Choose Your Research Articles

Rearing Children of the Market in the “You” Decade: Choose Your Own Adventure Books and the Ascent of Free Choice in 1980s America

Exploring some of the key tenets of neoliberal American culture, this article examines the historical forces behind the meteoric rise of interactive “Choose Your Own Adventure” (CYOA) children's books in the 1980s. Despite selling over 250 million copies worldwide and becoming the fourth most popular children's series of all time, the CYOA phenomenon has yet to be placed in its larger social, economic, historical or cultural context. When explaining the rise of interactive narratives, previous literature has mostly focussed on technological change – namely the invention of video games, computer consoles and hypertext narratives. Moving away from such claims, this article demonstrates how the incredible success of solely text-based CYOA books stemmed largely from the cultural ascent of individual market choice to the heart of American notions of agency, liberty, subjectivity and selfhood in the 1970s and 1980s.

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The way out – Metaphysical Melancholy in Lotta Lotass’ Den svarta solen
 Following the paratextual clues of Lotta Lotass’ conceptual ’Choose Your Own Adventure’ (anti-)novel Den svarta solen (”The black sun”, 2009) this article investigates the possible connection between melancholy as a theme and Immanuel Kant’s idealistic transcendentalism. Kant’s ”Copernican revolution” which concludes that human experience consists, not of things themselves, but of appearances shaped by the subject, suggest a claustrophobic experience in the loss of knowledgeability of the world. Using Julia Kristeva’s ideas on the melancholy, this article proposes that loss of knowledge of the world is the cause (”the black sun”) for the melancholy experience that Lotass tries to convey in the novel’s labyrinthine, descriptive representation of different rooms interconnected by arrows and numbers.

Choose your own murder: Non-linear narratives enhance student understanding in forensic science education

Higher education teaching in the forensic sciences tends to follow a traditional format of lectures followed by practical laboratory sessions. Sometimes this approach is not possible or viewed as not innovative enough. The free, open access software Twine was used with final year undergraduates in forensic and crime scene science in a UK university in order to create an interactive learning experience based around the creation of non-linear stories. Evaluation of this approach demonstrated the positive impact on student understanding when compared to the traditional lecture model. Students found the experience engaging and were keen to use Twine again.

Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future by Aaron Kashtan

Reviewed by: Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future by Aaron Kashtan Daniel F. Yezbick (bio) Aaron Kashtan, Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Book of the Future. The Ohio State University Press, 2018. 224 pp, $29.95, $104.95. Between Pen and Pixel is a remarkable work of critical insight and theoretical synthesis. As previous high profile reviews, including Vincent Haddad's "My Bookish Upbringing" from the 6 July 2019 L. A. Review of Books have observed, Kashtan's meticulously organized project cuts through the ongoing claptrap and clickbait associated with anxious assumptions and inane lamentations over the digitized death rattle of the traditional codex Book and/or its multimodal cousins, the Comics. Instead of blanket statements and generalized accusations, Kashtan methodically reveals a rich, cross-disciplinary interplay of narrative synergies that are as productive, informative, and inclusive as they are encouraging and, at times, downright playful in their positivity. Kashtan's work also arrives at a pivotal point in both comics history and comics scholarship, providing multiple frameworks of inquiry and understanding that can bridge the oceans of 20th century newsprint floppies, [End Page 127] trades, and graphic novels and the multitudes of digitally app-marketed, tablet-bound, and web-derived variants of 21st century comics. For the eager comics scholar, there are abundant pleasures throughout, including Kashtan's shrewd re-assessment of the complex negotiations of family artifacts and narrative materiality within Alison Bechdel's Fun Home; his systemic analysis of the contrasting analog and digital elements of Chris Ware's Building Stories; and perceptive discussions of how comics like Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's Bandette, Randall Munroe's xkcd, Alex Robinson's Box Office Poison, Carla Speed McNeil's Talisman, and Lynda Barry's "instructional trilogy" (Picture This, What It Is and Syllabus) respond to the "Crisitunity" of materiality that continues to inspire and confound the interaction of print and digital platforms and their readerships. Kashtan's fresh, inviting approach to the conditions of creation, interpretation, and commerce drive his analyses of many diverse works from Dan Slott and Michael Allred's Silver Surfer to Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse's Between Page and Screen. I am especially grateful for the project's intricately detailed assessments of the meta-narrative dynamics of Matt Kindt's Mind MGMT and Jason Shiga's Meanwhile. Each are among the finest close readings of key works by auteur creators in recent comics scholarship. In these and other moments, the book teems with an infectious love for its sequential subjects and their transmedial pleasures and provocations. At times, Between Pen and Pixel cannot help but indulge in the playful consanguinity of forms and stories it so cherishes. Thus, sly cryptographic games emerge out of its dissection of Matt Kindt's cunning use of codes and secret messages, and Kashtan's ingenious narratological assessment of gamebook design includes its own interactive "Choose Your Own" critical outcome option. These wry and inviting moments are not only compelling examples of his larger arguments about the inter-fertilization of material and digital codes, frames, and puzzles, but also a genuine sign of Kashtan's own life-long intimacy with the material and its benefits to readers, students, and teachers of story. He first makes these concerns explicit in the introductory section, "Who Should Read This Book and Who Wrote It," but the greater pay-off comes in three later sections relating to the instructional value and empowering potential of self-conscious textual literacy. Kashtan's final chapter, "Applications for Studying and Teaching Comics," is, like much of his work, personal and compelling in its recounting of various pedagogical experiences relating to materiality, narrative, and curriculum development. Yet, Between Pen and Pixel's greatest achievement—its most rewarding attention to its guiding focus on the materiality of comics/media—are the critical successes of Chapter 4, "Guided View: How Comics Move from Print to Digital and Back," and Chapter 5, "Between Panel and Screen: Comics That are Print and Digital at Once." In both chapters, intrepid close readings are used to dynamic effect, illustrating how transmedial, or remediated, or sequential simulacra of various forms reveal tensions of back...

Choose Your Words Wisely: Descriptions of a Professional Early Childhood Practitioner

The purpose of this study was to understand the components that determine quality early childhood education and Care (ECEC) from the views of practitioners and parents participating in the ECCE Scheme (2010). A major component of quality ECCE as identified by practitioners in this study related to professionalism in ECEC. This paper presents a critical view on traditional perspectives on what it means to be a professional within the context of ECCE. It seems that within the ECCE model, a professional practitioner is one who finds purpose in their work. However, they are also experts in ECCE. That is, a professional practitioner is knowledgeable in ECCE has a deep sense of respect and love for childhood as a distinct period in human growth and develop. These characteristics are the embodiment of a professional practitioner. To describe this phenomenon, this research coins the term “professional purpose.”

Choose your own adventure: Dani Hall at DFTB19

Choose your own adventure: Dani Hall at DFTB19

Choose your Patty: The Sensory Characterization and Consumer Acceptance of Burger Patties with Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) Enrichment

This experimental study aimed to determine the acceptable proportion of burger patty enriched with 25 g(Proportion A), 50 g (Proportion B) and 75 g (Proportion C) of oyster mushroom in terms of appearance, aroma, taste and texture. The level of acceptability as to appearance, aroma, taste and texture were also evaluated. The sensory characteristics were evaluated by 30 selected evaluators using a sensory evaluation sheet based in Five-point hedonic scale.Frequency count and percentage were used as statistical tools to determine the sensory characteristics of burger patty enriched with oyster mushroom. While, arithmetic mean was used to determine the level of acceptability of burger patty.Findings revealed that Proportion A has a very much pleasant oyster mushroom taste. On the other hand, Proportion B had a very much pleasant oyster mushroom smell and very much compact and fine texture. Lastly, Proportion C had a golden brown appearance and very much pleasant oyster mushroom smell.

