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The effects of the rolling process and microstructure on the brittle crack initiation and arrest of marine steel were systematically investigated. The microstructures of two steel plates produced by different rolling processes were observed and analyzed. The results demonstrated that the rolling process significantly influenced the microstructure. As the rolling temperature decreased, the grain size decreased, the high‐angle grain boundary (HAGB) content increased, and the average grain misorientation angle increased. The brittle crack initiation and the arrest abilities were evaluated by initiation fracture toughness and crack arrest toughness, respectively. The initiation fracture toughness and crack arrest toughness increased with the decreasing grain size and the increasing content of HAGBs. Finally, the influence of microstructure on the brittle crack initiation and arrest ability was explained from two aspects: (1) the critical event of crack initiation at low temperatures, and (2) the hindering effect of HAGB on the propagation of brittle cracks. Highlights: The average grain size decreased with the decreasing rolling temperature.The high‐angle grain boundary content and the grain misorientation angles increased with the decreasing rolling temperature.The critical fracture stress increased with the decrease in the critical crack size.The high‐angle grain boundary altered the brittle crack propagation path and improved the crack arrest ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: HealthPathways is a web-based platform designed for use during a consultation to offer health professionals locally agreed information to support clinical and referral decision making. This study aimed to investigate whether access to specific HealthPathways pages in the North Coast New South Wales (NSW) region increased during specific critical events. High pageviews is used as a proxy for platform usefulness, and/or trust as a source of up-to-date information. Methods: Data were extracted from Google Analytics from December 2015 to December 2021. Descriptive statistics were generated for the total number of pageviews for all pages by month and year (2015–2021); for the top 15 most viewed pages in 2019, February–March 2020 inclusive (early COVID-19 pandemic period), 10–24 March 2021 (North Coast NSW region local disaster declaration period) and 26 June–11 October 2021 (NSW COVID-19 lockdown period); and for monthly pageviews for the Influenza Immunisation pathway (2016–2021). Results: Access to specific pages in HealthPathways increased alongside the occurrence of critical events affecting the region. Spikes in access to specific pages were seen during COVID-19 lockdown periods, during natural disasters, as well as during the annual influenza season. Conclusions: HealthPathways is viewed as a useful and trusted source of information for health professionals in the North Coast NSW region. HealthPathways provides an opportunity for timely dissemination of information during critical events, including natural disasters and emergencies. What is known about the topic? Evidence from New Zealand suggests that HealthPathways is viewed as a useful and trusted source of information by health professionals during critical and emergency events, and when information needs are subject to frequent change. What does this paper add? This paper provides evidence in the Australian context that health professionals access specific pages in HealthPathways at higher rates during critical and emergency events. What are the implications for practitioners? HealthPathways has the capacity to provide timely and accurate information to health professionals during critical and emergency events, as well as to identify their emerging information needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses the Chilean social uprising of 2019 through the experiences of Marta and Juan, two residents of the peripheries of Santiago, who became involved in this event despite having no previous experience of participation in social and political organizations. It explores this event's strength in triggering contentious actions on the urban margins, and repression by the police‐criminal apparatus of the state. Delving into the ethical and biographical dispositions facilitating this couple's politicization during the course of the revolt, it argues that the critical force of this event lies precisely in the entry of unexpected—even unwanted—actors into the political space. Through a biographical narrative approach, it details the shift of its protagonists. By way of subjectivation, this shift unfolds in them a critical attitude embodied in public interventions demanding equality and social justice and in acts of community and neighborhood solidarity. The case sheds light on a rarely explored dimension of social revolts: the way certain actors collectively experience these critical events through a politics of care, bringing the polis into the domestic space, and from such politicization of the oikos, opens an unusual way of challenging the police order of their world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between October 2019 and March 2020 Chile experienced the most massive and heavily repressed cycle of social protests in its post‐dictatorship (1973–90) history. This essay explores the social uprising as a critical event of political subjectivation through the story of Ricardo, an ordinary young medical technician with no background of political affiliation who fully immersed himself in the forefront of confrontation with the police in the ground zero protest zone while also providing first‐aid assistance to those injured. Two vectors triggering Ricardo's unexpected and