Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom

Billions of people around the globe are well-acquainted with SpongeBob Squarepants and the antics of the title character and his friends on Bikini Bottom. By the same token, there is an absence of public discourse about the whitewashing of violent American military activities through SpongeBob’s occupation and reclaiming of the bottom of Bikini Atoll’s lagoon. SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of Indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland. This article exposes the complicity of popular culture in maintaining American military hegemonies in Oceania while amplifying the enduring indigeneity (Kauanui 2016) of the Marshallese people, who maintain deeply spiritual and historical connections to land—even land they cannot occupy due to residual radiation contamination from US nuclear weapons testing—through a range of cultural practices, including language, song, and weaving. This article also considers the gendered violence of nuclear colonialism and the resilience of Marshallese women

The take-up of multiple means-tested benefits by British pensioners. Evidence from the Family Resources Survey

Non take-up of means-tested benefits among pensioners is of longstanding concern. It will assume increased importance from 2003 with the introduction of the new means-tested Pension Credit, which will subsume Income Support and to which about half of all pensioners are expected to be entitled. In this paper we use Family Resources Survey data spanning the period April 1997 to March 2000 to investigate patterns of take-up of the three main means-tested benefits to which pensioners may be entitled – Income Support (IS), Housing Benefit (HB) and Council Tax Benefit (CTB). We find that although 36% of pensioners in our sample are failing to claim their entitlements to at least one of these benefits, only 16% of non claimants are failing to claim amounts worth more than 10% of their income. The proportions by which claiming all entitlements would increase non- claimants’ incomes are more useful indicators than individual benefit take-up rates, of the effectiveness of means-tested benefits. In general take-up is high where entitlement is high. But there are exceptions to this which may reflect the claims process and/or a greater degree of social stigma associated with IS than with HB or CTB.benefit take-up; pensions; means-testing; welfare participation

Global-Service Learning and Student-Athletes: A Model for Enhanced Academic Inclusion at the University of Washington

BackgroundThe University of Washington (UW) continues to create opportunities to engage all students in transformational undergraduate educational opportunities, such as study abroad.ObjectiveThis article describes specific efforts to increase inclusion for student-athletes in study abroad, particularly for first-generation students, including low-income students of color. Given the overrepresentation of students of color in sports vis-à-vis the larger student body at predominantly white institutions (PWIs), like UW, service-learning in communities beyond campus boundaries provides opportunities to apply international learning to a local context and to create a continuum of learning.MethodsBy coupling educational theories from the classroom—particularly theories related to power and privilege—with community-based leadership in local communities, students are better prepared to actively engage in improving their own institutions. During the summers of 2013, 2014, and 2015, the author was the instructor for study abroad courses to French Polynesia with student-athletes. The courses were for 12 days (10 days on the ground and 2 days of flying), the maximum time that football players could be away from required summer workouts. This paper examines student evaluations from the French Polynesia trip in 2015.FindingsStudent-athlete evaluations of a study abroad experience underscored: the transformative impact of study abroad to their academic, social, and athletic lives; the benefit of creating family-like relationships outside the confines of their sport; an appreciation for the many forms where indigenous knowledge resides, such as in navigation, dance, fishing, weaving, and cooking; intense feelings of culture shock upon return to the US, even when the trip is short in duration; a desire to engage with the diverse communities in Seattle beyond the scope of the program's structure, and; frustration, particularly for the male student-athletes, about the ways coaches, family, and friends wanted to frame the study abroad experience as a tourist experience in the South Pacific. In this regard, the student-athletes encountered stereotypes from their own communities that framed Oceania as a place for tourism, and student-athletes as uninterested in deep engagement with research and theory–stereotypes that the student-athletes resist.ConclusionsThis paper explains how the findings, coupled with Hartman and Kiely’s theories for global service learning (GSL), lead to recommendations for strengthening the future connections between global and local learning for students

Rare variants contribute disproportionately to quantitative trait variation in yeast.

How variants with different frequencies contribute to trait variation is a central question in genetics. We use a unique model system to disentangle the contributions of common and rare variants to quantitative traits. We generated ~14,000 progeny from crosses among 16 diverse yeast strains and identified thousands of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for 38 traits. We combined our results with sequencing data for 1011 yeast isolates to show that rare variants make a disproportionate contribution to trait variation. Evolutionary analyses revealed that this contribution is driven by rare variants that arose recently, and that negative selection has shaped the relationship between variant frequency and effect size. We leveraged the structure of the crosses to resolve hundreds of QTLs to single genes. These results refine our understanding of trait variation at the population level and suggest that studies of rare variants are a fertile ground for discovery of genetic effects

