Second circuit reviewing Google keyword advertising case

The Second Circuit will be the first appeals court to decidedirectly whether a search engine's sale of advertisements thatare keyed to trade marks of others constitutes trade mark usefor purposes of an infringement claim. Briefing on the appealwas completed in March, including briefs from the parties andseveral amicus briefs, and oral argument will be scheduled fora date some time after mid-May.     

the science of rape: (mis)constructions of women's trauma in evolutionary theory

The social sciences are witnessing renewed enthusiasm for sociobiological accounts of human behaviour. Feminist theory has, understandably, tended to engage cautiously with biological reasoning, because women have often been poorly served by the politics of such research. It is important, though, that feminists continue to contribute to this literature, in order to challenge problematic discourses that may emerge. The present paper seeks to analyse a domain of sociobiology that has been the focus of recent controversy: an evolutionary explanation of rape. Particular attention is given to the way in which women's traumatic experience of rape is constructed within this framework. It is argued that women's psychological pain is contorted, via the strategies of (a) diminishing women's pain and (b) ignoring their experience altogether. The operation of these two strategies is illuminated, and their practical consequences in the domains of legal reform and the depoliticization of science are evaluated.     

Assessing sheriff’s office emergency and disaster website communications

Sheriff’s offices are an integral component of the public health emergency preparedness and response system in the USA. During a public health emergency or disaster, sheriff’s offices need to communicate with people affected by the event. Sheriff’s office websites are logical sources for information about disaster preparedness and response efforts. No prior research evaluates emergency preparedness and response resources available through sheriff’s office websites. The current research is a national study of sheriff’s office websites to assess the availability of information relating to emergency preparedness and response. A content analysis of 2590 sheriff’s office website homepages was conducted to determine the presence or absence of nine communications elements important to people seeking information during an emergency or disaster. We found that 71.9% of sheriff’s office website homepages include links to agency services and programs, but only 6.5% provide links to emergency preparedness information. The findings of the study are useful to assess emergency preparedness and the amount of response information available, as well as to identify opportunities to improve sheriff’s office website homepages.     

Availability of affordable healthy food in Hillsborough County,Florida

Prior research has indicated that low‐income neighborhoods in urban regions throughout the United States have limited access to healthy food, which partly explains the prevalence of diet‐related diseases. Our study provides new evidence on the relationship between access, prices of healthy food, and key demographic factors in Hillsborough County, Florida. The research team completed 65 surveys of grocery and convenience stores regarding availability and prices of 11 food items included in the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey in Stores (NEMS‐S). Results from the regression analysis indicate that affordable healthy food is more likely to be found in grocery stores than in convenience stores. There is no significant evidence, however, that low‐income neighborhoods have less access to healthy food than the not‐low‐income ones. We also observe significant price differences among types of stores but not in grocery‐to‐convenience store ratios among income groups, suggesting that low‐income families are not exposed to higher food prices.     

Examining Commuters’ Cognitive Responses to Minibus Taxi Advertising

Abstract

Limited scholarly studies have been conducted on transit advertising in general, but even more so in South Africa. The purpose of the current study was to examine commuters’ cognitive responses to minibus taxi advertising by measuring their: (1) noting of minibus taxi advertising; and (2) recall of elements in minibus taxi advertisements. A survey was administered by trained fieldworkers to a quota-based sample of 398 regular minibus taxi commuters at a major taxi rank in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, South Africa. The results revealed that minibus taxi advertising has the potential to attract commuters’ attention, since the vast majority of the respondents regularly note advertisements on passing minibus taxis. The findings also revealed that some sub-groups in the sample demonstrated different cognitive responses. It was furthermore found that the commuting respondents typically recalled visual cues, colours and branding elements of minibus taxi advertising. The unique contribution of the study is that it is one of the first to examine the effectiveness of minibus taxi advertising media on a cognitive level. Thus, from an industry perspective, the study can guide marketers, advertisers and managers in grasping minibus taxi advertising in order to make more effective use of this unique out-of-home (OOH) advertising media platform for their advertising purposes.     

Feminism on the frontier: the history of abortion law reform in 1973 in the Northern Territory,Australia

In 1973, the Northern Territory (NT) criminal law relating to abortion was reformed. The NT was one of only two Australian jurisdictions where the 1970s liberalisation of abortion was enabled by legislative reform. Unlike the 1969 South Australian reform, the NT bill was sponsored by a female, and feminist, parliamentarian, Dawn Lawrie, assisted by a small group of supporters. This article recovers the narrative of this pioneering reform achieved in a place dominated by white men. It argues that this achievement was enabled by the NT’s individualistic culture, its history of white women’s activism and the mood for progressive change in 1970s Australia. It contextualises the reform by keeping the position of Indigenous women, including the public opposition of some to abortion reform, clearly in view, thus keeping race at the centre of the analysis of liberal feminist reforms and of white feminism in the NT in the early 1970s.