INVESTIGATING INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF ACADEMIC PUBLISHING PRACTICES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Academic publishing processes and standards play a fundamental role in communicating, reviewing, and expanding scientific knowledge in wildlife conservation. However, various publishing biases privilege some research perspectives and worldviews while limiting others. These biases directly impact intellectual diversity, or differences in ontology, axiology, and epistemology. This study aims to quantify intellectual diversity in the field of wildlife conservation and identify how publishing biases affect knowledge available to researchers and decision-makers worldwide. The study employed a sample of 50,000 articles published between 2018 and 2022, collected from the Web of Science database. To analyze the vast amount of article records, natural language processing techniques, including topic modeling, were applied to article abstracts. This enabled the identification of global differences in prevalent topics, theories, and methods in wildlife conservation research. By connecting these trends with researcher social diversity, the study seeks to understand the influence of diverse perspectives on research design and knowledge production. Additionally, an intellectual diversity survey was sent to a randomized sample of international and domestic authors to gather data on differences in axiology and epistemology as well as various publishing culture dynamics. Results reveal the existence of several biases in publishing culture, aligning with previous research. Moreover, language bias emerged as a primary concern, with researchers who did not speak English as a first language experiencing publishing biases most strongly. Differences in epistemological and axiological beliefs were also observed between demographic groups and connected to current work in value orientations and knowledge dimensions. Topic modeling revealed strong geographic differences in topics of study, and natural language processing demonstrated differences in research design. The study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the importance of diversity in wildlife conservation, management, and policy. By addressing biases and fostering intellectual diversity, researchers can effectively tackle complex global challenges. The findings of this research will inform future efforts to explore intellectual diversity and feasible approaches to reducing inherent barriers and biases in academic publishing

Give to You/Fill My Cup

At the core of my project is the assertion that the human voice functions as an instrument. During my time at Bard, my musical practice revolved around an exploration and desire to use singing as texture, as a solo instrument, and as storytelling. I wanted to challenge what it means to be a singer in a band setting, a setting that often illuminates gender in startling ways that limit the creativity and confidence of non-male players. Through this concert series, I wanted to show the singer as a player, an artist, and as integral to the work. I composed 14 original songs, each with different channels for incorporating the voice. For example, “Like a Dream” was written after an intensive study of hard bebop jazz. I aimed to create nimble and complex melodies that rang like horn lines, rhythms that took advantage of the song’s inherent spaciousness and ran over the bar line, and instrumentation whose main job was to support that vocal. “Another Day” does not follow a classic chord progression. Instead, the chords follow the vocal line, augmenting the harmony without necessarily adhering to a key signature. “Badlands” integrates my education in drums and electronic production with a vocal melody based on accents that elicit a popping and percussive effect. Behind each song is the hope to communicate something new with the voice, through range, dynamics, placement, and breath. Running in confluence with my fundamental beliefs around the voice as an instrument is expression through lyrics. In my concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies, I have studied how performing with words sets vocalists (who are often non-men) apart in their musical practice. The themes running throughout my two concerts play with the idea that the lyric can say as much as the music, that the choice of sounds, use of vowels as belts, and consonants as percussion all enhance musical meaning. Fascination with the tiny decisions around the performance of the words, from where I choose to reverberate them in my placement, to their consonance or dissonance with the rest of the band, encapsulates a large piece of my project. These are some of the foundational ideas and methods I employed to craft this concert series. However, beyond the intellectual and academic concepts, my music is hugely driven by feeling and a need to communicate and process through sound. Each concert presented a kaleidoscopic array of experiences stitched together by my guiding principles surrounding the female voice. Give to You traced cycles of growth, stagnation, self-reflection, and non-linear evolution of my confidence within interpersonal relationships. It dealt with questions of female resiliency in “Where Do I Put My Love?” which is a song about my capacity to share energy and the worry I have about putting it into the wrong place. The song’s elongated solo structure and rising dynamics depict the gradual and probing nature of those themes. “Connective Tissue” was inspired by a positive change in my perspective in regards to my sensuality and body. It describes ease felt with my physicality, that I had for the first time felt recognized by someone else. Its repetitive introduction led by all-female singers felt apt, as I hoped other women might relate to my experience. “Time Capsule \u27\u27 made use of scattered lyrics to fall through memory. It relied nearly exclusively on the voice to transport the listener through time and feeling, which I attempted to augment by the use of four octaves of range and inconsistent rhythms. “Mad”, “Secret” and finally “Like a Dream” detail first love, in its loving with abandon, giving all I have, seeing the world in color, heightened awakeness. In its hope. My second concert, Fill My Cup, treads with more caution and angst through a similar field of experience and experimentation. The songs are perhaps more self-assured in subject matter, dealing less with confusion and more with power. The themes underpinning this concert are in some ways, the aftermath of completing three years of work and self-reflection in Give to You. The thought in my mind was that I would rather be full than empty. Fill My Cup ponders how one might choose to do that. My creative direction this semester was colored by the urge to fill different empty spaces. A concert of more extremes, it is broken into two parts. The first half grapples with the erratic and tenuous experimentation I have sought out to fill loneliness or control change. Whether it is by “saying yes to things I don’t believe in” punctuated by united vocal harmonies in “Come Over Anyway” or by “looking for a place that speaks shelter” crooned on the full chords of “No Shame.” The second half seeks a more balanced future for myself, one where I can live presently and celebrate the filling of my days and heart with small things that add up to big feelings. Songs like “Think of You” and “Morning” engage with consistency and reciprocity. The metaphorical filling occurring is of coffee cups between lovers or with the intoxication of meeting someone new. The preciousness and fleetingness of these moments is something I have always wanted to capture musically. This concert series has led me to engage with these ideas of fullness and try to form a more comfortable relationship with emptiness. Harnessing these experiences and repurposing them in song and through the voice helps feels like a gift, feels like a dream

Cultural Expression Through Art

Our project’s goal is to work towards greater cultural awareness within the Missoula community by focusing on educating children about culture through art. Cultural education has been slow to be implemented in schools, although it is increasing in importance as diversity in the Missoula community and the rest of the U.S. continues to increase. Cultural awareness is a broad term that covers multiple aspects of awareness: empathy, competence, safety, and intelligence. Learning cultural awareness begins at a young age, so we designed a hands-on learning experience directed at students in grades 4 through 6. We decided to use art as a way to connect students to culture in an engaging and memorable way. Due to COVID-19, we created a virtual learning experience using materials that students could easily find at home or any store. Our website contains an introductory lesson on what culture is as well as other lessons led by educators who volunteered to partner with us. Educators provided an art tutorial video as well as a lesson about the culture behind the art project. We partnered with a local nonprofit, The Flagship Program, to offer the website to a small group of students in order to test our website’s functionality and obtain feedback from educators and their students about the material and areas for improvement. By encouraging cultural awareness at young ages, we can support students in developing cross-cultural skills that will foster future global awareness and communication skills. Art itself is a cultural activity that fosters growth, inclusivity, and innovation. By looking at art forms originating in different cultures, our project shows one of the many ways that cultural education can be incorporated into classrooms

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM