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Recovery of Early Literacy and Social-Emotional Skills Post-COVID-19: The Role of Teacher Insights in Shaping Early Educational Policy and Practices
Get PDFThis study explores how early childhood educators experienced and responded to the challenges of pandemic recovery, particularly in relation to early literacy and social-emotional skill development. Drawing on qualitative interviews with teachers across public, private, and charter schools in Illinois and California, this research examines the conditions under which recovery strategies were implemented, and the challenges many educators face post-pandemic. The study asks: What strategies have effectively mitigated the academic and social-emotional impacts of the pandemic on early learners? And how can schools and families better support teachers in implementing these strategies? While the initial hypothesis anticipated that greater institutional support would ease the burden of recovery, findings revealed a deeper emphasis on the need for sustained family involvement, relevant professional development, and context-specific tools, particularly regarding technology. Teachers noted that they did not expect direct support from their schools, but instead called for families to take a more active and consistent role in student learning and emotional regulation. The analytic framework centers on two key areas: teacher burnout and relational trust between educators and families. Burnout provides insight into the emotional and professional strain teachers experienced during the pandemic, while trust highlights how varying levels of family engagement shaped their ability to support student learning and wellbeing. Both concepts emerged as central to how teachers interpreted their roles and needs in a time of prolonged crisis. By centering teacher perspectives, this study identifies educator-informed strategies for bridging the gap between policy and practice. The findings underscore the need for recovery efforts that reflect classroom realities, prioritize teacher wellbeing, and position families as essential partners in early education
Phase Transitions in Nonreciprocal Driven-Dissipative Condensates
Get PDFWe investigate the influence of boundaries and spatial nonreciprocity on nonequilibrium driven-dissipative phase transitions. We focus on a one-dimensional lattice of nonlinear bosons described by a Lindblad master equation, where the interplay between coherent and incoherent dynamics generates nonreciprocal interactions between sites. Using a mean-field approach, we analyze the phase diagram under both periodic and open boundary conditions. For periodic boundaries, the system always forms a condensate at nonzero momentum and frequency, resulting in a time-dependent traveling wave pattern. In contrast, open boundaries reveal a far richer phase diagram, featuring multiple static and dynamical phases, as well as exotic phase transitions, including the spontaneous breaking of particle-hole symmetry associated with a critical exceptional point and phases with distinct bulk and edge behavior. Our model does not require postselection and is experimentally realizable in platforms such as superconducting circuits.</p
Genetic diversity is key to a nature-positive future
Get PDF1. Nature-positive describes the concept of halting and then reversing the loss of biodiversity in a manner that is equitable to all, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities. 2. Genetic diversity is the foundational component of biodiversity, underpinning species and ecosystem diversity. Genetic diversity is vital to resilience and ecosystem services. Whilst genetic diversity was included in early definitions of nature-positive, it has been omitted from some more recent framings. Here we discuss why this omission may jeopardise the very ecosystems which the concept aims to protect. 3. The limitations around data and methods for assessing genetic diversity are rapidly disappearing. Thus, we argue genetic diversity should be used for measuring nature-positive outcomes. With advances in genetic and genomic technologies, this approach can even be more affordable than assessing species or ecosystems. If DNA-based data are not available, indicators are available for inferring the status of genetic diversity with proxy data. 4. Policy implications. It is both possible and beneficial to incorporate genetic diversity in biodiversity assessments for nature-positive. It should be used in co-developing management plans at local and national levels. Including genetic diversity in steps to build a nature-positive future is thus essential if the concept is to achieve its aims. 1. Natureza positiva (“Nature-positive”) descreve o conceito de cessar e depois reverter a perda da biodiversidade de maneira equitativa para todos, em particular para povos tradicionais e comunidades locais. 2. A diversidade genética é o componente fundamental da biodiversidade, sustentando a diversidade de espécies e ecossistemas. A diversidade genética é vital para resiliência e para serviços ecossistêmicos. Embora a diversidade genética tenha sido incluída nas primeiras definições de natureza positiva, ela foi omitida de algumas concepções mais recentes. Aqui, discutimos por que essa omissão pode colocar em risco os próprios ecossistemas que esse conceito visa proteger. 