotion Association (KTI/CTI)The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss Innovation Promotion Association (KTI/CTI).SpringerNew yorkNational Licence
Attributing Benefits to Voluntary Programs in EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery: Challenges and Options
Get PDFThis paper reviews the economic justification for voluntary environmental programs to derive defensible measures of their positive social outcomes. We consider ideal experimental and statistical designs to detect and attribute benefits. We also explore a set of more practical approaches to benefit attribution that take into account the data gaps and statistical challenges that often make more rigorous approaches infeasible.voluntary programs, cost–benefit assessment, program evaluation
Book review: The theatrical public sphere, by Christopher B. Balme
Get PDFBook review of: The theatrical public sphere, by Christopher B. Balme. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; ISBN 9781107006836 (£60.00)Publisher PD
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