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Ghana: A Political and Social History
No full textFew African countries have attracted the international attention that Ghana has. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the then-colonial Gold Coast emerged as a key political and intellectual hub for British West Africa. Half a century later, when Ghana became the first sub-Saharan state to emerge from European colonial rule, it became a key site for a burgeoning transnational African anticolonial politics that drew activists, freedom fighters, and intellectuals from around the world. As the twentieth century came to a close, Ghana became an international symbol of the putative successes of post-Cold-War African liberalization and democratization projects. Given these many fascinating developments, it is easy to forget that fundamental concepts such as the Gold Coast, Ghana, and Ghanaian have never been set in stone and themselves bear exploring. Here Jeffrey Ahlman offers an original and accessible explanation of how these ever-changing concepts interact with those broader developments. On the one hand, he narrates a rich political history stretching from the beginnings of the very idea of the Gold Coast to the country\u27s 1994 democratization, which paved the way for the Fourth Republic. At the same time, he offers a rich social history that examines the sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent nature of what it means to be Ghanaian through discussions of marriage, ethnicity, and migration; of cocoa as a cultural system; of the multiple meanings of chieftaincy; and of other contemporary markers of identity. Throughout it all, Ahlman distills decades of work by other scholars while also drawing on a wide array of archival, oral, journalistic, and governmental sources in order to provide his own fresh insights. For its clear, comprehensive coverage not only of Ghanaian history, but also of the major debates shaping nineteenth- and twentieth-century African politics and society more broadly, Ghana: A Political and Social History is a must-read for students and scholars of African Studies -- Source: Publisherhttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/hst_books/1009/thumbnail.jp
The Visionary Queen: Justice, Reform, and the Labyrinth in Marguerite de Navarre
No full textThe Visionary Queen affirms Marguerite de Navarre’s status not only as a political figure, author, or proponent of nonschismatic reform but also as a visionary. In her life and writings, the queen of Navarre dissected the injustices that her society and its institutions perpetuated against women. We also see evidence that she used her literary texts, especially the Heptaméron, as an exploratory space in which to generate a creative vision for institutional reform. The Heptaméron’s approach to reform emerges from statistical analysis of the text’s seventy-two tales, which reveals new insights into trends within the work, including the different categories of wrongdoing by male, institutional representatives from the Church and aristocracy, as well as the varying responses to injustice that characters in the tales employ as they pursue reform. Throughout its chapters, The Visionary Queen foregrounds the trope of the labyrinth, a potent symbol in early modern Europe that encapsulated both the fallen world and redemption, two themes that underlie Marguerite\u27s project of reform.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/frn_books/1020/thumbnail.jp
Playing With Silence: Fawad Khan Speaks with Richa Nagar and Abdul Aijaz
No full textEds. Richa Nagar, Abdul Aijaz, and Nithya Rajan, Special Volume on “Ecologies of Violence and Haunting: Listening to to Chup
“My Language System is Broken!”: Striving for the Wellbeing of Individuals and Society | 「言語のシステムが壊れちゃった！」 ―個人と社会のウェルビーイングにむけて―
No full textCurrently, the impact of the new coronavirus, climate calamities, and conflicts and wars in various regions of the world have brought attention to individual wellbeing and social justice in both society at large and in the field of education. In this study, through the critical examination of the concepts of welfare linguistics and translanguaging, we attempt to scrutinize what constitutes wellbeing. To this end, by employing critical discourse analysis on the data of one student in a Japanese language class at an American college, we unpack how she was caught between monolingual ideology and her actual translanguaging practices. The results suggest that translanguaging does not necessarily guarantee wellbeing, and that wellbeing is influenced by factors such as individual life experiences, parental beliefs, and social environment. The implications for language education are that both students and teachers, as members of society, should not simply accept prevailing ideologies, but rather engage in continuous dialogues and reflections with others by using a range of available (linguistic) resources to envision and work towards the betterment of society. We believe such efforts would enhance the wellbeing of both individuals and society
A New Method to Invert for Interseismic Deep Slip Along Closely Spaced Faults Using Surface Velocities and Subsurface Stressing-Rate Tensors
Get PDFInversions of interseismic geodetic surface velocities often cannot uniquely resolve the three-dimensional slip-rate distribution along closely spaced faults. Microseismic focal mechanisms reveal stress information at depth and may provide additional constraints for inversions that estimate slip rates. Here, we present a new inverse approach that utilizes both surface velocities and subsurface stressing-rate tensors to constrain interseismic slip rates and activity of closely spaced faults. We assess the ability of the inverse approach to recover slip rate distributions from stressing-rate tensors and surface velocities generated by two forward models: (a) a single strike-slip fault model and (b) a complex southern San Andreas fault system (SAFS) model. The single fault model inversions reveal that a sparse array of regularly spaced stressing-rate tensors can recover the forward model slip distribution better than surface velocity inversions alone. Because focal mechanism inversions currently provide normalized deviatoric stress tensors, we perform inversions for slip rate using full, deviatoric or normalized deviatoric forward-model-generated stressing-rate tensors to assess the impact of removing stress magnitude from the constraining data. All the inversions, except for those that use normalized deviatoric stressing-rate tensors, recover the forward model slip-rate distribution well, even for the SAFS model. Jointly inverting stressing rate and velocity data best recovers the forward model slip-rate distribution and may improve estimates of interseismic deep slip rates in regions of complex faulting, such as the southern SAFS; however, successful inversions of crustal data will require methods to estimate stressing-rate magnitudes
The Role of GPR37 in Late Stage Maturation of Granule Cell Neurons
