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Chimerica: Disorienting Politics
No full textDelores Phillips and Cultural Studies Association’s Globalization and Culture Working Group Co-Host Kathalene Razzano discuss Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements (University of Michigan Press, 2024) with author Fan Yang, along with writer and historian Mark Tseng-Putterman. This podcast is accompanied by a scholarly commentary by Marcus Breen.https://csalateral.org/podcasts/positions/chimerica-disorienting-politics
Design as Hope: Reimagining Futures for Seemingly Doomed Problems
No full textDesign has the power to cultivate hope, especially in the face of seemingly intractable societal challenges. This one-day workshop explores how design methodologies -- ranging from problem reframing to participatory, speculative, and critical design -- can empower research communities to drive meaningful real-world changes. By aligning design thinking with hope theory -- framework of viewing hope as "goal-directed," "pathways," and "agentic" thinking processes -- we aim to examine how researchers can move beyond focusing on harm mitigation and instead reimagine alternative futures. Through hands-on activities, participants will engage in problem reframing, develop a taxonomy of design methods related to hope, and explore how community-driven design approaches can sustain efforts toward societal and individual hope. The workshop also interrogates the ethical and practical boundaries of leveraging hope in design research. By the end of the session, participants will leave with concrete strategies for integrating a hopeful design approach into their research, as well as a network for ongoing collaboration. Ultimately, we position hopeful design not just as a practical tool for action and problem-solving but as a catalyst for cultivating resilience and envisioning transformative futures.https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.0758
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
Besties with bots: GenAI as a lesson plan evaluator for preservice teachers
No full textIn this study, two literacy teacher educators developed a lesson plan activity to be completed during a focus group interview. Protocols for the focus group were developed using the AI literacy framework. The purpose of the study was to explore preservice teachers’ (PSTs) interactions with GenAI and how GenAI functioned as evaluators of their lesson plans. Analysis revealed PSTs’ varying levels of engagement with the chatbots, highlighting the need for teacher educators to guide effective communication with GenAI technologies. Additionally, PSTs found chatbots’ feedback helpful, viewing them as “besties.” Results showed a blend of human and machine feedback offered significant implications for teacher educators, suggesting the potential benefits of integrating blended feedback systems in teacher preparation programs.This study was sponsored by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at East Tennessee State University. Weappreciate the department for paying the participants to attend the focus group interviews.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21532974.2025.2474932?src
Chemotaxis of Drosophila Border Cells is Modulated by Tissue Geometry Through Dispersion of Chemoattractants
No full textMigratory cells respond to graded concentrations of diffusible chemoattractants in vitro, but how complex tissue geometries in vivo impact chemotaxis is poorly understood. To address this, we studied the Drosophila border cells. Live-imaged border cells varied in their chemotactic migration speeds, which correlated positionally with distinct architectures. We then developed a reduced mathematical model to determine how chemoattractant distribution is affected by tissue architecture. Larger extracellular volumes locally dampened the chemoattractant gradient and, when coupled with an agent-based motion of the cluster, reduced cell speeds. This suggests that chemoattractant levels vary by tissue architectures, informing cell migration behaviors locally, which we tested in vivo. Genetically elevating chemoattractant levels slowed migration in specific architectural regions, while mutants with spacious tissue structure rescued defects from high chemoattractant levels, promoting punctual migration. Our results highlight the interplay between tissue geometry and the local distribution of signaling molecules to orchestrate cell migration.We acknowledge funding from NSF DMS #1953423 to B.E.P. and M.S.-G., NSF IOS #2303587 to M.S.-G. and MERCK SHARP and DOHM LLC funding for N.A. For providing commercial fly stocks, we thank the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center (NIH P40OD018537) and we thank Dr. Trudi Dr. Schupbach for gifting us critical mutant fly lines. We thank FlyBase (release € FB2024_05)56 for all their resourceshttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422500219
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Phase I Final Report -- A Lunar Long-Baseline UV/Optical Imaging Interferometer: Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI)
