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This study delves into the intra-industry effects following a firm-specific scandal, with a particular focus on the Facebook data leakage scandal and its associated events within the U.S. tech industry and two additional relevant groups. We employ various metrics including daily spread, volatility, volume-weighted return, and CAPM-beta for the pre-analysis clustering, and subsequently utilize CAR (Cumulative Abnormal Return) to evaluate the impact on firms grouped within these clusters. From a broader industry viewpoint, significant positive CAARs are observed across U.S. sample firms over the three days post-scandal announcement, indicating no adverse impact on the tech sector overall. Conversely, after Facebook's initial quarterly earnings report, it showed a notable negative effect despite reported positive performance. The clustering principle should aid in identifying directly related companies and thus reducing the influence of randomness. This was indeed achieved for the effect of the key event, namely "The Effect of Congressional Hearing on Certain Clusters across U.S. Tech Stock Market," which was identified as delayed and significantly negative. Therefore, we recommend applying the clustering method when conducting such or similar event studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1956 the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) launched Mission 66, a ten-year program to rebuild and improve infrastructure within hundreds of units of the National Park System, among them Death Valley National Monument in California. As elsewhere, plans in this unit centered on a visitor center, new employee housing, administrative and maintenance facilities, and campgrounds. The original plans developed for Death Valley were abruptly changed, leading to allegations that the NPS was involved in a deal with a resort in the park, in which the NPS would receive a land donation in exchange for overlooking illegal use of monument water by the resort. This Great Death Valley Mission 66 Conspiracy reached the ears of Congress, and in 1962 Congressional hearings were held to investigate these matters. The NPS director and many others were called to give testimony. This story gives a fascinating glimpse into the development of Mission 66 facilities in a large park, and how the plans for these facilities depended on an underlying geography of land ownership, water rights, dubious surveys, and expectations by faraway bureaucrats; these in turn reveal much about possibilities and limitations on opportunities for park development. The Mission 66 facilities in Death Valley have stood the test of time and remain central to visitation in the park to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We know very little about the women who testify before congressional committees. Here we present data on the women who appeared as witnesses out of the 36,950 persons who gave testimony before 7,750 subcommittees and committees. We consider the roles of political party, party control, gender of chiefs of staff, location of hearings, and chamber rules among other factors to explain the underrepresentation of women witnesses. We find that women are dramatically underrepresented. Ultimately, the presence of Democratic women staff directors and women committee chairs, as well as initiatives to track witness diversity, increase the likelihood of women testifying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The 2019 Senate hearings on the proposed anti-LGBT + discrimination legislation in the Philippines re-ignited the 20-year-long debate on LGBT + protection in a country both known as a "gay-friendly nation" (Kohut in Pew Research Center, 2013; Manalastas et al., 2017) and "the last bastion of conservative Catholicism in Asia" (Bloomer et al. in Policy Press, 2020). Prior studies have looked at various positions on the bill and how it was constructed to lobby for or oppose its passage. The present study contributes to the existing literature by looking at how LGBT + people are socially represented in these legislative debates—highlighting how public talk in political spaces has social and material consequences on LGBT + people. Method: The current study used archived livestream recordings of the 2019 Philippine Senate hearings and social representations theory (SRT) to explore how LGBT + people are socially represented by groups who are positioned as pro- and anti-SOGIE Equality Bill. Results: The results of this study show how the pro-Bill speakers focused on representing "LGBT + as human," particularly as "normal humans," "God's creation," "marginalized humans," "exemplary marginalized humans," and "productive members of society." Meanwhile, anti-Bill speakers represented "LGBT + as wrong," specifically as "just feelings, not fact," "disordered condition," "wrong lifestyle choice," "harmful foreign ideology," "social problem," and "respectable without their LGBT + identities." Conclusion: Public talk in a political setting can (de)humanize LGBT + people, legitimizing both inclusionary and exclusionary social practices. Policy Implications: Anchoring on social representations can direct how to shift future talks toward supporting the SOGIE Equality Bill and delegitimizing exclusionary practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent Senate Select Committee has tabled its report into the provision of and access to dental care in Australia. The Senate Committee heard: There are significant barriers for many people accessing dental care, including high costs, trauma and fear, long waiting times and inaccessible services.There are service gaps, including a lack of special needs dentists, limited mobile services, very few