Psychiatric Power: The Post-Museum as a Site of Rhetorical Alignment

This essay examines Brain: The World Inside Your Head, a traveling museum exhibit sponsored by Pfizer, to show how the dissemination of psychiatric vocabularies aligns corporate and individual interests. The spatial composition of the museum and its interactive exhibits interpellate visitors as active agents capable of expressing their experiences through the scientific vocabularies of contemporary neuroscience. The gentle and benevolent conditioning to a way of thought and a manner of speaking, rather than a “hard sell” approach, makes pharmaceutical remedy an obvious and desirable mode of self care.     

Negotiating autonomy and responsibility in military robots

Central to the ethical concerns raised by the prospect of increasingly autonomous military robots are issues of responsibility. In this paper we examine different conceptions of autonomy within the discourse on these robots to bring into focus what is at stake when it comes to the autonomous nature of military robots. We argue that due to the metaphorical use of the concept of autonomy, the autonomy of robots is often treated as a black box in discussions about autonomous military robots. When the black box is opened up and we see how autonomy is understood and ‘made’ by those involved in the design and development of robots, the responsibility questions change significantly.     

Health-related information seeking: Is it worth it?

In spite of often compelling reasons for why people should seek information, they persistently engage in lower levels of it than might be expected, at times seeking no information at all. The idealized model reflecting dogged persistence, pursuing rational search strategies, until a high-quality answer is found is often assumed in the design of information systems. However, many people confronted with health problems engage in avoidance and denial, making a health care system dependent on proactivity problematic. This essay explores six conditions, the idealized model, avoidance, bewilderment, serendipity, ignorance is bliss, and indolence, that arise from low and high effort strategies when typed by good, contingent, and bad health outcomes. Since a substantial proportion of the population does not act in accordance with our assumptions, it may be time for policy makers, system designers and researchers to revisit their approaches to facilitating health-related information seeking.     

Examining calculator use among students with and without disabilities educated with different mathematical curricula

This study assessed if students with and without disabilities used calculators (fourfunction, scientific, or graphing) to solve mathematics assessment problems and whether using calculators improved their performance. Participants were sixth and seventh-grade students educated with either National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded or traditional mathematics curriculum materials. Students solved multiple choice and open-ended problems based on items from the State’s released previous assessments. A linear mixed model was conducted for each grade to analyze the factors impacting students’ self-reported calculator use. Chi Square tests were also performed on both grade’s data to determine the relationship between using a calculator and correctly solving problems. Results suggested only time as a main factor impacting calculator use and students who self-reported using a calculator were more likely to answer questions correctly. The results have implications for practice given the controversy over calculator use by students both with and without disabilities.     

The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources. By ‘open’ it is generally meant that the resource is available at no cost to others for adaptation and reuse in different contexts. However, ‘open’ is not a simple dichotomy; rather, there is a continuum of openness. We discuss four separate aspects of reuse and demonstrate how these describe different levels of openness. We discuss how the licensing and technical aspects of open educational resources affect the relative openness of an open educational resource. Implications for those creating open educational resources are discussed.     

Voices of senior rural men and women on falls and fall-related injuries: “If I fall outside and get hurt,what would I do?”

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study examined the falls and fall-related injury experiences of community-dwelling rural seniors. 42 senior men and women living in two rural areas in Saskatchewan, Canada were recruited, and in-depth interviews were conducted. Analysis revealed three main themes among responses: nature of falls and injuries, causes of falls and injuries, and consequences of falls and injuries. Men and women expressed a fear of falling, which led to activity limitations; however, women were more reflective on their potential to fall and showed an increased level of preparedness compared to men. The causes of falls included activities at the time of a fall, functional limitations, chronic diseases, and personal factors such as type shoes worn. While men and women downplayed the seriousness of their falls or injuries, indicating a level of hardiness, this trend was stronger among men. None of the participants discussed the role of health care professionals or the health care system in relation to fall risk and ways of preventing falls, despite reporting adaptations to prevent and deal with consequences of falls. Overall, these findings may allude to the scarcity of health care services provided in rural communities, highlighting a need to focus on falls prevention for community-dwelling rural seniors.     

Healthy Aging in Place: Perceptions of Rural Older Adults

To date, initiatives to support healthy aging in place have focused primarily on the views of policy makers, researchers, and health professionals. This article explored the meanings, experiences, and perceptions of healthy aging in place among rural older adults. Guided by a community-based participatory research approach, this study sheds light on the perspectives of rural seniors themselves. Through semistructured interviews with 40 rural older adults, the study found that rural older adults' conceptualization of healthy aging in place consisted of factors that policy makers and health professionals would not necessarily consider. In contrast to biomedical approaches, the rural older adults situated healthy aging in place within a more holistic context of health, ranging from social interaction to maintaining an optimistic mental outlook. If policy makers and researchers are to develop more effective interventions that support rural healthy aging in place, then the importance of rural older adults' perspectives, experiences, and input must be recognized.