The escalation of the opioid epidemic in the United States has sparked sweeping legislation meant to regulate physicians' opioid prescribing practices. The demands of such policies force physicians to initiate discussions that could jeopardize the collaborative doctor- patient relationships necessary for curbing inappropriate opioid prescriptions. Drawing on sociopragmatics, this discourse analysis study of primary care interactions examines the face- saving linguistic features employed by physicians in negotiating the line between policy demands and maintaining collaborative relationships. The findings reveal several face-saving acts‚"pseudo requests, downtowners, broadening, redirection, tag questions, impersonalization, listing, and (negative) imagery‚"used by physicians when enacting the three most prominent policies: (1) monitoring opioid use, (2) prescribing anti-overdose medication, and (3) transitioning patients from opioids to alternative treatment. Informed by Goffman's concept of "face-work," this study provides evidence of the communicative burden placed on physicians implementing disagreeable opioid policies, as well as opening up discussions on how policymakers and medical institutions can support physicians in implementing opioid policies. Keywords: opioids, face-work, face threats, medical discourse, doctor-patient interaction, discourse analysis, sociopragmatics

In recent years, the opioid crisis in the United States has sparked significant discussion on doctor- patient interactions concerning chronic pain treatments, but little to no attention has been given to investigating the vocal aspects of patient talk. This exploratory sociolinguistic study intends to fill this knowledge gap by employing prosodic discourse analysis to examine context-specific linguistic features used by the interlocutors of two distinct medical interactions. We found that patients employed both low pitch and creak as linguistic resources when describing chronic pain, narrating symptoms, and requesting opioids. The situational use of both features informs us about the linguistic ways in which patients frame fraught issues like chronic pain in light of the current opioid crisis. This study expands the breadth of phonetic analysis within the domain of discourse analysis, serving to illuminate discussions surrounding the illocutionary role of the lower vocal tract in expressing emotions.

The present study uses corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine the role of modality in policy verb phrases, using California opioid policies as a case study. By tracking the behavior of permissive and restrictive modals across time, this study highlights two potential discourse functions of modals in policy drafting: (i) to reflect the gravity of the issues on the ground, and (ii) to express permission and restriction by highlighting and deemphasizing a policy's suggestive intent, respectively. This study shows that the increased use of restrictive modality has significant positive correlations with California's worsening opioid crisis and its rising fatalities. A closer examination of state policy amendments reveals that altering policy modals has the potential to either broaden or limit the terms of existing policies. Informed by Van Dijk's “context models,” this study provides a cogent applied corpus linguistics framework for analyzing policy text and offers both political and linguistic perspectives into our understanding of modals and how communities address epidemics, respectively.

Patient-clinician interactions are central to technical and interpersonal processes of medical care. Video recordings of these interactions provide a rich source of data and a stable record that allows for repeated viewing and analysis. Collecting video recordings requires navigating ethical and feasibility constraints; further, realizing the potential of video requires specialized research skills. Interdisciplinary collaborations involving practitioners, medical educators, and social scientists are needed to provide the clinical perspectives, methodological expertise, and capacity needed to make collecting video worthwhile. Such collaboration ensures that research questions will be based on scholarship from the social sciences, resonate with practice, and produce results that fit educational needs. However, the literature lacks suggested practices for building and sustaining interdisciplinary research collaborations involving video data. In this paper, we provide concrete advice based on our experience collecting and analyzing a single set of video-recorded clinical encounters and non-video data, which have so far yielded nine distinct studies. We present the research process, timeline, and advice based on our experience with interdisciplinary collaboration. We found that integrating disciplines and traditions required patience, compromise, and mutual respect; learning from each other enhanced our enjoyment of the process, our productivity, and the clinical relevance of our research.

Topsy is an online analytical tool that evaluates millions of archived and real-time tweets based on their relevancy to a specific criterion. This report studies what Topsy considers relevant, how to create a relevant tweet, the accuracy of Topsy’s relevancy score and whether Topsy is an acceptable tool for use in gauging class participation. After thorough investigation, Topsy was determined to be a great analytical tool for monitoring Twitter participation, yet lacks the fundamental ability to distinguish between tweets relevant to coursework and tweets relevant to everything else.

Access to reliable electricity is at least a co-requisite to sufficient human development. In many developing countries, the percentages of the rural population that have electricity access are often below 5%. Specifically in Uganda, only about 2% of the rural population is currently served by the electric grid. To create effective policy and implementation programs, this paper examines the current challenges and implications of the current energy sector of Uganda. Ostrom’s Social-Ecological Systems framework is employed to organize the driving forces, interactions, and key players of the current system, including recent rural electrification programs that have resulted in some success. However, the implications of the current system include multiple barriers to widespread rural electrification, including high costs and little revenue. The push for solar photovoltaic systems in Uganda also has many shortcomings to improving development within the country. I end by discussing an alternative approach to rural electrification called the Empower Ugandans to Power Uganda Project that offers a locally driven effort to electrification and development.

Historically, advances in technology have made it possible for modern consumers to perform daily tasks more rapidly and efficiently. In the present technological age, innovation extends to energy conservation. As a typical consumer may be well aware, such innovation often means higher prices. However, in the case of appliances which run on minimal energy, advertisements claim that higher purchase prices will be justified by long-term monetary savings resulting from lower energy bills. This report investigates the veracity of this claim. Generally, the findings in this report are that it depends.

The ENERGY STAR program pioneered by the United State Environmental Protection Agency is a voluntary green-labeling program that helps consumers identify energy-saving appliances. Nevertheless, ENERGY STAR does not indicate to consumers whether a higher purchase price for the efficient appliance will be justified by subsequent energy savings.

There are several variables which may justify spending more for energy conserving appliances. It seems uncommon practice for a consumer to thoroughly evaluate factors which affect their purchase, making it possible to spend more money despite the mindset of saving money. The goal of this report is to identify and evaluate the variables, or varying scenarios, that potentially sway the smart purchase decision in the case of ENERGY STAR refrigerators. Thus, the decision can be tailored to a specific type of individual or household.
The ideal refrigerator for any given consumer depends on the habits and preferences of that consumer including: time value of money preferences, food storage habits, and energy prices. A cash flow diagram is a tool used to depict the monetary gains and losses involved in an investment and will be a practical means to showcase both the initial costs and long-term maintenance costs for either type of refrigerator as influenced by each of the three criteria introduced.

This report uses cash flow diagrams to investigative the sensitivity of a refrigerator purchase option to these three parameters. Graphs are also included which will take the costs shown in the cash flow diagrams and display how many years it will take for the higher initial purchase price of the ENERGY STAR refrigerator to be justified by its lower maintenance costs, called the break-even point. The analysis also involves calculating the net present value, a term used largely in business, for both an ENERGY STAR appliance and a conventional appliance; and involves calculating this net present value, also, as influenced by the different circumstances mentioned.

Each year, the United Nation’s Development Program (UNDP) publishes the Human Development Index (HDI), which is a composite index that offers a method of evaluating international human development not only by economic advances but also in terms of the capabilities of individuals within a country. This study investigates the origin of the diminishing returns to HDI, given its important implications for climate policy and development. Specifically, we examine the current HDI calculation procedure to determine if the observed relationship is a factor of dimension normalization and/or aggregation within the HDI calculation.