3. As limitações em torno de dados e métodos para avaliar a diversidade genética estão desaparecendo rapidamente. Desse modo, nós argumentamos que a diversidade genética deve ser usada para medir resultados de natureza positiva. Com avanços nas tecnologias genéticas e genômicas, essa abordagem pode ser ainda mais acessível do que avaliações de espécies ou ecossistemas. Se dados baseados em DNA não estiverem disponíveis, indicadores estão disponíveis para inferir o status da diversidade genética a partir de dados indiretos. 4. Implicações para políticas: É possível e benéfico incorporar a diversidade genética em avaliações de biodiversidade para uma natureza positiva. Ela deve ser utilizada no desenvolvimento conjunto de planos de gestão em nível local e nacional. Incluir a diversidade genética nas etapas de construção de um futuro de natureza positiva é, portanto, essencial para que esse conceito atinja seus objetivos.</p
Machine Learning-Driven Conservative-to-Primitive Conversion in Hybrid Piecewise Polytropic and Tabulated Equations of State
Get PDFWe present a novel machine learning (ML)-based method to accelerate conservative-to-primitive inversion, focusing on hybrid piecewise polytropic and tabulated equations of state. Traditional root-finding techniques are computationally expensive, particularly for large-scale relativistic hydrodynamics simulations. To address this, we employ feedforward neural networks (NNC2PS and NNC2PL), trained in PyTorch (2.0+) and optimized for GPU inference using NVIDIA TensorRT (8.4.1), achieving significant speedups with minimal accuracy loss. The NNC2PS model achieves 1 and ∞ errors of 4.54×10−7 and 3.44×10−6, respectively, while the NNC2PL model exhibits even lower error values. TensorRT optimization with mixed-precision deployment substantially accelerates performance compared to traditional root-finding methods. Specifically, the mixed-precision TensorRT engine for NNC2PS achieves inference speeds approximately 400 times faster than a traditional single-threaded CPU implementation for a dataset size of 1,000,000 points. Ideal parallelization across an entire compute node in the Delta supercomputer (dual AMD 64-core 2.45 GHz Milan processors and 8 NVIDIA A100 GPUs with 40 GB HBM2 RAM and NVLink) predicts a 25-fold speedup for TensorRT over an optimally parallelized numerical method when processing 8 million data points. Moreover, the ML method exhibits sub-linear scaling with increasing dataset sizes. We release the scientific software developed, enabling further validation and extension of our findings. By exploiting the underlying symmetries within the equation of state, these findings highlight the potential of ML, combined with GPU optimization and model quantization, to accelerate conservative-to-primitive inversion in relativistic hydrodynamics simulations
Framing Roots of Eco-Activism: Understanding Emotion Construction and Motivation in Online Environmental Discourse
Get PDFThis paper examines how people concerned about anthropogenic climate change use TikTok to co-create motivation behind action and try to spur various collective actions by mobilizing individual-level actions. Over the course of three months, I conducted a digital ethnography on climate-conscious communities on the social media app TikTok through interacting with the platform to situate my account within their amorphous environmentalist communities. I supplemented my observations with six semi-structured interviews with community members who have gained an audience through different forms of environmental videos. By tracing different discursive formations around environmentalism, I found that the communities within these formations focus on using various emotions as the bases for environmental activism or action, despite expressing diverse belief systems around these bases. I argue that we can better understand these different strains of online environmentalism by identifying how they position the human in relation to the natural world and discuss the implications of how the messaging and mobilizing of these communities may influence our understanding of emotional foundations for modern environmentalism as a decentralized social movement
The Problem of Peace: Anticolonial Thought and the Critique of International Order
No full textThis dissertation examines the role of peace as a problem for twentieth-century anticolonial struggle. For anticolonial thinkers and activists, peace represented more than the simple absence of war or an unqualified good. In imperial discourse, peace was used to justify domination and to naturalize structural violence; it was also used to create the moral framings for the use of spectacular violence and war-making when needed to maintain hierarchy. Colonized people who wanted to maintain an aspiration for peace challenged the assumptions surrounding civilization and sovereignty present in imperial peace discourse, and they put forth alternative proposals of peace that required justice, inclusion, and equality. Chapter 1 of the dissertation charts the historical construction of imperial peace, showing that a long line of Western legal and political thought has used peace to justify hierarchy and colonialism. The