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Social Media, Technology, and the Higher Education Classroom
Get PDFThis paper reflects on the ways that media technology infiltrate, push, and pull educators in the 21st century. The authors write about the importance of including new technology in our courses to better prepare students for their future careers and lives while also acknowledging the challenges that inclusion can present. By highlighting how technology serves as a facilitator for classroom participation and the ways the emergent technology can enhance a journalism curriculum, the paper points to some of the ways that emergent technology in our classes can have an enduring positive effect on our students in the future. However, the paper also points to some of the ethical challenges to be aware of within the oft-idealized land of technological innovation. Ultimately, this reflection is designed to challenge readers to think about what the role of technology in their own classrooms should or could be
Measured air quality impacts after teaching parents about cooking ventilation with a video: a pilot study
Get PDFBackground
Cooking-related emissions contribute to air pollutants in the home and may influence children’s health outcomes. Objective
In this pilot study, we investigate the effects of a cooking ventilation intervention in homes with gas stoves, including a video-based educational intervention and range hood replacement (when needed) in children’s homes. Methods
This was a pilot (n = 14), before-after trial (clinicaltrials.gov #NCT04464720) in homes in the San Francisco Bay Area that had a school-aged child, a gas stove, and either a venting range hood or over-the-range microwave/hood. Cooking events, ventilation use, and indoor air pollution were measured in homes for 2–4 weeks, and children completed respiratory assessments. Midway, families received this intervention: (1) education about the hazards of cooking-related pollutants and benefits of both switching to back burners and using the range hood whenever cooking and (2) ensuring the range hood met airflow and sound performance standards. The educational intervention was delivered via a video developed in conjunction with local youth. Results
We found substantially increased use of back burners and slight increases in range hood use during cooking after intervening. Even though there was no change in cooking frequency or duration, these behavior changes resulted in decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), including significant decreases in the total integrated concentration of NO2 over all cooking events from 1230 ppb*min (IQR 336, 7861) to 756 (IQR 84.0, 4210; p \u3c 0.05) and NO2 collected on samplers over the entire pre- and post-intervention intervals from 10.4 ppb (IQR 3.5, 47.5) to 9.4 (IQR 3.0, 36.1; p \u3c 0.005). There were smaller changes in PM2.5, and no changes were seen in respiratory outcomes. Impact
This pilot before-after trial evaluated the use of a four-minute educational video to improve cooking ventilation in homes with gas stoves and one or more school-aged children. Participant behavior changed after watching the video, and there were decreases in indoor air pollutant concentrations in the home, some of which were significant. This brief video is now publicly available in English and Spanish (wspehsu.ucsf.edu/projects/indoor-air-quality), and this provides suggestive evidence of the utility of this simple intervention, which could be particularly beneficial for households that have children with asthma
Development and use of a novel diver-operated ski for surveying nearshore rocky reef habitats
No full textThe use of camera and video technologies for conducting underwater surveys has rapidly expanded over the past several decades. However, the utility of these systems can be significantly hampered by numerous logistical factors, including limited underwater visibility, rough bottom topography, and ease of use for the operator. Video studies can be difficult to compare when methods and terminologies differ. Here, we describe the development of a cost-effective diver-propelled underwater ski-based video system for rapidly acquiring videos in challenging shallow, high-energy rocky benthic habitats for quantifying fish, macroalgae, and invertebrates in a coastal temperate system. The ski held the camera at a (relatively) fixed distance from the seafloor, we used parallel lasers to quantify our observations, and we used the standardized language of the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard to acquire consistent quantitative data to serve as an ecological baseline, also including archived images. Our results indicate that the ski proved to be an effective tool for capturing insightful data that would otherwise be very difficult and time-consuming to collect. Our baseline and repeatable methods can be used by other investigators at this or other locations for monitoring, re-evaluation, or comparisons to other sites
Disseminated neoplasia of bivalves
