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Short Stories from Taiwan
With careful literary crafting, Taiwan\u27s writers have told the complex story of their country since World War II. Sabina Knight, a professor at Smith College and author of Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction, recommends five of her favourite short story collections.
Interview by Sophie Roell, Edito
How Development and Survival Combine to Determine the Thermal Sensitivity of Insects
Thermal performance curves (TPCs) depict variation in vital rates in response to temperature and have been an important tool to understand ecological and evolutionary constraints on the thermal sensitivity of ectotherms. TPCs allow for the calculation of indicators of thermal tolerance, such as minimum, optimum, and maximum temperatures that allow for a given metabolic function. However, these indicators are computed using only responses from surviving individuals, which can lead to underestimation of deleterious effects of thermal stress, particularly at high temperatures. Here, we advocate for an integrative frame- work for assessing thermal sensitivity, which combines both vital rates and survival probabilities, and focuses on the temperature interval that allows for population persistence. Using a collated data set of Lepidopteran development rate and survival measured on the same individuals, we show that development rate is generally limiting at low temperatures, while survival is limiting at high temperatures. We also uncover differences between life stages and across latitudes, with extended survival at lower temperatures in temperate regions. Our combined performance metric demonstrates similar thermal breadth in temperate and tropical individuals, an effect that only emerges from integration of both development and survival trends. We discuss the benefits of using this framework in future predictive and management contexts
Episode 10: Zipline DC2122
Episode 10: This episode features four alums from the Class of 2022: Kirsten Appell, Kalyani Weiss, Harriet Wright, and Sophie Yates. Their Design Clinic project with Zipline was on the design of an anti-icing solution for Zipline\u27s unmanned aircraft
Assessing the Language of 2-year-olds: From Theory to Practice
Early screening for language problems is a priority given the importance of language for success in school and interpersonal relationships. The paucity of reliable behavioral instruments for this age group prompted the development of a new touchscreen language screener for 2-year-olds that relies on language comprehension. Developmental literature guided selection of age-appropriate markers of language disorder risk that are culturally and dialectally neutral and could be reliably assessed. Items extend beyond products of linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and syntax) and tap the process by which children learn language, also known as fast mapping. After piloting an extensive set of items (139), two phases of testing with over 500 children aged 2; 0–2; 11 were conducted to choose the final 40-item set. Rasch analysis was used to select the best fitting and least redundant items. Norms were created based on 270 children. Sufficient test-retest reliability, Cronbach\u27s alpha, and convergent validity with the MB-CDI and PPVT are reported. This quick behavioral measure of language capabilities could support research studies and facilitate the early detection of language problems
Episode 11: Susannah Howe, DC Director
This episode features an interview with Susannah Howe, the Design Clinic Director at Smith College. The interviewers are recent graduates Harriet Wright and Sophie Yates from the Zipline-DC2122 team
Annulled: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Archives of the Ottoman East
On October 2, 1878, Narduhi Magarian and Sahag Ağa Tevrizian were wed in the Ot- toman border town of Erzurum. Soon afterwards, both of them sought freedom from this union, one foisted upon them by Narduhi’s wealthy, violent, and alcohol-addled father, Garabed Efendi Magarian. The toxic fallout of this failed marriage prompted the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople to order an investigation. The resulting witness testimonies, held in a fragment of the Patriarchate’s records in Paris, describe the beginnings of this coerced marriage, the domestic violence it involved, and the anxieties about sex and potency that it stoked. These letters also have much to say about national and gendered silences imposed by the indefinite inaccessibility of the Armenian Patriarchate’s archive in Istanbul. This marriage highlights an aftereffect of national violence: how the apprehensions swirling around it serve to stifle history- writing about gendered violence. Through a single episode in the life of an Armenian woman, it also offers a view onto domestic abuse, marriage, and sex in a crisis-ridden Ottoman borderland. Although there may be an urge to recover Narduhi’s voice, avoiding that temptation shows how her story is important less for what it recovers than for two historical narratives that it disrupts: one that circumscribes women’s history with ideals of self-sacrifice and moral rectitude and another that attempts to construct a singular national past in the wake of catastrophe
Spotlight on Climate Change
For important contributions to the impact of climate change we\u27re putting the spotlight on Professor H. Allen Curran\u27s research on coral garden reefs under threat...*photo: Healthy Staghorn Coral (Acropora cervicornis) at Coral Gardens Reef, Belizehttps://scholarworks.smith.edu/gallery/1012/thumbnail.jp
Fossil Fuel Divestment in U.S. Higher Education: Endowment Dependence and Temporal Dynamics
Since 2012, students and others have pushed U.S. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to divest their endowments from fossil fuel producing industries. In the past decade, fossil fuel divestment has become the fastest growing divestment movement in history, with over 140 U.S. HEIs announcing divestment commitments. We conduct a quantitative analysis of the three phases of U.S. 4-year HEI divestment announcements (as well as rejections of divestment) to better understand the dynamics. Announcements began (2012-2017) with a number of schools divesting, followed by a second phase where new divestment announcements slowed. The current phase, which began around 2019, shows a renewed increase in divestments. Formal rejections of divestment followed a similar pattern in the early years, where rejections were slightly more common and represented more endowment value, but have declined as some schools reversed public positions. Schools that have divested from fossil fuels now represent roughly 3% of 4-year U.S. HEIs and 35% of endowment value. Roughly 85% more endowment value is now associated with U.S. schools that have divested from fossil fuels than with those that have rejected it. Our analysis points to endowment dependence (the share of operating expenses derived from the endowment) as a potentially important indicator of whether a school would divest, with early divestments from all fossil fuels coming nearly exclusively from schools with a relatively low endowment dependence. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of different theories of change for the divestment movement. In particular, we note that over 99% of 4-year HEIs representing roughly 95% of endowment value are less dependent upon their endowment than at least one recently divested HEI, suggesting that large endowment or high dependence on endowment are no longer strict barriers to FFD for most schools