Schools in the UnitedStates are required to supply specific specialty services such as speech, occupational and physical therapy under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Because of their geographic locations and sparse populations, many rural communities do not have these specialties. The alternative of traveling to metropolitan areas where these services are more readily available is hard on the children and their families. INTEGRIS Health and the Hugo Public Schools collaborated in a two-year speech teletherapy pilot study to test speech therapy services delivered over two-way, interactive videoconferencing. The effectiveness and satisfaction of this mode of delivery was measured. A comparison of lost therapy time due to technical difficulties was also made.Steps taken to develop and implement the school teletherapy program, outline of a typical session, perceptions of rural administration, clinical outcomes, lessons learned and future applications will be discussed.

This paper argues that the systemic nature of contemporary consumer surveillance undermines the most fundamental principle of free market economics: consumer sovereignty. Specifically, this paper argues that the rise of an ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ society in conjunction with neoliberal capitalism has entrenched routine forms of surveillance within commercial strategies by employing networked databases as a primary medium for the articulation of consumer sovereignty (choice/demand). The communicative relationship between consumers and producers within the market involves effectively ‘listening’ (and then responding) to consumer needs and wants in a timely manner. Surveillance is therefore not only necessary for the operation of globalized consumer capitalism, it is also the primary means by which consumer communicate their sovereignty within the marketplace. By turning to the work of Harold Innis and the intellectual tradition known as medium theory, this paper will theorize how in linking the actions of individual consumers to the decision-making capacities of trans-national corporations (TNC), the prevalence of consumer databases violates the fundamental neutrality of the market, and thus sovereignty, of individual consumers. In sum, by treating the database as a distinct communication medium, this paper will highlight how the commercial mediation of identity under neoliberalism can conceal the potential for the uneven geographic development, the marginalization of ‘less valuable’ consumer segments, and the exploitation of individual vulnerabilities through behavior and profile modeling.

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Polystyrene-b-[polystyrene-r-poly(acrylic acid)] block-random copolymers (BRCs) were used to stabilise polystyrene latexes prepared using a semi-batch emulsion process. The representative BRC used in this work was effective in stabilising the semi-batch...