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A HISTORY AND ETHNOGRAPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN EL SALVADOR: PURSUITS OF JUSTICE AND GUARANTEES OF NON-RECURRENCE
No full textEl Salvador underwent a Civil War that lasted from 1980 to 1992 which resulted in severe human rights abuses followed by a series of processes to transition to peace through employing transitional justice mechanisms. After the war, several injustices committed have yet to receive a meaningful response. Through the “War on Gangs,” the ruling elite have steered the judicial system towards “punitive populism” by scapegoating the socially and economically underprivileged populations in exchange for political gain. This approach to organized crime comes at the cost of legal rights of all Salvadorans and exacerbates precarious positions of many in the country, treating the symptoms of socioeconomic disparity without addressing the root causes. This research investigates the current and ongoing transitional justice processes, challenges that human rights defenders face in their line of work, and the current challenges in the realm of human rights
Open Inventories of Rainfall-Triggered Landslides
No full textLandslide inventories support both post-event response and predictive model evaluation, but it remains challenging to create public, current, comprehensive, and accurate landside inventories. In response to this need, thousands of rainfall-triggered landslides were mapped and organized within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Cooperative Open-Online Landslide Repository (COOLR), which contains over 11,000 landslide reports from the Global Landslide Catalog. Recently, 22 inventories containing thousands of rainfall-triggered landslides have been added to COOLR, which was re-organized to better accommodate large landslide inventories. All the data are available on the “Landslide Viewer” web application, which also shows referenced and imported landslide inventories from other researchers. The new inventories are each connected to a landslide-triggering rainfall event, and therefore their date of occurrence was usually known. Landslide events were found by searching through credible sources or due to an external request for support during a disaster response. In either case, high-resolution imagery was utilized to digitize the landslides in the region. The resulting data can be used for various purposes, such as model training and validation. To demonstrate their potential, satellite precipitation was analyzed with reference to the new inventories. The precipitation analysis highlights the potential of daily satellite precipitation estimates in areas with limited ground precipitation observations. Some of the heavy precipitation events were underestimated, but many were captured and could inform future landslide hazard assessment.This research is supported by the PMM Science Team (NNH21ZDA001N PMMST, 21-PMMST21-0046) and the NASA Disasters Program (NNH18ZDA001N DISASTERS, 18-DISASTER18-0022).https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/2025000758
"A Double-Edged Sword": Practitioners’ Perspectives on Social VR for ADHD
No full text27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, October 26-29, 2025, Denver, ColoradoSocial Virtual Reality (VR) is emerging as a promising technology for individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). However, we still need to explore how practitioners perceive and envision its integration into their clinical practice. This study presents findings from semi-structured interviews with six practitioners (clinicians, therapists, and clinical professors) experienced in ADHD and VR interventions. Our findings reveal practitioners see significant therapeutic potential in social VR for supporting cognitive skills, impulse control, and creating emotionally safe environments. However, they also highlight challenges, including difficulties with social communication in VR, ensuring skill transfer to real-life, and managing overstimulation.https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3663547.375971
XRISM/Xtend Transient Search (XTS) detected an X-ray flare from XRISM J0534-6600 in BSDL 2344 region of LMC
No full textAuthors: Y. Terada (Saitama U., JAXA), K. Fukushima, Y. Kanemaru, S. Ogawa (JAXA), M. Audard (U. de Geneve), E. Behar (Technion), S. Inoue (Kyoto U.), Y. Ishihara (Chuo U.), T. Kohmura (TUS), Y. Maeda (JAXA), H. Matsumoto (Osaka U.), M. Mizumoto (UTEF), K. Mori (U. of Miyazaki), N. Nagashima (Chuo U.), M. Nobukawa (NUE), H. Noda (Tohoku U.), K. Pottschmidt (UMBC, NASA GSFC, CRESST), M. Shidatsu (Ehime U.), H. Sugai (Chuo U.), T. Takagi (Ehime U.), H. Takahashi (Hiroshima U.), Y. Terashima (Ehime U.), Y. Tsuboi (Chuo U.), H. Uchida (Kyoto U.), T. Yoneyama (Chuo U.), M. Yoshimoto (Ehime U.), S. Katsuda (Saitama. U)XRISM/Xtend Transient Search (XTS) detected an X-ray flare from BSDL 2344 region in Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) on 2025-05-30 TT. The source position is determined to be (R.A., Dec.) = (83.570, -66.008), with a systematic error of ∼ 40 arcsec. Plausible counterparts are X-ray sources 4XMM J053423.3-660024 or 1eRASS J053423.5-660030. All statistical uncertainties in this report are provided as a 90% confidence level unless stated otherwise.
