Defining Food Safety Inspection

Food safety inspections are a key health protection measure applied by governments to prevent foodborne illness, yet they remain the subject of sustained criticism. These criticisms include inconsistency and inadequacy of methods applied to inspection, and ineffectiveness in preventing foodborne illness. Investigating the validity of these criticisms represent important areas for further research. However, a defined construct around the meanings society attributes to food safety inspection must first be established. Through critical examination of available literature, this review identified meanings attributed to food safety inspection and explicates some of the key elements that compose food safety inspection as a social construct. A total of 18 meanings were found to be attributed to food safety inspection. Variation in meanings were found between consumers, food business associates and food safety inspectors. For some, inspection meant a source of assurance, for others a threat to fairness, while most view inspection as a product of resources and inspector training. The meanings were then examined in light of common criticisms directed at food safety inspection, to expound their influence in how food safety inspection is realized, shaped, and rationalized. This review highlights the influence of sociological factors in defining food safety inspection.

Gender and Ethnicity Bias in Medicine: A Text Analysis of 1.8 Million Critical Care Records

Gender and ethnicity biases are pervasive across many societal domains including politics, employment, and medicine. Such biases will facilitate inequalities until they are revealed and mitigated at scale. To this end, over 1.8 million records from a large US hospital were evaluated with natural language processing techniques in search of gender and ethnicity bias indicators. Consistent with non-linguistic evidence of bias in medicine, physicians often focused on the emotions of female compared to male patients and focused more on the scientific diagnoses of male compared to female patients. Physicians reported on fewer emotions for Black patients versus White patients and physicians demonstrated the greatest need to work through diagnoses for Black women compared to other patients. This work provides evidence of gender and ethnicity biases in medicine as communicated by physicians in the field and requires the critical examination of institutions that perpetuate bias in social systems.

TEATRALIDAD Y MODOS DE REPRESENTACIÓN EN EL MELODRAMA DE RAINER W. FASSBINDER: DE SIRK A ARTAUD

El presente artículo explora el concepto de teatralidad cinematográfica a partir de un análisis de la estética del melodrama y el estudio formal de la obra de uno de los grandes renovadores del género, el director alemán Rainer W. Fassbinder. En concreto, toma como referencia la película Todos nos llamamos Ali (1974) para examinar su recepción del melodrama clásico o sirkiano, demostrando que la filiación teatral del género no se debe simplemente al perfeccionamiento de los valores plásticos de la puesta en escena sino también a la importancia del cuerpo del actor o actriz como entidad de sentido privilegiada, y en el caso de Fassbinder, a la influencia combinada de Brecht y Artaud. El análisis está precedido por una valoración de la idea de teatralidad desde la teoría intermedial, así como de la filiación del melodrama como género con el medio escénico. Abstract: This article deals with the concept of theatricality in film by studying the aesthetics of melodrama and discussing the work of one of the genre’s most prominent renovators, German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Particularly, it centers on the film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) in order to explore its reception of classic or sirkian melodrama, proving that the theatrical nature of the genre is not merely due to the refinement of the plastic values of mise-en-scène and placing, but also to the importance of the performer’s body as a privileged source of meaning, and, in Fassbinder’s works, to the combined influence of Brecht’s and Artaud’s. Our analysis is introduced by a critical examination of the idea of theatricality from the perspective of Intermedial Theory and an exploration of the bonds between performing stage and melodrama as a genre.

An Introduction to Musical Interactions

The article presents a contextual survey of eight contributions in the special issue Musical Interactions (Volume I) in Multimodal Technologies and Interaction. The presentation includes (1) a critical examination of what it means to be musical, to devise the concept of music proper to MTI as well as multicultural proximity, and (2) a conceptual framework for instrumentation, design, and assessment of musical interaction research through five enabling dimensions: Affordance; Design Alignment; Adaptive Learning; Second-Order Feedback; Temporal Integration. Each dimension is discussed and applied in the survey. The results demonstrate how the framework provides an interdisciplinary scope required for musical interaction, and how this approach may offer a coherent way to describe and assess approaches to research and design as well as implementations of interactive musical systems. Musical interaction stipulates musical liveness for experiencing both music and technologies. While music may be considered ontologically incomplete without a listener, musical interaction is defined as ontological completion of a state of music and listening through a listener’s active engagement with musical resources in multimodal information flow.

Anti-Racist and Intersectional Approaches in Social Science and Community-Based Research

Data are not objective, despite the reliance on data for “evidence-based” policy and practice. In this chapter, the authors offer a critical examination of the historical and present day context of racism and oppressive practices in research methods. The authors highlight how racism and oppression manifest at every stage of the research process: from initial conception of the research question to how data is collected, analyzed, and shared. This chapter offers concrete recommendations and solutions for researchers seeking to integrate anti-racist and intersectional approaches into their social science and community-based research.