subsequent chapters turn to the twentieth century, each one presenting a proposal for peace that was critiqued by Third World thinkers. Chapter 2 examines peace treaties through an exploration of the Khilafat Movement in India, which used the Treaty of Sèvres to critique the imperial cooptation of self-determination through such treaties. Chapter 3 analyzes the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war through the perspective of the Chinese international lawyer Yuen-Li Liang, who argued that the Pact entrenched an expansive notion of self-defense that privileged powerful states. Chapter 4 takes up the League of Nations and its system of collective security through the critique of Jawaharlal Nehru, who contended that a system that secures peace on the continent by outsourcing war elsewhere would ultimately result in global conflict. Chapter 5 looks at international courts and tribunals through the Tokyo Trials dissent of Radhabinod Pal, who claimed that international criminal law could not function in a just manner in the context of global inequality. Finally, Chapter 6 looks at UN-era attempts to articulate the boundaries of war and peace by examining debates over the definition of aggression, which showed that Third World attempts to limit aggression were consistently coopted by powerful states seeking to avoid accountability. Together, these chapters demonstrate that peace was a site of struggle and contestation that anticolonial thinkers sought to reclaim in the pursuit of justice
Use of Ambient AI Scribes to Reduce Administrative Burden and Professional Burnout
Get PDFImportance: While in short supply and high demand, ambulatory care clinicians spend more time on administrative tasks and documentation in the electronic health record than on direct patient care, which has been associated with burnout, intention to leave, and reduced quality of care. Objective: To examine whether ambient AI scribes are associated with reducing clinician administrative burden and burnout. Design, Setting, and Participants: This quality improvement study used preintervention and 30-day postintervention surveys to evaluate the use of the same ambient AI platform for clinical note documentation among ambulatory care physicians and advanced practice practitioners of 6 academic and community-based health care systems across the US. Clinicians were recruited by the health systems’ digital health leaders; participation was voluntary. The study was conducted between February 1 and October 31, 2024. Exposure: Use of an ambient AI scribe for 30 days.Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was change in self-reported burnout, estimated using hierarchical logistic regression. Secondary outcomes of burnout evaluated were changes in note-related cognitive task load, focused attention on patients, patient understandability of notes, ability to add patients to the clinic schedule if urgently needed, and time spent documenting after hours. Outcome measures were linearly transformed to 10-point scales to ease interpretation and comparison. Differences between preintervention and postintervention scores were determined using paired t tests. Results: Of the 451 clinicians enrolled, 272 completed the preintervention and postintervention surveys (60.3% completion rate), and 263 with direct patient care in ambulatory clinics (mean [SD] years in practice, 15.1 [9.3]; 141 female [53.6%]) were included in the analysis. The sample included 131 primary care practitioners (49.7%), 232 attending physicians (88.2%), and 168 academic faculty (63.9%). After 30 days with the ambient AI scribe, the proportion of participants experiencing burnout decreased significantly from 51.9% to 38.8% (odds ratio, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.13-0.54). On 10-point scales, the ambient AI scribe was associated with significant improvements in secondary outcomes of burnout (mean [SE] difference, 0.47 [0.12] points), note-related cognitive task load (mean [SE] difference, 2.64 [0.13] points), ability to provide undivided attention (mean [SE] difference, 2.05 [0.18] points), patient understandability of their care plans from reading the notes (mean [SE] difference, −0.44 [0.17] points), ability to add patients to the clinic schedule if urgently needed (mean [SE] difference, 0.51 [0.24] points), and time spent documenting after hours (mean [SE] difference, 0.90 [0.19] hours). Conclusions and Relevance: This multicenter quality improvement study found that use of an ambient AI scribe platform was associated with a significant reduction in burnout, cognitive task load, and time spent documenting, as well as the perception that it could improve patient access to care and increase attention on patient concerns in an ambulatory environment. These findings suggest that AI may help reduce administrative burdens for clinicians and allow more time for meaningful work and professional well-being.</sec
Machine Learning for Anastomotic Leak Prediction in Colorectal Surgery—Between Validation and Clinical Implementation
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Okimono in America and Japan: Rethinking Meiji-period Sculpture and Related Objects
