Panel. Spaces of Slavery

Ritual Architectures: Doorless and Makeshift Boundaries in Faulkner’s Slave Quarters / Amy Foley, Bryant UniversityFaulkner builds raced architectures throughout his writings, associating a lack of ornamentation in slave dwellings with an unfinished, nascent, or uncultivated way of life. Particularly in Go Down, Moses; Absalom, Absalom!; and “Red Leaves,” slaves live in cabins entirely without doors or with doors of a makeshift design as do the “domiciled” slaves of Thomas Sutpen and the McCaslins. Faulkner’s slave quarters are built from “odds and ends” and “refuse” that adorn sites of entry, repeatedly suggesting that the value of making a home is in the ritual or performance rather than in its material application. Faulkner conceptualizes how architectures direct, facilitate, and possibly “arrest” the motion of enslaved bodies relevant to contemporary theories of architecture and space, economy, labor models, and modes of observation and movement in industrial era work culture. His slave architectures anticipate and work out alternative models of supervision and relations between master and slave.Master/Slave Cartography: Mapping in The Unvanquished / Leigh Ann Litwiller Berte, Spring Hill CollegeThis paper examines Faulkner’s understanding of cartography as expressed in scenes within The Unvanquished (1938), a collection revised and published shortly after the author appended the first map of Yoknapatawpha to Absalom, Absalom!. In two key scenes, master and slave take turns as map makers, constructing “living maps” and what I call “trickster maps,” offering insight into the ways that maps and map making function as reflections of power and tools of subversion. Ultimately, these mapping scenes illuminate Faulkner’s larger conception of geography, unsettling our understandings of Yoknaptawpha as a geographical and imaginative entity. Faulkner offers a fluid understanding of the way that cartographers, land, events, and inhabitants intersect to construct contested, living maps of the world

MR-Clust: clustering of genetic variants in Mendelian randomization with similar causal estimates.

MOTIVATION: Mendelian randomization is an epidemiological technique that uses genetic variants as instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of a risk factor on an outcome. We consider a scenario in which causal estimates based on each variant in turn differ more strongly than expected by chance alone, but the variants can be divided into distinct clusters, such that all variants in the cluster have similar causal estimates. This scenario is likely to occur when there are several distinct causal mechanisms by which a risk factor influences an outcome with different magnitudes of causal effect. We have developed an algorithm MR-Clust that finds such clusters of variants, and so can identify variants that reflect distinct causal mechanisms. Two features of our clustering algorithm are that it accounts for differential uncertainty in the causal estimates, and it includes 'null' and 'junk' clusters, to provide protection against the detection of spurious clusters. RESULTS: Our algorithm correctly detected the number of clusters in a simulation analysis, outperforming methods that either do not account for uncertainty or do not include null and junk clusters. In an applied example considering the effect of blood pressure on coronary artery disease risk, the method detected four clusters of genetic variants. A post hoc hypothesis-generating search suggested that variants in the cluster with a negative effect of blood pressure on coronary artery disease risk were more strongly related to trunk fat percentage and other adiposity measures than variants not in this cluster. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: MR-Clust can be downloaded from https://github.com/cnfoley/mrclust. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Prioritising children and young people with disability in research about domestic and family violence : Methodological, ethical and pragmatic reflections

Purpose The perspectives of children and young people with disability who experience domestic and family violence are under-researched, impeding the development of approaches that meet their needs. Knowledge gaps stem from the layered discursive positioning of disability, childhood/youth, or domestic and family violence in addition to the methodological, ethical and pragmatic complexity of research needed to understand their priorities and be attuned to their lived experience. This article explores methodological, ethical and practical challenges to centring their voices in research about domestic and family violence. Method A conceptual framework of feminist disability theory and intersectionality informed our co-designed research, across three phases: (1) quantitative large-scale data linkage and case file analysis; (2) qualitative research with children and young people, their families and service providers and (3) stakeholder engagement workshops. Results We reflect on how our research was able to prioritise the contextual agency of children and young people with disability, ways it could not, and other constraints. Conclusion Children and young people with disability experiencing domestic and family violence hold an expert and unique vantage point on what happens to them. Amplifying their priorities for directing policy and organisational change requires more of researchers in terms of methods, but also more flexibility in how projects are funded to enable creativity and innovation. We call for collective attention to frameworks for supported decision-making and child ethics to progress inclusive research which recognises the importance of participation for children and young people with disability