Spanish in Action! Spanish Program Collaboration with the Non-Profit Organization Concerned Citizens for Migrants at Morehead

A PowerPoint presentation, titled Spanish in Action! Spanish Program Collaboration with the Non-Profit Organization Concerned Citizens for Migrants at Morehead, given by Ann Colbert, Itza Zavala-Garrett, Holly Hendrix, and Shelby Barker at the Justice Festival held on the campus of Morehead State University on October 11, 2023

Kumukumu 1, a hilltop site in the Aird Hills: Implications for occupational trends and dynamics in the Kikori River delta, south coast of Papua New Guinea

We report on archaeological excavations undertaken at Kumukumu 1 atop the dense rainforest-clad Aird Hills of the Kikori river delta islands, south coast of Papua New Guinea. Results indicate exploitation of the nearby environment, including the gathering of some 200 million shellfish from riverine habitats at the base of the hill some 600 years ago, and deposition of shell remains onto hilltop middens. We ask what the implications of such a site in a defensive location on the upper, steep hillslope of Kumukumu hill are for regional occupation and dynamics. We conclude that the hinterland-marine fringe islands of the river deltas that include the site of Kumukumu 1 were especially sensitive to heightened cross-cultural influences and inter-group raids and competition, leading to accelerated processes of centralisation and aggrandisement among some groups, and the subjugation, fragmentation and dispersal of less powerful neighbouring groups

RNA misprocessing in C9orf72-linked neurodegeneration

A large GGGGCC hexanucleotide repeat expansion in the first intron or promoter region of the C9orf72 gene is the most common genetic cause of familial and sporadic Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a devastating degenerative disease of motor neurons, and of Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), the second most common form of presenile dementia after Alzheimer’s disease. C9orf72-associated ALS/FTD is a multifaceted disease both in terms of its clinical presentation and the misregulated cellular pathways contributing to disease progression. Among the numerous pathways misregulated in C9orf72-associated ALS/FTD, altered RNA processing has consistently appeared at the forefront of C9orf72 research. This includes bidirectional transcription of the repeat sequence, accumulation of repeat RNA into nuclear foci sequestering specific RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and translation of RNA repeats into dipeptide repeat proteins (DPRs) by repeat-associated non-AUG (RAN)-initiated translation. Over the past few years the true extent of RNA misprocessing in C9orf72-associated ALS/FTD has begun to emerge and disruptions have been identified in almost all aspects of the life of an RNA molecule, including release from RNA polymerase II, translation in the cytoplasm and degradation. Furthermore, several alterations have been identified in the processing of the C9orf72 RNA itself, in terms of its transcription, splicing and localization. This review article aims to consolidate our current knowledge on the consequence of the C9orf72 repeat expansion on RNA processing and draws attention to the mechanisms by which several aspects of C9orf72 molecular pathology converge to perturb every stage of RNA metabolism

Transfer student analysis and retention: a collaborative endeavor

This paper aims to describe a multifaceted campus-wide initiative to retain transfer students that was undertaken when it was recognized that their retention rates were lower than those of first-time, full-time students. The “all-hands-on-deck” approach described in this paper demonstrates how strategic collaborations among the many institutional stakeholders at a public research university were marshalled to have a significant and positive impact on student retention

Signatures of Exposure to Childhood Trauma in Young Adults in the Structure and Neurochemistry of the Superior Temporal Gyrus

Background: Childhood trauma (CT) has been linked to increased risk for mental illness in adulthood. Although work in experimental animals has shown that early life stressors can affect inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmission in adult rodents, with possible excitotoxic effects on local grey matter volumes (GMV), the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate this relationship in humans remain poorly understood. Aim: To examine glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) metabolite concentrations and potential excitotoxic effects on GMV, in adults who experienced CT. Methods: Fifty-six young adults (Mage = 20.41) were assigned to High CT (n = 29) and Low CT (n = 27) groups (by using the CT questionnaire) and underwent magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) to measure temporal lobe metabolite concentrations and volumetric imaging to measure GMV. Results: Glutamate concentrations did not differ between groups; however, relative to the Low CT group, participants in the High CT group had reduced GABA concentrations in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) voxel. Furthermore, logistic regression showed that participants with low left STG GABA concentrations and low left STG volumes were significantly more likely to be in the high CT group. Conclusions: This study provides the first evidence that both low GABA concentrations and its interaction with GMV in the left STG are associated with high levels of CT and suggest that altered inhibitory neurotransmission/metabolism may be linked to a lower GMV in the left STG in adults who experienced CT. Future studies are warranted to establish if utilizing these measures can stratify clinical high-risk and predict future clinical outcomes in high CT individuals