Aboriginal dentists and sparse services in regional areas.There are significant impacts of poor oral health, including pain and suffering, shame and low self‐esteem, poor nutrition and poorer general health.There are benefits to good oral health, including the ability to smile, eat and talk, improved confidence, increased productivity and being more employable. There were 35 recommendations for reform centred around the need to put the mouth back in the body and covered by five broad themes: More equitable access.Better integration.National data and coordination.Awareness and education.Culturally safe and accessible care. This paper provides an overview of the problem and focuses on the recommended funding reforms necessary to improve access to dental care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"When Conscience Calls: Moral Courage in Times of Confusion and Despair" by Kristen Monroe is a thought-provoking and inspiring book that explores the concept of moral courage in liberal democracy. Monroe presents a new conceptualization of moral courage that focuses on agency and intentionality, supported by interviews with nearly 100 individuals who have demonstrated moral courage. The book raises questions about risk perception, the role of support networks, and the social consequences of moral courage. While further empirical studies are needed, the book offers valuable insights into the conditions under which moral courage is displayed. [Extracted from the article]

Several theories of policy change posit that the politics of defining and prioritizing problems differs from the politics of devising and selecting solutions. The former involves simplifying through heuristics like indicators and ideology while the latter incorporates policy analysis and expertise to a greater degree. By employing two large datasets of U.S. congressional hearings to analyze policymakers' behavior of sending political messages, which we call "grandstanding," we offer two findings. First, consistent with our hypotheses, grandstanding is more prevalent when committees are focused on new and emerging problems than when committees examine proposed alternatives or the implementation of existing policies. Second, the cognitive dynamics of problem solving and the incentives to grandstand vary depending on policy issues considered in hearings. Our analysis helps put dissatisfaction with contemporary U.S. policymaking in context: a rise in "messaging politics" derives at least in part from an increased focus on contesting the problem space in agenda‐setting venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2000, Charisse Shumate, a co-founding member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) and other incarcerated women in California gathered at a senate hearing to give testimony on medical and living conditions in prison. Incarcerated women's narratives demonstrate the key role that their critical agency played in their advocacy for a humane prison system. The narratives also illustrate women's resolve to use their voices to speak up. Women's experiences of incarceration have long been silenced and this was part of the collective experience shared at the senate hearing. The collaborative work to document the hearings as well as women's prison experiences and activism reflects an important response to women's invisibility in dominant discourses of prisons and imprisonment and the marginalization that incarcerated women experience in the broader anti-carceral movement. The California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a coalition-building organization founded by women on both sides of the razor wire, is an abolitionist feminist organization founded in San Francisco, California in 1995. CCWP practices a specific brand of activism that prioritizes and supports the voices, leadership, and creativity of women and transgender people incarcerated in women's prisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The A-Team: Why Heist-Comedies Are Unprofitable" is a 2010 action-adventure film directed by Joe Carnahan. The plot follows four American soldiers who are tasked with recovering stolen $100 bill-printing plates. After the plates are re-stolen and their commander is assassinated, the soldiers are put on trial and accused of collaborating with the thieves. They are later commissioned by a CIA agent to retrieve the plates and seek revenge. The film features A-list actors and includes explosive action scenes. The article also discusses the history of plate theft and counterfeiting, highlighting the unrealistic nature of the film's plot. Despite its absurdity, "The A-Team" stands out as a successful and funny heist film in a genre that often struggles to be profitable. [Extracted from the article]

"Black Stats Matter: Integrating Negro League Numbers into Major League Records" by Philip Lee is a book that aims to convince readers that the players and statistics of the Negro Leagues should be regarded as Major Leagues. The book explores the history of segregation in baseball and argues that the Negro Leagues were of higher quality than the early Major Leagues. While some aspects of the book, such as the comparisons made and the cherry-picked years, may be questionable, it provides valuable insights and dispels arguments against integrating African American statistics. The book also includes raw statistics and information about Negro League teams and players, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in Major League Baseball. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Trabalhos em Lingüística Aplicada is the property of Universidade Estadual de Campinas - Portal de Periodicos Eletronicos Cientificos 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.)

