Search

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.

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.

In 2011, a Norwegian right-wing extremist killed 77 mostly young people in an attack on proponents of multiculturalism. A critical event of this magnitude is important in a nation’s collective memory. For young people’s political socialization and value orientation, it could be crucial. Adolescents’ memories and interpretations of terrorism are an understudied area. On the basis of different memory narratives among ethnic Norwegian adolescents, who were 13 or 14 in 2011, implications of the attacks, seen as a case of collective memory formation of terrorism, are discussed in terms of how young people remember and interpret the attacks and negotiate between competing narratives. Focus group interviews conducted in 2015–2016 with 18-year-olds showed a marked tension between support for democratic values and numerous references to individuals and organizations having critical views on immigration and diversity and the importance of active agents promoting the conflicting narratives.

This project examines questions of discernibility and presentation methods for safety-critical driving messages. A driving simulator experiment tested two methods of providing safety messages: distinct (with all alerts having distinct auditory and visual components) and master (a common visual and auditory alert) presentations. Participants completed drives that contained a safety critical event, with and without an alert, and reported their perceptions of the alert’s meaning and hazard location. No significant differences were observed in participants’ ability to identify the location of the referent hazard. There were significant differences in participants’ ability to assess the meaning of the alert: the distinct group displayed higher overall performance as compared to the master group. Implications of the study for design guidance and potential future research topics are discussed.

Confronted with any kind of critical event, people tend to develop an urgent need for answers that provide a useful interpretation of what they experience as a painfully intruding disaster. This urge results from the often-unbearable suffering and the disruption of everyday life, routines, and relations. Moreover, dreams and aspirations one had for the future, the realization of which they perceived as important in leading a meaningful life, may be lost or have to be reconsidered. Accompanying feelings of disappointment, demoralization, or even desperation are often treated as symptoms of depression. This approach is called into question by the concept of demoralization, which points to the presence of healthy modes of functioning in a state of lucid awareness of one’s condition. In this article, we focus on the case of schizophrenia, as we suppose that having to deal with recurring psychotic episodes constitutes such a pervasive experience, possibly leading to meaning deficiency. We propose then a treatment perspective that integrates care for the processes of mourning and of meaning making. This view, described here in the case of schizophrenic psychosis, is offered as a paradigm that can serve the approach to other serious conditions requiring prolonged care.

The disruption of blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a critical event in the formation of brain edema during early phases of ischemic brain injury. Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) activation, which contributes to BBB damage, has been reported in ischemia–reperfusion and traumatic brain injury. Here, we investigated the effect of 3-aminobenzamide (3-AB), a PARP-1 inhibitor, on the ultrastructure of BBB. Male Sprague Dawley rats were suffered from 90 minutes of middle cerebral artery occlusion, followed by 4.5 hours or 22.5 hours of reperfusion (R). The vehicle or 3-AB (10 mg/kg) was administered intraperitoneally (ip) 60 minutes after lacking of blood. Tissue Evans Blue (EB) levels, ultrastructures of astrocytes and microvessels, and areas of perivascular edema were examined in penumbra and core, at I 1.5 hours /R 4.5 hours and I 1.5 hours /R 22.5 hours, respectively. The severity of ultrastructural changes was graded with a scoring system in each group. We showed that 3-AB treatment significantly decreased tissue EB levels and ultrastructural scores, attenuated damages in astrocytes and microvessels, and reduced areas of perivascular edema. In conclusion, PARP inhibition may provide a novel therapeutic approach to ischemic brain injury.

This study used the Naturalistic Truck Driving Study data set to test the feasibility of applying naturalistic data to evaluation of the relationship between prescription (Rx) and over-the-counter (OTC) drug use and involvement in a safety-critical event (SCE). The risk of drug use was calculated by comparing SCEs and baseline epochs that occurred within a drug's half-life with SCEs and baseline epochs that did not occur within a drug's half-life (for the same half-life period). This research found that nearly 97% of commercial motor vehicle drivers used an OTC drug at least once (mostly caffeine), and 25% used at least one Rx drug. Furthermore, Rx and noncaffeine OTC drug use was not associated with an increased or decreased risk of involvement in an SCE. As caffeine was the only drug classification used multiple times by many drivers, this odds ratio analysis was the only analysis performed. Caffeine use while driving was found to be associated with a decreased risk of SCE involvement in all seven half-lives (half-life odds ratios ranging from 0.44 to 0.66). This project illustrated the feasibility of using a naturalistic driving approach to assess the risk associated with Rx and OTC drug use while driving. It is possible that analyses for specific medications could be performed with a sufficiently large sample of drivers who used each classification of drug.

