Whitewashing African American History in Oklahoma City’s Deep Deuce District: Exploring Historical Preservation as a Problematic Tool for Tourism and Gentrification

Historic preservation of African American neighborhoods in Oklahoma City values restoration of buildings and objects but fails to authentically preserve or respect the original culture by actively excluding the Black community from Deep Deuce. Oklahoma City's rhetoric surrounding Deep Deuce refers to urban change as "revitalization," yet it continues to repeat history by neglecting the Black community of Oklahoma City. Theory from rhetoricians, Kenneth Burke and Michel Foucault, are used to create a rhetorical lens that centers power, influence, and discourse. For gentrification scholarship, several scholarly articles are used for the survey of scholarship. The books, Color of Law and Root Shock, are heavily referenced in the project and interviews completed with community members of Oklahoma City are used as primary sources. Oklahoma City states they have historically preserved Deep Deuce, a traditionally African American neighborhood; the rhetoric of their preservation methods, however, reveal that the city has weaponized the land in the past and present to dismantle the local Black community and whitewashes their history to attract tourists and residents to the gentrified neighborhood. These findings are significant in challenging the fact that the city officials state that they are historically preserving an area and challenging their profit-driven motives. It shows the disconnect between preserving the physical environment and preserving the community itself. By cutting off the Black community from the preservation process, failing to include them in the new community, and failing to take responsibility for large contributions to the past destruction of the original community, the city is not authentically and respectfully preserving the space. Suggestions for future research includes further exploring this topic through the lens of Rhetoric of Choice which challenges how those with power and influence, such as the local, state, and federal government shed responsibility for their racist actions, policies, and laws by using rhetoric that states that these things are the cause of individual citizens making choices that do not involve the government or those in power

Combining galaxy and 21cm surveys

Acoustic waves traveling through the early Universe imprint a characteristic scale in the clustering of galaxies, QSOs and inter-galactic gas. This scale can be used as a standard ruler to map the expansion history of the Universe, a technique known as Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). BAO offer a high-precision, low-systematics means of constraining our cosmological model. The statistical power of BAO measurements can be improved if the `smearing' of the acoustic feature by non-linear structure formation is undone in a process known as reconstruction. In this paper we use low-order Lagrangian perturbation theory to study the ability of $21\,$cm experiments to perform reconstruction and how augmenting these surveys with galaxy redshift surveys at relatively low number densities can improve performance. We find that the critical number density which must be achieved in order to benefit $21\,$cm surveys is set by the linear theory power spectrum near its peak, and corresponds to densities achievable by upcoming surveys of emission line galaxies such as eBOSS and DESI. As part of this work we analyze reconstruction within the framework of Lagrangian perturbation theory with local Lagrangian bias, redshift-space distortions, ${\bf k}$-dependent noise and anisotropic filtering schemes.Comment: 10 pages, final version to appear in MNRAS, helpful suggestions from referee and others include

Limitation of energy deposition in classical N body dynamics

Energy transfers in collisions between classical clusters are studied with Classical N Body Dynamics calculations for different entrance channels. It is shown that the energy per particle transferred to thermalised classical clusters does not exceed the energy of the least bound particle in the cluster in its ``ground state''. This limitation is observed during the whole time of the collision, except for the heaviest system.Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures, 1 tabl

Probing star formation in the dense environments of z ~ 1 lensing haloes aligned with dusty star-forming galaxies detected with the South Pole Telescope

We probe star formation in the environments of massive (∼10^(13) M_⊙) dark matter haloes at redshifts of z ∼ 1. This star formation is linked to a submillimetre clustering signal which we detect in maps of the Planck High Frequency Instrument that are stacked at the positions of a sample of high redshift (z > 2) strongly lensed dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) selected from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2500 deg^2 survey. The clustering signal has submillimetre colours which are consistent with the mean redshift of the foreground lensing haloes (z ∼ 1). We report a mean excess of star formation rate (SFR) compared to the field, of (2700 ± 700) M_⊙ yr^(−1) from all galaxies contributing to this clustering signal within a radius of 3.5 arcmin from the SPT DSFGs. The magnitude of the Planck excess is in broad agreement with predictions of a current model of the cosmic infrared background. The model predicts that 80 per cent of the excess emission measured by Planck originates from galaxies lying in the neighbouring haloes of the lensing halo. Using Herschel maps of the same fields, we find a clear excess, relative to the field, of individual sources which contribute to the Planck excess. The mean excess SFR compared to the field is measured to be (370 ± 40) M_⊙ yr^(−1) per resolved, clustered source. Our findings suggest that the environments around these massive z ∼ 1 lensing haloes host intense star formation out to about 2 Mpc. The flux enhancement due to clustering should also be considered when measuring flux densities of galaxies in Planck data