Scholars in pragmatics have long been interested in how knowledge is construed, contested and legitimised. Much recent work in pragmatics has focused on developing more detailed theoretical understandings of epistemic positioning and epistemic authority, including in institutional contexts which are typically characterised by knowledge asymmetries and power inequalities. Yet the relational consequences of epistemic positioning have received little attention, therefore, this article aimed to investigate how authority and community are simultaneously negotiated in interaction, turn by turn. Taking a social semiotic approach, combining analysis using exchange structure, evidence and epistemic stance frameworks, this article examines a public hearing of the 2010 Senate Committee Inquiry into Donor Conception in Australia. Findings reveal four cumulative discursive patterns: donor-conceived witnesses positioned their lived experience as non-negotiable, cast doubt on fertility practitioners' expertise, layered opinions upon experience and employed recognised knowledges to bolster authority. This article introduces the concept of 'lived expertise'; that is, authority grounded in experience and sustained through awareness of additional forms of experiential and institutional knowledges. Empirically, this study sheds light on how donor-conceived people – as people with lived experience – expand the subject positions afforded to them in institutional contexts, inviting legitimacy and belonging. • Epistemic authority is negotiated in interaction • Data from a public hearing of a Senate Committee Inquiry were analysed • Witnesses use experiential and institutional knowledges to sustain authority • Analysis reveals the discursive patterns that contribute to lived expertise • Donor-conceived witnesses enact authority on donor conception [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a book review of "UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here - and Out There" by Garrett M. Graff. The reviewer acknowledges the recent attention given to UFOs and the increased military and scientific involvement, but criticizes the book for its lack of a comprehensive history and its artificial division of the subject into three parts. The reviewer expresses skepticism about the evidence for extraterrestrial life but suggests that the book may be of interest to historians of astronomy. The article also discusses the book "UFOs, SETI, and Culture" by Alexander C.T. Geppert, critiquing its juxtaposition of UFO events with the scientific endeavors of SETI and astrobiology. The author argues that the methodologies and data quality of SETI and astrobiology differ significantly from those of UFO enthusiasts. The author suggests that historians of astronomy should be interested in the UFO debate as anomalies in the past have contributed to scientific discovery. The author concludes that claims of government coverups regarding UFOs are unlikely, and that the government's lack of knowledge about the phenomena is more plausible. [Extracted from the article]

The evaluation of relative changes in policy agenda composition using dynamic compositional models can offer a useful way to lead future studies of policy agenda trade‐offs for sustainability. As a specific empirical case, this study examines changes in the annual composition of legislative attention in the United States congressional hearings on energy as a substantive issue domain. Using the description texts of hearings, this article assesses the compositional energy topic changes of conventional agendas, other general agendas, and unconventional agendas, including environmental and social agendas. By focusing on how economic contextual shocks, along with political factors, shape the energy agenda attention mix, this study discovers that conventional agendas related to energy topics in U.S. congressional hearings are relatively less likely to be discussed when economic conditions are adverse under Democratic legislature controls. It illustrates example conditions under which policy agenda subtopics for sustainability are more likely to be pursued at the expense of which subtopics. Related Articles: Heidbreder, Brianne. 2012. "Agenda Setting in the States: How Politics and Policy Needs Shape Gubernatorial Agendas." Politics & Policy 40(2): 296–319. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00345.x. Morini, Marco, and Marco Cilento. 2020. "New Parties, Fractionalization, and the Increasing Duration of Government Formation Processes in the EU Member States." Politics & Policy 48(6): 1202–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12381. Steger, Wayne P. 2008. "The President's Legislative Program: An Issue of Sincere versus Strategic Behavior." Politics & Policy 33(2): 312–29. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2005.tb00645.x. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Washington offers a course called "War & Health" that explores the health consequences of war and the role of health professionals in preventing war. Students can choose a specific war as their case study and engage in discussions, writing assignments, and activism related to their chosen war. The course includes guest speakers, panel discussions, and a final assignment involving a mock hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. The course emphasizes the importance of understanding the indirect harms of war and the need for primary prevention strategies in public health. [Extracted from the article]