sudden transformation into an activist are identified: the intergenerational potency of antidictatorial memories and the power of the spontaneous multitude in demonstration. In recalling the dictatorship, Ricardo and his friends used to ask themselves, "What would I have done if I'd been there?" In the face of the social uprising, Ricardo brings to the present that generation‐specific question and responds with total exposure, defending the multitude and healing the wounded. We argue that the event's critical nature is interpreted in the light of the past. Ricardo's involvement becomes an ethical imperative in his time and in his own history. This duty fuels his mobilization and desire for social transformation, blurring the analytical boundaries between ethics and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Obstetrics and Gynecologic operating room emergencies, the surgeon cannot both operate and lead a suddenly expanded and redirected team response. However, one of the most often used approaches to interprofessional continuing education designed to improve teams' ability to respond to unanticipated critical events still emphasizes surgeon leadership. We developed Explicit Anesthesia and Nurse Distributed (EXPAND) Leadership to imagine a workflow that might better distribute emergency leadership task responsibilities and practices. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate teams' responses to distributing leadership during an interprofessional continuing education simulated obstetrical emergency. We used interpretive descriptive design in a secondary analysis of teams' post-simulation reflective debriefings. One-hundred sixty providers participated, including OB-Gyn surgeons, anesthesiologists, CRNAs, scrub technicians, and nurses. Using reflective thematic analysis, we identified three core themes: 1) The surgeon is focused on the surgical field, 2) Explicit leadership initiates a nurse transition from follower to leader in a hierarchical environment, and 3) Explicit distributed leadership enhances teamwork and taskwork. Continuing education which uses distributed leadership to improve teams' ability to respond to an obstetric emergency is perceived to enhance team members' response to the critical event. The potential for nurses' career growth and professional transformation was an unexpected finding associated with this continuing education which used distributed leadership. Our findings suggest that healthcare educators should consider ways in which distributed leadership may improve teams' response to critical events in the operating room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The paper examines the psychological facet of innocent suffering. One can find a description of this phenomenon in social psychology as a factor that affects the belief in a just world, but there is a lack of qualitative scientific data about related psychological features, processes, copings, and consequences on the personality level. Methods: To study innocent suffering, semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted (31 respondents, ~223 minutes per respondent, 6,924 min in total) aimed to gather data about the experiences of innocent sufferings happened to participants. For the analysis of texts, a narrative and content analysis are used within the framework of grounded theory. The reliability of the results is based on expert assessment. Results and discussion: As a result, six essential properties of innocent sufferings were identified: complexity, stability, distress, injustice, casual incoherence, and breaks of integrity of a life story. The most “popular” life domains, in which participants reported about innocent sufferings, are violence, abuse (physical and psychological), and quitting romantic relationships. It is proposed a scientific definition of innocent suffering and the prototype of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extreme temperature induced by fire and hot toxic smokes in tunnels threaten the trapped personnel and firefighters. To alleviate the potential casualties, fast while reasonable decisions should be made for rescuing, based on the timely prediction of fire development in tunnels. This paper targets to achieve a real-time prediction (within 1 s) of the spatial-temporal temperature distribution inside the numerical tunnel model by using artificial intelligence (AI) methods. A CFD database of 100 simulated tunnel fire scenarios under various fire location, fire size, and ventilation condition is established. The proposed AI model combines a Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) model and a Transpose Convolution Neural Network (TCNN). The real-time ceiling temperature profile and thousands of temperature-field images are used as the training input and output. Results show that the predicted temperature field 60 s in advance achieves a high accuracy of around 97%. Also, the AI model can quickly identify the critical temperature field for safe evacuation (i.e., a critical event) and guide emergency responses and firefighting activities. This study demonstrates the promising prospects of AI-based fire forecasts and smart firefighting in tunnel spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines responses to the 2015 terror attack on Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, amongst students in a secondary school in Berlin-Neukölln, Germany. The Charlie Hebdo attack occurred in the final weeks of a 19-month ethnographic study in the community. By analyzing the responses in the school to this critical event, we identify what is at stake for Muslim students. Students presented many explanations for why the attack happened, and opinions on whether the attackers' actions were justified. Staff