A nationwide telephone survey about the O. J. Simpson trial affirmed the third-person effect perceptual-bias hypothesis that people perceive news media coverage to exert greater influence on other people than on themselves. The study did not indicate an association between third-person perception and support for restrictions on press coverage of the trial. The findings suggested that respondents' opinions about Simpson's guilt interacted with the third-person effect and that perceptual bias remains a fruitful, although complex, predictor of support for press restrictions. It was suggested that people perceive issues as legitimate or illegitimate topics of public discourse, and that issue legitimacy may be associated with willingness to support press restrictions.Journalists and civil libertarians have been disturbed by the public's willingness to support restrictions on expression (Zalkind, 1975). Support for expression is a complicated phenomenon, dependent on factors such as the issues, attitudes toward groups expressing opinions, the political environment, and perceptions of threat (

This study tested the “third-person effect” during the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial. The perceptual component of the third-person effect predicts that people judge themselves to be less susceptible to media influence than other people. Findings from a nationwide telephone survey indicated that respondents' self-perceived knowledge about the legal issues involved in the Simpson trial was correlated with third-person perception of a perceived “neutral” media message. Self-perceived knowledge was not correlated with third-person perceptual bias of a perceived “biased” message. It was suggested that the biased message primed respondents' perceptions of Simpson's guilt or innocence. The relative contributions of various predictors of third-person perception were assessed using regression analysis.

Dynamic viscoelastic and shear stress properties at various shear rates with intermediate rest periods of varying length were measured for a thermotropic nematic liquid-crystalline polyester of homogeneous backbone structure, with a long flexible spacer. Data obtained in the liquid-crystalline and isotropic states were found to independently superimpose when shifted along the u axis. In the low-frequency region of the liquid-crystalline state, data exhibit log G' and log G" values <1 when plotted vs log u>. Properties for the isotropic state correspond to other wide molecular weight distribution melts except here, and in the liquidcrystalline state, 7j(y) < |i)*(«)|. While interrupted-flow (I-F) results in the isotropic state were similar to other isotropic materials, in the liquid-crystalline state at 145 °C and similarly at 160 °C, previously unsheared samples sheared at w = 0.1 s_1 showed a stress maximum, accompanied by a transient negative first normal stress difference peak and later by a positive N\ peak. At 160 °C, w = 0.5 s'1, a second stress overshoot appeared, as did another positive Ni peak. When compared with optical micrographs of sheared samples, the first peak may be related to initial domain structure deformation, not reappearing in subsequent shear events after short rest periods. The second stress overshoot that appears with higher shear rates appears to correspond to the complete breakdown of these domains, producing a birefringent yet featureless appearance.Structure reappears with longer rest periods but differs from initial texture. If sheared, this structure is capable of producing an initial stress overshoot.

In this paper, the rheology of a 60 mol% para‐hydroxybenzoic acid (PHB)/40 mol% poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) copolyester (herein referred to as PHB60/PET40) produced by Unitika Co., Japan, was investigated using viscoelastic property temperature sweeps. In addition to the large‐scale hysteresis (super‐cooling) of viscoelastic properties that has also been seen with other PHB‐based materials, in which it is possible for several PHB linkages to occur side by side along the polymer backbone (most notably the PHB60/PET40 polymer produced by Tennessee Eastman), smaller‐scale viscoelastic transitions, one present in heating, and believed to be associated with the partial isotropization of liquid crystalline material, and the other apparent on cooling, occurring at a lower temperature than the first and thought to be associated with the opposite process, were observed. When overall mol% PHB composition along individual chains is considered, the well‐defined appearance of the additional smaller‐scale rheological transitions seen here is believed to be due to a unimodal composition distribution, rather than a bimodal distribution of which there is increasing evidence in the Tennessee Eastman materials. This difference is believed to be caused by differences in the preparation technique used for the Unitika version of the polymer.

SynopsisWide ranges of pressure and temperature are encountered in polymer processing operations, as, for example, in injection molding. While the temperature dependence of viscosity has been widely studied, the pressure dependence has not. The present work focuses on the measurement of the melt viscosity of polystyrene at high pressures (up to 124 MPa or 18, OOO psi) and high shear rates (1-100 s-') at 180OC. The apparatus was a capillary rheometer with the downstream chamber being held a t a high back pressure by means of a needle valve. The data so obtained were combined with zero shear viscosity data from the literature; and then correlated with a shear-dependent rheological model of the authors, using a shift factor suggested by Utracki (based on the Simha-Somcynsky equation of state). The final correlation calls for making both the elastic modulus and the time constant dependent on pressure, with the modulus being the dominant factor at high shear rates.