XRISM/XTS detected the flare at the peak time on 2025-05-30 at ∼ 15:56 TT, and the flare decayed in ∼ 4,000 sec. The peak flux is calculated as 3 × 10⁻¹³ erg s⁻¹ cm⁻² (0.4 – 10.0 keV). A systematic error of roughly 20% should be added to the statistical error. The corresponding luminosity is 3 × 10³⁴ erg s⁻¹ by assuming the distance at 50 kpc in LMC.
We derived the above systematic error for the flux by comparing our derived values for the sources detected with XTS in several observations with those for the corresponding X-ray counterparts. We estimated the systematic error for the source position from the separations between the detected sources with the corresponding counterparts in the same field of view.https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=1721
Recent Advances in Aerosol Optical Depth Measurements in Polar Regions: Insights from the Polar-AOD Program
No full textA multi-year analysis of aerosol optical depth (AOD, τ) and Ångström exponent (α) was conducted using ground-based photometer data from 15 Arctic and 11 Antarctic sites. Extending the dataset of Tomasi et al. 2015 through December 2024, the study incorporates stellar and lunar photometric observations to fill data gaps during the polar night. Daily mean values of τ at 0.500 μm and α (0.440–0.870 μm) were used to derive monthly means and seasonal histograms.
In the Arctic, persistent haze events in winter and early spring lead to peak τ values. A decreasing trend in Arctic τ suggests the impact of European emission regulations, while biomass-burning aerosols are becoming more significant. In Antarctica, τ increases from the plateau to the coast. Fine-mode aerosols dominate in summer-autumn, while coarse-mode particles are more prevalent in winter-spring. Shipborne photometer data align well with ground-based measurements, confirming the reliability of mobile observations.
Trend analyses using the Mann-Kendall test and Theil-Sen regression indicate a significant negative trend in τ at Andenes (-2.43 % per year), likely driven by reduced anthropogenic emissions. Antarctic stations such as Syowa and South Pole show positive trends (+3.84 % and +3.54 % per year), though these are subject to uncertainties from data limitations and instrument changes.
This work contributes to the Polar-AOD network (https://polaraod.net/; last access 15/05/2025), enhancing the understanding of aerosol variability and long-term trends in polar regions while promoting open data access for the scientific community.This work was supported by COST Action CA21119 Harmonia: International network for harmonisation of atmospheric aerosol retrievals from ground based photometers, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2527
Disability Intimacy in HCI: Defining a Community-driven Research Agenda
No full textThe 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, October 26-29, 2025, Denver, ColoradoIntimacy is a complex, multifaceted subject of importance within disability rights movements. Disabled individuals are entitled to the same universal human rights (e.g., marriage, sexual and reproductive self-determination) as everyone else. Assistive measures that support equity in their personal lives remain central to these movements. However, the research community’s relatively narrow focus of what "intimacy" is (i.e., primarily concerned with sex) combined with factors, such as context, cultural sensitivities, power dynamics and complex ethics, has resulted in its limited exploration in HCI Accessibility Research. Among the relatively small body of HCI literature, most works approach disabled intimacies through a primarily defcit-oriented and heteronormative lens. Notably, ASSETS has featured only two papers on this subject in the past 23 years [53]. Moreover, few studies in HCI explore the methodological and ethical considerations of researching disabled intimacies, and even fewer are disability-led and include queer perspectives [53]. In this half-day virtual workshop, we invite engineers, technology design and development researchers, industry practitioners, accessibility advocates, as well as anyone with disabled and/or queer lived experiences to discuss potential avenues to expand research in Disability Intimacy within HCI. Our goal is to better defne what this novel research feld could look like, facilitate connections between individuals interested in exploring it, and contribute to its overall visibility and expansion.https://www.experiencing-access.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Disability_Intimacy_Workshop_Proposal.pd
The Moon Plan to Condition State Aid for School Construction on Capacity Utilization
No full textSchool construction money is never enough and Maryland has reported 80 percent of its school buildings are unreliable and or in need of repair. Sunil Dasgupta talks with the state’s House Majority Leader David Moon about his plan to link state aid for school construction to how efficiently counties use existing school capacity, encouraging school boards to change attendance boundaries before they build new. Music by Drew Pictures and the Lead Extras.https://open.spotify.com/episode/1PUzdWiMZJpU1ZsUVrRlP
Constraints on Axion-Like Particles from VERITAS Observations of a Flaring Radio Galaxy in the Perseus Cluster
No full textBackground: Axion-like particles (ALPs) are hypothetical particles that emerge in numerous theoretical extensions to the Standard Model. Their coupling to electromagnetic field implies that ALPs would mix with photons in the presence of external magnetic fields. As ALP phenomenology is governed by the mass and strength of its coupling, there is a subset of this parameter space in which this mixing would be expected to leave an imprint on the spectra of TeV gamma-ray sources.
