“Privacy” in Semantic Networks on Chinese Social Media: The Case of Sina Weibo

Unprecedented social and technological developments call into question the meanings and boundaries of privacy in contemporary China. This study examines the discourse of privacy on Sina Weibo, the country's largest social medium, by performing a semantic network analysis of 18,000 postings containing the word “ (privacy).” The cluster analysis identifies 11 distinct yet organically related concept clusters, each representing a unique dimension of meaning of the complex concept. The interpretation of the findings is situated in the discussion of the rapidly evolving private realm in relation to emerging new contexts of the public realm. Privacy, justified for both its instrumental functions and intrinsic values, both reflects and constitutes new forms of sociality on the sociotechno space of Weibo.     

Being a “Good Parent” in Parent–Teacher Conferences

This research advances our understanding of what constitutes a “good parent” in the course of actual social interaction. Examining video‐recorded naturally occurring parent–teacher conferences, this article shows that, while teachers deliver student‐praising utterances, parents may display that they are gaining knowledge; but when teachers' actions adumbrate student‐criticizing utterances, parents systematically display prior knowledge. This article elucidates the details of how teachers and parents tacitly collaborate to enable parents to express student‐troubles first, demonstrating that parents display competence—appropriate involvement with children's schooling—by asserting their prior knowledge of, and/or claiming/describing their efforts to remedy, student‐troubles. People (have to) display competence generically in interaction. By explicating how parents display competence, this article offers insights for several areas of communication research.     

Replacing the mediator orientation grids,again: Proposing a ‘new new grid system’

The mediation profession's standard for assessment is revised, updated and—maybe—finalized. Leonard L. Riskin, of Columbia, Mo., who debuted his “Mediator Orientation Grid” in these pages a decade ago, revisits his process tool, which has now grown into a “New New Grid System.”.     

Controllable Stiffness Origami “Skeletons” for Lightweight and Multifunctional Artificial Muscles

Flexible, material‐based, artificial muscles enable compliant and safe technologies for human–machine interaction devices and adaptive soft robots, yet there remain long‐term challenges in the development of artificial muscles capable of mimicking flexible, controllable, and multifunctional human activity. Inspired by human limb's activity strategy, combining muscles' adjustable stiffness and joints' origami folding, controllable stiffness origami “skeletons,” which are created by laminar jamming and origami folding of multiple layers of flexible sandpaper, are embedded into a common monofunctional vacuumed‐powered cube‐shaped (CUBE) artificial muscle, thereby enabling the monofunctional CUBE artificial muscle to achieve lightweight and multifunctionality as well as controllable force/motion output without sacrificing its volume and shape. Successful demonstrations of arms self‐assembly and cooperatively gripping different objects and a “caterpillar” robot climbing different pipes illustrate high operational redundancy and high‐force output through “building blocks” assembly of multifunctional CUBE artificial muscles. Controllable stiffness origami “skeletons” offer a facile and low‐cost strategy to fabricate lightweight and multifunctional artificial muscles for numerous potential applications such as wearable assistant devices, miniature surgical instruments, and soft robots.     

It's more than just ‘med arb’: The case for ‘transitional arbitration’

Converting to mediation from arbitration gives most people the willies, even when it's not a new experience. Gerald F. Phillips, of Los Angeles, describes how he embraces his mediator's role in “transitional arbitration,” and how combined processes can work.     

Relational Communication and Understanding in Conversations About Hurtful Events Between Parents and Adolescents

This article examines how the severity of a hurtful event and discrepancies in perceptions of relational communication affect perceived understanding and empathic accuracy (EA) in parent–adolescent discussions about a hurtful event in their relationship. Results from a dyadic interaction study showed that the severity of the hurtful event was negatively associated with perceived understanding. Furthermore, discrepancies in perceptions of disaffiliation behaviors during a conversation about a child's hurtful event were also negatively associated with perceived understanding. Discrepancy in perceptions of adolescent's dominance corresponded negatively with parents' perceived understanding when discussing the child's hurtful event. There were no significant associations with EA. The implications for work on hurtful events, understanding, and relational framing theory are discussed.     

Social Media and the Activist Toolkit: User Agreements,Corporate Interests,and the Information Infrastructure of Modern Social Movements

The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere have been credited in part to the creative use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Yet the information policies of the firms behind social media can inhibit activists and empower authoritarian regimes. Analysis of Facebook's response to Egypt's “We Are All Khaled Said” group, YouTube's policy exemption for videos coming from Syria, Moroccan loyalist response to the online presence of atheists, and the activities of the Syrian Electronic Army illustrate how prohibitions on anonymity, community policing practices, campaigns from regime loyalists, and counterinsurgency tactics work against democracy advocates. These problems arise from the design and governance challenges facing large‐scale, revenue‐seeking social media enterprises.     

