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Del Silencio al Trazo. La Resignificación del Trauma de Género en las Memorias Gráficas de Creadoras Transatlánticas Actuales
No full textThis study analyzes the expressive and reinterpretive capacity of graphic memoirs written by female authors from Argentina, Chile, and Spain, focusing specifically on the representation of gender-based violence and its traumatic aftermath in the context of fourth-wave feminism. Using a qualitative approach and a gender perspective, six transatlantic graphic memoirs are examined: El cuerpo de Cristo by Bea Lema, El buen padre by Nadia Hafid, Diario oscuro by Marcela Trujillo, La sombra de la cucaracha by Gato Fernández, Estamos todas bien by Ana Penyas, and Naftalina by Sole Otero. Specifically, the use of the formal and stylistic resources of the comic medium—through Charles Hatfield's (2005) four tensions of comics—is analyzed to express traumatic experiences described as unspeakable: gender-based violence in the home, the medicalization of female psychological suffering, sexual trauma, and intergenerational trauma.Throughout the analysis, the connection between gender trauma and its structural roots is emphasized to situate this trauma in the sociopolitical context from which it must be confronted. Adopting a political relational perspective on trauma (Angela Carter 2011), these works are read as criphistemologies (Mollow 2014), sources of alternative knowledge born from the embodied experience of trauma. The role that graphic memoirs play as spaces of testimony and resistance to medical and legal discourses and as instruments of collective awareness in the context of fourth-wave feminism is highlighted. The conclusions emphasize that these works, rather than expressing trauma, perform it, constituting a critical intervention in the resignification not only of individual pain, but also of collective pain.Release after 08/04/203
Exploring Novel PACAP-Derived Glycopeptides: Synthesis, and Therapeutic Potential for Neuroprotection
No full textNeurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI) represent complex, multifactorial conditions for which current treatments primarily address symptoms rather than underlying causes. This dissertation first provides a comprehensive review of the therapeutic landscape of neurodegenerative disorders, therapeutic peptides, and the Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase-Activating Polypeptide (PACAP) system in chapters 1-3. It then investigates the therapeutic potential of glycosylated analogues of PACAP, an endogenous neuropeptide with known neuroprotective properties. Building on prior structure-activity relationship (SAR) insights, novel PACAP-derived glycopeptides, termed “truncamers”, were synthesized using optimized solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) methods, including strategies to minimize aspartamide formation and monitor Fmoc deprotection via UV-Vis spectroscopy.These analogues utilize glycosylated amino acid building blocks, synthesized through minimally competent Lewis acid catalysis, to enhance blood-brain barrier permeability, enzymatic stability, and modified membrane interaction via amphipathic “Biousian” behavior. Structural and functional evaluations of circular dichroism (CD), plasmon waveguide resonance (PWR), and cAMP mobilization assays reveal that glycosylation induces Biousian properties while preserving PAC1 receptor activity. In vivo efficacy was further validated using a rodent model of TBI, where select “truncamers” significantly ameliorated motivational deficits linked to lateral habenula dysfunction. This work demonstrates the promise of PACAP glycopeptides as a platform for CNS-active drug development and contributes new synthetic tools and biological insights toward achieving truly neuroprotective therapeutics.Release after 08/27/202
Unveiling The Mechanisms Of Mass Transfer In Modern Subduction Zones
No full textSubduction channels are crucial pathways for recycling slab mass into the deep mantle. A portion of this material is returned to the mantle wedge, contributing to the remarkable diversity of arc lavas from mafic to rhyolitic forms, unlike in other geological settings. Despite this variation, the lavas found in both continental and oceanic arcs generally display consistent trace element patterns. This uniformity highlights a dominant mass transfer mechanism that defines the signature of global arc volcanism. Aqueous fluids and partial melts from slab sources are key mechanisms for this consistency, but they must avoid mantle interaction to preserve their signature. Buoyant mélange diapirs originating from the slab can prevent this interaction, although their prevalence and formation conditions remain largely unknown. This thesis integrates high-pressure, high-temperature experiments combining thermodynamic, geochemical, and geodynamic modeling. It aims to uncover (a) the mechanisms of mass transfer agents in modern subduction zones, (b) their role in elemental cycling, and (c) their contributions to the diversity and distinct signatures of volcanic arcs.Reactions in the mantle, driven by subduction slab partial melting, have been investigated under subarc depth conditions, revealing a key mechanism for preserving the geochemical signatures of slabs (Chapter 1). The findings reveal that mica-rich, olivine-free pyroxenites form due to the high silica content in the slab's partial melt, reaching a “melt-buffer” state. This allows subsequent slab melts to flow freely through these pyroxenites, preserving their element compositions while minimizing interactions with the surrounding mantle rock. Additionally, being less dense than the mantle, these pyroxenites can create instabilities in the mantle. Previous research only focused on chlorite-rich mélanges and pure sediments to showcase a diverse range of subducted lithologies. This study provides phase equilibria of unexplored serpentinite-rich