No full textNeurogenesis, the generation of new neurons, is a process that occurs from development and continues through adulthood. There are two neurogenic niches, the subgranular zone located in the hippocampus, and the subventricular zone located along the lateral ventricle. Neurogenesis is involved in the processes of aging, ischemic damage, and neurodegeneration. GPR37, an orphan receptor, has been recognized to play an important role in the canonical Wnt signaling pathway. The canonical Wnt pathway is responsible for early and late stage maturation of neurons. The current study aimed to distinguish the maturation process of hippocampal neurons within mice that express GPR37 and mice that do not express GPR37, and determine the role that GPR37 plays in emotion regulation and affective behavior. The current study demonstrated a difference in the morphology of mature neurons in GPR37 knock-out (KO) mice in comparison to wild-type (WT) mice in both the dorsal and ventral hippocampus. This study also demonstrated a behavioral phenotype in GPR37 KO mice, in which KO mice exhibited a decrease in risk assessment behavior compared to WT mice. This data may suggest that GPR37 signaling plays a role in modulating risk assessment behavior. The morphological alterations which we observed in mature neurons within the ventral hippocampus could consequently lead to differential effects on circuit integration that regulate behavioral phenotypes
Notions of the Ocean: Molecular Techniques for Characterizing the Biodiversity and Function of Marine Microbial Eukaryotes at Different Ocean Depths
No full textThe majority of eukaryotic diversity is microbial; however, it can be difficult to fully characterize this microbial diversity because many species are currently uncultivable. The use of two molecular techniques: metatranscriptomics and metabarcoding, allows for the characterization of microbial species using water samples directly from their natural environment. This research is critical because microbial eukaryotes are key members of the base of the marine trophic pyramid, so an understanding of their composition at different ocean depths gives important insight into the health of the ecosystem and the availability of prey for larger marine animals. In addition, as ocean temperatures and acidification increase, an understanding of current marine microbial biodiversity is necessary for establishing a baseline to compare future changing compositions of marine organisms. This research aims to illuminate how to characterize active microbes using RNA metabarcoding and how metatranscriptomes from the same samples can be used to identify key gene families involved in the functioning of these microbes. Using water samples collected at seven locations at different ocean depths along the shelf and in blue waters, we are able to use molecular techniques to analyze microbial biodiversity in relation to their location in the water column. Results indicate that there are differences between biodiversity at the surface and deep chlorophyll maximum (DCM) in comparison to samples taken at depth. In addition, the use of metatranscriptomics further elucidates the biodiversity of microbes and begins to create an understanding of active gene families for those organisms
Missing History of a Modern Domesticate: Historical Demographics and Genetic Diversity in Farm-Bred Red Fox Populations
Get PDFThe first record of captive-bred red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) dates to 1896 when a breeding enterprise emerged in the provinces of Atlantic Canada. Because its domestication happened during recent history, the red fox offers a unique opportunity to examine the genetic diversity of an emerging domesticated species in the context of documented historical and economic influences. In particular, the historical record suggests that North American and Eurasian farm-bred populations likely experienced different demographic trajectories. Here, we focus on the likely impacts of founder effects and genetic drift given historical trends in fox farming on North American and Eurasian farms. A total of 15 mitochondrial haplotypes were identified in 369 foxes from 10 farm populations that we genotyped (n = 161) or that were previously published. All haplotypes are endemic to North America. Although most haplotypes were consistent with eastern Canadian ancestry, a small number of foxes carried haplotypes typically found in Alaska and other regions of western North America. The presence of these haplotypes supports historical reports of wild foxes outside of Atlantic Canada being introduced into the breeding stock. These putative Alaskan and Western haplotypes were more frequently identified in Eurasian farms compared to North American farms, consistent with historical documentation suggesting that Eurasian economic and breeding practices were likely to maintain low-frequency haplotypes more effectively than in North America. Contextualizing inter- vs. intra-farm genetic diversity alongside the historical record is critical to understanding the origins of this emerging domesticate and the relationships between wild and farm-bred fox populations
Development of DNA Origami Exoskeletons and Cationic Cores Toward Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Targeted Therapeutics
No full textNanotechnology has emerged as a powerful tool for targeted drug delivery through its ability to encapsulate, protect, and deliver a variety of therapeutic agents. A cutting-edge technique for targeted drug delivery on the nanoscale is DNA origami (DNA-O), which allows precise structures to be created and functionalized. These functionalizations can result in stimulus-responsive conformational changes to the DNA-O structure, resulting in payload release. Here, a suite of DNA-O exoskeletons and cationic lipid or polymer-based cores are conceptualized, designed, and developed for the creation of two distinct layered targeted delivery vehicles. These structures include (a) a 42 nm DNA-O exoskeleton for encapsulating (b) a polyethyleneimine (PEI)-wrapped gold nanoparticle (AuNP) as well as (c) a 115 nm DNA-O exoskeleton for encapsulating either (d) a lipid nanoparticle core or (e) a core of PEI complexed with DNA. The 42 nm DNA-O exoskeleton is based on previous work from the Derr Lab and has two tethered hemispheres and has been further modified to include thiol handles intended to reversibly close the sphere through disulfide bond formation. PEI-AuNPs were successfully wrapped, cationic, and ≤ 40 nm, as confirmed by dynamic light scattering (DLS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The 115 nm DNA-O structure was modeled and DNA sequences were designed for folding one hemisphere. LNPs were synthesized with microfluidics and LNPs and PEI-DNA polyplexes were both characterized and confirmed to be ≤ 115 nm and cationic using DLS and TEM. Collectively, these results present a toolkit designed for creating layered nanostructures that could be used for the encapsulation of therapeutics and targeted drug delivery