Framing processes in public commentary on US federal tobacco control regulation

Governmental health policy officials increasingly seek to promote public participation in expert and technical decisions regarding health regulation. The issues of what r?le the public plays in regulatory processes, and how health policy officials orient to public opinion, matter especially in the US context, where public commentary is a requisite component of federal rule-making. This paper examines written commentary as one specific, institutionalized form of public participation. To understand the relationship between scientific evidence and public commentary in public health regulation, we examine a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, proposed in 1995, to restrict the promotion and sale of tobacco products to minors. We use recent work on collective action frames to analyse how the FDA framed the proposed regulation as a rational, science-based policy; the discursive practices employed in the public commentary either to embrace or to contest the FDA's framing; and how the agency presented the final version of its rule as responsive to that public commentary. Our content analyses reveal a significant disparity between the FDA's emphasis on scientific evidence and the commentators' emphases on political and ideological frames, which we analyse in terms of counter-framing. An orientation to the dynamics of framing and counter-framing contributes to an understanding of the relationship between scientific evidence and public commentary in the formulation of controversial health policy regulations.     

Optimum take-off angle in the long jump

In this study, we found that the optimum take-off angle for a long jumper may be predicted by combining the equation for the range of a projectile in free flight with the measured relations between take-off speed, take-off height and take-off angle for the athlete. The prediction method was evaluated using video measurements of three experienced male long jumpers who performed maximum-effort jumps over a wide range of take-off angles. To produce low take-off angles the athletes used a long and fast run-up, whereas higher take-off angles were produced using a progressively shorter and slower run-up. For all three athletes, the take-off speed decreased and the take-off height increased as the athlete jumped with a higher take-off angle. The calculated optimum take-off angles were in good agreement with the athletes' competition take-off angles.     

Peer‐Mediated Instruction in Inclusive Secondary Social Studies Learning: Direct and Indirect Learning Effects

Ten inclusive middle school social studies classes, including 133 general education students, and 24 students with mild disabilities (21 with learning disabilities and 3 with emotional disabilities), were assigned at random to a traditional instruction condition, or an experimental condition involving classwide peer tutoring with specialized materials and parent training. After 18 weeks of instruction, posttest data revealed that students in the experimental condition gained significantly more than students in the traditional instruction condition. These effects were observed on content included in the tutoring intervention, as well as on related content that was taught but not included in the tutoring intervention. Results are discussed within the context of recent research on inclusive secondary content area instruction.     

“We bleed for female empowerment”: mediated ethics,commodity feminism,and the contradictions of feminist politics

Discourses of female empowerment are increasingly prominent within ethical capitalism, which seeks to remedy global crises with private-sector solutions and their commodities. This article examines the intersecting manifestations of female empowerment, commodity activism, and ethical capitalism with case studies on Born Free Africa, a fashion collection combatting mother-to-child HIV transmission, and THINX, which sells “period-proof” panties. Each company articulates empowerment through a binary between the Western feminist savior and “in-need” woman of the global south. This article argues that this iteration of empowerment not only reinforces logics of neo-colonial capitalism, but also masks disciplinary regimes for individual feminine subjects.