were alarmed about students' viewpoints that they considered "extreme". These dynamics resulted in conflicts and misunderstandings amongst students, and between students and staff. Yet, we show that, rather than the violence itself, or questions about its legitimacy, it was everyday processes in students' lives – e.g., bullying, peer pressure and discrimination, and feelings of being misrepresented and misunderstood – that were central to students' reactions to the event. We suggest that to understand students' reactions, both the immediate and the broader socio-political contexts must be considered, particularly rising xenophobia and processes of polarization in Germany and Europe at large. We thus conclude that to understand young people's reactions to terrorist acts, we need to look beyond initial statements and explore ethnographically how wider contexts shape the actions, reactions, and future orientations of young Muslims in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this case study is to gain insight into how a cultural change process develops as a result of organizational transformation. Design/methodology/approach: This case study employs an ethnographic and longitudinal research design. The transformation period of the organization is described by means of desk research and interviews with the management. Simultaneously, the cultural change process is described following four organizational mindset analyses. Findings: This paper supports the theoretical assumption that culture changes as a reaction to transformation. However, in this case study, culture is also proven to be proactive, in that it emerged a year before the actual transformation was carried out. It is believed that the announcement of the new transformation caused a shift in the organizational mindset, enabling its members to deal with a situation of high uncertainty and stress. Whether the cultural change process in reaction to the transformation will evolve into a new sustainable cultural equilibrium could not yet be determined. Originality/value: This study has contributed to comprehending the relationship between transformation and the process of cultural change. Cultural change is not solely a reaction to transformation. It can also be proactive in that it emerges before the transformation is carried out. That makes cultural change both proactive and reactive in relation to transformation, an insight that, as such, has not yet been discussed in the cultural theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: The purpose of this paper is to enhance nursing and collaborative practice by presenting a concept analysis of clinical debriefing and introducing an operational definition. Background: Debriefing has taken many forms, using a variety of approaches. Variations and inconsistencies in clinical debriefing, and its related terms, still exist in the clinical setting. Design: Concept analysis. Methods: Walker and Avant's eight‐step approach to concept analysis. Results: The defining attributes of clinical debriefing identified in this analysis are described as the five E's: educated/experienced facilitator, environment, education, evaluation and emotions. Antecedents identified in this analysis include the critical event, the desire or need to review such an event and the organizational awareness to execute clinical debriefs. The consequences of clinical debriefings are primarily advantageous and positively impact involved nurses, healthcare teams, patients and organizations. Empirical referents of clinical debriefing are complex and multifactorial. The productivity of a clinical debrief can be enhanced through a series of proposed questions. Together, the defining attributes, antecedents and consequences shape a proposed operational definition of clinical debriefing. Conclusion: Clinical debriefing is a valuable tool within healthcare organizations. Debriefing can be a holistic, interprofessional, collaborative experience when all five defining attributes are present. Further investigation is required to standardise debriefing practices in clinical settings. Relevance to clinical practice: A concept analysis on clinical debriefing promotes uniformity of debriefing practices, reflective practice among nurses and healthcare teams, and contributes to nursing science by creating a platform for the development of practice standards, research and theory development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Critical incident stress management (CISM) teams can be adapted in urban primary care clinics to address and process traumatic events in primary care. A guide for implementing the CISM team model within this setting is delineated. Methods: Review of existing literature and guide to implementation of CISM team in primary care. Results: Respondents reported the team validated their reactions to the critical incident and were grateful for CISM presence. Conclusion: Despite indications that vicarious traumatization, burnout, and compassion fatigue are rising (Bodenheimer & Sinsky, 2014; Coles et al., 2013; Woolhouse et al., 2012), there is little information about efforts to address this. Operating and emergency rooms and intensive care units utilize CISM (Maloney 2012; Powers, 2015); however, it's overlooked in primary care (Blacklock, 2012; Naish et al., 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inspiration for writing this article is on the one hand, the critical event caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that is being shared by all people around the world and that affects us all universally. On the other hand, it is my academic experience, shared by my colleagues - academic teachers. Therefore, the research I conducted meets all the conditions of critical engaged