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“I am a normal Asian American?”: Diverse ways that Asian Americans respond to an open-ended question about their racial identification
No full textPan-ethnic labels such as “Asian” and “Asian American” are used to describe a vastly diverse group. However, the majority of those who would be described by others as Asian or Asian American do not choose to describe themselves with these terms (Ruiz et al., 2023). In this mixed method study, we used a Consensual Qualitative Research–Modified approach (Spangler et al., 2012) to inductively explore the preferred racial labels of 501 Asian American participants. The most common codes for racial self-identification were Asian (20%), Asian American (19%), Asian ethnic group (e.g., Korean; 17%), and Asian ethnic group plus American (e.g., Korean American; 11%). In addition to the racial self-identification codes, themes related to and beyond race emerged. For example, some participants elaborated on their racial and ethnic identites and specified other salient aspects (e.g., physical characteristics). Given the activist roots of the term “Asian American” (S. Sue et al., 2021) and heterogeneity within the group, we quantitatively examined if preferred racial labels were related to experiences of racism and demographic factors. While there were no demographic differences between the racial self-identification codes, there were significant differences in racism-related stress. Results from our study offer another dimension of diversity, chosen racial self-identification, which may be related to Asian Americans’ experiences with racism
Tapping the source: Raoul Peck’s James Baldwin and the archival backstage of \u3ci\u3eI Am Not Your Negro\u3c/i\u3e
No full textRaoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro (2016) presents itself and was understood as the cinematic counterpart to Remember this House, a book James Baldwin began in 1979 but never finished. In fact less than 20% of the film’s voiceover derives from this or any unpublished source. The rest consists of redacted fragments from Baldwin’s published non-fiction, most significantly No Name in the Street (1972), reassembled to simulate a free-indirect yet nevertheless first-person ‘libretto’. By situating I Am Not Your Negro in relation to the broader Baldwin revival of the 2010s and fresh concerns regarding the film’s excision of Baldwin’s sexuality, this essay contextualizes and philologically traces the ‘archival backstage’ of I Am Not Your Negro to reveal an intricate, almost sui-generis act of literary adaptation, where the imagined completion of an archival fragment stands in for the splintering and re-emplacement of published text. As part of this process, I Am Not Your Negro offsets and triples the usual first-person subjectivity of the essay film onto Peck (as arranger of images) and two Baldwins: an imagined narrator/screenwriter and an embodied historical actor. Most broadly this essay suggests that the epistemic assumptions surrounding the film and its companion paperback should be revisited, not so as to undermine their archival legitimacy but to more rigorously appreciate the power of their intervention
The Trees POV : Refugee Landscapes in Postrevolutionary Tunisian Cinema
No full textIn early 2011, at the height of the so-called Arab Spring, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime (r. 1969–2011) started to disintegrate. As violence convulsed Libya, hundreds of thousands of people fled across the borders into Tunisia and Egypt—not only Libyans, but also third-country nationals who had been living and working within Libyan borders, many from sub-Saharan Africa.1 In response, and against the backdrop of a newfound revolutionary idealism, the Tunisian government chose to keep the border open.2 In February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) established the Choucha refugee camp, located eleven kilometers from the Ras Jadir border post—Tunisia’s first refugee camp since the Algerian war in 1962.3 That same month, the filmmakers Ismaël, Youssef Chebbi, and Ala Eddine Slim drove south from Tunis to Choucha to make a film
Methylene Blue Attenuates 3-Nitropropionic Acid-Induced Oxidative Stress and Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Striatal Cells: Therapeutic Implications in Huntington’s Disease Neuropathology
No full textThere are no disease-modifying treatments available for Huntington’s disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disease caused by a genetic mutation in the Huntingtin gene. Previous research suggests that disruptions in the bioenergetics of the mitochondria and increased oxidative stress are potential inducers of HD. Therapies that enhance antioxidant pathways intend to target and attenuate the overproduction of reactive oxygen species associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. We have investigated the effect of Methylene Blue (MB) as a potential therapy for HD. MB is a small molecule demonstrated to exhibit neuroprotective effects in other neurodegenerative disease models, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, by attenuating the oxidative stress pathways implicated in their pathophysiology. We used an established striatal cell model of HD expressing wild-type (STHdhQ7/Q7) or mutant (STHdhQ111/Q111) HTT and a chemical inducer of HD, 3-Nitropropionic acid (3-NPA), to determine the HD-specific mechanisms regulated by 3 h of MB pre-treatment. Upon 24 h of exposure to 3-NPA, mutant HD cells exhibited a significant concentration-dependent decrease in cell survival and a concomitant increase in cell death compared to wild-type, confirming that 3-NPA exacerbates mutant HTT neurotoxicity. Examination of mitochondrial membrane potential and mitochondrial function in the striatal cells by JC-1 and ATP assays, respectively, revealed MB mediated neuroprotection against 3-NPA-induced reduction in mitochondrial activity. Immunoblotting analysis revealed that MB restores baseline expression of oxidative-stress-related proteins, including HO1 and p62, in both wild-type and mutant cells exposed to 3-NPA. Our findings establish a novel neuroprotective role of MB in both genetic and pharmacological models of HD, suggesting that MB might be a promising therapeutic candidate for altering the underlying pathophysiology of HD by improving mitochondrial function
Causal predictive modeling of survival of lung and bronchus cancer patients diagnosed during 2010–2011 in Texas
No full textBackground: Lung and Bronchus cancer is the most fatal type of cancer in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, there were more than 127,000 deaths from lung cancer in 2023. Lung cancer care cost 23.8 billion dollars in 2020. In Texas, only 22.8% of lung cancer patients survived 5 years or more past diagnosis based on 2012–2018 data.
Aim: This study evaluates the survival length of lung and bronchus cancer patients in Texas using advanced statistical and machine learning methods applied to an 11-year cohort study from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program. It also quantifies the causal effect of early (localized) versus late (distant) stage at diagnosis on survival time of those patients. Additionally, it explores the influence of demographic and available clinical factors to assess disparities in survival across different groups.
Methodology: We performed classical survival analyses, followed by causal survival analysis to study the average years lost among different patient groups. Additionally, we performed survival random forest and survival neural network modeling. Finally, we conducted causal inference and causal survival random forest to estimate and predict the average treatment effect of early-stage diagnosis on lung cancer patient survival.
Results: Stage and age are the two most important factors in predicting the survival of patients with lung and bronchus cancer. Lung cancer patients diagnosed with the regional stage have about twice the risk of dying as those in the localized stage at any time, and this risk increases as the stage advances. We also find that the average extended lifetime of the localized stage group was about 4 years compared to survivors diagnosed with the distant stage. It can also extend the probability of survival by up to 50%.
Conclusion: Our study underscores the need for early screening, diagnosis and improving equity in lung cancer patients care, which could lead to improved outcomes and reduced mortality in this high-risk population.
Impact: Understanding lung and bronchus cancer survival using advanced causal inference and predictive modeling techniques, highlights the critical importance of early-stage diagnosis, showing that patients diagnosed at localized stages have a substantially higher survival probability. This research underscores the necessity of promoting early screening and equitable cancer care to improve survival rates and healthcare outcomes for lung and bronchus cancer patients