Long glances away from the road present a significant risk to driving safety. The tail of the distribution for in-vehicle glance duration has been proposed to be more relevant to crash risk than the mean of the distribution. Using data collected in the 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study (Dingus et al., 2006), this study examined the changes in the distribution of driver off-road glance duration, as well as in the frequency of such glances, at different time points before crash/near-crash events and compared with baseline (i.e., normal) driving. The results showed that the shape of the distribution of off-road glance duration at the onset of the precipitating factor of crashes/near-crashes was similar to the distribution in epochs during the preceding 25 seconds; nonetheless, the frequency of off-road glances increased in the approach to crashes/near-crash events. Compared with baseline epochs, drivers in crashes/near-crash events tended to look away from the forward road more often and with longer duration (i.e., with thicker tail end of the distributions; exceeding 1.7 seconds as observed in the distributions). It suggests that frequent off-road glances longer than 1.7 seconds present a high-risk glance pattern in the seconds preceding a safety- critical event and that the 2.0 second-threshold that is frequently cited in defining dangerously long off-road glances might be a liberal estimation.

Systems thinking involves looking beyond events to see patterns of behaviour and the underlying systemic interrelationships. This is especially important for teams of planners or decision makers that are required to have a shared understanding of the systems they are affecting. Soon after ‘systems thinking’ emerged, the creation of generic counter-intuitive structures that seem to occur repeatedly in different systems began. These generic structures (which have come to be known as Archetypes) are models that can represent systems across different domains. This paper outlines the most 9 common archetypes that were first proposed by Senge. Finally, a new archetype is proposed that is characterized by a critical event triggering a massive increase in some factor.

Chat has become a primary means of communication for military command and control decision makers. One of the most important aspects of military chat use is the ability to detect critical events quickly and accurately, a task often complicated by the large number of chat messages received during actual operations. The primary goal of this research was to identify factors that enable chat watchstanders to more rapidly identify the critical information embedded in chat messages. These factors, which include message highlighting and chatroom layout, have the potential to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of information processing in fast-paced, information-rich operational environments. In this study, message highlighting techniques enabled users to detect 92% of highlighted events, in comparison to 83% of events that were not highlighted. These findings indicate that highlighting chat messages confers significant performance advantages, especially in conjunction with associated factors, such as chatroom layout.

This essay suggests that 9-11 constitutes a critical event for urban scholars because it encapsulated and catalyzed a trend toward urban-based terror that had been building for a decade or more. The best way to put 9-11 in perspective and understand its significance is through a paradigm. In constructing the 9-11 paradigm, the author suggests a set of components that set the parameters for explanation. These consist of the diffusion of terror as an urban phenomenon, the economic ramifications of urban terror, and the impact of terror on the use of urban space. These components are not just mutually compatible but integral to the 9-11 paradigm. As a result of 9-11, public security, order, and protection have become central issues for cities. The paradigm also underscores the stakes held by national and intergovernmental elites in cities confronted by crisis.

Following a critical event resulting in loss of life, members of emergency service organizations are frequently required to participate in postmortem inquiries that seek to understand the cause of the tragedy and ensure that such an event does not occur again. Although researchers have become increasingly knowledgeable about the effects of critical events on rescue workers, to date, no studies have focused on the stress and trauma experienced as a result of having one's actions questioned in such a process. This study compares trauma responses in firefighters and paramedics who have been questioned in postmortem inquiries following a critical event in the work-place and those who have not. Involvement in a review was found to be associated with significantly higher traumatic stress and depression symptoms. Those involved in reviews were more likely to have taken mental health stress leave. In addition, both media coverage of the event and the review were significantly associated with depression scores.

Incident reports are intended to help identify problems in safety critical systems and aid in preventing subsequent accidents, thus improving safety. Unfortunately, incident-reporting forms are generally unstructured, providing little guidance to the reporter on how to describe the critical events of an incident. As a result, most reports contain information on what happened, as opposed to why an incident happened, and hence make the identification of intervention and prevention strategies onerous. The purpose of the present study was to help remedy this situation by developing and testing a tool, coined the Critical Event Recall Tool (CERT) for improving the quality of information contained in narrative reports of incidents. Results of this study indicate that CERT improved the analytical content of general aviation pilots' reports of a critical incident that occurred during a simulated cross-country flight and that pilots who used CERT generally felt that the tool was easy to use and understand.

The purpose of this study was to develop a method for indexing the dynamic modulation of flexion/extension moment and the center of pressure (CoP) by the intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) during a lifting and lowering task. The indices were developed to provide information about tendency, direction and relative rate of change. The theories used in developing the two scaling indices are reviewed. Ten subjects were recruited, and their postural control and IAP were examined in the context of para-sagittal lifting and lowering. The two indices were applied before and after each critical event: liftoff, extend-to-flex (i.e., the inflection point of the whole body movement from extension to flexion) and touchdown. Statistical significance was found suggesting that both back-belt wearing and a breathing technique, Valsalva's maneuver, may change the modulating potential of IAP in postural control.

