Correcting the Gaze: Reflecting on the Diversity and Complexity of Comics for Black History Month

City researchers reflect on the diversity and complexity of comics for UK Black History Month. Dr Ernesto Priego and PhD student Linda Berube from the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design (HCID) say ‘grand narratives’ in comics research must be challenged

Follow the users: assessing UK nonprint legal deposit within the academic discovery environment

This chapter explores the role that non-print legal deposit collections can play in library discovery and calls on libraries to help users to understand how these unique resources can contribute to their research

Infusing Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Into Science Methods Courses Across Virginia

This article outlines the results of a collaborative study of the effects of infusing problem-based learning (PBL) into K-12 science methods courses across four universities in Virginia. Changes in pre-service teachers\u27 attitudes surrounding science teaching were measured before and after completing a science methods course in which they experienced PBL first-hand as participants, and then practiced designing their own PBL units for use in their future classrooms. The results indicate that exposure to PBL enhances pre-service teachers\u27 knowledge of inquiry methods and self-efficacy in teaching science

Context is Everything: A Review of Comics Studies: A Guidebook

Comics Studies: A Guidebook, edited by Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty, Rutgers University Press, 326 pages, 2020, ISBN 9780813591414. This article is a review of Comics Studies: A Guidebook, edited by Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty (Rutgers University Press, 2020). This volume, ranging over the broad themes of Histories, Cultures, Forms, and Genres, provides an introduction to some of the major debates in comics studies. The review maintains that in the attempt to embrace a wider context, an opportunity has been missed to challenge and refresh traditional narratives. It can be argued that a single volume guidebook may not be the best place to undertake such a major reinvention of comics studies

The Parallel Universe: A Review of Webcomics

The review considers Webcomics, by Sean Kleefeld (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). This volume, ranging over broad themes in sections titled Historical Overview, Social and Cultural Impact, Key Texts, and Critical Uses, is an essential text in the under-studied area of webcomics. While Webcomics provides a fresh consideration of the form’s place in digital history, historical and current works, and promoting diverse creator voices, this review maintains that an opportunity has been missed to place webcomics in the wider social and cultural context of communication and publishing. This consideration, and that of digital comics readers’ ‘lived experience’ with webcomics, points to a gap in empirical research

Web/Comics 2023: Webcomics and/as Hypertext

Web/Comics 2023 is the first in a new workshop series for the ACM Hypertext conference. The Web/Comics workshop focuses on the transformation of the comics medium enacted by hypertext through the emergence of webcomics, or "graphic sequential narratives that are created, published, and read online" [1]. The Web/Comics workshop brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from the humanities and technological communities to share work and discuss the latest research on webcomics from the perspectives of both communities. It wants to act as a bridge to increase collaboration between the comics and hypertext research communities. Researchers and practitioners working with webcomics or hypertext are invited to attend this workshop. Participants are asked to submit a short (between 2 and 4 pages) position paper on their current work. The planned event is a half day hybrid workshop with sessions based around short presentations, with emphasis on opportunities for dialogue and discussion in the final roundtable session

Phosphonate production by marine microbes: exploring new sources and potential function

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Acker, M., Hogle, S. L., Berube, P. M., Hackl, T., Coe, A., Stepanauskas, R., Chisholm, S. W., & Repeta, D. J. Phosphonate production by marine microbes: exploring new sources and potential function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(11), (2022): e2113386119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113386119.Phosphonates are organophosphorus metabolites with a characteristic C-P bond. They are ubiquitous in the marine environment, their degradation broadly supports ecosystem productivity, and they are key components of the marine phosphorus (P) cycle. However, the microbial producers that sustain the large oceanic inventory of phosphonates as well as the physiological and ecological roles of phosphonates are enigmatic. Here, we show that phosphonate synthesis genes are rare but widely distributed among diverse bacteria and archaea, including Prochlorococcus and SAR11, the two major groups of bacteria in the ocean. In addition, we show that Prochlorococcus can allocate over 40% of its total cellular P-quota toward phosphonate production. However, we find no evidence that Prochlorococcus uses phosphonates for surplus P storage, and nearly all producer genomes lack the genes necessary to degrade and assimilate phosphonates. Instead, we postulate that phosphonates are associated with cell-surface glycoproteins, suggesting that phosphonates mediate ecological interactions between the cell and its surrounding environment. Our findings indicate that the oligotrophic surface ocean phosphonate pool is sustained by a relatively small fraction of the bacterioplankton cells allocating a significant portion of their P quotas toward secondary metabolism and away from growth and reproduction.This work was supported in part by grants from the NSF (OCE-1153588 and DBI-0424599 to S.W.C.; OCE-1335810 and OIA-1826734 to R.S.; and OCE-1634080 to D.J.R.), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (no. 6000 to D.J.R.), and the Simons Foundation (Life Sciences Project Award IDs 337262 and 647135 to S.W.C.; 510023 to R.S.; and Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology [SCOPE] Award ID 329108 to S.W.C. and D.J.R.)

"Webcomics Archive? Now I'm Interested": Comics Readers Seeking Information in Web Archives (Poster)

There is a longstanding tradition of understanding information needs and interaction behavior across different user groups to inform the design of digital products and services. There is a gap in such research of comics readers, specifically how they seek and interact with the information and interfaces of web-based archives provided by cultural institutions. For example, while information interaction research has now recognized that information-seeking for leisure and pleasure are important domains of study - consuming information based in fiction can help us escape to exciting worlds by captivating narratives - and while there have been studies of how people find fiction to read, there have to our knowledge been no user-centered studies on how people find and consume digital comics. This exploratory study provides an enriched understanding of the information needs and interaction behaviors of digital comics readers and how that understanding can inform the design of digital platforms to better support them

Investigating the physical properties of transiting hot Jupiters with the 1.5-m Kuiper Telescope

We present new photometric data of 11 hot Jupiter transiting exoplanets (CoRoT-12b, HAT-P-5b, HAT-P-12b, HAT-P-33b, HAT-P-37b, WASP-2b, WASP-24b, WASP-60b, WASP-80b, WASP-103b, XO-3b) in order to update their planetary parameters and to constrain information about their atmospheres. These observations of CoRoT-12b, HAT-P-37b and WASP-60b are the first follow-up data since their discovery. Additionally, the first near-UV transits of WASP-80b and WASP-103b are presented. We compare the results of our analysis with previous work to search for transit timing variations (TTVs) and a wavelength dependence in the transit depth. TTVs may be evidence of a third body in the system and variations in planetary radius with wavelength can help constrain the properties of the exoplanet's atmosphere. For WASP-103b and XO-3b, we find a possible variation in the transit depths that may be evidence of scattering in their atmospheres. The B-band transit depth of HAT-P-37b is found to be smaller than its near-IR transit depth and such a variation may indicate TiO/VO absorption. These variations are detected from 2-4.6$\sigma$, so follow-up observations are needed to confirm these results. Additionally, a flat spectrum across optical wavelengths is found for 5 of the planets (HAT-P-5b, HAT-P-12b, WASP-2b, WASP-24b, WASP-80b), suggestive that clouds may be present in their atmospheres. We calculate a refined orbital period and ephemeris for all the targets, which will help with future observations. No TTVs are seen in our analysis with the exception of WASP-80b and follow-up observations are needed to confirm this possible detection.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, 9 Tables. Light Curves available online. Accepted to MNRAS (2017 August 25