No full textDisseminated neoplasia was first identified as a contagious cancer in oysters in 1986. Since that time, it has been found in several species of bivalves around the world. While only identified at low prevalence in some bivalve species, it can also occur at high prevalence and cause significant mortality in other species. Highest prevalence in most affected populations occurs in the winter/spring time periods. Histologically, circulating neoplastic cells are found in the sinusoids and, as in leukemia in other animals, the cells proliferate and fill up the vascular system as the disease progresses. Neoplastic cells appear to move through the sea water from an affected animal to a naïve animal causing the infection in the naïve animal making this disease a third type of cellular transmitted cancer known in the world. But, the cause of transformation of an as-yet unidentified normal cell to a neoplastic cell is not understood. Neoplastic cells in an affected individual do contain high levels of reverse transcriptase and high numbers of retrotransposons that are members of the gypsy/Ty3 transposon family. Retrovirus has been identified in some animals affected with the disease and, while Koch\u27s postulates have been fulfilled by a group of researchers with a retrovirus extracted from neoplastic cells, the research has not been repeated, so the cause of the disease is yet to be elucidated
Thick Black women and misogynoir in the Caribbean
No full textIt is well documented that thick Black female bodies are idealized in Afro-Caribbean communities. However, there is also a long and deep history of oppression of thick Black women in Caribbean spaces based on their race, gender, and body shape and size, which continues to inform the lives of thick Black women in postcolonial Caribbean societies. This paper is an exploratory, grounded analysis of thick Black women’s quotidian experiences in this dialectic, explicitly focusing on Jamaica. Using Caribbean research methodologies situated in decolonial feminist epistemologies, I explore the everyday realities of voluptuous Black women who have to negotiate white Eurocentric body discourses in contemporary Jamaican society. The study foregrounds the voices of thick Black women as they articulate their own lived realities with navigating ‘misogynoir’ in Jamaican public spaces
Willingly and with Pleasure: Desiring Politics in the Couronnement de Louis
No full textThis essay describes how the aristocratic hero’s loyalty toward his king and lord is produced, sustained, and put to politically effective use in the chanson de geste the Couronnement de Louis by reading the twelfth-century poem for evidence of its hero’s desire. In providing Charlemagne with an unwilling heir in the form of the titular Louis, I argue, the Couronnement breaks open the ideology of lineal inheritance and hereditary monarchy and lays bare a field of political culture crisscrossed by the desires of powerful men: desires for titles and power, land and wealth, certainly; but also desires that constitute their relationships with one another. In taking Charlemagne’s unwilling heir Louis as the object of his continual devotion, the hero Guillaume d’Orange must necessarily subordinate his own interests as such (political, economic, lineal, and indeed sexual), to the interests of the younger man, ultimately coordinating his desires relative to those of his lord. Reading Guillaume’s loyalty as Freudian libido—and therefore as alterable, reversible, and re-arrangeable in terms of quantity, intensity, attachment, and aim—defamiliarizes the familiar, structural image of the lord-vassal bond, producing a finer-grained understanding of how power and politics work at the level of what men want for themselves and from one another
Mercury content in the baleen plates of rorqual whales
Get PDFMercury is a persistent environmental contaminant posing significant risks to wildlife health due to its propensity for bioaccumulation in organismal tissues. This study investigated total mercury concentrations in the baleen plates of rorqual whales (Family Balaenopteridae), specifically the Fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), Blue whale (B. musculus), and Rice’s whale (B. ricei). Archived baleen samples were sourced from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and analyzed for total mercury (Hg) content (ppm dry weight) using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Male Fin and Blue whales from the Antarctic, South Pacific region (1947-1948), with body lengths ranging from 21 to 24 m, exhibited mean Hg concentrations of 0.19 ± 0.05 ppm and 0.14 ± 0.01 ppm, respectively (n = 2 per species). In contrast, male and female Rice’s whales from the Mid-Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (1923-2009), with ranging from 5 to 13 m in length, demonstrated higher Hg burdens compared to their congeners, averaging 0.80 ± 0.66 ppm (n = 8). Rice’s whales showed evidence of Hg bioaccumulation, as indicated by a positive relationship between Hg concentration and body size. Notably, size-standardized Hg levels in the 1923 Rice’s whale sample was substantially higher compared to those from later years (1923 = 1.99 ppm; 1974-2009 = 0.39 ppm). The observed variations in Hg contamination across whale species likely reflect inter-specific differences in geographic location, migratory behavior, habitat use, and feeding ecology. Additionally, the reduction in Hg concentrations in Rice’s whales post-1970 may be linked to global pollution control measures