No full textThis report presents the findings of a NIAC Phase I feasibility study for the Artemis-enabled Stellar Imager (AeSI), a proposed high-resolution, UV/Optical interferometer designed for deployment on the lunar surface. Its primary science goal is to image the surfaces and interiors of stars with unprecedented detail, revealing new details about their magnetic processes and dynamic evolution and enabling the creation of a truly predictive solar/stellar dynamo model. This capability will transform our understanding of stellar physics and has broad applicability across astrophysics, from resolving the cores of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) to studying supernovae, planetary nebulae, and the late stages of stellar evolution. By leveraging the stable vacuum environment of the Moon and the infrastructure being established for the Artemis Program, AeSI presents a compelling case for a lunar-based interferometer. In this study, the AeSI Team, working with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Integrated Design Center (IDC), has firmly established the feasibility of building and operating a reconfigurable, dispersed aperture telescope (i.e., an interferometer) on the lunar surface. The collaboration produced a credible Baseline design featuring 15 primary mirrors arranged in an elliptical array with a 1 km major axis, with the potential to expand to 30 mirrors and larger array sizes through staged deployments. Additionally, this study identified numerous opportunities for optimization and the necessary trade studies to refine the design further. These will be pursued in follow-up investigations, such as a NIAC Phase II study, to advance the concept toward implementation.https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2503.0210
Spatiotemporal Patterns of Subsidence and Sea Level Rise in the Samoan Islands 15 Years After the 2009 Samoa-Tonga Earthquake
No full textFifteen years after the 2009 Samoa-Tonga earthquake, rates of subsidence on the Samoan Islands remain elevated compared with pre-earthquake levels. Coastal flooding has become a regular occurrence, increasing coastal erosion, risk of saltwater intrusion in freshwater aquifers, and threats to critical infrastructure. There is an urgent need to characterize ongoing trends in local and regional subsidence and constrain future behavior to inform the development of effective coastal resilience measures. Here, we have leveraged a multi-sensor, multi-frequency remote sensing suite to track changes in subsidence rates on the islands of Upolu (Samoa) and Tutuila (American Samoa). Our updated GPS/GNSS and tide gauge/altimetry records elucidate subsidence relaxation trends since the earthquake, and our analysis of high-resolution InSAR data from the Sentinel-1 mission—overcoming difficulties presented by vegetated terrain and small landmass sizes—reveal an unprecedented view of local subsidence in the Samoan Islands. These local signals need to be accounted for in coastal planning, including for the development of updated flooding thresholds that are relevant to the Samoan Islands and that account for spatial heterogeneities in subsidence. Overall, we find that subsidence on Upolu has nearly returned to pre-earthquake levels; meanwhile, subsidence on Tutuila will likely continue for a few more decades but ease more quickly than previously predicted. Both of these trends should alleviate previously anticipated pressures associated with high subsidence coupled with sea level rise.S A Huang s work was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center administered by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities ORAU under contract with NASA and previously administered by the Universities Space Research Association USRA until February 2022 Project support was provided for J Sauber R Ray E Fielding and S C Han from NASA s Coastal land change due to earthquakes and implications for sea level rise in the Samoan Islands 19 ESI119 0027 Part of the research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 80NM0018D0004 We also acknowledge the use of Copernicus Sentinel data 2015 2023 retrieved from ASF DAAC 21 November 2023 processed by ESA Original ALOS 2 radar images are copyright 2015 2021 by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA and were provided under JAXA ALOS RA6 project 3278 and the JAXA free ALOS 2 data program The authors are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers associate editor and editor Satoshi Ide for providing constructive feedback that has significantly improved the manuscript The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies either expressed or implied of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA or the U S Government The U S Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation hereinhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2024JB02976
Synthetic Generation of Dynamic Omics Data Demonstrates Aspergillus nidulans BrlA Paradoxical Wall Stress Response