Hospitability: The Communicative Architecture of Humanitarian Securitization at Europe's Borders

This paper explores the communicative architecture of reception at the peak of Europe's 2015–2016 “migration crisis.” Drawing on fieldwork at one of Europe's outer borders—the Greek island of Chios—the paper examines the border as a site where refugee and migrant reception takes place and where the parameters of Europe's ethico-political response to the “crisis” are set. The paper demonstrates that the continent's double requirement of security and care produces a new and highly ambivalent moral order, hospitability. Constituted through techno-symbolic networks of mediation, hospitability reaffirms dominant theorizations of the border as an order of power and exclusion but goes beyond these in highlighting micro-connections of solidarity that simultaneously coexist with and attempt to challenge this order.     

Media Violence and Children's ADHD‐Related Behaviors: A Genetic Susceptibility Perspective

This study examined the relationship between media violence exposure and Attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)‐related behaviors. Using survey (parent‐reported) and genetic data of 1,612 Dutch children (aged 5 to 9 years), we examined genetic disposition as a possible cause of individual differences in children's use of and susceptibility to media violence. The gene variant of interest was the 5‐HTTLPR polymorphism, which has been associated with ADHD‐related behaviors in previous research. Results showed that the “long” variant of the gene polymorphism was related to greater violent media use, which in turn was related to more ADHD‐related behaviors. The 5‐HTTLPR genotype did not moderate the effect of media violence on ADHD‐related behaviors. This study provides insight into the role of genetic factors in media effects.     

Client Science: Bad News and the Fully Informed ADR Client

Professor Aaron comments that this piece, excerpted from: “Bad News and the Fully Informed Client,” the first chapter of her book, Client Science, addresses the lawyer's challenge when counseling clients where “bad” news—negative, pessimistic or unwelcome developments or analysis—must be conveyed, whether or not within an ADR process. “As a mediator of civil cases, I suspect that mediation involves a higher than average percentage of cases involving ill‐counseled clients or ‘difficult clients’ who may fairly be characterized as ‘counseling‐resistant’ despite the best efforts of skilled lawyers. When the lawyer explains ‘bad news’ about case developments or likely outcomes, he risks the client's suspicion or accusation of less than zealous advocacy. While a mediator can assist with client communication when legal circumstances are grim, counsel are obligated to ensure their clients are well informed of realistic expectations when exercising autonomy and self determination.”     

Back to Basics: Legos and Me

Editor's Note: Master Mediator columnist Bob Creo has taken a break in the past two issues of Alternatives from his focus on neuroscience, psychological factors and cognitive biases that affect dispute resolution to revisit his past. He has returned to his earliest columns on mediation room techniques and practice issues—some nearly a decade old—and is reprising and updating them for a “Back to Basics” series. The articles are new to these pages, originally having appeared exclusively on the website of Alternatives' publisher, the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Last month's column faced “ghostbusting” in mediation—that is, dealing with the specters of “persons with influence over the outcome, but who are not physically present at the mediation session.” The November column covered the concept of satisfactory compromise. This month's column looks at the building blocks of a mediation resolution, literally. Still to come is a back‐to‐basics examination of constructing settlements.     

BACK TO BASICS SERIES: Compromise & Me! Being in Sweden: Lagom – Meeting in The Middle

Editor's Note: The Master Mediator is taking a break from his fascinating, in‐depth series on neuroscience and the psychological factors and cognitive biases that may affect dispute resolution. As Bob Creo's earliest columns, describing and discussing mediation room techniques and practice issues, appeared a number of years ago, and only on the CPR website, Alternatives is delighted that he has agreed to reprise and update them, beginning in this issue, in a new “Back to Basics” series. This column deals with the concept of compromise; future columns in the series will cover “ghostbusting” in mediation, terms of reference, and constructing settlements.     

Smashing OpenFlow's “atomic” actions: Programmable data plane packet manipulation in hardware

Recently, with new hardware architectures such as Reconfigurable Match Tables and languages such as P4, the Software Defined Networking community has started to bring line‐rate data plane programmability inside switching chipsets. Starting from the original OpenFlow's match/action abstraction, most of the work has so far focused on key improvements in matching flexibility. Conversely, the “action part,” ie, the set of operations (such as encapsulation or header manipulation) performed on packets after the forwarding decision, has received way less attention. Goal of this paper is to move beyond the idea of “atomic,” preimplemented, actions, and rather make them programmable while retaining high speed multi‐Gbps operation. To this purpose, we propose a domain‐specific HW architecture, called Packet Manipulation Processor (PMP), able to efficiently implement such actions. Both a PMP C++ instruction set simulator and a NetFPGA prototype have been developed. The performances of the PMP have been verified with three nontrivial use cases (tunneling, NAT, and ARP reply generation), showing that also in the worst case the throughput is well above 10 Gbps.     