research: it stems from my own biographical experiences, it is an important opinion on the issue, it is rooted in the current, critical social event and it is aimed at unmasking, revealing real social practices and behaviors. Described below are the styles of managing institutions of higher education (of different kinds - vocational, academic, etc.) in a critical event related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Which management styles are being updated in a critical situation, which are selected and preferred by management, and what are the consequences? These are the questions I will try to answer. In accordance with aforementioned declarations, I will do it based on interviews with the authorities of several Polish institutions of higher education, as well as on the basis of autoethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering & Architectural Faculty of Eskisehir Osmangazi University / Eskişehir Osmangazi Üniversitesi Mühendislik ve Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of Eskisehir Osmangazi University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: In recent years, critical events have heavily affected the cruise industry. Such events may variously influence customers' intention to take a cruise in the future depending on different factors. This paper aims to study such factors, in particular the emotions related to the event, the prior corporate reputation and the use of social media in the corporate communication strategies followed during the crisis. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on the development of a structured questionnaire submitted online via blogs and other social media. Overall, 572 cruiser opinions were used to test five research hypotheses by performing logistic regression analysis. Findings: The degree of anger increases the likelihood of a critical event influencing the intention to take a cruise in the future. On the contrary, a former excellent corporate reputation reduces that likelihood and the high importance placed by potential customers on information about the critical event transmitted via social media does not have any influence. Practical implications: The study has several managerial implications, as it identifies and analyses the variables cruise company managers should consider when dealing with critical events. Originality/value: Despite the relevance of this topic, no studies have yet focused on how (and by which factors) a critical event may influence customers' intention to take a cruise in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent decades, rapid transit system (RTS) plays a significant key role to form most affordable and comfort travel zone to humans. With increase in population and usage of RTS, safety measures are concerned to be most notable factor in the world. Moreover, during emergency cases internal wired safety setups of any RTS does not prevents drastic disaster and allows negative impact for on-demand reliable changes. As an alternative to other expensive technologies, wireless sensor network (WSN) system provides fast communicative and compact applications to RTS. Inorder to reduce causalities, designing such a network application to RTS always poses challenging problems in terms of fault tolerance and time bounded packet delivery. Integrated fuzzy-logic based synchronized data transmission (IFSDT) algorithm has been designed to optimize those challenges, especially in RTS. IFSDT is a synchronized energy aware algorithm that prevents the occurrence of potential faults during unexpected emergencies in the coaches of RTS and ensures the fast transmission of critical broadcast signal and response in a limited time span. Furthermore, the results of the proposed design performs better than the existing reliable and energy optimized WSN design and exhibits the optimized response time for broadcasting emergency signals which is below 0.02 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the ongoing presence of the 1972 expulsion of the racialized Asian population by former president Idi Amin in contemporary Uganda. The expulsion was a "critical event" and thus the paper uses an "anthropology of the event" approach to focus on the architecture of silence and historical consciousness of the event in urban Kampala. The four arenas of focus are: (1) official state narratives; (2) community mobilization and public forums on urban African-Asian relations; (3) memories, adventure tales, and narratives expressed by Ugandan Asian men; and (4) the infrastructure and material culture of 1970s Asian property expropriation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terror attacks in Norway 2011, targeting what the perpetrator described as proponents of immigration and multicultural society, created exceptional circumstances for people to reflect on issues of belonging. In this kind of situation, it is assumed that people emphasise their affinity with the affected country. This, in turn, makes the problematisation of the affinities displayed particularly interesting since the act of expressing them even in a very taxing situation indicates their importance. Texts by individuals from ethnic minorities, written soon after the attacks, are analysed in terms of conceptions of ‘Norwegianness’. Results show explicit support for civic values but also multiple expressions of not feeling recognised as part of majority society also from individuals obviously acculturated to Norwegian lifestyles and cultural codes. These expressions are explained in terms of whiteness – non-whiteness and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid perception and processing of critical monitoring events are essential to ensure healthy operation of Internet of Manufacturing Things (IoMT)-based manufacturing processes. In this paper, we proposed a framework (active sensing and processing architecture (ASPIE)) for active sensing and processing of critical events in IoMT-based manufacturing based on the characteristics of IoMT architecture as well as its perception model. A relation model of complex events in manufacturing processes, together with related operators and unified XML-based semantic definitions, are developed to effectively process the complex event big data. A template based processing method for complex events is further introduced to conduct complex event matching using the Apriori frequent item mining algorithm. To evaluate the proposed models and methods, we developed a software platform based on ASPIE for a local chili sauce manufacturing company, which demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods for active perception and processing of complex events in IoMT-based manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many coal gasification related accidents happened in China recently. Investigations of the accidents show that the performance of safety barriers and the risk influence factors contributing to it plays an important role. Lack of attention on the performance of safety barriers and associated risk influence factors hinder the thorough understanding of these accidents and, therefore, needs to be addressed by providing a new analysis methodology. Herein, we developed an approach from critical events and safety barriers to control the major hazards during the coal gasification process. The method consists of process hazard identification based on critical events, barrier performance evaluation based on barrier diagrams, and quantification of risk influence factors based on Bayesian network. The application of the method indicates that it is suitable for controlling major hazards of the coal gasification process as well as other chemical processes. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 36: 382-391, 2017 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method of predicting the influence random events on the critical functionality of an object is discussed. Research is performed regarding the possibility of extending a prediction model to a prediction system by functionally uniting this model with additional models or recognizing the type of influence of a random event on a complex technical object. The proposed solution is importatnt because executing a prediction system instead of a prediction model allows one to detect critical situations that, when influencing technical objects, can result in the catastrophic loss of functionality of the corresponding objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) has been well accepted as a framework to understand and describe types of knowledge required by teachers to teach specific content with technology effectively. However, limited studies have used the framework in analysing the complexity of technology integration in mathematics classrooms. This study investigates, through examining critical instructional events, the most influential TPACK constructs in understanding and shaping teachers' pedagogical practices using digital technology. This case study was conducted in an early secondary mathematics classroom in Indonesia that used a web-based resource to support students' understanding of fractions. The finding suggests that the qualitative examination of the four intersected TPACK constructs assists in understanding the challenges and the opportunities to teachers when utilising an exploratory-based technology. It demonstrates that the combination of pedagogical stances and choice of technology significantly influence the visibility of other TPACK constructs. Implications of this study include the need of thoughtful planning prior to using web-based resources and the importance to utilise critical events in developing and assessing teachers' TPACK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is an essential requirement of democracy that politicians provide account of their words and actions to the public. However, being able to account is especially important when a politician or the party he/she is representing is assumed responsible for a critical event that has undesirable consequences for the public. Under such a condition, political press conferences serve as an instrument for a politician to justify the position of the government by means of argumentation. By adopting the pragma-dialectical framework, this paper sets out to explain how a politician maneuvers strategically in a press conference for the purpose of diminishing political responsibility when his party which is in charge of the government is assumed responsible for a critical event. The paper draws its data from the political press conference held by Erdoĝan, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, following the mine accident that took place in Soma, Turkey, in 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities invest significant resources in the provision of mathematics tuition to first year students, through both traditional and non-traditional means. Research has shown that a significant minority of students do not engage with these resources appropriately. This paper presents findings from a study of two groups of students at Maynooth University. Both groups had similar mathematical backgrounds on entry to university. The first group consisted of seven students who had failed first year mathematics and had very low levels of engagement with available supports. The second group consisted of nine students who had passed first year mathematics and had engaged with the supports to a significant extent. It emerged that while both groups initially displayed