“Born Under My Heart”: Adoptive Parents’ Use of Metaphors to Make Sense of Their Past, Present, and Future

Metaphors provide the opportunity to make sense of our experiences and share them with others. The current research qualitatively examined interviews with adoptive parents who had adopted through intercountry or private adoptions. Throughout their interviews, each participant used at least one metaphor in describing their experiences of adopting and raising their child. Overarchingly, the metaphor of “Adoption is a journey” encapsulated parents’ experiences. To demonstrate the journey, parents used metaphors to describe the past, present, and future. Metaphors of the past focused on their child’s trauma and the origin of how the child came to join their family. Metaphors used to describe the present were challenge metaphors, including child’s behaviors and finding support, coping metaphors, and balance metaphors. Lastly, metaphors of the future included guiding and commitment metaphors. In addition to metaphors, parents used symbolic rituals to connect their children with their past and current family. From metaphors, we offer several practical implications for postadoption intervention. First, interventions should be developed to meet participants where they are. Second, interventions should focus on the overall picture of adoption, as parents make sense of their past experiences and their ideals about the future. Lastly, services should focus on tools, not fixes

Syzygium nusatenggaraense (Myrtaceae), a new rainforest tree species with a calyptrate calyx from the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia

A new rainforest tree species of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), Syzygium nusatenggaraense Sunarti & Y.W.Low is described here based on two collections from the Lesser Sunda Islands. This species is superficially similar to Syzygium arcanum P.S.Ashton, a Bornean endemic tree species, but differs in a suite of morphological characters and geographic distribution. The new species is illustrated, and description is here given. Satu spesies pohon hutan hujan baru dari suku jambu-jambuan atau Myrtaceae, Syzygium nusatenggaraense Sunarti & Y.W.Low diterbitkan disini berdasarkan kepada dua koleksi dari Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara. Spesies ini mirip dengan satu spesies pohon endemik Borneo Syzygium arcanum P.S.Ashton, tetapi berbeda dalam rangkaian karakter morfologi dan distribusi geografisnya. Spesies baru tersebut diilustrasikan dan deskripsi diberikan di sini

The Role of Antarctica in Biogeographical Reconstruction: A Point of View

Premise of research. The opening of the Drake Passage in the Miocene (disconnecting Antarctica and South America and resulting in the establishment of the Circumpolar Current preventing warm waters from the north to reach the polar continent) has led to the formation of the ice sheets and the retreat of the temperate to tropical vegetation that had covered Antarctica for millions of years. With only two current native vascular plant species, Antarctica has been virtually ignored in biogeographical reconstructions and, when considered, only a posteriori invoked as a route of dispersal to reconcile inferred disjunct biogeographical patterns. Methodology. Here, we provide a brief overview of the rich fossil record of Antarctica, further confirming that many plant families were once present on this continent and that the age of a family is mostly not correlated with its presence or absence on the continent. Such evidence indicates a need to develop a paleogeographical model incorporating Antarctica that can be applied to constrain ancestral area reconstructions.Wepropose such a model and investigate its effects on biogeographical scenarios using the cosmopolitan plant family Myrtaceae (a family with a rich fossil record in Antarctica) as a case study. Pivotal results. Based on this evidence and previous studies that have shown the importance of Antarctica in the biogeography and evolution of plant lineages, we argue that this region should routinely be included as a predefined area in biogeographical analyses. Conclusions. A possible paleogeographical model including Antarctica is proposed. It is subdivided into five time slices and spans the last 160 Myr. We expect that the formal inclusion of Antarctica in ancestral area reconstructions (using an evidence-based biogeographical model) will open further discussions and research programs assessing the importance of this area in shaping the current temperate and tropical floras and increase the precision of resulting biogeographical patterns

Policy brief : Providing certainty and acting with urgency – addressing skills and worker shortages for industrial decarbonisation

Decarbonising industrial clusters is a critical component of the UK Government's efforts to transition to net zero by 2050 (2045 in Scotland). In its recently published (December 2023) Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) Vision, the UK Government argues that establishing a new CCUS industry could add £5BN to the economy by 2050, support 50,000 jobs by 2030 and create storage capacity equivalent to taking 6M cars off the road. Yet achieving these economic as well as environmental gains will require concerted efforts from across Government, industry, educational institutions, and others to address persisting skills and worker shortage