“Choose Your Horror”

“Choose Your Horror”

Symptomatic catheter-associated thrombosis in pediatric trauma patients: Choose your access wisely

BackgroundTraumatic injury and the presence of a central venous catheter are 2 of the strongest risk factors for venous thromboembolism in children. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of symptomatic, catheter-associated thrombosis in critically injured children. We hypothesized that femoral venous catheters are associated with a greater rate of thrombotic complications when compared with all other central venous access points. MethodsWe reviewed a retrospective cohort (2006–2016) of injured children (≤18 years) admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit with central access placed ≤7 days from admission. Symptomatic, catheter-associated thrombosis was determined by radiographic evidence. Poisson regression was used to compare the incidence of catheter-associated thrombosis per 1,000 catheter days between femoral and nonfemoral catheters. All comparisons were 2-tailed with α = 0.05. ResultsWe examined 209 pediatric trauma patients with central access (65% femoral, 19% subclavian, 11% arm vein, and 5% internal jugular). Femoral catheters were removed earlier (median [interquartile range] 4 [2–7] vs 8 [3–12] days, P < .001) and were larger in diameter (5 Fr [4–7] vs 4 Fr [4–4], P < .001) when compared with all other catheters. Catheter-associated thrombosis was more frequent in femoral versus nonfemoral catheters (18.4 vs 3.5 per 1,000 catheter days, P = .01). ConclusionFemoral venous catheters are associated with a greater incidence of symptomatic, catheter-associated thrombosis in pediatric trauma patients. When central venous access is indicated for injured children, the femoral site should be avoided. If a femoral venous catheter is necessary, use of a smaller catheter should be considered.

Choose Your Own Intervention: Using Choice to Enhance the Effectiveness of a Utility-Value Intervention.

Utility-value interventions, in which students are asked to make connections between course material and their lives, are useful for improving students' academic outcomes in science courses. These interventions are thought to be successful in part because the intervention activities afford students autonomy while they complete them, but no research has explored directly whether interventions that include more support for autonomy are more effective. In this study, the degree of choice incorporated in a utility-value intervention was systematically varied in order to test this possibility. We assigned college biology students (n = 406) to a high-choice utility-value intervention condition (choose between two formats- essay or letter- for each of 3 writing assignments), one of two low-choice intervention conditions (complete either an essay and then a letter, or vice versa, and choose a format for the third assignment), or a control condition (summarize course material 3 times). Students in the high-choice condition reported significantly higher perceived utility value and interest for biology course content compared to students in the low-choice conditions. There were also significant, but small, indirect effects of choice on students' final course grades and enrollment in the next course in the biology sequence via perceived utility value and interest. Results suggest that social-psychological interventions which include more choice are likely to be more effective than those which include less choice.

Choose Your Own Adventure: An Analysis of Interactive Gamebooks Using Graph Theory

"BEWARE and WARNING! This book is different from other books. You and YOU ALONE are in charge of what happens in this story." This is the captivating introduction to every book in the interactive novel series, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA). Our project uses the mathematical field of graph theory to analyze forty books from the CYOA book series for ages 9-12. We first began by drawing the digraphs of each book. Then we analyzed these digraphs by collecting structural data such as longest path length (i.e. longest story length) and number of vertices with outdegree zero (i.e. number of endings). In this paper we discuss the results of statistical analyses we used to compare books by author, year, and reader preference. We also discuss numerous errors we found in the description of certain books and the publication of others.