mélanges (Chapter 2) and shaly-rich mélanges (Chapter 3) under conditions of deep forearc to subarc depths. Covering the full spectrum of ultramafic and sedimentary-rich mélanges. Serpentine-rich mélanges transform into peridotite-like rocks with minor hydrous minerals and coexist with aqueous fluids and basaltic melts, while shaly-rich mélanges transform to olivine-free pyroxenite with abundant hydrous minerals and coexist with dacitic to rhyolitic melts. Key findings reveal that mantle viscosity, slab geotherm, and subduction rates significantly influence diapir growth, regardless of mélange characteristics. Fast, cold subduction limits diapirism and leads to effective volatile sequestration in hydrous minerals, facilitating their transfer into the mantle and progressively releasing aqueous fluids that carry trace element signatures into arc magma sources. Conversely, warm, slowly subducting slabs can promote diapirism in thinner ultramafic or sediment-rich channels. Aqueous fluids dominate in ultramafic channels, while low-degree partial melts prevail in sediment-rich channels. Both agents help transfer distinct trace signatures to magma sources. Diapirism can occur in tectonic slabs with heat sources, such as nearby slab tears or plumes. However, those mélanges lose buoyancy upon reaching thermal equilibrium at temperatures above 850 °C. Smaller diapirs may stagnate near the slab-mantle interface, while larger ones can retain buoyancy and remelt in hotter mantle regions. High degree melting of diapirs explains some arc lava diversity, but it does not account for the consistent arc trace element patterns. Overall, diapirism is contingent on hot slabs, while aqueous fluids and partial melts remain as the dominant agents of mass transfer from the slab to arc magma sources
On the Space Filling Nature of Trees: Clarifying and Validating a Model of Plant Architecture With Laser Scans of Tree Crowns
No full textThe scaling of mass and energy in the biosphere is most dramatically illustrated in forest ecosystems. Individual plants can span up to 12 orders of magnitude in size as they climb through a canopy. During growth, trees allocate carbon and water dynamically to meet a variety of physiological and ecological constraints via the deployment of leaf area, the history of which is inscribed in branching architecture. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) provides new opportunities to map out the geometric complexity of branching architecture in tree crowns, and infer the physiological functioning of individuals using allometric theory for the scaling of size and performance. This dissertation is focused on clarifying and validating the West, Brown and Enquist (WBE) model in order to mechanistically predict allometric relationships in tree crowns. We advance WBE by testing its core assumptions for the first time with Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS)–a technique for laser imaging large tree crowns. These measurements establish a diverse dataset of the largest range of plant vascular networks analyzed to-date, a key test for scaling theory that purports to describe biological function across an arbitrary range of sizes. This work emerges from a controversial disconnect between the allometric predictions of WBE and various empirical evaluations of those predictions. More specifically, measurements of fine-scale branching plus allometric observations of tree architecture from forest plots have been discordant with WBE. The field is advanced in a movement toward resolving this conflict by i) clarifying the core assumptions of the theory and proposing new empirical approaches to testing them, and ii) demonstrating that geometric patterns broadly match clarified predictions. In particular, the studies contained herein clarify theoretical predictions by consistently emphasizing the driving force of leaf area in plant network development. By proposing novel proxies of leaf area and branch development, we validate core predictions of the theory and outline key deviations, proposing extensions to the WBE model where needed. We extensively validate these results with destructively harvested data, to account for bias in remote sensing techniques which are pervasive in studies of TLS. The most critical gap we address is the role of branch extension and light foraging in affecting the geometry of tree branching networks. We measure light-foraging in small (terminal twigs and branches) and show they adhere to broad theoretical assumptions from WBE, namely space-filling and the preservation of metabolic service volume, which produces the core proportionality in metabolic scaling. I use this mechanism to explain a long-standing inconsistency between theoretical predictions and tree branching data, namely the presence of curvature on log-log plots of power laws. The novel methods and results presented here point the way toward linking tree geometry to physiological functioning (e.g. water use, respiration/photosynthetic rates, growth rates) in order to further the applicability of allometric relationships and broad-spectrum remote sensing to ecological and evolutionary studies of tree architecture
Summary - Future of the Colorado River
No full textThis article, published in the VegIPM Newsletter (Vol. 16, No. 5), summarizes 2025 Southwest Ag Summit panels with water negotiators and Yuma water leaders, discussing competing perspectives on the future of Colorado River governance.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center
Soil Health: Biological Diversity
No full textThis article, published in the VegIPM Newsletter (Vol. 16, No. 6), highlights soil biodiversity, describing its role in nutrient cycling, ecosystem resilience, and discoveries such as antibiotics, while stressing how agricultural practices impact soil biology.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center
Groundwater Assessment in the Lower Colorado River Basin
