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A practical guide to coding line-by-line trace gas absorption in Earth's atmosphere
No full textWe present two new open-source codes, in the C language, for simulation of the line-by-line molecular (gas) absorption in the solar spectral region with wavelengths up to ∼2500 (nm). The first one, gcell, simulates absorption spectroscopy in a gas cell for a given length of the cell, temperature, and pressure. The second one, aspect, is for spectroscopy in Earth's atmosphere - a common need for remote sensing applications. Both use the HITRAN database for line shape (Voigt) modeling. Aspect adapts height variations of the thermodynamic parameters (profiles) from MODTRAN. Separate discussion of the gas cell and the atmospheric modes simplifies software development, documentation, and support, and ultimately the transfer of knowledge between generations of scientists. These are the main goals of the current paper. Despite the existence of numerous computer programs for absorption spectroscopy, the code development process is poorly covered in literature. As a result, it is difficult for a non-developer to confidently modify an existing code or create a new tool within a reasonable amount of time.This work received no target funding (see Conclusion: last paragraph). However, the work of S. Korkin was partially supported by NASA Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) mission; the work of A. Lyapustin and S. Korkin was partially supported by NASA VIIRS, DSCOVR, and PACE programs via respective ROSES proposals (PI: A. Lyapustin); the work of A. M. Sayer and A. Ibrahim was partially supported by NASA PACE Project Science.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002240732500007
Chemosensory tobacco product toxicology part 2: toxicological testing, assays, and state of the science
No full textThe toxicologic impacts on the normative function of the chemosensory system and the loss of its contribution to organism protection and homeostasis remain an underrepresented area of interest in the published literature. The impact of chemical constituents in electronic nicotine delivery system e-liquids or aerosols on the chemosensory system is even less known, as are the effects on product selection and use behavior—and this may be an overlooked impact on the public health. This review is a snapshot of the current state of the science and opportunities for improving and increasing the volume of publications in chemosensory toxicology on the potential impacts of tobacco products. The proposed solutions rely on the determination of the scientific community to take advantage of an unexplored field of opportunity. Active research engagement and use of an integrative, risk-driven planning framework to address harmonization and data gaps in neurosensory research programs would support harmonization, improve scientific visibility in the published literature, and recruit additional investigators to this research community.This paper is a collaborative project by the Center for Coordination of Analytics, Science, Enhancement and Logistics (CASEL) in the Tobacco Regulatory Science Toxicity Special Interest Group (SIG), which is supported, in part, by the CASEL cooperative agreement U54DA046060 (National Institute of Drug Abuse [NIDA] and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products [FDA CTP]). Support for authors was also provided by NIH and FDA CTP awards including U54DA046060 (AMS), U54DA036151 (SVJ), U54CA228110 (IR), 1R21DA050852-01 and 1R01DA057687 (RR), as well as the University of Maryland Baltimore Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) Accelerated Translational Incubator Pilot Program (ATIP) Pilot Grant (WL).https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/advance-article/doi/10.1093/toxsci/kfaf091/821191
Scenes at the Stakes: Black Cemetery Citizenship and Grave Matters at Palmetto Cemetery
No full textThis capstone manuscript explores what it means to practice Black cemetery citizenship at
burial grounds established informally through community care, yet burdened by the legacies of
structural racism and systemic dispossession. Situated at Palmetto Cemetery, a historic African
American burial ground in Columbia, South Carolina, this work moves beyond conventional
preservation frameworks to center the radical care work descendants and community members
perform to sustain memory, place, and responsibility. It traces the ongoing return of
descendants to the cemetery and looks to better understand the threats and challenges
impacting its perpetual care. Framed through a series of narrative scenes, it takes readers to the
“stakes”—to the physical, emotional, and cultural ground where the living stand in relation to
the dead, confronting what has been lost, what remains, and what must be reclaimed.
Building on the theoretical lineages of the break (Moten) and the wake (Sharpe), this work
reclaims the stake as the living tension between disappearance and reclamation, between flight
and return. A Black cemetery citizenship praxis emerges as a revisionary practice that
illuminates the stakes, holding ground, linking generations, and refusing cultural loss—not
simply to fix the past, but to create space for Black cultural life to come. Through descendant
interviews, fieldwork, and personal narrative, it calls attention to the grave matters that surface
when Black burial grounds are treated as invisible and argues for descendant-defined practices
of care as a form of truth, justice, and reconciliation practice.
