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Land, Labor, and the Railroad in Industrial Appalachia: How the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Engineered Space, 1843-1872
Get PDFDuring the nineteenth century, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad reshaped the social, political, and physical environment of the mid-Atlantic around the needs of the industrial economy. The creation of industrial space, and the proliferation of communities to populate it, is seen retrospectively as an inevitable consequence of technological innovation, but engaging with contemporary corporate records reveals that this space, like the railroad, was engineered. In order to design a supply chain that would make industrialization economical, the railroad and coal industries engaged in political and social engineering to design the new locales of industrialism, exemplified in the Allegheny Mountains by the coal company town. As this new type of space was populated by the workers necessary to its function, the spatial practices of those workers and their families informed its evolution, defining its boundaries and informing the ways in which it transcended them. Using an environment as methodology, this paper explores the early history of American industrialism, the spatial inflection of corporate power, and the role of working class contestations in the construction of the built environment
In Your CORT: Corticosterone And Its Receptors In The Brain Underlie Mate Choosiness In Female Cope’s Gray Treefrogs (\u3cem\u3eHyla chrysoscelis\u3c/em\u3e)
No full textSelecting an attractive mate can involve trade-offs related to investment in sampling effort. Glucocorticoids like corticosterone (CORT) are involved in resolving energetic trade-offs. However, CORT is rarely studied in the context of mate choice, despite its elevated levels during reproductive readiness and the energetic transitions that characterize reproduction. Few systems are as well suited as anuran amphibians to evaluate how females resolve energetic trade-offs during mate choice. Phonotaxis tests provide a robust bioassay of mate choice that permit the precise measurement of inter-individual variation in traits such as choosiness–the willingness to pursue the most attractive mate despite costs. In Cope\u27s gray treefrogs (Hyla chrysoscelis), females exhibit remarkable variation in circulating CORT as well as choosiness during mate choice, and a moderate dose of exogenous CORT rapidly (\u3c1 h) and reliably induce large increases in choosiness. Here we measured the expression of glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid (MR) receptors in the brains of females previously treated with exogenous CORT and tested for mate choosiness. We report a large decrease in GR expression in the hindbrain and midbrain of females that were treated with the moderate dosage of CORT–the same treatment group that exhibited a dramatic increase in choosiness following CORT treatment. This association, however, does not appear to be causal, as only forebrain GR levels, which are not affected by CORT injection, are positively associated with variation in choosiness. No strong effects were found for MR. We discuss these findings and suggest future studies to test the influence of glucocorticoids on mate choice
On Water Arrangements In Right- And Left-Handed DNA Structures
Get PDFDNA requires hydration to maintain its structural integrity. Crystallographic analyses have enabled patterns of water arrangements to be visualized. We survey these water motifs in this review, focusing on left- and right-handed duplex and quadruplex DNAs, together with the i-motif. Common patterns of linear spines of water organization in grooves have been identified and are widely prevalent in right-handed duplexes and quadruplexes. By contrast, a left-handed quadruplex has a distinctive wheel of hydration populating the almost completely circular single groove in this structure
Misinformation, Fraud, And Stereotyping: Towards A Typology Of Harm Caused By Deepfakes
Get PDFScholars, politicians, and journalists have raised alarm over the potential for AI-generated photos, video, and audio—often referred to as deepfakes—to reduce trust in one another and our institutions. Despite these clarion calls, little empirical work exists on how deepfakes are being used to harm individuals outside of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). This research provides a preliminary analysis of 50 wide-ranging incidents of deepfake harm. We find that the most common types of harm are relational, systemic, financial, and emotional. Apart from AI-generated NCII, the most prevalent uses of deepfakes to cause harm were instances of mis- and disinformation, fraud, and misrepresentation of or stereotyping about marginalized groups (e.g., women and racial minorities). We concluded with recommendations for future work and discuss potential challenges in identifying, quantifying, and preventing harm caused by deepfakes both online and off
Staying Within the Ts: Racialized Boundary and Language Production Processes among Temple University Students and the White Supremacist Geographies of Urban University Place-Making
No full textThis combined ethnographic study and discourse analysis investigates the use of racialized boundary production language among a sample of 21 Temple University students in reference to the Black community adjacent to their campus that not only reflects structures of racialized surveillance, dispossession, and capital extraction that actively uproot North Philadelphia’s Black communities but perpetuates them as well via the reification of borders predicated on university policing and displacement. Through an analytical framework based in Katherine McKittrick’s (2006) plantation analytic and Margaret Ramirez’s (2019) borderlands analytic along with additional literature of Black Geographies and Lee and Ahn’s (2023) theorizations of “postracial” discursive mechanisms, this research demonstrates how these boundary productions enact active violences against Black North Philadelphians enabled by the university. At the intersection of linguistic anthropology, university gentrification, Black Geographic thought, and carceral geographies, this project provides insight into the role of boundary language among those with access to power in reconstructing white supremacist systems of power at an interpersonal, discursive level within shared spatial imaginaries often circulated among university students
Inter-Kingdom Communication And The Sympoietic Way Of Life
