Writing Resistance, Writing the Self: Literary Reconstruction in United States Prison Witness

Based in a digital archive of first-person witness by people currently incarcerated in the United States (U.S.), this paper discusses witness texts that document and grieve the experience of alienation of self-identity, fight that alienation, and that together map both the degradation of human dignity at the center of current U.S. penality and how it can be resisted in restoring sociality with other incarcerated people. Writing from inside often represents a moment not only of resistance to the prison regime, but of reconstruction of the self that is the premise for all further resistance. After placing prison witness today against the background of such witness from an earlier penal era, the paper looks at patterns across the essays currently posted in the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). The paper suggests that the very availability of the APWA could re-ground future U.S. prison scholarship.Baseado num arquivo digital de testemunhos na primeira pessoa de reclusos atualmente encarcerados nos Estados Unidos (EUA), este artigo discute textos que documentam e refletem o sofrimento daqueles que passam pela experiência de alienação da autoidentidade, que combatem essa alienação e que, juntos, mapeiam a degradação da dignidade humana no seio do atual sistema penal dos EUA e como esta pode ser combatida para recuperar a sociabilidade com outros reclusos. Escrever do seu interior representa muitas vezes um momento não apenas de resistência ao regime prisional, mas também de reconstrução do eu, que é a premissa de toda a resistência subsequente. Confrontando o testemunho atual ao contexto de um testemunho de uma era penal anterior, o artigo analisa os padrões dos textos publicados nos dias de hoje no American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). A análise sugere que a própria disponibilização do APWA poderá re-definir os futuros estudos académicos sobre as prisões dos EUA.Fondé sur une archive numérisée de témoignages à la première personne par d’ actuels déténus aux États-Unis (EUA), cet article se penche sur des textes qui documentent et reflètent la souffrance de ceux qui traversent l’expérience d’aliénation de l’identité de soi, qui luttent contre cette aliénation et qui, ensemble, géographisent et tracent les contours de la dégradation de la dignité humaine au sein de l’actuel système pénal des EUA et la façon dont elle peut être combattue pour récupérer la sociabilité avec d’autres détenus. Écrire de l’intérieur représente souvent un moment, non seulement de résistance au régime carcéral, mais aussi de reconstruction du moi, prémisse de toute résistance sous-jacente. Après avoir placé le témoignage actuel de la prison d’aujourd’hui dans le contexte d’un témoignage d’une époque pénale antérieure, cet article examine les tendances observées dans les essais publiés aujourd’hui dans l’American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). L’analyse suggère que la mise à disposition de l’APWA pourra re-définir les futures recherches académiques sur les prisons des EUA

Activist Bibliography as Abolitionist Pedagogy in the American Prison Writing Archive

This article describes how undergraduate coursework performs activist bibliography for the largest and first fully searchable digital archive of testimony writing by currently incarcerated people, the American Prison Writing Archive (APWA). The authors argue that when teachers invite students to participate as citizen archivists for the APWA as coursework, through contributing crowdsourced metadata such as transcription and subject tagging, the incarcerated writers whose manuscripts they edit become the epistemological center of the course. Through this pedagogy, APWA authors create and disseminate knowledge about the emotional and physical tolls of incarceration and the need for prison abolition. The article features two case studies in undergraduate teaching assignments: (a) students performing subject tagging of APWA testimony in a literature course, and (b) students transcribing APWA manuscripts in a literacy studies course. Both engage students in activist bibliographical work and digital humanities for a public audience that increases the functionality and content in the archive, defies carceral censorship, and demystifies broad public and political misinformation about prisons and imprisoned people. By detailing two possibilities for incorporating APWA editing into literature and literacy curricula, and its potential to ideologically transform student citizen archivists, the authors hope to attract more instructors to include this editorial work in their syllabi and extend our call for critical action within and beyond the archive. (In the issue section Rethinking Catalogs and Archives

Understanding Livestock Grazing Impacts: A Decision Support Tool to Develop Goal-Oriented Grazing Management Strategies

Managing grasslands in the western United States has become much more complex over the last few decades. A century ago the goal was to survive as a livestock producer, and grassland management involved using forage effectively and overcoming obstacles such as predators and shortages of water and feed. Today the successful grassland manager also needs to consider the diversity and health of the ecosystem as a whole. Livestock grazing can negatively and/or positively affect riparian areas, sensitive plants, and endangered wildlife. Since the impact on a specific factor will vary depending on the timing, intensity and class of livestock grazed, land managers need a decision support system that will help them simultaneously evaluate the affect of different grazing management strategies on a variety of environmental and economic factors. Understanding Livestock Grazing Impact, an interactive website, assembles and presents information on the impacts of livestock grazing in a way that is both comprehensive and accessible. This makes it easier for ranchers and land managers to analyse, compare and choose the grazing strategies that best achieve the goals for a given grazing unit

