Promise and Ontological Ambiguity in the In vitro Meat Imagescape: From Laboratory Myotubes to the Cultured Burger

In vitro meat (IVM), also known as cultured meat, involves growing cells into muscle tissue to be eaten as food. The technology had its most high-profile moment in 2013 when a cultured burger was cooked and tasted in a press conference. Images of the burger featured in the international media and were circulated across the Internet. These images—literally marks on a two-dimensional surface—do important work in establishing what IVM is and what it can do. A combination of visual semiotics and narrative analysis shows that images of IVM afford readings of their story that are co-created by the viewer. Before the cultured burger, during 2011, images of IVM fell into four distinct categories: cell images, tissue images, flowcharts, and meat in a dish images. The narrative infrastructure of each image type affords different interpretations of what IVM can accomplish and what it is. The 2013 cultured burger images both draw upon and depart from these image types in an attempt to present IVM as a normal food stuff, and as ‘matter in place’ when placed on the plate. The analysis of individual images and the collection of images about a certain object or subject—known as the imagescape—is a productive approach to understanding the ontology and promise of IVM and is applicable to other areas of social life.     

Grammatical Encoding in Aphasia: Evidence from a “Processing Prosthesis”

Agrammatic aphasia is characterized by severely reduced grammatical structure in spoken and written language, often accompanied by apparent insensitivity to grammatical structure in comprehension. Does agrammatism represent loss of linguistic competence or rather performance factors such as memory or resource limitations? A considerable body of evidence supports the latter hypothesis in the domain of comprehension. Here we present the first strong evidence for the performance hypothesis in the domain of production: an augmentative communication system that markedly increases the grammatical structure of agrammatic speech while providing no linguistic information, functioning merely to reduce on-line processing demands. Copyright 2000 Academic Press and Unisys Corporation.     

Developing a Learning Progression for Curriculum,Instruction, and Student Learning: An Example from Mathematics Education

Learning progressions have been demarcated by some for science education, or only concerned with levels of sophistication in student thinking as determined by logical analyses of the discipline. We take the stance that learning progressions can be leveraged in mathematics education as a form of curriculum research that advances a linked understanding of students learning over time through careful articulation of a curricular framework and progression, instructional sequence, assessments, and levels of sophistication in student learning. Under this broadened conceptualization, we advance a methodology for developing and validating learning progressions, and advance several design considerations that can guide research concerned with engendering forms of mathematics learning, and curricular and instructional support for that learning. We advance a two-phase methodology of (a) research and development, and (b) testing and revision. Each phase involves iterative cycles of design and experimentation with the aim of developing a validated learning progression. In particular, we gathered empirical data to revise our hypothesized curricular framework and progression and to measure change in students. thinking over time as a means to validate both the effectiveness of our instructional sequence and of the assessments designed to capture learning. We use the context of early algebra to exemplify our approach to learning progressions in mathematics education with a focus on the concept of mathematical equivalence across Grades 3-5. The domain of work on research on learning over time is evolving; our work contributes a broadened role for learning progressions work in mathematics education research and practice.     

Associations of Parent-Adolescent Discrepancies in Family Cohesion and Conflict with Adolescent Impairment

Family cohesion and family conflict are important protective and risk factors respectively in the development of child psychopathology. Our study examines parent-adolescent discrepancy of the family environment constructs, family cohesion and family conflict, and their associations with adolescent impairment. The sample consists of 141 parent-adolescent dyads evaluated at an outpatient behavioral health clinic. The mean adolescent age is 14.8 (range 11–18) while the mean parent age is 48.9 (range 32–67). Findings show that adolescents report significantly less family cohesion but do not differ significantly in reports of family conflict. Greater family cohesion is associated with less adolescent impairment by multiple reporters. Nonetheless, greater family conflict is associated with more adolescent impairment by the same reporter. The results show that both adolescent and parent reports of family cohesion and conflict are important to consider when integrating information gathered in a clinical assessment.     

Subtle Motor Findings During Recovery from Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Preliminary Report

Pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a heterogeneous condition, varying in both severity and sequelae. The long-term motor deficits following severe TBI requiring inpatient rehabilitation are better established than those following milder forms of TBI. The authors examined motor performance 2 and 12 months postinjury in children without overt motor impairment using standard measures of upper limb function and the Physical and Neurological Examination for Subtle Signs (PANESS). The PANESS was sensitive to differences between children with TBI and uninjured children as well as to changes in children with TBI over time. These data suggest that subtle motor deficits are present after milder forms of TBI and, particularly those related to balance and gait, may persist even 12 months postinjury.     

