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An oral history with jina valentine by Kelly Lloyd
No full textFor visual artist and professor jina valentine, a sense of place is closely tied with the imperative to build community. Having experienced several relocations, first as a student and later as an academic, valentine has met this requirement by developing systems of support and works of collaboration several times over and using a myriad of tactics. These strategies have included co-founding Black Lunch Table, an organization focused on Black artists and legacy; teaching inside and outside the university system; and considering parenthood as slow sculpture. Transdisciplinary artist and educator Kelly Lloyd joins valentine as her interviewer. Bringing these practitioners together offers a salient portrait of the artist as community member. While traversing the landmarks of valentine’s journey, this conversation interrogates the tensions that have presented themselves throughout her career: material/ephemeral, potential/limitation, confidence/doubt, impulse/regret. In this revealing, wide-ranging exchange, the two artists examine the value of mentorship as a vital intervention, explore how to cultivate anchors as a matter of praxis, and explain why the concept of “work” should be called something else.
—Andrea L. Battleground, OHP Producer
The following interview is adapted from two Zoom sessions conducted in December 2022
Sensitivity of Philippine historically damaging tropical cyclone events to surface and atmospheric temperature forcings
Get PDFAs the climate warms, sea surface temperature (SST) is projected to increase, along with atmospheric variables which may have an impact on tropical cyclone (TC) properties. Climate models have well-known errors in simulating current climate SSTs that will likely affect future TC projections. Therefore, a better understanding of the
impact of SST changes will help us identify the largest uncertainty in projecting TC changes. The focus of the study is the Philippines where TCs have a significant annual impact. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model, a set of experiments were carried out for three observed TCs, Typhoons Haiyan, Bopha, and Mangkhut at a resolution of 5km using ERA5 boundary conditions. Experiments were performed using ERA5 SSTs in control experiments without any changes; then with an imposed uniform SST adjustment of between -4 to +4°C; and finally with a monthly mean SST change
derived from a CMIP6 model. Additional experiments with changes in temperature profile were also performed where each of the SST and atmosphere experiments were run in isolation from each other. Changes in SSTs resulted in changes in TC track, intensity, and rainfall. In the positive SST simulations, TCs tended to move northwards and resulted in substantial increases in maximum wind speeds reaching a difference of up to 10, 13, 23 ms-1 for Typhoons Haiyan, Bopha, and Mangkhut, respectively. Analysis of the accumulated rainfall also showed that increased SST results in
increased rainfall. Inclusion of atmospheric warming offsets the intensification due to SST change. Moreover, warmer SSTs resulted in slower-moving TCs and increased
TC size
Prediction of occupant thermal state via infrared thermography and explainable AI
Get PDFAccurate and real-time assessment of occupant thermal comfort can provide a solid foundation for efficient air conditioning operations. Existing studies already show the feasibility of using contactless technologies for thermal comfort prediction assisted by machine learning algorithms. However, the lack of transparency in machine learning often weakens user trust. This study performs explainable AI analysis to explore the potential of infrared imaging in thermal comfort evaluation. Specifically, an investigation was carried out in a climatic chamber, and infrared cameras were used to collect facial temperature data. Five popular ensemble tree models were employed to construct prediction models, and explainable AI analysis was performed using SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) theory. Results show that combining additional facial information can significantly improve the overall model performance, and certain facial attributes present high contributions based on SHAP values. Combining facial features with explainable AI provides a convincing basis for thermal comfort assessment. The high SHAP values of facial features can also contribute to finding selective occupants with low neutral voting rates, providing evidence for customized cooling or heating from building systems
Autistic adults exhibit typical sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance
No full textThe visual processing differences seen in autism often impede individuals’ visual perception of the social world. It has recently been suggested that pairs of individuals shown facing each other – so-called ‘facing dyads’ – engage a form a visual processing similar to that recruited by faces. Given that many autistic people experience difficulties when asked to identify faces, we reasoned that autistic individuals may also make less accurate judgements about facing dyads. We examined whether groups of autistic and non-autistic participants differed in their ability to judge interpersonal distance – a key visual feature of facing dyads. Contrary to our hypothesis, the autistic and non-autistic participants displayed similar ability to detect changes in interpersonal distance. As expected, however, our autistic participants showed worse face recognition than our non-autistic participants. These findings suggest that the visual processing of faces may be selectively impaired in autism without affecting the perception of facing dyads
Inhibiting the extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) cascade in cancer and the heart: for better or worse, in sickness and health?
