Race in the Life Sciences: An Empirical Assessment, 1950-2000

The mainstream narrative regarding the evolution of race as an idea in the scientific community is that biological understandings of race dominated throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up until World War II, after which a social constructionist approach is thought to have taken hold. Many believe that the horrific outcomes of the most notorious applications of biological race—eugenics and the Holocaust—moved scientists away from thinking that race reflects inherent differences and toward an understanding that race is a largely social, cultural, and political phenomenon. This understanding of the evolution of race as a scientific idea informed the way that many areas of law conceptualize human equality, including civil rights, human rights, and constitutional law. This Article provides one of the first large-scale empirical assessments of publications in peer-reviewed biomedical and life science journals to examine whether biological theories of race actually lost credibility in the life sciences after World War II. We find that biological theories of race transformed yet persisted in the dominant academic discourse up through modern times—a finding that contradicts the central narrative that the life sciences became “color-blind” or “post-racial” several decades ago. The continued salience of biological race in the life sciences suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the questionable assumptions driving this research on biological race and its potential spillover effects, i.e., how persisting claims of biological race in the scientific literature might reconstitute its significance in law and society in a manner that may be harmful to racial minorities

Calcium isotopic composition of high-latitude proxy carrier Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (sin.)

The accurate reconstruction of sea surface temperature (SST) history in climate-sensitive regions (e.g. tropical and polar oceans) became a challenging task in palaeoceanographic research. Biogenic shell carbonate SST proxies successfully developed for tropical regions often fail in cool water environments. Their major regional shortcomings and the cryptic diversity now found within the major high latitude proxy carrier Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (sin.) highlight an urgent need to explore complementary SST proxies for these cool-water regions. Here we incorporate the genetic component into a calibration study of a new SST proxy for the high latitudes. We found that the calcium isotopic composition (δ44/40Ca) of calcite from genotyped net catches and core-top samples of the planktonic foraminifera Neogloboquadrina pachyderma (sin.) is related to temperature and unaffected by genetic variations. The temperature sensitivity has been found to be 0.17 (±0.02)‰ per 1°C, highlighting its potential for downcore applications in open marine cool-water environments. Our results further indicate that in extreme polar environments, below a critical threshold temperature of 2.0 (±0.5)°C associated with salinities below 33.0 (±0.5)‰, a prominent shift in biomineralization affects the δ44/40Ca of genotyped and core-top N. pachyderma (sin.), becoming insensitive to temperature. These findings highlight the need of more systematic calibration studies on single planktonic foraminiferal species in order to unravel species-specific factors influencing the temperature sensitivity of Ca isotope fractionation and to validate the proxies' applicability

Riffing on Kuma:: culture-based sustainably via pattern and layering

This study is based on an architecture studio that examines culture as an integral part of architectural production, on the theory that achieving a deeper level of sustainability requires a thorough-going engagement with culture. Believing that culture encompasses and !s a society's approach to all the pillars (ecological, social, economic) of sustainable development. Achieving this requires deeper insight into the myriad ways in which culture can shape architecture, which in turn shapes culture. While the link between culture and sustainability is increasingly accepted, what culture !s relative to architecture needs more careful analysis. We will first review how studying artifacts beyond the confines of architectural production sparked deeper understandings of how culture is both persistent and dynamic across time and circumstance. Our focus, however, will be Kengo Kuma's theory of how pattern and layering are potent vehicles for enacting culture as sustainability--"The rediscovery of the heritage of traditional Japanese patterns and boundaries can unveil new horizons and new challenges to sustainability in world's architecture. Through layering we can protect ourselves from natural elements, without detaching us from nature” (Liotta & Belfiore, 94). We will show how our own "riff” on this through analyses and making exercises”helped students internalize qualitative and quantitative sustainability values. Students embarked on project design ready to test how culture, as embodied in things like food growing and preparation, climatic and seasonal awareness aligned with patterns of activity, and layered spatial practices, could inform sustainable approaches. This enhanced mode of design thinking will enable them to function more meaningfully, as well as pragmatically, out in the world. This is a case study based on qualitative methods of evaluation