Minority Stress and the Risk of Unwanted Sexual Experiences in LGBQ Undergraduates

Sexual assault is prevalent among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) college students, but its relationship to anti-LGBQ stigma has not been established. The goal of the present study was to determine whether minority stress, specifically internalized homophobia, predicted unwanted sexual experiences among LGBQ undergraduates (N = 763), whether routine behaviors (number of consensual sexual partners and alcohol use) mediated this relationship, and whether sense of LGBTQ community was a protective factor. Significant proportions of sexual minority men (10 %), women (18 %), and non-binary or transitioning students (19 %) reported an unwanted sexual experience since entering college. Internalized homophobia was associated with greater risk of unwanted sexual experiences. It also had a negative indirect effect on unwanted sexual experience risk through a negative association with number of sexual partners. Alcohol use did not mediate the relationship between internalized homophobia and unwanted sexual experiences. Sense of LGBTQ community was associated with lower risk, mediated by lower levels of internalized homophobia. The relationships between internalized homophobia and unwanted sexual experience risk were similar for women and men. These findings demonstrate that minority stress increases LGBQ students’ risk of sexual victimization and that in-group social relationships can mitigate this risk. We argue that minority stress is an important risk factor for sexual violence. Violence prevention interventions should attempt to reduce internalized homophobia, and colleges and high schools should establish LGBQ-affirming social climates and provide resources for LGBQ students, including targeted violence prevention efforts and programs that foster a sense of supportive community.     

Neuropsychological impairment as a consequence of football (soccer) play and football heading: a preliminary analysis and report on school students (13-16 years).

Footballers run the risk of incurring mild head injury from a variety of sources, including the intentional use of the head to play the ball, known as heading. This paper presents a preliminary exploratory analysis of data collected to examine whether cumulative incidence of mild head injury, or cumulative heading frequency, are related to neuropsychological functioning in male adolescent footballers. In a quasi-experimental cross-sectional design, neuropsychological test scores of school team footballers were compared with those of similarly aged rugby players and noncontact sport players. Cumulative mild head injury incidence was estimated using self-reports, and cumulative heading was estimated using a combination of observation and self-reports. No participants had sustained a head injury within 3 months of testing. There was no relationship between head injury and neuropsychological performance, and there were no decrements in either the footballers or the rugby players in comparison with the noncontact sport players. Within the footballers, cumulative heading did not predict any of the neuropsychological test scores. These findings indicate the absence of neuropsychological impairment arising due to cumulative mild head injury incidence, or cumulative heading. Although these null findings may be reassuring to players, parents, and football organizers, we stress that they are preliminary. Further data is being collected from the same populations to provide more reliable effect estimates.     

Opting out or denying discrimination? How the framework of free choice in American society influences perceptions of gender inequality

American women still confront workplace barriers (e.g., bias against mothers, inflexible policies) that hinder their advancement at the upper levels of organizations. However, most Americans fail to recognize that such gender barriers still exist. Focusing on mothers who have left the workforce, we propose that the prevalent American assumption that actions are a product of choice conceals workplace barriers by communicating that opportunities are equal and that behavior is free from contextual influence. Study 1 reveals that stay-at-home mothers who view their own workplace departure as an individual choice experience greater well-being but less often recognize workplace barriers and discrimination as a source of inequality than do mothers who do not view their workplace departure as an individual choice. Study 2 shows that merely exposing participants to a message that frames actions in terms of individual choice increases participants' belief that society provides equal opportunities and that gender discrimination no longer exists. By concealing the barriers that women still face in the workplace, this choice framework may hinder women's long-term advancement in society.     

Features,as well as space and time,guide object persistence

What role do surface features (e.g., color) play in the establishment and maintenance of episodic representations of objects (object files)? Mitroff and Alvarez (2007) showed that stimuli that were linked by a continuous spatiotemporal history yielded object-specific preview benefits—a standard index of object files—whereas stimuli linked only by shared surface features did not. Here, it is shown that abruptly changing the features of an object that has been established on the basis of spatiotemporal history can disrupt object-specific preview benefits (Experiments 1 and 2). Moreover, under some conditions, feature match alone can give rise to the preview benefits (Experiment 3). These results indicate that surface features, as well as spatiotemporal factors, play an important role in establishing and maintaining episodic object representations.