No full textThis dissertation investigates the ambiguous genre of okimono 置物 (lit. placeable objects) of the Meiji period 明治時代 (1868–1912) and their locus in Japanese sculptural history. Before the inception of the genre of chōkoku 彫刻 (tr. sculpture) from the West during the Meiji period, the term okimono was used in Japan to loosely refer to all three-dimensional objects. However, during the late 1800s, Meiji government officials forcibly replaced the word okimono with the Western term sculpture in an effort to prove to the world that Japan, too, produced Fine Arts. As a result of this philosophical and cultural supplantation, many Japanese objects, like okimono, were either recategorized as sculpture or simply displaced. Yet, while remaining a minor term overall, okimono has gained a different reputation in the international sphere. Explicitly, the group of objects known as okimono has begun to be treated as a more formal genre of uniquely Japanese sculpture in America, while in Japan the category remains less distinct. Why is this the case? By investigating okimono, this project attempts to clarify this discrepancy through visual and written examples and to address the consequences of the implantation of Western art categories onto already-existing Japanese aesthetics during this time. Chapter One grapples with the varied definitions of the term okimono found in Japanese and English sources throughout history. The gap between the written official narrative and pragmatic use of the term by artists and the general public contributed to the international ambiguity of the genre. Chapter Two investigates okimono and okimono-like objects through the World’s Fairs. The limited kinds of okimono submitted to the Expositions contributed to the narrowing of the definition of okimono in America, while more monumental sculpture became popular in Japan, replacing okimono as sculpture. Chapter Three will mainly look at okimono traded in the American-Japanese art market from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The existing popularity of ceramic figurines initiated by East Asian trades in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries provided a foundation from which okimono were easily accepted as interior décor in America while remaining a separate genre in Japan. Chapter Four inquiries into the practice of collecting okimono in America. By considering both private and museum collections of these objects in both America and Japan, one can begin to see that private connoisseurs of Asian art have played a larger role in the canonization of okimono in the Euro-Americas. Comparatively, the “canon” of art in Japan during this time was dictated by the Japanese government, and in turn, okimono are now considered crafts in their country of origin
RNA Modifications in Cancer: Insights into Mechanisms and Therapeutic Applications
No full textThe central dogma describes the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to protein. As the intermediary, RNA is a versatile regulator of gene expression. Chemical modifications on RNA, such as N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and pseudouridine (Ψ), profoundly influence RNA fate and function. Dysregulated RNA modifications are frequently observed in cancer, yet their mechanistic contributions to tumorigenesis remain incompletely understood. My PhD research focused on developing technologies and uncovering mechanisms by which RNA modifications regulate cancer biology and may be leveraged for therapeutic development and cancer detection. 1. Development of BIHIND for Ψ detection Ψ occurs in rRNA, tRNA, snRNA, mRNA, and lncRNA. While classical CMC-based Ψ mapping relies on RT-stop analysis, it often causes RNA degradation and requires large RNA input, followed by labor-intensive precipitation steps. To overcome these limitations, I developed BIHIND (Bisulfite Incorporation Hindered ligation-based detection), enabling quantitative and high-throughput Ψ detection without reverse transcription. BIHIND-qPCR quantifies Ψ stoichiometry at single-nucleotide resolution, and BIHIND-seq profiles Ψ transcriptome-wide. We validated BIHIND by monitoring dynamic Ψ changes upon pseudouridine synthase depletion. 2. Mechanistic role of PUS7-mediated Ψ in transcription and CRC apoptosis Although Ψ is known to regulate RNA splicing and translation, its role in transcription was unclear. I discovered that PUS7 catalyzes pseudouridylation of 7SK snRNA, a regulator of RNA polymerase II pausing. Loss of PUS7 reduces Ψ on 7SK, leading to release of P-TEFb, increased Pol II Ser2 phosphorylation, and enhanced transcription elongation. In colorectal cancer (CRC) cells, modulation of 7SK pseudouridylation—either by PUS7 depletion or dCas13b-guided site-specific Ψ editing—induces KLF6/DDIT3-mediated apoptosis and sensitizes cells to 5-FU. 3. Targeted degradation of FTO for AML therapy m6A is the most abundant mRNA modification and is essential for AML stem cell maintenance. We designed FP54, a potent degrader of the m6A eraser FTO based on the inhibitor FB23-2. FP54 selectively degrades FTO and suppresses AML progression in xenograft models more effectively than FB23-2. Mechanistically, FTO loss disrupts ribosome biogenesis and global translation, with especially strong effects on DNA-replication-related mRNAs. These findings support selective degradation of m6A regulators as a therapeutic strategy for AML