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Relativistic Rocket
No full textUsing only the postulates of special relativity, we derive the kinematic equations for a relativistic rocket undergoing constant proper acceleration, obtain closed-form expressions for velocity, position, and proper time, and analyze fuel requirements for exhaust speeds (0.05c and c) and payloads (1.4 and 100 metric tons). Numerical examples illustrate feasibility across interstellar distance between 0 and 20 LY. We conclude that interstellar travel is infeasible without far future technology.Temple University. College of Science and TechnologyMathematic
Peter Logan: Victorian Fetishism [Audio interview]
No full textPeter Logan is the author of Nerves and Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century British Prose (1997) and, more recently, Victorian Fetishism: Intellectuals and Primitives (2009). On May 15, 2012, Fred Rowland interviewed Peter Logan to discuss Victorian Fetishism, which details the development of ideas about the primitive and how these concepts set the boundaries of culture in Victorian Britain. Drawing from Lucretius, Vico, and Auguste Comte, Peter Logan explains how fetishism – the defining feature of culture’s absence – figured in the works of literary and cultural critic Matthew Arnold, realist novelist George Eliot, and anthropologist Edward Tylor.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesEnglishLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Hector Postigo: The Digital Rights Movement [Audio interview]
No full textHector Postigo is the author of The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright, in which he presents three case studies of a broad group of loosely knit organizations and individuals that address issues concerning fair use, free speech, privacy, and innovation in the digital environment. None of these concerns are new but the digital medium has changed the social, legal, and economic configuration in which the stakeholders operate. Users are no longer simply passive receivers of content but producers as well. Anyone with a computer can generate new and original online content, or can reuse and remix content in creative ways. This is a real watershed for creation and innovation and the digital rights movement is motivated by a vision of culture as shared and participatory. Expanded conceptions of fair use and free speech are essential to facilitate this vision. Individuals, organizations, and businesses that “own” content through government-granted copyrights have an interest in maintaining control in their works, for commercial and other reasons. The lines dividing users, creators, and content owners are very fluid, so much of this story is about the evolution of legal rules – government regulation – with regards to copyright and digital technology. By looking at three different cases in which the nascent digital rights movement struggled with the owners and producers of technology and commercial media over the meaning of fair use, free speech, and cultural production, Hector Postigo provides a unique perspective on the profound changes that digital technology has set in motion for cultures, economies, and polities. Fred Rowland interviewed Hector Postigo on December 12, 2013.Klein College of Media and CommunicationTemple University. LibrariesMedia Studies and ProductionLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Miriam Solomon: Making Medical Knowledge [Audio interview]
No full textMiriam Solomon is interested in the scientific and social processes which come together to create medical knowledge. Patients come in all shapes and sizes and their socioeconomic backgrounds vary widely. Basic sciences and clinical practices produce vast amounts of data that are evaluated and interpreted. Often the data are contradictory. Millions of articles, reports, and conference proceedings are published. Pharmaceutical companies experiment and test drugs with an eye to the marketplace. How do doctors come to consensus on the best diagnoses and treatments? In Making Medical Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2015) Miriam Solomon addresses this question. She explains how consensus conferences and evidence-based, translational, and narrative medicine promote differing methodologies and organizational schemas for coming to consensus on medical problems. After analyzing the advantages and limitations of each, she recommends a “developing, untidy, methodological pluralism” for “making medical knowledge.” Miriam Solomon is a professor of Philosophy at Temple University with research interests in philosophy of science, philosophy of medicine, epistemology, gender and science, and bioethics. Fred Rowland interviewed her on December 17, 2015.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesPhilosophyLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
THE ROLE OF ACETYL-COA METABOLISM IN EPIGENETIC REGULATION OF MYOFIBROBLAST DIFFERENTIATION
No full textHeart failure (HF) features excessive extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition and cardiac remodeling mediated by myofibroblasts, a differentiated fibroblast population. Identifying mechanisms of myofibroblast formation and function could yield novel targets to impede or reverse fibrosis. Our lab has demonstrated that metabolic reprogramming involving glutaminolysis in myofibroblasts supports histone demethylation to enable myofibroblast gene expression. However, how acetyl-CoA metabolism regulates histone acetylation in myofibroblasts is unknown. ATP-citrate lyase (ACLY) synthesizes acetyl-CoA to supply de novo lipid synthesis and histone acetylation. We hypothesize that ACLY regulate histone acetylation for chromatin remodeling required for myofibroblast gene expression. We examined the role of ACLY in myofibroblast differentiation with transforming growth factor β (TGFβ)-stimulated cardiac fibroblasts (CFs) and pressure-overload induced cardiac fibrosis in transgenic mouse models. Pharmacological inhibition of ACLY reverted differentiated myofibroblasts under continuous TGFβ stimulation to a more quiescent/non-fibrotic phenotype. Investigation using a mouse model of pressure-overload revealed that loss of ACLY in post-activated, CFs prevented LV functional decline and excessive ECM deposition. Mechanistically, fibrotic stimulation increases ACLY accumulation in the nucleus where its activity is required for the myofibroblast formation. At the chromatin level, ACLY activity controls H3K27ac occupancy at promoters correlated with TGFβ-dependent gene expression and myofibroblast identity. Further, ACLY interacts with the canonical TGFβ-pathway transcription factors SMAD2/3 during TGFβ stimulation, suggesting ACLY is specifically directed to fibrotic gene loci to supply acetyl-CoA for local histone acetylation. Ongoing work is determining the mechanisms regulating ACLY chromatin interactions and whether this enzyme directly regulates chromatin remodeling complexes.Molecular & Cellular Bioscience