By bringing the interdependent labors of descendants into conversation with Black studies,
critical heritage, and cultural sustainability theory, this manuscript positions cemetery
citizenship as a critical, regenerative practice—not only for tending the dead but for reclaiming
Black presence, place, and futurity
Adaptive Constrained ICA with Mixing Matrix Column Constraints: Application to fMRI Data
No full text2025 59th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), Baltimore, MD, 19-21 March 2025Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a powerful data-driven method that has been widely applied in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data analysis to uncover underlying sources. An attractive way to boost ICA performance is via constraints to guide ICA factors to be similar to user-supplied "references", allowing incorporation of prior-knowledge into the factorization. However, most of existing constrained ICA methods typically only impose source constraints and are unable to impose constraints on the mixing matrix. With multi-subject medical imaging datasets, constraining the mixing matrix with subjects’ symptom-related measurements, such as clinical scores or cognitive variables, enhances the algorithm’s ability to identify brain activities associated with these symptoms. This offers a novel perspective for understanding the pathologies underlying various psychiatric disorders. Therefore, to overcome the limitations of existing constrained ICA algorithms, we introduce a new constrained ICA algorithm: adaptive-reverse constrained matrix entropy bound minimization (arc-M-EBM), which imposes constraints on the mixing matrix and uses adaptive-reverse thresholding to avoid overfitting or underfitting. This approach ensures flexibility and leads to more accurate and interpretable source separation. Simulations demonstrate that arc-M-EBM outperforms traditional ICA methods. Application to resting-state fMRI data from 176 subjects from healthy controls and patients reveals significant relationships between constrained components and clinical measures, enhancing our understanding of brain-behavior relationships.This work was supported in part by grants NSF 2316420, NIH R01MH118695, NIH R01MH123610, and NIH R01AG073949.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1094469
A Second Shot, A True Crime Episode
No full textOn October 23, 1971, Deputy Sheriff James T. Hall was killed in the parking lot of Manor Country Club, the center of a wealthy golf course community between the city of Rockville and Olney, MD. The case remained unsolved for 50 years, until 2021, when cold case detectives finally took another look at the urging of Hall's daughter, Carolyn Philo, who had long moved to Dallas, Texas, where she told the story of her father’s murder to her doctor, Michael Weissberg, a moonlighting crime writer. As cold case detectives pursued neglected leads, Weissberg began writing the book. Weissberg joined Sunil Dasgupta to talk about the recently-published book, A Second Shot: https://a.co/d/9rHb3cp. Music by Silver Spring power pop band, The Airport77s.https://open.spotify.com/episode/4jH3Uo8ECw0p26KhekS91
The Social Science of Life in College w/ Dr. Arielle Kuperberg
No full textOn today’s episode I speak with Dr. Arielle Kuperberg, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health at UMBC. Dr. Kuperberg is also the co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families.https://socialscience.umbc.edu/episode-64
Single solitons and intermode breathing solitons in MgF₂ microresonators
No full textIntermode breathers can be triggered by the avoided mode crossings in microresonators. Here, we numerically and experimentally explore the breather and single soliton regimes as the pump-power and pump-cavity detuning vary. Below a pump-power threshold, a single soliton regime is obtained within a detuning range. Above this threshold, an intermode breather section emerges, resulting in a soliton-breather-soliton pattern in which the system transits from a stable soliton to a breathing soliton and back to a stable soliton as the detuning increases.This paper is based upon work supported by, or in part by, the Army Research Laboratory and the Army Research Office under Contract or Grant No. W911NF2210131. Also, the work in this paper is partially supported by a project sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through Cooperative Agreement Award No. HQ0034-20-2-0007 under NCMS’s Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) program. Project participants include the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, commonly referred to as DEVCOM ARL. In addition, this research was partially sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and was accomplished under Grant No. W911NF-23-1-0166.https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/bkzf-65q
My Body, My Birth; How Choice in Perinatal Care Supports Cultural Wellbeing
No full textThere’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to birth planning.
