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“Living Alongside Death”: Torture, Detention, and the Intersubjective Body
No full textHow does torture work? Scholarly consensus seems to agree that torture reaches into the body to undermine the fundamental core of the person, but rarely do we specify the mechanisms by which it achieves this effect. I propose to answer this question through a focus on the conditions of detention and the ways in which these conditions are manipulated. I examine spatial dislocation, sleep deprivation, and dietary manipulation as prominent techniques of torture. Using what I call an “improper phenomenology,” I show how these techniques work to subvert the detained person’s relationships with space, time, and community. With reference to critical and feminist phenomenologists, I argue that these relationships are what structure and constitute the subject. These ties, in other words, are not only part of what enables us to exist but part of what makes us who and what we are. The unmaking or subversion of these relationships through techniques of torture not only undermines the stable subject but also has profound effects on those “beyond” the detention center
Fish Engineering: Building Homes & Habitats
No full textGrade Level: 4. Explore species that make a difference in their ecosystem! Students will learn the importance of keystone species and ecosystem engineers through this hands-on classroom activity. By building their own fish nest, measuring, and graphing data, students will investigate the significance of the bluehead chub.
Focus: Constructing, collecting, and graphing data on a keystone species fish that creates habitats for
other fish to use
Cannibalism & Competition in the Chesapeake Bay
Full text linkGrade Level: 7th grade Life Science.
Blue crabs are opportunistic omnivores which means that they eat everything they can get their claws on, including each other! Cannibalism is a major driver for blue crab abundance in Chesapeake Bay and we need you to help us better understand how cannibalism works. Together, let’s look at how changes in the number of prey, or the prey density, can impact how much cannibalism occurs in blue crab habitats.
Focus: Understanding a predator-prey relationship and how competition for resources such as habitat space can influence cannibalism in the blue crab population
Ecological Monitoring Program at VIMS ESL: Annual Report 2024
No full textAn Ecological Monitoring Program (EMP) has been established at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Eastern Shore Laboratory (VIMS ESL) for the coastal environment near the Wachapreague lab. The goals of the initiative are to 1) provide status and trends information to scientists who study and regulators who manage Virginia’s marine resources, 2) provide a scientific context for short-term research and grant proposals 3) provide pedagogical enrichment for educators to use in their classes, and 4) build capacity in staff expertise and training of interns and students at VIMS ESL. The program formalizes and standardizes data collection for a long-term status and trends database as an asset of VIMS ESL in addition to our marine operations and shore support facilities. The EMP standard methods also provide visiting scientists and educators with protocols for consistent and comparable work and training. The EMP includes electronic water quality stations, oyster settlement and adult population dynamics, microbial biofilm growth, characterization of benthic communities in soft sediments and oyster reefs, sediment characteristics, and drone surveillance of salt marsh die back, Wachapreague Inlet dynamics and macroalgae distribution on mudflats. While this document focuses on these core areas of our monitoring activities, results of other VIMS ESL research on shellfish aquaculture, bay scallop restoration, and shorter-term grant supported research projects are reported elsewhere.Virginia Institute of Marine Scienc
Diffusion Models for Fast Simulation of Cherenkov Detectors
No full textWe investigate the application of Diffusion models to achieve fast simulation of Cherenkov detectors, with particular emphasis on optical photon transport in Detection of Internally Reflected Cherenkov (DIRC) light systems. Conventional frameworks like Geant4 incur substantial computational cost when tracing photons through intricate geometries and reflective interfaces, creating a barrier for large-scale studies. Here, we compare Diffusion-based generative approaches against models used in other works, namely Normalizing Flows, to evaluate their fidelity and efficiency in simulation. By training Diffusion methods on photon‐hit distributions and comparing results over the full phase space, we demonstrate some of the limitations in using recursive, non-likelihood based generative methods in low-dimensional, highly conditional physics domains.Data ScienceBachelors of Science (BS
Estimation of Juvenile Striped Bass Relative Abundance in the Virginia Portion of Chesapeake Bay Annual Progress Report: 2024 - 2025
No full textThe 2024 juvenile Striped Bass abundance index was 3.43 and was significantly lower than the reference mean of 7.77 for the period 1980 to 2009. Abundance indices were below average in the James River and average in the York and Rappahannock rivers in 2024 compared with the river-specific reference means (1980-2009). With the exception of the James River, where the majority of juvenile Striped Bass were collected at upriver sites, relatively low catches of young‐of‐the‐year Striped Bass from sites upriver and downriver of core nursery areas suggest juvenile Striped Bass largely remained within core nursery areas in 2024. Juvenile indices of abundance were calculated for three additional economically and recreationally important fishes in Virginia waters. Juvenile White Perch abundance indices in 2024 were below historic averages in the James, York, and Rappahannock river systems. In 2024, the juvenile abundance index for Atlantic Croaker was similar to its historic average, while the juvenile abundance index for Spot was below its historic average in Virginia waters. Indices of abundance were calculated for eight common forage species within the tidal nearshore zone of Virginia waters. Abundance indices for Atlantic Silverside and Spottail Shiner were generally below their historic averages in 2024. The abundance indices for Banded Killifish, Inland Silverside, and Mummichog were generally similar to their historic averages in 2024. For the third consecutive year, the abundance index for American Shad was greater than its historic average in the Rappahannock River. In contrast, the abundance indices for American Shad were below average in the James, Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Pamunkey, and York rivers. The abundance indices for Alewife were average in the James and York rivers, but below average in the Rappahannock River. Abundance indices for Blueback Herring were average in the James, York, and Rappahannock rivers. Together, these results suggest adequate production of forage fish prey for piscivores in Virginia.Virginia Institute of Marine Scienc