Get PDFOrganisms are now seen as holobionts, consortia of several species that interact metabolically such that they sustain and scaffold each other’s existence and propagation. Sympoiesis, the development of the symbiotic relationships that form holobionts, is critical for our understanding the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. Rather than being the read-out of a single genome, development has been found to be sympoietic, based on multigenomic interactions between zygote-derived cells and symbiotic microbes. These symbiotic and sympoietic interactions are predicated on the ability of cells from different kingdoms of life (e.g., bacteria and animals) to communicate with one another and to have their chemical signals interpreted in a manner that facilitates development. Sympoiesis, the creation of an entity by the interactions of other entities, is commonly seen in embryogenesis (e.g., the creation of lenses and retinas through the interaction of brain and epidermal compartments). In holobiont sympoiesis, interactions between partners of different domains of life interact to form organs and biofilms, wherein each of these domains acts as the environment for the other. If evolution is forged by changes in development, and if symbionts are routinely involved in our development, then changes in sympoiesis can constitute an important factor in evolution
Conflict, Resistance, and Resolve: Uncovering Lost Narratives in Japanese-American Internment
Get PDFBy the end of 1942, the U.S. army and the national government had forcibly removed 120,000 Japanese descended individuals from their homes on the West Coast, confining them to ten internment camps across the nation. In an effort to construct a more accurate representation of the mindset of internees in the wartime era, my thesis hones in on conflict and division within camp life. I emphasize the heterogeneity of Japanese-American voices and push back against the oversimplification of the different internee subgroups: the Japan-born immigrants (“Issei”), U.S.-born citizens (“Nisei”), and Japan-educated Nisei who returned home before the war (“Kibei”). Throughout the course of the internment era, they have been characterized as “loyal” or “disloyal.” The continued use of these labels, both in the wartime period and in the subsequent scholarship on internment, minimizes the complexity of internees’ views. Their mindsets were shaped by the traumatic nature of removal, the treatment they received in the camps, and their fears about post-camp life. Depending on their individual experiences, internees chose to act in distinct ways. For example, some internees resisted governmental authority while others served as government informants. However, their choices were not necessarily indicative of undying loyalty to Japan or the United States. Through a case study of the Manzanar internment camp in California and the Poston internment camp in Arizona, I demonstrate that the “disloyal” and “loyal” labels provide an incomplete understanding of life in the camps. Deep disagreements shaped internees’ experiences, and the intricacies of the internment experience are silenced through racialized assumptions about people of Japanese ancestry. With conflict as a lens for viewing the internment experience, a much clearer picture wartime Japanese American experiences comes to the forefront
The Battle Over Memory: The Contestations of Public and Familial Narratives in Remembering 9/11
Get PDFOn September 11, 2001, the four plane crashes marked the three sites of trauma that, to this day, sit in the heart of United States history. The paper examines the contested and often conflicting public and familial narratives at sites of memory and the recurring themes behind commemoration narratives. Drawing on newsletter articles and seven interviews with members of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and The Peace Abbey, the paper concludes that national and public remembrances of 9/11 adopted a top-down approach that has repressed familial remembrances in three main ways: by glorifying the victims, co-opting the version told of 9/11 stories, and erasing distinct voices that did not fit the national narrative. By contrast, familial remembrances of the victims built a bottom-up approach to memorialize 9/11 and its victims that valued the holistic representation of their lost loved ones in remembrances
A Market for Plenty: Immigrants and the Making of the Fulton Fish Market
Get PDFFounded in the early nineteenth century at the southern seaport of Manhattan, New York, the Fulton Fish Market was, and remains, one of the largest seafood markets in the world. At its heart was a workforce capable of moving hundreds of millions of pounds of fish a year, that endured public suspicion and resisted activist reform, and which ultimately shaped the palate of not only New York City, but America as a country—a workforce that was, in its formative decades, predominantly immigrants. This article builds on pre-existing general scholarship regarding the Fulton Fish Market and introduces perspectives found in contemporary newspapers, memoirs, and other nonfiction writings to study the contributions immigrants made to the identity and functions of Fulton. It adds another piece to the ever-deepening literature on New York City\u27s immigrant histories and foodways
\u3cstrong\u3eLong Distance Relationships\u3c/strong\u3e: Investigating the Quaternary Structure of Influenza A M2 Protein
No full textThe Influenza A virus, responsible for yearly epidemics and periodic pandemics, is a pressing public health concern. The tetrameric membrane protein M2 is a potential target of interest for antivirals to replace those against which most influenza strains have already developed immunity. The monomeric amphipathic helix of M2 is well characterized, but previous structural studies have been unable to develop distance constraints between monomers in the M2 tetrameric bundle. The goal of this thesis is to optimize nanodiscs for the collection of inter-monomer distances using pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy (EPR) to better resolve the quaternary structure of M2.
Nanodisc preparations were optimized to eliminate clusters of M2 and empty nanodiscs, and were characterized using size exclusion chromatography and dynamic light scattering. Upon collection of EPR data, samples were determined to have improved EPR spectra qualities in deuterated buffer. Collected EPR data showed four expected inter-monomer distances and higher quality data in the presence of the drug rimantadine. Lastly, simulations were performed to compare EPR data with predicted data based on two models of M2 and to determine optimal sites for future studies. It was determined that both collected and existing distance data agreed more with a published Howard Lab structure than with a model of tetrameric M2 that was determined using solid state NMR