This thesis includes gathered stories of, and reflections from, birthing people (mothers) on their experiences in childbirth planning and perinatal care and on the role agency played in those experiences. It draws on historic childbirth practices in the United States and the case study of Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwifery Center as a framework of norms expressed and encountered in some birthing communities and cultures. This paper aims to be a supportive and informative piece of literature for those preparing to give birth and planning their birth experiences. As part of academic and applied work in cultural sustainability, one objective is to support mothers navigating birth planning in the United States, especially in times of globalization and the medicalization of birth practices. It aims to help readers better understand how agency in birth planning affects cultural wellbeing. This capstone illuminates the intersectionality of birth planning with identity, culture and personal power.
Discussions carried out through ethnographic interviews focused on how mothers’ experiences affected their cultural wellbeing. Themes discussed by participants included an interest in educating themselves on the science of birth; the need for cultivating supportive teams in perinatal care such as with doulas, midwives, partners and obstetrics teams (and finding those teams by whatever means necessary, even if it meant changing teams midway through pregnancy); and using statistics to be well-informed about procedures and the risks associated with them.
Mixed methodologies were employed for this capstone, including storytelling, auto-ethnographic reflections, and decolonization frameworks. I was inspired by the academic framework of Indigenous methodologies presented by Margaret Kovach in her book, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts, with an emphasis on the Nêhiÿaw Kiskêÿihtamowin epistemology that asserts a foundation of “giving back to community” (Kovach 2009, 11). Using these values to guide the work, this project seeks to support communities of birth workers and those preparing to give birth through the future development of a website to host notable themes from the interviews and research. I interviewed friends who gave birth, with whom I shared a deep rapport, constructed over years of raw girl talk. In interviewing friends, I employed “friendship as methodology” (Owton and Allen-Collinson 2014, 284), which breaks down the traditional hierarchy of participant and researcher into an approach that feels less hegemonic and less rigid. This methodology reflects ideas presented by Kovach in creating a basket of knowledge to learn from and centering all inside that space, without a hierarchy of value given to any one idea (Kovach 2009, 45). All ideas shared by participants are viewed as contributing the same value to informal knowledge sharing, through storytelling. What resonates from hearing these stories is unique for everybody, and exemplifies the use of agency in those moments of learning.
I also explored the history of U.S. birthing practices over the course of 50 years from 1971 to 2021, to provide meaning and an understanding of social movements in U.S. birthing communities, especially those focused on the natural birth movement. I drew on Gaskin’s work with The Farm Midwifery Center as research material, such as first-hand accounts of births in her book, Spiritual Midwifery, focused on using a mind-body connection for mothers. Midwifery practices inform the assistance at The Farm Midwifery Center, which focuses on supporting women’s agency throughout all stages of pregnancy and delivery. Gaskin’s work emphasizes supporting the natural birth movement and the idea that little medical intervention is needed in the natural process of birth, especially for a low-risk birth. Through observational learning and midwifery perinatal care, Gaskin and The Farm Midwifery Center became a hub of information and experience for unmedicated birthing communities. Sharing first-hand birthing stories in published books, talks, documentaries and international events, Gaskin demonstrates the positive influence that storytelling can have on supporting the mind-body connection of a mother (Gaskin 2011, 254). It is through this informal sharing of knowledge that learning about varying aspects of childbirth can occur. By listening to a multitude of experiences from the source -mothers who have experienced childbirth- other mothers may design their own comprehensive approach to childbirth, through learning from these stories. By understanding possible experiences, the act of sharing stories can lead to a greater sense of agency in childbirth planning. Thus, I believe storytelling has a deeper value than just sharing histories, but in sharing experiences, mothers can be confident in outcomes they may encounter.
Storytelling, in this method, supports agency in choice, through understanding the myriad of possibilities in childbirth planning. Agency can be foundational to culture, through supporting cultural diversity and cultural wellbeing by the unique choices made by individuals. Narrative reflections shared in participant interviews displayed that cultural heritage and traditions may influence decisions made in birth planning, but do not predetermine how agency and cultural wellbeing are experienced in U.S. perinatal care. Storytelling proved to be a powerful tool for sharing personal anecdotes and reflecting on birth planning. Themes expressed by participants include having a supportive team, learning the science and anatomy of birth, including statistics on risks associated with procedures, self-advocacy and role fear (and thus stress) played in these experiences.