Christine Woyshner: Tenth Man Contest [Audio interview]
No full textThe 1930s American South was a region of deep racial segregation as the social norms of white supremacy and the terrorism of lynching kept white and black Americans in separate and unequal spheres. The Commission on Interracial Cooperation was an Atlanta-based initiative of white liberals and black leaders to increase understanding and cooperation between the races. Of its many programs, an essay competition called the Tenth Man Contest encouraged white schools to teach black history and culture. At its height, the contest reached 90 school districts in 23 states. Students participating in this program studied numerous textual sources, engaged in a variety of artistic activities, and visited black schools and businesses. One of the rich legacies of the Tenth Man Contest is an archive of the student papers submitted to the competition. In her article, “‘I feel I am really pleading the cause of my own people’: US southern white students’ study of African-American history and culture in the 1930s through art and the senses” (History of Education, 2018, URL), Professor of Education Christine Woyshner uses this archive to analyze the ways that white high school students understood and interpreted their encounter with the black history, society, and culture. These encounters were often sensuously rich as white students described their visual and aural impressions of African American art, literature, schools and neighborhoods. Fred Rowland interviewed Christine Woyshner about her article on April 30, 2018.Temple University. College of Education and Human DevelopmentTemple University. LibrariesTeaching and LearningLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Derivation of the Hodgkin–Huxley Model
No full textWe derive the Hodgkin–Huxley model from a membrane–circuit analogy and extend it to the one-dimensional cable equation. The membrane is treated as a parallel plate capacitor with conductances for Na+, K+, and leak. The Na+ and K+ pathways use m, h, n voltage-dependent gating. The leak term is ungated with a fixed reversal potential. The aim is a concise, consistent derivation that explicitly links the biophysics to the equations. While many graduate-level texts discuss elements of this derivation, in my experience it is difficult to find a contemporary derivation that is both complete—including the cable extension—and conceptually accessible to undergraduate readers.Temple University. College of Science and TechnologyMathematic
David Wolfsdorf: Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy [Audio interview]
No full textFred Rowland interviewed David Wolfsdorf on June 12, 2013 on his book, Pleasure in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is a professor of philosophy at Temple University specializing in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. This work examines the views of Plato, Aristotle, the Epicureans, the Old Stoics, and the Cyrenaics with regards to pleasure. At the end of this work, he also touches on modern treatments of pleasure in philosophy. For the ancient Greeks an understanding of pleasure was a necessary part of appreciating what constituted the “good life”, an important focus of their ethical and moral theorizing. Professor Wolfsdorf’s previous work includes Trials of Reason: Plato and the Crafting of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2008) and many articles in leading classics and ancient philosophy journals.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesPhilosophyLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Judith Levine: Ain't No Trust [Audio interview]
No full textThe official name of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act makes the legislators’ motivations very clear: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. On signing it, President Clinton fulfilled his campaign pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Clearly fronting personal responsibility and work, the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 came right as the country’s economy was entering an unprecedented boom. The dot.com bubble was in its most expansive stage, with employment tight and wages rising. The “new economy” offered a bright horizon as Internet entrepreneurs would transform the economy and lift all boats on a turbulent but exciting sea. The intent and the rhetoric surrounding the 1996 Welfare Reform Act was consistent with an American tradition of individualism. Looking at low-income individuals from this perspective, they simply lacked either the motivation or the personal characteristics necessary to thrive in our economy. The plan was to establish a program of carrots and sticks to encourage changes in personal behavior. Judith Levine brings a different perspective to this debate in her new book Ain’t No Trust: How Bosses, Boyfriends and Bureaucrats Fail Low-Income Mothers and Why It Matters (University of California Press, 2013). Consistent with an alternative tradition that “no man [or woman] is an island, she is interested in social factors that influence personal behaviors, in this case trust and distrust. Looking at two different cohorts of interviews with low-income women in the Chicago area, one before and one after the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, she studied how trust and distrust emerge and shape low-income mothers approach and response to life events. She feels that this is a perspective lacking from the 1996 Act. Fred Rowland interviewed Judith Levine on February 20, 2014.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesSociologyLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit
Stephen Nepa: The New Urban Dining Room [Audio interview]
No full textCan restaurants serve as a means of urban economic development? Sure seems like Philadelphia is trying, as restaurants proliferate in Center City and environs. If you’re interested in studying this question, I recommend you look at Stephen Nepa’s 2012 dissertation, There Used to be Nowhere to Eat in this Town: restaurant-led development in postindustrial Philadelphia, available through the Temple University Libraries’ digital collections.
You can also read Stephen Nepa’s article in Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (Fall 2011), “The New Urban Dining Room: Sidewalk Cafes in Postindustrial Philadelphia”. With over 300 sidewalk cafes opening up since the late 1990s, this is an important urban phenomenon that deserves study. Why such an explosion? Why did it take so long? What does it mean for the future of our city? Fred Rowland interviewed Stephen Nepa on July 19, 2012 about Philadelphia's new urban dining room.Temple University. College of Liberal ArtsTemple University. LibrariesHistoryLearning and Research ServicesAudacityAudacit