Get PDFThe extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1/2) are the prototypic mitogen-activated protein kinases, first discovered and investigated in the context of cell division and their role in cancer. ERK1/2 are phosphorylated and activated by upstream kinases, MEK1/2 (also known as MKK1/2) that are phosphorylated and activated by RAF kinases (RAF1, BRAF, ARAF), these being activated by the small G protein RAS. The oncogenic nature of the pathway has resulted in the generation of highly specific inhibitors of the pathway that are successfully used to treat cancer, particularly melanoma. Those in clinical use currently inhibit some isoforms of RAS, RAF kinases and MEK1/2, with additional inhibitors of these kinases in clinical trials. New drugs are also entering the clinic to inhibit ERK1/2 themselves. The ERK1/2 cascade is also important in the heart. It promotes cardiomyocyte hypertrophy and cardioprotection to counter pathophysiological stresses, but plays a significant role in enhancing cardiac fibrosis with detrimental consequences for cardiac function. Here, we summarise the role of ERK1/2 signalling in cancer and the heart, we outline the development of ERK1/2 cascade inhibitors for cancer with information on those that are approved as cancer treatments and those in clinical trials, and discuss the known and predicted consequences of these ERK1/2 cascade inhibitors for the heart. Integral with this, we consider whether these drugs are necessarily detrimental to the heart or if/when they may be repurposed to prevent or treat heart failure
River flow in the near future: a global perspective in the context of a high-emission climate change scenario
Get PDFThere is high confidence that global warming intensifies all components of the global water cycle. This work investigates the possible effects of global warming on river flows worldwide in the coming decades. We conducted 18 global hydrological simulations to assess how river flows are projected to change in the near future (2015–2050) compared to the recent past (1950–2014). The simulations are forced by runoff from the High Resolution Model Intercomparison Project (HighResMIP) CMIP6 global climate models (GCMs), which assume a high-emission scenario for the projections. The assessment includes estimating the signal-to-noise () ratio and the time of emergence (ToE) of all the rivers in the world. Consistently with the water cycle intensification, the hydrological simulations project a clear positive global river discharge trend from ∼2000 that emerges beyond the levels of natural variability and becomes “unfamiliar” by 2017 and “unusual” by 2033. Simulations agree that the climate change signal is dominated by strong increases in the flows of rivers originating in central Africa and South Asia and those discharging into the Arctic Ocean, partially compensated for by the reduced flow projected for Patagonian rivers. The potential implications of such changes may include more frequent floods in central African and South Asian rivers, driven by the projected magnification of the annual cycles with unprecedented peaks, a freshening of the Arctic Ocean from extra freshwater release, and limited water availability in Patagonia given the projected drier conditions of its rivers. This underscores the critical need for a paradigm shift in prioritizing water-related concerns amidst the challenges of global warming
Evaluating existing ocean glider sampling strategies for submesoscale dynamics
Get PDFMixing in the upper ocean is important for biological production and the transfer of heat and carbon between the atmosphere and deep ocean, properties commonly targeted by observational campaigns using ocean gliders. We assess the reliability of ocean gliders to obtain a robust statistical representation of submesocale variability in the ocean mixed layer of the Weddell Sea. A 1/48◦ regional simulation of the Southern Ocean is sampled with virtual ‘bow-tie’ glider deployments, which are then compared against the reference model output. Sampling biases of lateral buoyancy gradients associated with the arbitrary alignment between glider paths and fronts are formally quantified, and the magnitude of the biases are comparable to observational estimates, with a mean error of 52%. The sampling bias leaves errors in the retrieved distribution of buoyancy gradients largely insensitive to deployment length and the deployment of additional gliders. Notable sensitivity to these choices emerges when the biases are removed by sampling perpendicular to fronts at all times. Detecting seasonal change in the magnitude of buoyancy gradients is sensitive to the glider-orientation sampling bias but the change in variance is not. We evaluate the impact of reducing the number of dives and climbs in an observational campaign and find small reductions in the number of dive-climb pairs have a limited effect on the results. Lastly, examining the sensitivity of the sampling bias to path orientation indicates the bias is not dependent on the direction of travel, in our deep ocean study site
Replacement of saturated fatty acids from meat by dairy sources in relation to incident cardiovascular disease: the European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition (EPIC)-Norfolk study
Get PDFBackground: Prospective observational data revealed lower cardiovascular disease (CVD) incidence with modeled replacement of saturated fatty acids (SFA) from total meat by total dairy, but it is unknown what the associations are of replacing SFA from types of meat by types of dairy with CVD incidence.