Comment on: Stopping Eating and Drinking by Advance Directives: Choose Your Injustice

This case is not an ambiguous one. I think that in real life very few physicians would implement an order to withhold food and sedate someone who still appears to want food, can still feed himself, and is able to swallow safely like Bill in this vignette. That would probably be a criminal act. But it gets a lot more complicated when the person does not appear to desire food and is unable to put food or fluids into his own mouth, even when it is offered by being placed on a tray in front of him. And the situation becomes more complicated still when the person appears to be experiencing severe suffering in other ways or is having severe difficulties swallowing. We should not be placing value judgments on other people’s quality of life, but there does come a point for almost everyone where the burdens of sustaining life — or as others might say, prolonging the dying process — outweigh any perceptible benefit beyond biological functioning. This is especially true when there is severe apparent suffering in a patient with profound dementia or in someone for whom virtually everything going into the mouth is going to wind up in the airway. Electing not to hand-feed selected patients under these circumstances when it is in accordance with their previously expressed wishes seems much less ethically fraught. We equate feeding with nurturance and love, but it may not always work out that way. Nursing homes will probably never be a place where SED by AD will be practicable or permissible, but other care settings may be. There will be much more discussion on this topic in the bioethics community and beyond, in the years to come. Stopping Eating and Drinking by Advance Directives: Choose Your InjusticeCaring for the AgesVol. 20Issue 3PreviewJim, I have a hypothetical case for you. One of my residents with dementia, let’s call him Bill, has an advance directive stating that when he no longer has meaningful social interaction, his caregivers should stop giving him food or water. He is now mostly mute, though rarely he may say a word or two. He still eats reasonably well and seems to enjoy mealtimes, occasionally saying “That’s good” when eating ice cream. His agent with POAHC [power of attorney for health care] is his wife, Alice, who also has advanced dementia and can no longer function as his decision-maker but is more verbal than Bill. Full-Text PDF

Stopping Eating and Drinking by Advance Directives: Choose Your Injustice

Stopping Eating and Drinking by Advance Directives: Choose Your Injustice

Choose Your Own Adventure: Examining the Fictional Content of Video Games as Interactive Fictions

Choose Your Own Adventure: Examining the Fictional Content of Video Games as Interactive Fictions

Choose your champion for this year’s ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest!

Choose your champion for this year’s ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest!

Choose Your Friends Wisely: How Organizational Identity Influences Behavior at U.S. Colleges and Universities

Choose Your Friends Wisely: How Organizational Identity Influences Behavior at U.S. Colleges and Universities

Choose Your Battles Wisely: The Consequences of Protesting Government Procurement Contracts

Firms that successfully protest a government agency’s conduct or terms of a procurement contract observe a reduction in future business opportunities with the government. These firms receive fewer and less valuable government contracts, face more contract cancellations, and experience significant reductions in sales growth and employee growth. Despite widespread belief, successful bid protesters do not delay government procurement due to lengthy dispute resolutions. We provide the first analysis of corporate interactions with the United States government bid-protest system. Our results demonstrate the effects of legitimate bid protests to firms.

Supplemental Material for Choose Your Own Intervention: Using Choice to Enhance the Effectiveness of a Utility-Value Intervention

Supplemental Material for Choose Your Own Intervention: Using Choice to Enhance the Effectiveness of a Utility-Value Intervention

Choose your weapon

PurposeCivil forfeiture is an increasingly common way for governments to relieve criminal wrongdoers of the proceeds of their crimes and to restore the property to the victims of the offense. The question that is asked, however, is this: Is civil forfeiture an essential tool that is needed to fill a gap in the arsenal of weapons available to law enforcement or is it a prosecutorial shortcut that allows cases to be closed without obtaining the evidence needed to obtain a criminal conviction in cases that should be prosecuted criminally. The answer is that it is both. When properly used, civil forfeiture is an essential tool that provides a means of recovering property, but it is a tool that can also be used to save time and money even though the investment of those resources in bringing a criminal to justice would better serve the public interest. The aim of this paper is to show why this is so.Design/methodology/approachAnalysis of the use of civil forfeiture in the USA.FindingsCivil forfeiture is an essential law enforcement tool.Originality/valueWhile undeniably an essential law enforcement tool, civil forfeiture is sometimes used as a shortcut to conserve resources.

Influenza virus: Choose your enemies wisely.

Natural influenza virus infection in humans induces protective neuraminidase-reactive antibodies that are not induced by current influenza vaccines.