No full textWe propose a method to generate additional dynamic omics trajectories which could support pathway analysis methods such as enrichment analysis, genetic programming, and machine learning. Using long short-term memory neural networks, we can effectively predict an organism’s dynamic response to a stimulus based on an initial dataset with relatively few samples. We present both an in silico proof of principle, based on a model that simulates viral propagation, and an in vitro case study, tracking the dynamics of Aspergillus nidulans’ BrlA transcript in response to antifungal agent micafungin. Our silico experiment was conducted using a highly noisy dataset with only 25 replicates. This proof of principle shows that this method can operate on biological datasets, which often have high variance and few replicates. Our in silico validation achieved a maximum R² value of approximately 0.95 on our highly noisy, stochastically simulated data. Our in vitro validation achieves an R² of 0.71. As with any machine learning application, this method will work better with more data; however, both of our applications attain acceptable validation metrics with very few biological replicates. The in vitro experiments also revealed a novel paradoxical dose-response effect: transcriptional upregulation by Aspergillus nidulans BrlA is highest at an intermediate dose of 10 ng/mL and is reduced at both higher and lower concentrations of micafungin.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2006190 and No. 2006189.https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.02.638868v
Bayesian Inference for High-dimensional Time Series with a Directed Acyclic Graphical Structure
No full textIn multivariate time series analysis, understanding the underlying causal relationships among variables is often of interest for various applications. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) provide a powerful framework for representing causal dependencies. This paper proposes a novel Bayesian approach for modeling multivariate time series where conditional independencies and causal structure are encoded by a DAG. The proposed model allows structural properties such as stationarity to be easily accommodated, and further does not assume any pre-specified parent-child ordering. Given the application, we further extend the model for matrix-variate time series. We take a Bayesian approach to inference, and a “projection-posterior” based efficient computational algorithm is developed. The posterior convergence properties of the proposed method are established along with two identifiability results for the unrestricted structural equation models. The utility of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulation studies and real data analysis.The authors would like to thank the National Science Foundation for the Collaborative Research Grants DMS-2210280 (for Subhashis Ghosal), DMS-2210281 (for Anindya Roy), and DMS-2210282
(for Arkaprava Roy).https://arxiv.org/html/2503.23563v
An X-ray view of the Cataclysmic Variable V902 Mon: Discovery of an X-ray eclipse
No full textV902 Mon is one of a few eclipsing Intermediate Polars (IPs), and show deep eclipses in the optical lightcurves. The presence of a strong Fe Kα fluorescence line in its X-ray spectrum and its low X-ray flux compared to other IPs suggests significant absorption, most likely from an accretion disk. In an observation carried out using the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), we confirm the presence of an X-ray eclipse in the energy resolved lightcurves, coincident with the optical AAVSO/CV-band lightcurves. Broadband X-ray spectral analysis using NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations confirm a strong absorption N H ∼10 ²³ cm⁻² local to the source, along with a high equivalent width of about 0.7 keV for a Fe Kα fluorescence line. We interpret this using a model similar to an Accretion Disk Corona source, which have a very high inclination and the compact object is heavily obscured by the body of the accretion disk. We propose that the primary X-rays from the accretion column in V902 Mon is hidden from our direct view at all times by the accretion disk. In this scenario, the observed scattered X-rays indicate substantial absorption of direct X-rays by the accretion disk. Additionally, a strong Fe fluorescence line suggests reprocessing of the radiation by a more extended region, such as the pre-shock region, which could be located a few white dwarf radii above the orbital plane.This work was supported by NASA grant 80NSSC21K0022 and RSA No. 1698067. The scientific results reported here are based on observations made by the NuSTAR X-ray observatory, and we thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software, and Calibration teams for scheduling and the execution of these observations. This research has made use of NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS) jointly developed by the ASI Science Science Data Center (ASDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology. This research has made use of data and/or software provided by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), which is a service of the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC. This research makes use of the SciServer science platform (www.sciserver.org). SciServer is a collaborative research environment for large-scale data-driven science. It is being developed at, and administered by, the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science at Johns Hopkins University. SciServer is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) program and others, as well as by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. We have extracted archival data from the XMM-Newton Science Archive and the data analysis was performed with the XMM-Newton SAS. We acknowledge with thanks the variable star observations from the AAVSO International Database contributed by observers worldwide and used in this research.http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.1050