Bathrooms without Borders: Transgender Students Argue Separate is not Equal

Title IX guidelines governing equal access to collide with state legislation around gender identity and multiple use bathrooms and changing facilities. This policy review of literature argues for a stronger voice from Washington, protecting the rights of all students to feel safe using private spaces at school. The many court rulings offer a fair perspective upon which to act. State laws are inconsistent and at times challenge the Constitutional limits on individual rights.     

Lonely Courage,Commemorative Confrontation,and Communal Therapy: William James Remembers the Massachusetts 54th

On May 31, 1897, William James, one of America's most influential philosophers and psychologists, delivered the first civic oration of his career. The principal orator at the dedication of the Robert Gould Shaw memorial in Boston, James did what commemorative speakers are not supposed to do. He chose to be confrontational and divisive in a situation that called for exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, upon conclusion of his speech the audience erupted in applause, hailing his remarks as both unconventional and fitting. In this essay, I explore how James's speech could be both unconventional and fitting. I argue that his Shaw memorial oration demonstrates a style of commemorative discourse that is conflictual, even disruptive, yet capable of serving the ends of the epideictic tradition. As I show, James used his intellectual ethos as the nation's leading psychologist to construct a kind of communal therapy session, at the heart of which was the notion of “lonely courage.” With this strangely individualistic civic virtue, James turned his audience from spectators gazing upon the Shaw memorial to active participants in the memorial's meaning. Ultimately, his individualistic notion of civic virtue stands as an alternative to other forms of civic virtue and to the patterns of epideictic discourse that authorize them.     

Frustrative nonrelief in instrumental escape conditioning

The generality of the frustration effect in an aversive stimulus conditioning procedure was examined by training and testing 40 rats in a double cold-waterway escape conditioning apparatus. Experimental and control procedures analogous to appetitive conditioning experiments (e.g., Amsel & Roussel, 1952; Wagner. 1959) indicated that frustrative nonrelief (i.e., reinforcement omission) in the first goal tank yielded significant increments in swimming speed in the second waterway, and that these increments in performance were dependent upon initial training with continuous relief (i.e., reinforcement) in the first goal tank. Extensions of the generality of the frustration effect are discussed.     

Communication mode and the processing of printed words: evidence from readers with prelingually acquired deafness

The aim of this study was to elucidate how the primary communication background of prelingual deafened readers affects the way they mediate the recognition of written words. A computer-controlled research paradigm (a semantic decision task) asking for the categorization of familiar Hebrew nouns was used to investigate the participants' sensibility to phonological and orthographic manipulations in the target stimuli. Two groups of readers with hearing impairments and a hearing control group participated in the study. Twenty-seven of the participants with deafness (mean grade 6.9) were raised by hearing parents advocating a strict oral approach at home and at school. For an additional 22 students who were deaf (mean grade 6.9), the majority of them children of deaf parents, Israeli Sign Language was the preferred means of communication. The mean grade of the 39 participants in the hearing control group was 6.5. Findings indicate that both the hearing participants and the participants with prelingual deafness who were trained to communicate orally recoded visually presented target words phonologically. No such evidence was found for participants with deafness who were native signers. Although participants from signing backgrounds seemed to generate nonphonological representations of written words, there was no evidence that for them, the absence of recoding to phonology detrimentally affected on their ability to process such representations flexibly. In all, findings suggest a causal link between an individual's processing strategy for some written words and the modal nature of his or her primary language.     

Elementary school–wide implementation of a blended learning program for reading intervention

The authors examined the implementation of a blended learning program for literacy instruction across kindergarten through Grade 5 in a Title I urban elementary school, including a population of students (18%) who are English learners. Student progress in the online component of the blended learning program was a significant predictor of growth in reading performance on a standardized reading assessment (Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation, Pearson Assessment, Boulder, CO) when controlling for student grade level, initial student skill level, and English learner status; however, students in kindergarten through Grade 2 showed more substantial gains than students in later grades. These results suggest there is a benefit of a blended learning approach to literacy instruction for a diverse cross-section of students, particularly when beginning instruction in the early grades.     

Reading vocabulary knowledge and deafness

With respect to reading vocabulary knowledge and deafness, this article addresses two broad questions: (1) Why is vocabulary knowledge related to reading comprehension ability? (2) How is reading vocabulary (i.e., word meanings) acquired? The article argues that the answers to these questions are best addressed by a vocabulary acquisition model labeled the knowledge model. In essence, this model asserts that both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are critical. It is necessary to teach vocabulary, especially to poor readers, who are not likely to derive many word meanings from the use of context during natural or deliberate reading situations. On the basis of theoretical and research syntheses, the article offers implications for vocabulary instruction for deaf children and adolescents.     

The effect of load and sex on kinematic and kinetic variables during the mid-thigh clean pull

Power is a fundamental component for many sporting activities; while the load that elicits peak power during different exercises and differences between sexes remains unclear. This study aims to determine the effect of sex and load on kinematic and kinetic variables during the mid-thigh clean pull. Men (n = 10) and women (n = 10) performed the mid-thigh clean pull at intensities of 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%, 120%, and 140% of one repetition maximum (1RM) power clean in a randomised and counter-balanced order, while assessing bar velocity, bar displacement, power, force, and impulse. Two-way analysis of variance revealed that men demonstrated significantly greater (p < 0.05) values for all variables across loads, excluding bar velocity. Men demonstrated significantly greater (p < 0.05) bar velocities with 40–80% 1RM; in contrast, women demonstrated significantly (p < 0.05) higher velocities with 120–140% 1RM. Irrespective of sex significantly greater (p < 0.05), system peak power, bar velocity, and displacement occurred with 40% 1RM. In contrast, peak force and impulse were significantly (p < 0.05) greater with 140% 1RM. When performing the mid-thigh clean pull, to maximise system power or bar velocity, lower loads (40–60% 1RM) are recommended. When training force production or impulse, higher loads (120–140% 1RM) are recommended, when using the mid-thigh clean pull.     

The times of subjectivity and social reproduction

Abstract

A reflection on the reasons why we take films such as Hou’s as cherished cinephilic objects and on the ways that we, as critics, often try to disguise our desiring relation to films.     

Multiple-joint exercises using elastic resistance bands vs. conventional resistance-training equipment: A cross-over study

Previous studies indicate that elastic resistance bands (ERB) can be a viable option to conventional resistance-training equipment (CRE) during single-joint resistance exercises, but their efficacy has not been established for several commonly used multiple-joint resistance exercises. Thus, we compared muscular activation levels in four popular multiple-joint exercises performed with ERB (TheraBand^®) vs. CRE (Olympic barbell or cable pulley machines). In a cross-over design, men and women (n?=?29) performed squats, stiff-legged deadlifts, unilateral rows and lateral pulldown using both modalities. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses of main and interaction effects, and subsequent post hoc analyses were used to assess differences between the two resistance-training modalities. CRE induced higher levels of muscle activation in the prime movers during all exercises (p?<?.001 for all comparisons), compared to muscle activation levels induced by ERB. The magnitude of the differences was marginal in lateral pulldown and unilateral rows and for the erector spinae during stiff-legged deadlifts. In squats the quadriceps femoris activations were substantially lower for ERB. The differences between ERB and CRE were mostly observed during the parts of the contractions where the bands were relatively slack, whilst the differences were largely eliminated when the bands became elongated in the end ranges of the movements. We conclude that ERB can be a feasible training modality for lateral pulldowns, unilateral rows and to some extent stiff-legged deadlifts, but not for the squat exercise.