No full textThis article, published in the VegIPM Newsletter (Vol. 16, No. 14), reviews ASU-led research on declining groundwater in the Lower Colorado River Basin, showing severe depletion and emphasizing the need for expanded groundwater regulation beyond Arizona’s AMAs.Documents in the Arizona Pest Management Center collection are made available by the Arizona Pest Management Center (APMC) and the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information about items in this collection, please contact https://acis.cals.arizona.edu/about-us/arizona-pest-management-center
Ultrafast Parametric Laser Technology for Strong-field science in Long-Wave Infrared
No full textIntense, ultrashort-pulse laser sources (USPLs) enable a wide range of applications in remote sensing, laser wakefield acceleration, and directed energy. The extremity of the underlying physical phenomena scales favorably with the wavelength of the laser driver, yet, to-date, most of the investigations in intense light-matter interactions used high-power USPLs operating in the relatively narrow wavelength range in the near infrared (NIR). This applies to the nonlinear self-channeling of USPL pulses in air, known as laser filamentation, the primary motivator for the work discussed in this dissertation. Like several other metrics in intense light-matter interactions, the threshold for self-focusing, which is the prerequisite to filamentation, and the optical power carried by an individual laser filament, both scale in proportion to the wavelength of the laser squared. Recent developments in the ultrafast laser technology have enabled the extension of the studies of air filamentation from the familiar NIR spectral range to the short-wave and mid-wave infrared (SWIR and MWIR, respectively). An interesting effect accompanying MWIR filamentation is the efficient and non-perturbation generation of low odd-order harmonics of the optical driver. As the results of our experiments show, spectral interference of the neighboring harmonics carries information about the carrier-envelope phase (CEP) of the MWIR driver pulses and can be used for the single-shot CEP characterization. Contrary to intuition, the carrier-phase information is preserved through the highly nonlinear propagation through the interaction region in the presence of ionization. The natural extension of these and other studies in strong-field science to LWIR is hindered by the lack of practical optical sources in that wavelength range. To address this shortcoming, we have designed and constructed a source of ultrashort optical pulses operating at the center wavelength of 8.5 um. The source is based on optical parametric chirped-pulse amplification (OPCPA) and currently generates one-millijoule pulses at the repetition rate of ten pulses per second. The optical bandwidth of the generated LWIR emission supports one hundred femtosecond pulse duration, corresponding to multi-gigawatt peak optical power. In this dissertation, I will discuss the principle of operation of this OPCPA source, and the major trade-offs involved in its design
Educating New Rural Providers About Remote Patient Monitoring for Heart Failure Patients
No full textPurpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to increase the knowledge of new providers in the Rural Telehealth Certificate Program (RTCP) at the University of Arizona about the benefits of Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) for heart failure patients. This project also assessed the intent of new providers to incorporate RPM into their practice. Background: Studies show that 75% of 30-day readmissions could be prevented if heart failure management was focused on patient understanding and compliance of their heart failure self-care (Sohn et al., 2020). Retrospective research of remote monitoring has shown decreased hospital readmissions as well as decreased emergency department visits (Lynch et al., 2022). Methods: An educational PowerPoint presentation about RPM was distributed to new providers through the RTCP coordinator. A pretest-posttest was available to the new providers to fill out at the beginning and end of the presentation, respectively. This helped evaluate the effectiveness of the educational presentation and any intent to incorporate RPM into current or future practice. Results: Two new rural providers participated in the intervention and completed the anonymous pretest-posttest. There was a positive change score for both participants for the Likert-scale questions. They both also indicated in the open-format questions of their intent to utilize RPM in their current/future practice. Conclusions: Due to a small sample size, results are not generalizable, but may imply that educating new rural providers about RPM for heart failure patients could initiate future RPM use for eligible patients. This would potentially benefit rural providers and improve their patient outcomes. The overall conclusion depicts that education on RPM benefits and utilization for heart failure patients should be pushed forward fervently
Projected Temperature Increase Across the Cotton Belt Region of the United States
No full textThis article outlines projections for maximum and minimum air temperatures averaging across nine selected GCMs under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios: SSP1-2.6 ("Sustainability" pathway with low greenhouse gas emissions), SSP2-4.5 (moderate future warming), SSP3-7.0 (medium to high level of greenhouse gas emissions), and SSP5-8.5 (high greenhouse gas emissions scenario). The projections are provided for five sites across the US Cotton Belt: Maricopa, AZ; Halfway, TX; Chillicothe, TX; Camilla, GA; and Lewiston-Woodville, NC, where key research and extension centers linked with the University of Arizona, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, the University of Georgia, and the University of North Carolina, respectively are located.We are grateful to Cotton Incorporated for funding this project