The article is a book review of the film "Oppenheimer" directed by Christopher Nolan. The film explores the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, focusing on two key events: the 1954 Atomic Energy Committee hearing that stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance, and the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing for Lewis Strauss. The review highlights how the film engages with historical myths and the portrayal of Oppenheimer as a scientist and prophet. It also discusses the gendered epistemologies and the role of science in policy depicted in the film. The review concludes by reflecting on the cultural yearning for science to be more than it is and the tragic lessons learned from the pursuit of knowledge and power. [Extracted from the article]

In April 1948, Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace arrived in Indiana to much controversy. The conservative state did not welcome Wallace, and veterans' organizations actively organized to disrupt his speaking engagements. On April 6, at the Progressive Party's Evansville campaign event, a mob attacked Wallace supporters, causing injuries and pushing the isolated town into the national spotlight. In the wake of the riot, a local professor was fired for his involvement in the Wallace campaign, and the radical CIO Local 813 became the subject of U. S. House committee hearings. Anticommunist hysteria gripped the Evansville community. What happened in Evansville on April 6 was part of a populist fascism in the United States propelled by anti-communism and enacted by veterans' organizations. While national politicians dominate histories of anti-communism, some of the greatest damage done during the 1940s and 1950s occurred when other Americans, specifically veterans' groups, violated the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The comparable worth principle – a call for a general readjustment of wages according to a measure of the worth of an occupation – gained policy momentum in the United States in the early 1980s. A Supreme Court decision, multiple bills, congressional hearings as well as an arsenal of initiatives from women and labour groups all over the United States shaped the debate both as a technical as well as a political issue. At the core of the quarrel lie diverse opinions on the criteria and practices of setting fair wages. This paper follows the deployment of economic arguments on both sides of the controversy between the start of a national movement in 1979, and when all US government agencies declared the principle unsound in 1985. The dominant view on the origin of biases affecting pay practices and the criteria for rational wage determination shifted radically over this period: from the market to job analysts for the responsibility of the biases, and from bureaucratic procedures to market for the locus of rationality. I document this shift using discussions about scientific evidence brought by economists in legal and political hearings. The paper describes three moments in the relationship between science and policy: first the scientization of policy, second, the politicization of knowledge claims, and finally, the weaponization of economic knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When an individual or group trauma becomes a shared public experience through widespread media coverage (e.g., mass violence, being publicly outed), sharing a social identity with a targeted individual or group of victims may amplify feelings of personal vulnerability. This heightened perceived threat may draw people to engage with trauma-related media because of increased vigilance for self-relevant threats, which can, in turn, amplify distress. We studied this possibility among two U.S. national samples following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, FL (N = 4675) and the 2018 Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court Senate hearings (N = 4894). Participants who shared LGBT or Hispanic identities with Pulse massacre victims reported greater exposure to massacre-related media and acute stress. Participants who shared Dr. Blasey Ford's identities as a victim of interpersonal violence and a Democrat reported more hearings-related media exposure and acute stress. Indirect effects of shared single identity on acute stress through self-reported event-related media exposure emerged in both studies. Results for sharing dual identities with victims were mixed. These findings have implications for media use and public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over federal regulation of diagnostic tests is not new, but scientific advances, societal developments, and global events over the past decade have accelerated efforts by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and members of Congress to revise the regulatory oversight of these devices, including laboratory-developed tests (LDTs). Despite years of congressional hearings and public meetings, legislation in the House and Senate, draft guidance from the FDA, and debate in the stakeholder community, LDT regulation remains unchanged, and the path forward remains unclear. LDTs play an essential role in infectious disease (ID) management and treatment, and changes in their regulation will have far-reaching implications for diagnostic laboratories. LDTs are widely used by clinical microbiology laboratories for the diagnosis and monitoring of a myriad infectious diseases, and until three years ago, such testing was conducted largely out of the spotlight. The COVID-19 pandemic changed this by bringing ID tests into the forefront. As the 118th Congress gets under way, the regulation and oversight of diagnostic tests, including LDTs, remains at the forefront of health care policy discussions on Capitol Hill and with the FDA. Change is coming, and it is important that clinical microbiologists, ID physicians, and other laboratorians have a seat at the table when such changes are being discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many assumed that legislators send political messages or even grandstand in expectation of gaining electoral rewards. However, largely due to a lack of proper data and measurements, this assumption has not been tested. Publicized committee hearings provide a unique environment to consistently observe changes in legislators' speech patterns and test this assumption. Using House committee hearing transcripts from 1997 to 2016 and Grandstanding Scores-which capture the intensity of political messages conveyed in members' statements in hearings-I find that an increase in a member's messaging efforts in a given Congress leads to increased vote share in the following election. This suggests that legislators' grandstanding remarks, often regarded as cheap talk, can be an effective electoral strategy. Additional findings suggest that PAC donors respond differently to members' grandstanding behavior. Specifically, while voters react to members' grandstanding positively but are ignorant about their legislative effectiveness, PAC donors are unmoved by members' grandstanding behaviors and reward members' effective law-making activities instead. These asymmetric reactions from voters and donors may provide members with a twisted incentive to appeal to voters merely by making impressive, political speeches while legislating in favor of organized interests, which raises concerns about how representative democracy works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Supreme Court; judicial diversity; Senate Judiciary Committee; president; gender; race EN Supreme Court judicial diversity Senate Judiciary Committee president gender race 400 409 10 03/28/23 20230401 NES 230401 In February 2022, President Joseph Biden announced his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Presidents Reagan and Trump, President Biden promised to put a woman, and in particular a Black woman, on the Court.[21] He too fulfilled this promise in 2022, when Ketanji Brown Jackson became the second female nominee of color to the Supreme Court. [Extracted from the article]

Focusing on the neighborhood of Bushwick from the post–World War II (WWII) era to the onset of the neighborhood's gentrification, this paper traces the fundamental significance of race in the policy decisions that led to the evolution of Bushwick from a vibrant middle-class community to one of concentrated poverty and blight by the end of the twentieth century. Drawing on firsthand accounts, senate hearings, court trials, media accounts, as well as the secondary literature, this paper shows how policy actions and inaction led to the inevitable destruction in the neighborhood during the blackout of 1977. Although the blackout marks one of the most turbulent periods in the neighborhood's history, the community's resilience is accentuated throughout the destruction and its aftermath. Today, as Bushwick's residents face a new threat in the form of gentrification, this paper seeks to situate this contemporary development within the historical and ongoing significance of race in urban studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Sandel's critique of commodification is based on two pillars: corruption and fairness. After outlining these concepts, this paper scrutinizes Sandel's analysis of paid line-standing, focusing, in particular, on queues for congressional hearings in the United States. Sandel's corruption objection to commodifying places in queues for these hearings is unsatisfactory, and I develop an alternative account. According to that alternative, the corruption can be overcome by remedying the background conditions of inequality in society. This conclusion contradicts something that Sandel repeatedly claims, namely, that his corruption and fairness critiques of commodification are independent of each other. The corruption critique of paid line-standing for congressional hearings, I argue, has little normative force beyond that of his fairness critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise" by Kenneth Whyte is a book that argues that the decline of the domestic auto industry can be attributed to the campaign for improved car safety in the 1960s. The author contends that efforts to force auto manufacturers to produce safer cars were misguided and that automakers had already been addressing the issue through education, engineering improvements, and law enforcement. The book criticizes Ralph Nader, who became famous for his book "Unsafe at Any Speed," and portrays him as a latecomer to auto safety activism who manipulated data and posed as an independent expert. The author also criticizes other individuals, such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Abraham Ribicoff, and Robert F. Kennedy, for their involvement in highly publicized hearings against General Motors. While the book provides solid research and argues that the Chevrolet Corvair was not found to have an unsafe design, it is less convincing in claiming that Nader's efforts resulted in a regulatory regime that harmed GM and the American economy. The author's larger argument is that economic growth is the greatest good and that regulations and tort law should be viewed critically. [Extracted from the article]