Recommendations to the field of perinatal care include supporting the mind-body connection, desires of the birthing person, and the natural flow of low-risk pregnancy (Sasser 2025) to support cultural wellbeing of birthing individuals. Through the creation of a website to host findings from this research and interviews, the goal is to support others in their agency, cultural wellbeing, and positive birth planning experiences, through the field of cultural sustainability
AI for Climate Change and Sustainability
No full textClimate change stands as one of the most significant existential threats of the 21st century, with far-reaching impacts on ecosystems, economies, and the well-being of humanity. Despite the existence of global awareness and policy frameworks, such as the Paris Agreement, efforts for effective mitigation and adaptation are still progressing at a slow and inadequate pace. In this landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative technology that holds the potential to tackle climate-related challenges on a large scale. This paper investigates the ways in which AI can aid in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability across diverse sectors. We start by delving into the scientific foundations and socioeconomic ramifications of climate change to establish a comprehensive understanding of the crisis at hand. Following this, we examine the contributions of AI in various areas, including climate modeling, predictive analytics, early warning systems, agricultural practices, land management, and disaster response mechanisms. Case studies from the real world illustrate successful applications of AI in fields such as renewable energy management, intelligent urban infrastructure, and ecosystem monitoring. Nevertheless, we also critically assess the shortcomings of existing AI systems, with particular emphasis on challenges related to data quality, algorithmic bias, and ethical considerations in deployment. The paper advocates for the advancement of AI systems that are less biased, more inclusive, and incorporate human judgment, ensuring alignment with planetary health objectives and supporting informed decision-making in regions that are particularly vulnerable. By integrating developments in AI and climate science, this research provides a multi-faceted perspective on how intelligent systems can enhance climate resilience and sustainability initiatives. While AI alone is not a panacea, when developed with care and applied ethically, it can be instrumental in fostering a more sustainable future.https://zenodo.org/records/1571649
Data-Driven Techniques for Inference in Large-Scale fMRI Datasets: Homogeneous Subgroup Identification and Multi-Subject Analysis
No full textThe availability of large-scale, open-source neuroimaging datasets has significantly expanded opportunities for brain research. By jointly analyzing multisubject data from such repositories, researchers can draw group inferences across cohorts, enhance our understanding of brain function, and identify potential biomarkers or subtypes of different disorders. Additionally, large-scale datasets facilitate the detection of subtle effects that may not be statistically discernible in smaller cohorts. However, analyzing such data poses challenges due to high dimensionality, inter-subject variability, and the computational demands of existing methods, which grow with dataset size. While these frameworks are designed to effectively capture subject differences, their computational cost increases as the number of subjects grows. This dissertation addresses these challenges by developing data-driven techniques that efficiently analyze large-scale datasets, extract meaningful and reproducible features, and optimize computational performance. Using multi-subject resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) as a case study, we demonstrate the effectiveness of these methods in applications such as homogeneous subgroup identification and biomarker detection. Our proposed techniques preserve subject variability while maintaining computational efficiency, enabling the identification of clinically meaningful subgroups and biomarkers from various large psychiatric cohorts. We begin by introducing foundational concepts in fMRI data analysis and commonly used techniques such as blind source separation (BSS) and joint BSS (JBSS) methods. We provide studies of subgroup identification from multi-subject rs-fMRI data, highlighting the advantages of JBSS techniques in preserving subject variability. We propose to model the cross-functional network information as a multiplex network and enhance the subgroup identification performance by taking the multi-dimensional information into account. To address computational complexity limitations of the current JBSS methods, we develop methods that enhance computational efficiency while preserving subject variability. These techniques position data-driven and model-driven approaches as two ends of a spectrum, seeking an optimal balance in between by either flexible constraint selection schemes or a representative coreset strategy. Furthermore, we extend the coreset concept to higher-dimensional data, developing an efficient tensor-based method for complex fMRI research tasks such as dynamic functional network analysis over time. We conclude by summarizing our proposed large-scale data analysis techniques and providing guidelines for selecting appropriate methods based on specific research needs