The transition from the intra-uterine to extra uterine life is a critical event in life. Any difficulty and hazards at this time may cause irreversible damage to vital organs and permanent handicap later in life, therefore it is important to manage any type of emergency in neonatal period as soon as possible4. Neonatal deaths in the pediatric emergency department occur within 24 hrs of admission, many of these deaths can be prevented if very sick neonates are identified soon after their arrival and if treatment is started immediately1. Because, nurses represent the largest group of trained professional health workers available, their awareness of and preparation for emergency care of ill and injured is essential5.

The purpose of this study was to examine utilization rates of scheduled early intervention services. Service utilization data reported for 1 week out of every month over a 4-month period were analyzed for a cohort of 146 infants and toddlers. Major findings included: (a) 69% of the families used the majority of their services; (b) child and maternal characteristics were not significantly related to service utilization; (c) providers who were younger and close in age to mothers evidenced significantly higher utilization rates; (d) families in which therapists served as the primary service provider had the lowest utilization rates; and (e) mothers who believed that service decisions should be made by professionals evidenced higher utilization rates. Overall, data reveal that the assignment of a primary $service provider to a family is a critical event in the early intervention experience.

The principle advantage of a head-up display (HUD) is that a driver does not have to take their eyes off the road. However, the advantage afforded by a HUD may be lost when surprising or unexpected events occur in the traffic environment. This study sought to determine the time-costs for elderly drivers associated with responses to the appearance of a pedestrian (critical event) while engaged in a HUD task. Sixteen older drivers (65 to 81, Mean = 73) interacted with a number of tasks presented in a low-cost driving simulator. Critical event onset after engaging in a HUD task (+100, +250, +1000 ms), display location (head-up, head-down), tracking difficulty (easy, hard), and display type (visual search, verbal memory) were the within-subjects variables. Analyses of perception-response time (PRT) and missed events (error) indicate that braking to a critical event, while performing a display task, is affected by the interaction between the temporal and spatial limitations of visual attention. HUD design and safety issues are briefly considered.

This article presents a new model that explains how collective political action develops over time under different structural conditions and given institutional settings. Two kinds of actors are distinguished: (a) The representatives of the state are endowed with the power to provide a certain public good and to impose costs on citizens by means of repressive action. The state's representatives aim at gaining a certain amount of support from the citizens and regard collective political action as a disturbance of their activities. (b) Citizens use collective political action to pressure the state to provide a public good. Each citizen is faced with specific incentives for collective political action. Proceeding from certain distributions of the incentives in a collective, processes of collective political action are evoked by a critical event (e.g., a nuclear reactor incident). Computer simulations are used to explore the implications of the model for three generated data sets. In a normal and a rectangular distribution, initial collective political action decreases so that the public good is not provided. Only in a u-shaped distribution does a large extent of collective political action emerge so that a partial provision of the public good ensues.

In World War II, 350,000 women served in the American military. Was this service a critical event in their lives as it has been in the lives of many men? This article describes background characteristics of women who served and their reasons for volunteering, and focuses on some short-and long-term effects of this service on their attitudes and values. The work is based on surveys taken at the time (but not analyzed), and on a questionnaire developed by the author and filled out by 338 women veterans of the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, the WAC, WAVES, Marine Corp Women's Reserve, and SPARS.

In two experiments 17- (mean age=17;10), II- (mean age=11;7), 9- (mean age=9;7), and 7-year-olds (mean age = 7;7) walked along a straight line between two locations in a large-scale environment. They were then asked to estimate: (a) the distance from the beginning of the walk to the occurrence of a critical event that had occurred along the walk, and (b) the time taken to traverse various parts of the walk. In experiment 1 each half of the walked distance was traversed in varying amounts of time, with the critical event occurring halfway between the two locations. In experiment 2 the time taken to traverse each part of the walk was held constant but the distance to the occurrence of the critical event was varied. The results indicated that only younger children's estimates of the distance traversed in an environment may be influenced by the time taken to traverse that distance.

Brain evoked potentials (EP) were used to study subject responses to “critical events” (CEs) which were part of a series of stimuli. Both reaction times (RT) and EPs were influenced by the appearance of the CE. Longer RTs and a large late positive component of the EP were associated with the trials containing the CE stimuli. Intermediate RTs and late positive components of the EPs were found in a condition in which the stimulus preceding the CE gave information about the following CE and was also similar in appearance. While this is a laboratory test, it is similar in many ways to actual situations confronted by human factors specialists. EPs appear, then, to be useful tools in the system design and evaluation process.