Cosmic Microwave Background Constraints on the Duration and Timing of Reionization from the South Pole Telescope

The epoch of reionization is a milestone of cosmological structure formation, marking the birth of the first objects massive enough to yield large numbers of ionizing photons. However, the mechanism and timescale of reionization remain largely unknown. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) Doppler effect from ionizing bubbles embedded in large-scale velocity streams—known as the patchy kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect—can be used to constrain the duration of reionization. When combined with large-scale CMB polarization measurements, the evolution of the ionized fraction, x-bar_(e), can be inferred. Using new multi-frequency data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT), we show that the ionized fraction evolved relatively rapidly. For our basic foreground model, we find the kSZ power sourced by reionization at ℓ = 3000 to be D^(patchy)_3000 ≤ 2.1 μK^2 at 95% confidence. Using reionization simulations, we translate this to a limit on the duration of reionization of Δz≡z_(x-bar)_e=0.20 - z_(x-bar)_e=0.99≤4.4 (95% confidence). We find that this constraint depends on assumptions about the angular correlation between the thermal SZ power and the cosmic infrared background (CIB). Introducing the degree of correlation as a free parameter, we find that the limit on kSZ power weakens to D^(patchy)_3000 ≤ 4.9 μK^2, implying Δz ≤ 7.9 (95% confidence). We combine the SPT constraint on the duration of reionization with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe measurement of the integrated optical depth to probe the cosmic ionization history. We find that reionization ended with 95% confidence at z > 7.2 under the assumption of no tSZ-CIB correlation, and z > 5.8 when correlations are allowed. Improved constraints from the full SPT data set in conjunction with upcoming Herschel and Planck data should detect extended reionization at >95% confidence provided Δz ≥ 2. These CMB observations complement other observational probes of the epoch of reionization such as the redshifted 21 cm line and narrowband surveys for Lyα-emitting galaxies

Agroecology as a science, a movement and a practice. A review

Agroecology involves various approaches to solve actual challenges of agricultural production. Though agroecology initially dealt primarily with crop production and protection aspects, in recent decades new dimensions such as environmental, social, economic, ethical and development issues are becoming relevant. Today, the term ‘agroecology’ means either a scientific discipline, agricultural practice, or political or social movement. Here we study the different meanings of agroecology. For that we analyse the historical development of agroecology. We present examples from USA, Brazil, Germany, and France. We study and discuss the evolution of different meanings agroecology. The use of the term agroecology can be traced back to the 1930s. Until the 1960s agroecology referred only as a purely scientific discipline. Then, different branches of agroecology developed. Following environmental movements in the 1960s that went against industrial agriculture, agroecology evolved and fostered agroecological movements in the 1990s. Agroecology as an agricultural practice emerged in the 1980s, and was often intertwined with movements. Further, the scales and dimensions of agroecological investigations changed over the past 80 years from the plot and field scales to the farm and agroecosystem scales. Actually three approaches persist: (1) investigations at plot and field scales, (2) investigations at the agroecosystem and farm scales, and (3) investigations covering the whole food system. These different approaches of agroecological science can be explained by the history of nations. In France, agroecology was mainly understood as a farming practice and to certain extent as a movement, whereas the corresponding scientific discipline was agronomy. In Germany, agroecology has a long tradition as a scientific discipline. In the USA and in Brazil all three interpretations of agroecology occur, albeit with a predominance of agroecology as a science in the USA and a stronger emphasis on movement and agricultural practice in Brazil. These varied meanings of the term agroecology cause confusion among scientists and the public, and we recommend that those who publish using this term be explicit in their interpretation