Anonymous and expeditious mobile user authentication scheme for GLOMONET environments

The Global Mobility Network (GLOMONET) is rapidly becoming important as well as a popular feature in today's high‐performance network. The legal mobile users enjoy life using the ubiquitous services via GLOMONET. However, because of the broadcast nature of the wireless channel, providing user authentication along with the privacy and anonymity of the users in GLOMONET is indeed a challenging task. In this article, we come up with a secure and expeditious mobile communication environment using symmetric key cryptosystem to ensure mobile users' anonymity and privacy against eavesdroppers and backward/forward secrecy of the session key. Our scheme can also protect numerous security threats, like man‐in‐the‐middle attack, known session key attack, lost smartcard attack, and forgery attack. Furthermore, we put forward a new technique named as “friendly foreign agent policy,” where many foreign agents can make different groups among themselves and perform important responsibilities to authenticate a legitimate mobile user without interfering his or her home agent even though the mobile user moves to a new location, covered by a new foreign agent (belongs to the same group). Security and performance analyses show that the proposed scheme is secure and more efficient as compared with other competitive schemes for GLOMONET environments.     

Genesis of “Solitary Cations” Induced by Atomic Hydrogen

Substitution of constituent atoms and/or changes of crystal structure are routinely used to tailor the fundamental properties of a semiconductor. Here, it is shown that such a tailoring can also be realized thanks to a novel hydrogen effect. Four hydrogen atoms can screen the effect the crystal potential has on a constituent cation, thus generating a solitary cation: an effectively isolated impurity, so chemically different from the unscreened constituent cations that it strongly perturbs the electronic properties of the material by increasing its fundamental band‐gap energy. Such a hydrogen‐induced screening effect is removed by thermal treatments, thus permitting reversible modifications of both the “crystal chemistry” and material's properties. This phenomenon, observed in InN and other topical nitrides, should permit the development of a new class of materials as well as the fabrication of photonic devices and optical integrated circuits with distinct, tailor‐made regions emitting or absorbing light, all integrated onto a monolithic semiconductor structure.     

Back to Basics Series: Ghostbusters & Me

Editor's Note: The Master Mediator is taking a break from his in‐depth series on neuroscience and the psychological factors and cognitive biases that may affect dispute resolution. As Bob Creo's earliest columns, describing and discussing mediation room techniques and practice issues, appeared only on the CPR website, he has agreed to reprise and update them for Alternatives, beginning with last month's issue, in a new “Back to Basics” series. Last month's column covered the concept of satisfactory compromise, while this one addresses “ghostbusting” in mediation. Future columns will cover such essentials as terms of reference and constructing settlements.     

Social networking in the aging context: Why older adults use or avoid Facebook

Despite a growing body of research about older adults’ use of social networking sites (SNS), scholars have not fully explored how this technology is meeting this group’s interactional and information-seeking needs. How do these older adults view this technology? What are their communication needs and expectations and why are they drawn to it? To address these questions and fill a gap in the literature, this study draws upon in-depth interviews with 46 older adults (average age: 80.4 years) about their perceptions of Facebook, which was the leading SNS at the time of writing. Analysis of interview data revealed six primary reasons for using Facebook (keeping in touch, sharing photos, social surveillance, responding to family member requests, convenient communication, curiosity) and six primary reasons for not using Facebook (privacy, need for media richness, preference for familiarity, triviality of communication, time commitment, frustration with site tools). Emergent findings hold implications for future research and SNS design.     

Design of an “Active Defense” System as Drug Carriers for Cancer Therapy

A novel intelligent “active defense” system that can specially respond to cancerous tissues for drug release was designed and prepared. The “active defense” system consists of a biodegradable dextran microgel core cross‐linked by a Schiff's base and a surrounding layer formed by Layer‐by‐Layer (LbL) assembly. The loading and release of macromolecular model drug, dex‐FITC, as well as antineoplastic drug, DOX, was investigated. The in vitro cell inhibition and drug release behavior of the drug delivery system were studied and the results showed that the entrapped drug could be explosively released from the microcapsules and thereafter taken up by cancer cells upon the trigger of the acidic environment around tumor tissues.     

The Theory of Settlement,in Two Words … With a Little Hollywood Help

Editor's note: Alternatives columnist Bob Creo, a Pittsburgh arbitrator and mediator, has been revisiting his catalog of CPR Institute website columns, originated a decade ago, in a Back to Basics Alternatives series that he has subtitled “Human Problems, Human Solutions.” These updated and expanded columns are in print for the first time, building on new concepts and knowledge. He has revisited a wide spectrum of mediation room behaviors and practices.     

Comparative Optimism About Privacy Risks on Facebook

Comparatively optimistic people feel that they are less susceptible to risks than are others. This study investigated predictors and outcomes of comparative optimism about privacy risks on Facebook. Results from a nationally representative survey of adult U.S. Facebook users (N = 1,156) show that users exhibit comparative optimism in believing that they are less susceptible to privacy risks than are average users. However, unlike prior findings in offline contexts, this study finds that comparatively optimistic Facebook users do not appear to engage in riskier privacy behaviors. The findings of this study shed light on how privacy decision-making may be different in social networking contexts compared to other contexts due to the networked nature of the communication platform.