The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for the CMB

We investigate the statistics of the cosmic microwave background using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We show that, when we correctly de-correlate the data, the partition function of the Kolmogorov stochasticity parameter is compatible with the Kolmogorov distribution and, contrary to previous claims, the CMB data are compatible with Gaussian fluctuations with the correlation function given by standard Lambda-CDM. We then use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to derive upper bounds on residual point source power in the CMB, and indicate the promise of this statistics for further datasets, especially Planck, to search for deviations from Gaussianity and for detecting point sources and Galactic foregrounds.Comment: Improved significance of the results (which remain unchanged) by using patches instead of ring segments in the analysis. Added sky maps of the Kolmogorov-parameter for original and de-correlated CMB ma

Structural and molecular study of the supraspinatus muscle of modern humans (Homo sapiens ) and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes )

Objectives To analyze the muscle architecture and the expression pattern of the myosin heavy chain (MyHC) isoforms in the supraspinatus of Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens in order to identify differences related to their different types of locomotion. Materials and methods We have analyzed nine supraspinatus muscles of Pan troglodytes and ten of Homo sapiens. For each sample, we have recorded the muscle fascicle length (MFL), the pennation angle, and the physiological cross?sectional area (PCSA). In the same samples, by real?time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we have assessed the percentages of expression of the MyHC?I, MyHC?IIa, and MyHC?IIx isoforms. Results The mean MFL of the supraspinatus was longer (p?=?0.001) and the PCSA was lower (p?<?0.001) in Homo sapiens than in Pan troglodytes. Although the percentage of expression of MyHC?IIa was lower in Homo sapiens than in Pan troglodytes (p?=?0.035), the combination of MyHC?IIa and MyHC?IIx was expressed at a similar percentage in the two species. Discussion The longer MFL in the human supraspinatus is associated with a faster contractile velocity, which reflects the primary function of the upper limbs in Homo sapiens—the precise manipulation of objects—an adaptation to bipedal locomotion. In contrast, the larger PCSA in Pan troglodytes is related to the important role of the supraspinatus in stabilizing the glenohumeral joint during the support phase of knuckle?walking. These functional differences of the supraspinatus in the two species are not reflected in differences in the expression of the MyHC isoforms

Probing dark energy with the next generation X-ray surveys of galaxy clusters

We present forecasts on the capability of future wide-area high-sensitivity X-ray surveys of galaxy clusters to yield constraints on the parameters defining the Dark Energy (DE) equation of state (EoS). Our analysis is carried out for future X-ray surveys which have enough sensitivity to provide accurate measurements of X-ray mass proxies and Fe-line based redshifts for about 2x10^4 clusters. We base our analysis on the Fisher Matrix formalism, by combining information on the cluster number counts and power spectrum, also including, for the first time in the analysis of the large scale cluster distribution, the effect of linear redshift-space distortions (RSDs). This study is performed with the main purpose of dissecting the cosmological information provided by geometrical and growth tests, which are both included in the analysis of number counts and clustering of galaxy clusters. We compare cosmological constraints obtained by assuming different levels of prior knowledge of the parameters which define the observable-mass X-ray relation. This comparison further demonstrates the fundamental importance of having a well calibrated observable-mass relation and, most importantly, its redshift evolution. Such a calibration can be achieved only by having at least $\sim 10^3$ net photon counts for each cluster included in the survey. We show that RSDs in the power spectrum analysis carry important cosmological information also when traced with galaxy clusters and the DE FoM increases by a factor of 8. Besides confirming the potential that large cluster surveys have in constraining the nature of DE, our analysis emphasizes that a full exploitation of the cosmological information carried by such surveys requires not only a large statistic but also a robust measurement of the mass proxies and redshifts for a significant fraction of the cluster sample, derived from the same X-ray survey data.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figures,published on MNRA

Indicadores de qualidade do solo em sistemas de cultivo orgânico e convencional no semi-árido Cearense.

A qualidade do solo pode mudar com o passar do tempo, em decorrência de eventos naturais ou ações antrópicas. A adoção de práticas de cultivo orgânico reduz o revolvimento do solo, favorecendo a recuperação de suas propriedades físicas e químicas. Este trabalho teve como objetivo comparar propriedades físicas,químicas e biológicas de solos cultivados com algodão em bases orgânicas e no sistema convencional, assim como identificar as que possam ser utilizadas como indicadores de qualidade do solo. Selecionaram-se seis áreas submetidas ao cultivo orgânico e três ao cultivo convencional para coleta de amostras de solo deformadas e indeformadas, nas camadas de 0–10, 10–20 e 20–30 cm. Técnicas de estatística univariada e multivariada foram utilizadas para análise dos dados. Os resultados mostraram que os indicadores físicos e químicos testados individualmente não foram sensíveis para diferenciar as áreas sob sistema de cultivo orgânico daquelas sob cultivo convencional. No entanto, a aplicação de técnicas de análise multivariada – no caso, componentes principais e a discriminante de Anderson – permitiu a distinção entre algumas áreas cultivadas sob cultivo orgânico comparativamente às convencionais, até mesmo as que estavam em transição.Dos indicadores biológicos, a fauna edáfica mostrou-se mais precisa na avaliação da qualidade do solo, distinguindo de forma satisfatória as áreas sob sistema de cultivo orgânico das que estavam sob sistema convencional