Riffing on Kuma:: culture-based sustainably via pattern and layering

This study is based on an architecture studio that examines culture as an integral part of architectural production, on the theory that achieving a deeper level of sustainability requires a thorough-going engagement with culture. Believing that culture encompasses and !s a society's approach to all the pillars (ecological, social, economic) of sustainable development. Achieving this requires deeper insight into the myriad ways in which culture can shape architecture, which in turn shapes culture. While the link between culture and sustainability is increasingly accepted, what culture !s relative to architecture needs more careful analysis. We will first review how studying artifacts beyond the confines of architectural production sparked deeper understandings of how culture is both persistent and dynamic across time and circumstance. Our focus, however, will be Kengo Kuma's theory of how pattern and layering are potent vehicles for enacting culture as sustainability--"The rediscovery of the heritage of traditional Japanese patterns and boundaries can unveil new horizons and new challenges to sustainability in world's architecture. Through layering we can protect ourselves from natural elements, without detaching us from nature” (Liotta & Belfiore, 94). We will show how our own "riff” on this through analyses and making exercises”helped students internalize qualitative and quantitative sustainability values. Students embarked on project design ready to test how culture, as embodied in things like food growing and preparation, climatic and seasonal awareness aligned with patterns of activity, and layered spatial practices, could inform sustainable approaches. This enhanced mode of design thinking will enable them to function more meaningfully, as well as pragmatically, out in the world. This is a case study based on qualitative methods of evaluation

HI and OH absorption in the lensing galaxy of MG J0414+0534

We report the detection of \HI 21-cm absorption in the $z=0.96$ early-type lensing galaxy towards MG J0414+0534 with the Green Bank Telescope. The absorption, with total $N_{\rm HI}=1.6 \times 10^{18} (T_{\rm s}/f) {\rm cm}^{-2}$, is resolved into two strong components, probably due to the two strongest lens components, which are separated by 0.4\arcsec. Unlike the other three lenses which have been detected in \HI, J0414+0534 does not exhibit strong OH absorption, giving a OH/\HI column density ratio of N_{\rm OH}/N_{\rm HI}\lapp10^{-6} (for $T_{\rm s}=100$ K, $T_{\rm x}=10$ K and $f_{\rm HI}=f_{\rm OH}=1$). This underabundance of molecular gas may indicate that the extreme optical--near-IR colour ($V-K=10.26$) along the line-of-sight is not due to the lens. We therefore suggest that despite the strong upper limits on molecular absorption at the quasar redshift, as traced by millimetre lines, the extinction occurs primarily in the quasar host galaxy.Comment: Accepted by MNRAS Letters, 5 (and a bit) pages, 5 figure

Relaxation at late stages in an entropy barrier model for glassy systems

The ground state dynamics of an entropy barrier model proposed recently for describing relaxation of glassy systems is considered. At stages of evolution the dynamics can be described by a simple variant of the Ehrenfest urn model. Analytical expression for the relaxation times from an arbitrary state to the ground state is derived. Upper and lower bounds for the relaxation times as a function of system size are obtained.Comment: 9 pages no figures. to appear in J.Phys. A: Math. and Ge

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ANTICANCER ACTIVITY OF ANGIOTENSIN RECEPTOR BLOCKERS - IRBESARTAN AND TELMISARTAN

Objective: Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) are effective hypertensive drugs. Reduction in risk of lung cancer with ARBs was proven in clinical studies. Telmisartan and irbesartan are the second-generation ARBs. This study screens the anticancer activity of these two drugs in a dose-dependent manner using A549 cell line.Methods: Different concentrations of irbesartan and telmisartan were treated on A549 cells and the anticancer activity was evaluated through methylthiazolyldiphenyl-tetrazolium [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide] cytotoxicity assay. The dot plot of the cytotoxicity results was used to extrapolate the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values. Microscopic changes in the cells post-treatment with these drugs were also recorded at ideal concentrations.Results: A reduction in cell viability was noted in A549 cells with increasing concentration of the drug. The IC50 values for irbesartan and telmisartan were 31.1 μg and 15.6 μg, respectively. Microscopic observation of the cells shows more rounded and deformed dead cells on telmisartan- and irbesartan-treated cells when compared with the untreated control.Conclusion: The results confirm the anticancer activity of both the drugs with telmisartan being more efficient. The anticancer activity could probably be due to the role of irbesartan and telmisartan in inhibiting mitogen-activated protein kinase cell survival pathway and local angiogenesis

High-dimensional quantum dynamics of adsorption and desorption of H2_2 at Cu(111)

We performed high-dimensional quantum dynamical calculations of the dissociative adsorption and associative desorption of hydrogen on Cu(111). The potential energy surface (PES) is obtained from density functional theory calculations. Two regimes of dynamics are found, at low energies sticking is determined by the minimum energy barrier, at high energies by the distribution of barrier heights. Experimental results are well-reproduced qualitatively, but some quantitative discrepancies are identified as well.Comment: 4 two column pages, revtex, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let