Ambivalent Legacies: A Response to Harper Keenan

Harper Keenan’s generous letter to beginning queer/trans teachers hinges on the question: How do we stand in that impossible moment when we are welcoming newcomers while still acknowledging our debts to those who’ve come before? Jonathan Silin, whose work this issue celebrates, grapples with these questions of legacy in an essay that reflects on his contributions as an early childhood educator and researcher and a gay rights and HIV/AIDS activist. Silin (2020) asks: Is it possible to leave behind traditional ideas about legacy, weighted down as they are with commitments to social and biological reproduction, and reimagine it as something more ethereal, more queer if you will, that might lead to unthought possibilities? (p. 55) Harper’s letter is one possible response to Jonathan’s question. If social and biological reproduction—what Jack Halberstam (2011) calls “straight time”—tend toward conservatism, loyalty, and continuity, then queer legacies will make room for “unthought possibilities,” including the gestures of welcome, like Harper’s letter, that open the door before knowing who has arrived. Harper invites queer/trans beginning teachers into the dance party and introduces them to the guests who came earlier— Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, Paula Grossman and Steve Dain, and Jonathan Silin. Harper reminds the new teachers that their welcome was made possible by all these earlier activists. Indeed, the fact that they are able to walk in the front door and call themselves queer and trans teachers was made possible by the protests and politics of activists. For Harper, activism is education

Local false discovery rate facilitates comparison of different microarray experiments

The local false discovery rate (LFDR) estimates the probability of falsely identifying specific genes with changes in expression. In computer simulations, LFDR <10% successfully identified genes with changes in expression, while LFDR >90% identified genes without changes. We used LFDR to compare different microarray experiments quantitatively: (i) Venn diagrams of genes with and without changes in expression, (ii) scatter plots of the genes, (iii) correlation coefficients in the scatter plots and (iv) distributions of gene function. To illustrate, we compared three methods for pre-processing microarray data. Correlations between methods were high (r = 0.84–0.92). However, responses were often different in magnitude, and sometimes discordant, even though the methods used the same raw data. LFDR complements functional assessments like gene set enrichment analysis. To illustrate, we compared responses to ultraviolet radiation (UV), ionizing radiation (IR) and tobacco smoke. Compared to unresponsive genes, genes responsive to both UV and IR were enriched for cell cycle, mitosis, and DNA repair functions. Genes responsive to UV but not IR were depleted for cell adhesion functions. Genes responsive to tobacco smoke were enriched for detoxification functions. Thus, LFDR reveals differences and similarities among experiments

Centering Racial Justice in Sex Education: Strategies for Engaging Professionals and Young People

This practice paper—Centering Racial Justice in Sex Education: Strategies for Engaging Professionals and Young People—serves as a guide to providing racially just practices for those working in the field of sex education. We understand that much like any other work discussing diversity and inclusion practices, this isn't about presenting a list of things that will allow organizations to simply check a box or provide a one-size-fits-all approach. Described throughout these pages is the pursuit of racial justice and equity that requires multi-layered efforts that address the needs of both youth of color and the communities in which they live.This practice paper describes—The need for racial justice and equity in the K–12 sex education space;Methodology of the research conducted with key informants;Content of racially just sex education;Qualities of a racially just sex educator;Administrative and management practices that support sex educators of color; and,Measurement and evaluation practices to enhance sex education for youth of color

Perceptions and Barriers of Survivorship Care in Asia: Perceptions From Asian Breast Cancer Survivors.

PurposeWith the long-term goal to optimize post-treatment cancer care in Asia, we conducted a qualitative study to gather in-depth descriptions from multiethnic Asian breast cancer survivors on their perceptions and experiences of cancer survivorship and their perceived barriers to post-treatment follow-up.MethodsTwenty-four breast cancer survivors in Singapore participated in six structured focus group discussions. The focus group discussions were voice recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed by thematic analysis.ResultsBreast cancer survivors were unfamiliar with and disliked the term "survivorship," because it implies that survivors had undergone hardship during their treatment. Cognitive impairment and peripheral neuropathy were physical symptoms that bothered survivors the most, and many indicated that they experienced emotional distress during survivorship, for which they turned to religion and peers as coping strategies. Survivors indicated lack of consultation time and fear of unplanned hospitalization as main barriers to optimal survivorship care. Furthermore, survivors indicated that they preferred receipt of survivorship care at the specialty cancer center.ConclusionBudding survivorship programs in Asia must take survivor perspectives into consideration to ensure that survivorship care is fully optimized within the community

Our Space: Being a Responsible Citizen of the Digital World

Our Space is a set of curricular materials designed to encourage high school students to reflect on the ethical dimensions of their participation in new media environments. Through role-playing activities and reflective exercises, students are asked to consider the ethical responsibilities of other people, and whether and how they behave ethically themselves online. These issues are raised in relation to five core themes that are highly relevant online: identity, privacy, authorship and ownership, credibility, and participation.Our Space was co-developed by The Good Play Project and Project New Media Literacies (established at MIT and now housed at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism). The Our Space collaboration grew out of a shared interest in fostering ethical thinking and conduct among young people when exercising new media skills

(Discrete) Almansi Type Decompositions: An umbral calculus framework based on osp(1∣2)\mathfrak{osp}(1|2) symmetries

We introduce the umbral calculus formalism for hypercomplex variables starting from the fact that the algebra of multivariate polynomials \BR[\underline{x}] shall be described in terms of the generators of the Weyl-Heisenberg algebra. The extension of \BR[\underline{x}] to the algebra of Clifford-valued polynomials $\mathcal{P}$ gives rise to an algebra of Clifford-valued operators whose canonical generators are isomorphic to the orthosymplectic Lie algebra $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$. This extension provides an effective framework in continuity and discreteness that allow us to establish an alternative formulation of Almansi decomposition in Clifford analysis (c.f. \cite{Ryan90,MR02,MAGU}) that corresponds to a meaningful generalization of Fischer decomposition for the subspaces $\ker (D')^k$. We will discuss afterwards how the symmetries of \mathfrak{sl}_2(\BR) (even part of $\mathfrak{osp}(1|2)$) are ubiquitous on the recent approach of \textsc{Render} (c.f. \cite{Render08}), showing that they can be interpreted in terms of the method of separation of variables for the Hamiltonian operator in quantum mechanics.Comment: Improved version of the Technical Report arXiv:0901.4691v1; accepted for publication @ Math. Meth. Appl. Sci http://www.mat.uc.pt/preprints/ps/p1054.pdf (Preliminary Report December 2010

Critical health education studies: Reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium

In May 2018, a group of scholars gathered in the icy and sunlit grandeur of Queenstown (Aotearoa New Zealand) to talk, debate and share ideas about health education. The conference aimed to trouble and disrupt traditional kinds of health education and, instead, suggest possibilities for the critical study of health education – both in terms of theory and practice. This introduction to the special themed symposium is a reflection by the six authors on that new conference – Critical Studies in Health Education (CHESS) – and what it aimed to achieve. The authors discuss and define the intent of critical approaches to health education, and reflect on their experiences of the conference, as well as the future of the field. Papers in this special themed symposium of Health Education Journal are also introduced.Katie Fitzpatrick acknowledges the support of Te Aparangi The Royal Society of New Zealand for its support via a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research