The Talent Development Trajectory of a Persuasive Communicator: A Biological Anthropologist Becomes a Voice for Animal Justice
No full textThrough the lens of the talent development megamodel and the higher mastery framework, this instrumental case study examines the career trajectory of a biological anthropologist, Barbara J. King, who became a persuasive science communicator in the struggle for animal justice. Much of her impact stems from her development in two career paths, one formal and one informal, in biological anthropology and science communication. She developed credibility as a primatologist and academic and was able to apply her experience in the biological anthropology domain to public communication channels to share information about animal cognition and behavior. Through cumulative epiphanies, she came to recognize the value of understanding animals’ lived experience and the need to seek justice for animals. She became confident in her advocacy because of her extensive knowledge base and her teaching and writing skills, which developed through the many opportunities she eagerly pursued. King’s resilience, optimism, patience, curiosity, and motivation combined with confidence in her knowledge base and communication skills to create persuasive communications that challenge the ubiquitous view that animals’ lives are of lesser value than humans’ and they may be used for human purposes. In her dual careers of biological anthropology and science communication, she learned how to share strong evidence from animal research while respecting the individuals receiving her messages. Educators can support development of students’ transformational giftedness by encouraging identity exploration, fostering openness to new ideas, and not limiting their education to the narrow requirements of success within a single domain.Educatio
Stomach Soup: Using Genetics to Identify Organisms Consumed by White Marlin
No full textGrade Level: High School Biology 9-10. What is the White Marlin eating? Students will draw fish puzzle pieces from a bag and match the fish pieces to obtain a DNA sequence. Students will learn how to use bioinformatic tools (NCBI BLAST) to analyze these sequences and identify the species to which they belong. Students may then create and interpret phylogenetic trees based on the species they identified the White Marlin to have consumed.
Focus: Students will use randomly selected genetic sequences to identify digested fish and invertebrates. Students will also learn how to use NCBI GenBank and BLAST, which are part of the National Library of Medicine and used in genetics research
A Model Archive for Estuarine exchange flow in the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System
Full text linkDataset associated with Yin, D., Harris, C. K., & Warner, J. C. (2025). Estuarine exchange flow in the Albemarle‐Pamlico estuarine system. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 130(8), e2024JC021919.
These files are compressed versions of input files, model code, and output used for the associated manuscript (Yin et al., 2025). Many of the input and output files use the NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) file format. These have "nc" as a file extension and can be read using a variety of open-source tools: see http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/docs/. For information about the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS), see www.myroms.org. For information about the Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport Modeling System (COAWST), see https://github.com/DOI-USGS/COAWST.This dataset includes model input, code, and output used in the manuscript published at JGR-Oceans (Yin et al., 2025). In this work, the authors used a numerical model to understand the mechanisms behind the estuarine exchange flow of the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System.
The Albemarle-Pamlico Estuarine System is located on the northeast coast of North Carolina, U.S.Funding for this research was provided by National Science Foundation Coastlines and People Hubs for Research and Broadening Participation (CoPe) (Grant No. 2052889) and by sponsors of W&M’s high performance computing facilities
Age, Origin, and Tectonic Significance of the Arvonia and Buffards Formations in Virginia's Piedmont
No full textRocks in Virginia’s Piedmont formed during multiple Paleozoic orogenies and the suturing of exotic terranes to Laurentia. The Arvonia and Buffards formations, in the Chopawamsic arc terrane, have long been considered Late Ordovician Taconian successor basin deposits. These units range from quartzite, schist, and commercial-grade slate of the Arvonia Formation, to conglomeratic and micaceous schist of the Buffards Formation. The Quantico Formation occurs to the northeast of this area and is correlative to the Arvonia Formation.
Previous workers concluded that these formations are Late Ordovician, based on fossil assemblages that include crinoids, bryozoa, trilobites, and brachiopods. Additionally, the stratigraphic and structural relationship between the Arvonia and Buffards formations is contested, with some workers hypothesizing that the Arvonia Formation is older, while others suggest that the Buffards Formation is older. We use ICP-MS laser ablation geochronology on detrital zircons (from 5 samples) and new mapping to constrain the depositional age of the two formations and better understand their significance.
Mapping and observations of bedding-foliation relationships and facing indicators show that the Buffards Formation is stratigraphically above the Arvonia Formation in the core of a regional syncline. Our U-Pb detrital zircon age dates reveal detritus in these units is as young as 389 Ma (Devonian). Both formations yield Mesoproterozoic and Paleozoic population peaks, though the three Buffards samples contained a smaller Mesoproterozoic peak, and a larger percentage of post-Ordovician zircons than the two Arvonia samples. The difference in age populations indicates that there was a shift in provenance between deposition of the Arvonia Formation and the Buffards Formation. Furthermore, these age data suggest that the Arvonia-Buffards successor basin is not post-Taconian, but rather Acadian (late Devonian), and likely related to the docking of the Goochland and Dinwiddie terranes to the east onto Laurentia