similar tactics and encountered similar difficulties, their levels of reaction to a number of critical events in their mathematical education were key to their engagement levels and their subsequent progression. Further analysis revealed aspects of the students' behaviour which caused them to approach or avoid difficulties. The reasons behind the different student behaviours were investigated, and the main categories of influence on student behaviour which emerged from the interview data were fear, social factors, and motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective.Identification of modifiable risk factors for hypotension during critical care transport is important to optimize patient preparation, crew training, and patient safety. We set out to determine the incidence of hemodynamic deterioration after administration of opioids or sedatives during critical care transport, and identify patient- and transport-level predictors.Methods.We assembled a retrospective cohort of adults undergoing urgent critical care transport between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2010. The primary outcome was post-medication hypotension, defined by new hypotension or new vasopressor within 10 minutes of medication administration.Results.Opioids or sedatives were administered 28,592 times in 8,328 patient transports, with 159 episodes of post-medication hypotension (0.6% of all medication administrations). Mechanical ventilation (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 4.9; 95% confidence interval [95%CI] 2.7–8.9), baseline vasopressor requirement (adjusted OR 2.1; 95%CI 1.3–3.4), transport duration (adjusted OR 1.5; 95%CI 1.1–2.2) per log unit increment of duration), surgical diagnosis (adjusted OR 4.1; 95%CI 1.6–10.7 compared to trauma), and ACP crew level (adjusted OR 2.4 compared to baseline of CCP; 95%CI 1.5–3.8) were all associated with an increased odds of post-medication hypotension. ACP crew level remained associated with increased post-medication hypotension in a sensitivity analysis of 1,242 propensity-matched pairs (crude OR for ACP vs. CCP 3.0; 95%CI 1.4–6.5).Conclusions.Post-medication hypotension occurred once in every 160 drug administrations and was associated with mechanical ventilation, baseline hemodynamic instability, transport duration, surgical diagnosis, and ACP crew. These findings provide targets for improvements in patient preparation, crew training, and clinical practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I address the issue of collective female identities in contemporary Russia. The Pussy Riot performance is regarded as a critical event that serves as a trigger for certain 'groupness'. Taking critical event perspectives avoids framing the respondents with the researcher's predetermined categories. The empirical data is collected via collective interviews with the diverse group of Moscovites. Analysis highlights the domination of an authoritarian/collectivistic interpretative repertoire in older participants' discussions about the performance, which has resulted in the articulation of the image of the disadvantaged female and the denial of women's agency. The younger participants, being familiar with a co-existing liberal interpretative repertoire, have continued to use a conservative repertoire to discuss Pussy Riot. This and a general lack of gender problematisation in the interviews indicate that feminist discourse is not at all widespread in the Moscovites' everyday discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terror attacks in Norway in July 2011 led to massive popular mobilisation as particularly expressed in thousands of memory messages displayed at spontaneous memorial sites. This article is based on a review and analysis of all messages, collected in Oslo and in the area around Utøya Island, using the concepts ‘critical event’, ‘national identity dynamic’, ‘depoliticisation’ and ‘domestic alien’. Results show that the predominant theme in the messages of peace and compassion is partly made possible by subordinate themes of depoliticisation and of alienating the perpetrator from majority, national community, thus contributing to the ongoing construction of a Norwegian, national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzing the period of 'intensive transnationalism' among Pakistani migrants in Denmark precipitated by the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, this article explores the relationship between events and effects on a global scale. One significant initiative after the disaster was the founding of an ad hoc association, Medical Doctors in Assistance to the Earthquake Victims in Pakistan, which consisted mainly of medical workers with a Pakistani background. The article discusses the wax and wane of this association and its impact in three interconnected contexts: family objectives, community dynamics, and national identity politics in Denmark. Despite the medical doctors' efforts and intentions, the outcome was framed by 9/11, which has become the major critical event of the decade-one that has supported a developing cleavage between the Danish majority and Denmark's Muslim immigrant minority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in critical event analysis to identify under what conditions alcohol is necessary in contributing to unprotected sex. The paper is based on a set of in-depth interviews with 84 men aged 18 = 29 from three typical low income communities in Mumbai who reported using alcohol and having sex with at least one nonspousal partner once or more in the 30 days prior to the interview. The interviews included narratives of critical events defined as recent (past 30–60 day) events involving sexual behavior with or without alcohol. The paper