Disciplined freedom,branded authenticity,and dependable independence: how tensions enact flexibility in lifestyle blogging careers

Analyzing 219 blog posts from 52 self-employed women lifestyle bloggers in North America, this study shows how these digital professionals navigate tensions and communicatively constitute work flexibility. In their narratives, women bloggers employed tension management approaches such as reframing, continual connections, and reflective practice in response to tensions in enacting temporal–spatial, identity, and financial flexibility. Specifically, women followed oxymoronic constructions – disciplined freedom, branded authenticity, and dependable independence – to embrace and transform competing poles of fluidity?structure, authenticity?marketability, and independence?interconnection. Expanding work–life research to the self-employed digital labor context, this study responds to recent calls to uncover more-than tension management strategies in empirical settings and contributes to a tension-centered, contextual, and processual analysis of workplace flexibility construction.     

The Information Nature of Culture

This paper explores the information nature of culture. It is represented as an extragenetic and nonorganizational information process and system. Information is regarded as a universal property of matter that is essentially associated with development processes and realizes various forms and ways of storage and circulation at various development stages of global evolution. The socio-cultural principle of exogenous accumulation, transmission, and transformation of information is analyzed in the context of the continuing growth of the information content of material systems on the superhighway of global-universal evolution. It is noted that the information concept of culture evolves into a new area of cultural studies, that is information and cultural studies, advancing our understanding of the nature of culture and cultural genesis.     

Russian Science Citation Index: Areas for Development Identified by Active Users

The current state of the Russian Science Citation Index is analyzed. Several areas for its further development identified by long-standing active users, such as data searching, refinement, and storage; current user alerts; data input with the Science Index license; patent information; and the application programming interface (API) are investigated.     

Critical communication pedagogy and service learning in a mixed-method communication research course

ABSTRACT

Course: Mixed-Method Communication Research Methods

Objective: The purpose of this semester-long activity is to provide students with opportunities to cultivate mixed-method communication research skills through a social justice-informed service-learning format. Completing this course, students will be able to: recognize the unique strengths of quantitative and qualitative research methods; locate, evaluate, and utilize scholarly literature for a literature review; conduct an original research project using quantitative and qualitative research methods to gather and analyze data; and raise self and community awareness about a social issue through collaboration with a community organization.     

审美游戏与中学课程教学

审美游戏是人类特有的一种融创造性、娱乐性和教育性为一体的活动,由于学校教育和审美游戏在本质上具有同一性,因而在实践活动中可以将二者有机地结合起来。以中学课程教学为例:语文和哲学是关于语言和解释的游戏,音乐和数学是关于符号和序列的游戏,美术和历史是关于时间和变化的游戏,地理和物理是关于空间和运动的游戏,生物和化学是关于模拟与复制的游戏。搞好课程教学的关键在于充分发掘身体、器物和符号这三者之间的内在联系并不断地促使其相互转化。     

大学的收益:留学生教育中的经济学意义

留学生教育的经济收益是国际教育服务贸易中的重要部分,国外有关学者、政府机构和国际组织都非常关注,但在国内,人们对留学生教育的认识还主要集中在政治和文化层面。通过建构的经济收益测算模型(包括图式模型和数学模型),并以上海一所大学的留学生样本进行试测,研究显现出我国高校留学生教育的经济学意义:留学生教育促进了教育服务贸易,增加了我国经济总量;能够缩减我国在国际教育服务贸易中的巨大逆差;增加了高校的"预算外收入";改变了高校的教育资源结构,提高了教育管理效率。     

苏格拉底的教育方法及其危机

苏格拉底假定了某种现象背后的"先在本质"的存在。知识就是认识者透过事物的现象把握本质,这就是杜威所嘲讽的"旁观者知识观"。缘自古希腊自然哲学家的旁观者知识观经苏格拉底等人的维护使"接受学习"长时间地主导了人类的求知方式。苏格拉底的教育方法使学生处于被动状态,使学生在知识面前没有了自由探索的空间。     

Circulating Cell-Free DNA Level in Prediction of COVID-19 Severity and Mortality: Correlation of with Haematology and Serum Biochemical Parameters

Lymphocyte dysregulation in coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) is a major contributing factor linked to disease severity and mortality. Apoptosis results in the accumulation of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in circulation. COVID-19 has a heterogeneous clinical course. The role of cfDNA levels was studied to assess the severity and outcome of COVID-19 patients and correlated with other laboratory parameters. The current case series included 100 patients with mild COVID-19 (MCOV-19) and 106 patients with severe COVID-19 (SCOV-19). Plasma cfDNA levels were quantified using SYBR green quantitative real-time PCR through amplification of the β-actin gene. CfDNA level was significantly higher in SCOV-19 at 706.7 ng/ml (522.6–1258) as compared to MCOV-19 at 219.8 ng/ml (167.7–299.6). The cfDNA levels were significantly higher in non-survivor than in survivors (p = 0.0001). CfDNA showed a significant correlation with NLR, ferritin, LDH, procalcitonin, and IL-6. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of cfDNA in the discrimination of SCOV-19 from MCOV-19 were 90.57% & 80%, respectively. CfDNA showed a sensitivity of 94.74% in the differentiation of non-survivors from survivors. CfDNA levels showed a significant positive correlation with other laboratory and inflammatory markers of COVID-19. CfDNA levels, NLR, and other parameters may be used to stratify and monitor COVID-19 patients and predict mortality. CfDNA may be used to predict COVID-19 severity with higher diagnostic sensitivity.