SubmilliJansky Transients in Archival Radio Observations

[ABRIDGED] We report the results of a 944-epoch survey for transient sources with archival data from the Very Large Array spanning 22 years with a typical epoch separation of 7 days. Observations were obtained at 5 or 8.4 GHz for a single field of view with a full-width at half-maximum of 8.6' and 5.1', respectively, and achieved a typical point-source detection threshold at the beam center of ~300 microJy per epoch. Ten transient sources were detected with a significance threshold such that only one false positive would be expected. Of these transients, eight were detected in only a single epoch. Two transients were too faint to be detected in individual epochs but were detected in two-month averages. None of the ten transients was detected in longer-term averages or associated with persistent emission in the deep image produced from the combination of all epochs. The cumulative rate for the short timescale radio transients above 370 microJy at 5 and 8.4 GHz is 0.07 < R < 40 deg^-2 yr^-1, where the uncertainty is due to the unknown duration of the transients, 20 min < t_char < 7 days. A two-epoch survey for transients will detect 1.5 +/- 0.4 transient per square degrees above a flux density of 370 microJy. Two transients are associated with galaxies at z=0.040 and z=0.249. These may be similar to the peculiar Type Ib/c radio supernova SN 1998bw associated with GRB 980428. Six transients have no counterparts in the optical or infrared (R=27, Ks=18). The hosts and progenitors of these transients are unknown.Comment: Accepted for ApJ; full quality figures available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~gbower/ps/rt.pd

MendelianRandomization v0.5.0: updates to an R package for performing Mendelian randomization analyses using summarized data.

The MendelianRandomization package is a software package written for the R software environment that implements methods for Mendelian randomization based on summarized data. In this manuscript, we describe functions that have been added to the package or updated in recent years. These features can be divided into four categories: robust methods for Mendelian randomization, methods for multivariable Mendelian randomization, functions for data visualization, and the ability to load data into the package seamlessly from the PhenoScanner web-resource. We provide examples of the graphical output produced by the data visualization commands, as well as syntax for obtaining suitable data and performing a Mendelian randomization analysis in a single line of code

Understanding Minnesota's Q Comp Program

Capstone paper for the fulfillment of the Master of Public Policy degree.Minnesota’s Quality Compensation program (Q Comp) is a unique initiative that seeks to provide districts with the tools to better support teachers in developing their professional practice. The program requires participants to utilize four specific components while still allowing wide flexibility in local design and implementation. Districts and charter schools seeking to adopt or amend Q Comp plans can learn from both the existing body of research and other districts’ experiences with implementation. This paper includes a literature review of each component individually, a summary of existing research about Q Comp specifically, and a synthesis of common themes from interviews with various school staff, union representatives and other local experts around the Twin Cities metro. Using that knowledge and an assessment of the current political landscape in the state, we conclude with five recommendations for districts. These recommendations apply to any district or charter school planning to adopt or amend a Q Comp plan. We recommend that districts or charter schools: ● Start the process by getting on the waiting list now. ● Teachers take the lead in writing the plan. ● Think about needs and professional development locally. ● Use opportunities for innovation, but also integrate into existing strategy. ● Be responsive and flexible about implementation

The Grizzly, February 22, 1985

Auto Blaze Cuts Phone Service • New Forensics Society Competing Successfully • All is Well With All\u27s Well Cast • Career Program Scheduled • Students Invited to Presidential Symposium • Pi Gamma Mu Seeks New Members • UC Selected for Ed Project • Bloodmobile Here in March • Nutrition Forum Tuesday • Bears Beat Swarthmore to Finish Season • Baseball Trains for Season and Florida Trip • Carr Puts Teams in Drive • Wellness Week Aimed at Promoting Overall Health • Night on Ice Scheduledhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1134/thumbnail.jp

“Just another day in retail”: Understanding and addressing workplace sexual harassment in the Australian retail industry

Sexual harassment is a systemic and pervasive feature of the retail industry ecosystem and a persistent part of daily interactions between retail workers, and their managers, peers and customers. It is such a common experience that many retail workers perceive it as “just part of the job”. Sexual harassment causes harm on multiple levels: it affects the wellbeing of individual employees, damages team cohesion, creates economic damage for businesses, and is a drag on the national economy. At June 2023, the retail industry had contributed over $102 million to Australia’s annual gross domestic product (Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, 2023). It employs 9 per cent of all Australians, and is the nation’s third-largest employer of women and the second largest employer of young people (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2021a, 2022b, 2022e). Not only is retail a major source of employment, but it is also an essential service, providing Australians with the goods they depend upon every day. Retail workers deserve safety, dignity and respect. Addressing sexual harassment in the retail industry is both a pressing workplace safety issue and a nationally significant concern. The changed legislative landscape, including the introduction of an additional “positive duty” on employers to eliminate sexual harassment and related unlawful conduct as far as possible, should add extra impetus and urgency for change