identifies themes related to alcohol, sexuality and condom use, uses QCA to identify and explain configurations leading to protected and unprotected sex, and explains the differences. The analysis shows that alcohol alone is not sufficient to explain any cases involving unprotected sex but alcohol in combination with partner type and contextual factors does explain unprotected sex for subsets of married and unmarried men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police officers are exposed to critical events as part of their duty which can affect their well-being. The present study examines the relationships between risk and protective factors and health outcome following critical incident exposure among police officers. Person-oriented analyses were applied to questionnaire data from a sample of 509 Italian municipal police officers. Two groups with different patterns of risk and protective factors were found by cluster analysis. One group (resilient officers) had higher levels of protective factors such as self-esteem and social support and lower levels of risk factors such as peritraumatic distress and perceived threat in comparison to the other group (non resilient police officers). The resilient group reported fewer traumatic stress reactions than the non resilient group in spite of a similar degree of exposure to critical incidents and better health than expected in spite of severe abuse. The two groups differed according to sleeping pills use but not for alcohol and smoking habits. Risk and protective factors could offer an explanation of resilience as an outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the spread of change in business networks with focus on critical events as triggers of radical change. The conceptual discussion is based on the analytical framework for change developed by Halinen, Salmi and Havila. This framework, compiling the mechanism, nature and forces of change in business networks, distinguishes between confined and connected change. It is suggested that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may cause changes that spread in the business networks, and M&As are investigated as triggers of radical network change in particular. The paper includes an empirical analysis of M&As in the Nordic graphic industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the connection between the changing definitions of a social problem-racial inequality-and a public policy designed to remedy that problemschool desegregation-focusing on the case of Mobile, Alabama. Survey data show that Whites in Mobile during the 1980s began to settle on one prevailing view of why Black people generally get fewer of the good things in life than Whites-that "Blacks don't try hard enough"-while support for other explanations, such as White discrimination and the lingering burden of historical abuse, declined. During the same period, the Mobile public changed its views of busing for school desegregation to be consistent with the new redefinition of the problem of race. The rapid change in the public's views of race and busing was not explained by objective measures of racial conditions in Mobile or by media coverage of these topics. Instead, the change was a converging social construction by conservative activists nationally and locally operating indirectly through mass media and among people directly through face to face encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the process by which a social problem is redefined in response to a critical event. Critical events are contextually dramatic happenings, such as economic depressions, environmental disasters, intense physical confrontations, strategic initiatives by a social movement organization, or new public policies. A critical event focuses public attention, which is itself a scarce resource in the claims-making process. It invites the collective definition or redefinition of a social problem when movement activists, media operatives, and others compete over the meaning assigned to the issues evoked. A redefining critical event occurs when the perception of reality surrounding movement issues shifts markedly among elites and mass publics. In a case in Nashville, TN, for example, a tax-increase referendum became a redefining event when conservative movement operatives successfully shifted ‘the problem’ of the schools from issues of distributive justice to issues of efficient production. The public then substantially lowered its assessment of the public schools in a short period of time, even though performance indicators for the schools seemed not to warrant this diminution in public esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how topics evolve in text data is an important and challenging task. Although much work has been devoted to topic analysis, the study of topic evolution has largely been limited to individual topics. In this paper, we introduce TextFlow, a seamless integration of visualization and topic mining techniques, for analyzing various evolution patterns that emerge from multiple topics. We first extend an existing analysis technique to extract three-level features: the topic evolution trend, the critical event, and the keyword correlation. Then a coherent visualization that consists of three new visual components is designed to convey complex relationships between them. Through interaction, the topic mining model and visualization can communicate with each other to help users refine the analysis result and gain insights into the data progressively. Finally, two case studies are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of TextFlow in helping users understand the major topic evolution patterns in time-varying text data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]