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the associations of replacing SFA from total, red, processed, and poultry meat by SFA from total dairy, milk, cheese, and yogurt with the incidence of CVD.
Methods: We analyzed longitudinal data from 21,841 participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Norfolk study (56.4% female; age, 40–79 years). Dietary data were collected by food frequency questionnaires at baseline (1993–1997). Incident fatal or nonfatal CVD (n 1⁄4 5902), coronary artery disease (CAD; n 1⁄4 4215), stroke (total: n 1⁄4 2544; ischemic: n 1⁄4 1113; hemorrhagic: n 1⁄4 449) were identified up to 2018. Hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using Cox regression for the risk associated with replacement of 2.5% of energy from SFA from meat by dairy, adjusted for sociodemographic, lifestyle, energy, dietary, and cardiometabolic factors.
Results: Replacing SFA from total meat by total dairy was associated with a lower CVD incidence (HR: 0.89; 95% CI: 0.82, 0.96) and CAD (HR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.80, 0.96). Replacing SFA from processed meat by cheese was associated with lower CVD (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.68, 0.88); CAD (HR: 0.77; 95% CI: 0.66, 0.90), and stroke (HR: 0.81; 95% CI: 0.67, 0.99). Similarly, replacing SFA from red meat by cheese was associated with lower CVD (HR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.76, 0.97). Higher incidence of stroke was found with replacement of SFA from poultry by milk (HR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.09, 3.89), yogurt (HR: 2.55; 95% CI: 1.27, 5.13), or cheese (HR: 1.96; 95% CI: 1.04, 3.70), but the CI were relatively large, owing to low, narrow range of poultry SFA intake.
Conclusions: Findings indicate that different SFA-rich foods at baseline have differential associations with CVD risk. If confirmed by further studies, these findings could be used to inform specific food-based dietary guidance
A novel localized fast multipole method for computations with spatially correlated observation error statistics in data assimilation
Get PDFSeveral observation types (e.g., geostationary satellite and Doppler radar observations) have recently been found to exhibit strong spatial error correlations. Including these error statistics in data assimilation for numerical weather prediction can improve analysis quality and forecast skill. Moreover, it allows for increases in the spatial density of observations assimilated, which is needed for the provision of information on appropriate scales for high-resolution forecasting. However, introducing correlated error statistics may increase the computational complexity and parallel communication costs of matrix-vector products involving observation precision matrices (inverse observation error covariance matrices). Without new approaches, we cannot take full advantage of new observation uncertainty estimates. We develop a new numerical approximation method based on a particular type of fast multipole method and a domain localization approach. The basic idea is to divide the observation domain into boxes and then separate calculations of matrix-vector products according to the partition. These calculations can be done in parallel with very low communication overheads. The new method is easy to implement and parallelise, and it is applicable to a wide variety of observation precision matrices. We applied the new method to a simple variational data assimilation problem and found that the computational cost of the variational minimisation was dramatically reduced while preserving analysis accuracy across a range of scales. The new method has the potential to be used as an efficient technique for practical applications where a large number of observations with mutual error correlations need to be assimilated quickly
The impact of resilience acquisition on students transitioning to university during Covid-19: a follow up study with Myanmar students
Get PDFIn our previous study (Gomersall & Floyd, 2022), we reported that a group of Myanmar students, who studied online for their high school qualifications during COVID-19, reported drawing on a range of factors to enable them to overcome the adversity and continue their education. Moreover, they claimed that they had benefited from the online experience and were ready to progress to university. This study returns one year later to interview some of the original participants to see if their perceptions became reality. In addition, a group of students from the 2020 cohort are also interviewed so that a comparison can be made between the last group of students who studied ‘normally’ before COVID-19, and those who experienced online learning for the first time. This study addresses a gap in the literature by examining student perspectives of the ways in which they thrived as a result of digitally enhanced learning. We conclude that learning online enabled students to develop personally, enhance their digital skills, and acquire skills and knowledge that could be utilised again in the future. Moreover, those who studied online in both high school and university found the process of commencing online studies at university easier, which supports the tentative conclusion that even in low resource settings, it would be beneficial for schools to explore integrating more digital skills into the classroom