The Spitzer c2d Survey of Large, Nearby, Interstellar Clouds. VII. Ophiuchus Observed with MIPS

We present maps of 14.4 deg^2 of the Ophiuchus dark clouds observed by the Spitzer Space Telescope Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). These high-quality maps depict both numerous point sources and extended dust emission within the star-forming and non–star-forming portions of these clouds. Using PSF-fitting photometry, we detect 5779 sources at 24 μm and 81 sources at 70 μm at the 10 σ level of significance. Three hundred twenty-three candidate young stellar objects (YSOs) were identified according to their positions on the MIPS/2MASS K versus color-magnitude diagrams, as compared to 24 μm detections in the SWIRE extragalactic survey. We find that more than half of the YSO candidates, and almost all those with protostellar Class I spectral energy distributions, are confined to the known cluster and aggregates

Water-soluble polymers: emerging contaminants detected, separated and quantified by a novel Gpc/Maldi-Tof method

Water-soluble polymers (WSPs) are additives used as thickeners, stabilisers and flocculants in industry and in household products, including personal care products. Given their widespread use, it is likely WSPs enter the environment, particularly through wastewaters. This is of concern as there is little ecotoxicological research on their fate and behaviour once in the environment, which means their risk to aquatic life is not understood. The lack of suitable analytical techniques to detect, characterise and quantify WSPs hinders research on the potential impact of these polymers. A novel method has been developed that identifies polymers within a sample and separates them using gel-permeation chromatography (GPC). This is coupled with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS), to quantify the polymer fractions using molecular weight information. This process has been carried out on a range of aqueous media. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) ingredients were successfully separated from non-polymeric material in a commercial shaving gel personal care product (PCP), before being quantified at 1.62 wt%. This method was applied to a spiked wastewater influent sample to demonstrate the extraction and separation of PEG from organic constituents such as dissolved organic matter (DOM). This highlighted the additional challenges of analysing WSPs in the environment, as factors such as sorption and biodegradation affected the total recovery of PEG, with an extraction efficiency of 53%. Overall, this method was applied for the extraction of PEG from a PCP with accurate quantification, before a proof-of-concept extraction from wastewater demonstrated the difficulties associated with WSP analysis in environmental samples. This method provides opportunities to use tandem GPC/MALDI-TOF MS to quantify WSPs in a broad array of environmental samples. Additional studies could include its application to wastewater or freshwater monitoring

Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide

This Resource Guide is the outcome of a Summer Institute on Methodologies for Housing Justice convened by the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin as part of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1758774). Held in Los Angeles in August 2019, the Summer Institute brought together participants from cities around the world. As is the case with the overall scope and purpose of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, it created a shared terrain of scholarship for movement-based and university-based scholars. Dissatisfied with the canonical methods that are in use in housing studies and guided by housing justice movements that are active research communities, the Summer Institute was premised on the assertion that methodology is political. Methodology is rooted in arguments about the world and involves relations of power and knowledge. The method itself – be it countermapping or people’s diaries – does not ensure an ethics of solidarity and a purpose of justice. Such goals require methodologies for liberation. Thus, as is evident in this Resource Guide, our endeavor foregrounds innovative methods that are being used by researchers across academia and activism and explicitly situates such methods in an orientation towards housing justice

Theory of Star Formation

We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating overdensities to initiate gravitational contraction or collapse, and countering the effects of gravity in these overdense regions. The key dynamical processes involved in star formation -- turbulence, magnetic fields, and self-gravity -- are highly nonlinear and multidimensional. Physical arguments are used to identify and explain the features and scalings involved in star formation, and results from numerical simulations are used to quantify these effects. We divide star formation into large-scale and small-scale regimes and review each in turn. Large scales range from galaxies to giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and their substructures. Important problems include how GMCs form and evolve, what determines the star formation rate (SFR), and what determines the initial mass function (IMF). Small scales range from dense cores to the protostellar systems they beget. We discuss formation of both low- and high-mass stars, including ongoing accretion. The development of winds and outflows is increasingly well understood, as are the mechanisms governing angular momentum transport in disks. Although outstanding questions remain, the framework is now in place to build a comprehensive theory of star formation that will be tested by the next generation of telescopes.Comment: 120 pages, to appear in ARAA. No changes from v1 text; permission statement adde