Data: In 2017, the VERITAS gamma-ray observatory recorded the second day of a dramatic flare of the radio galaxy NGC 1275, embedded at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster. This serendipitous locale provides a spatially-extended magnetic field of strength O(10 µG) through which escaping photons traverse, making it an excellent target to study ALPs.
Methods: We analyze the VERITAS data of NGC 1275's 2017 flare with the gammapy analysis package. Extensive fitting and modeling are performed to ultimately conduct a likelihood analysis used to search for any evidence of a preference for ALPs and to explore the confidence with which constraints can be set. We adopt the CLs method for this study for its conservative approach to setting limits in regimes where the search has limited sensitivity. Results: No evidence for the existence of ALPs is found, and no combination of mass and coupling strength can be excluded at or above 95% confidence level. We provide a map showing the strength of our exclusions in the mass and coupling parameter space. The strongest exclusions are found in the mass range 2 X 10⁻⁷eV ≲ mₐ ≲ 4 10⁻⁷ eV and at the coupling strength of gₐ* ≳ 3 X 10⁻¹¹ GeV⁻¹ up to 80% confidence level, which are consistent with previous studies.
Conclusions: We find the CLs to be a trustworthy approach, and advocate for its continued usage in future studies. We note that many of the limitations contributing to the limited sensitivity seen by VERITAS in this study will be improved with next-generation γ-ray instruments, such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO).
* = subscript γThis research is supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution, by NSERC in Canada, and by the Helmholtz Association in Germany. This research used resources provided by the Open Science Grid, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and resources of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We acknowledge the excellent work of the technical support staff at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and at the collaborating institutions in the construction and operation of the instrument. C. A. was supported by NSF grant PHY-2110497. Q. F. acknowledges the support from NSF grant PHY2411860. M. M. acknowledges the support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2121 “Quantum Universe” – 390833306 and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program Grant agreement No. 948689 (AxionDM).http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.1901
Causal Explanation of the Quality of Parent-Child Interactions with Multimodal Behavioral Features
No full text27th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction,October 13 - 17, 2025,Canberra,AustraliaThe quality of interactions between parents and children is a critical factor in child development. In recent years, programs have been developed to improve parenting behaviors through evidence-based approaches, such as attachment-based interventions. A vital element of these programs is assessing parenting quality via video recordings of parent-child interactions, which is often labor-intensive and requires specialized expertise. Prior work explored machine learning models to predict expert ratings of parenting behaviors from recordings of semi-structured parent-child play. However, the large set of low-level multimodal features struggled to provide explainable insights, creating barriers to communicating with domain experts and improving the models. In this work, we developed a machine learning pipeline combining sparse multiple canonical correlation analysis with causal discovery and inference techniques to uncover explainable causal relationships between nine categories of behavioral features and expert quality ratings of parent-child interactions. This work provides valuable insights into otherwise black-box models and contributes to the growing body of research on transparent, trustworthy machine learning approaches for modeling parenting behaviors, while offering unique insights into behavioral factors contributing to parenting quality.https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3716553.375081
Orbital Phase-resolved Analysis of X-ray and Gamma-ray Observations of the High-Mass Gamma-ray Binary 4FGL J1405.1-6119
No full textWe present the results of multi-wavelength observations of the High-Mass Gamma-Ray Binary 4FGL J1405.1-6119. A pair of joint XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations taken in 2019 (sampling the gamma-ray maximum and X-ray maximum) characterize the emission of soft and hard X-rays. We find variability of the hydrogen column density along our line of sight, NH, and photon index, Γ, and find no evidence of pulsations in X-rays. We also refine a new best-fit orbital period to P = 13.7157 ± 0.0014 days, the first orbital phase resolved analysis based on nearly 16 years of Fermi–LAT observations of 4FGL J1405.1-6119 and the evolution of the spectral shape as a function of orbital phase. Finally, the X-ray and γ-ray spectra for the phases sampled in the new X ray observations can be interpreted in the framework of the intrabinary shock model, previously applied to High-Mass Gamma-Ray binaries such as LS 5039.This work was also partially supported by NASA grant 80NSSC20K1304 and also under NASA award number 80GSFC21M0006. Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA. This research has made use of data from the NuSTAR mission, a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Data analysis was performed using the NuSTAR Data Analysis Software (NuSTARDAS), jointly developed by the ASI Science Data Center (SSDC, Italy) and the California Institute of Technology (USA). This work made use of data supplied by the UK Swift Science Data Centre at the University of Leicester.http://arxiv.org/abs/2505.1371