Affirmative Action in Higher Education: What Role does Whiteness Ideology Play?

Affirmative Action in higher education seeks to increase equality of opportunities for students who belong to groups known to have been treated prejudicially against previously. Whether scholars support or oppose Affirmative Action, substantial literature on Affirmative Action has debated why this policy is perceived as biased and how these misperceptions have led to racial resentment. I think how whiteness ideology plays a role in Affirmative Action is overlooked in the conversation. In my research, I analyze how the legal privilege of whiteness permeates policymaking and perceptions of race by comparing and contrasting the Supreme Court opinions of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and lower Court opinions of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, two prominent “reverse discrimination” racially-based Affirmative Action cases. I also analyze the text of prominent news from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal on Bakke and SFFA. I find that all the resources I examine demonstrate the presence of whiteness ideology, whether explicitly or implicitly. I argue that whiteness ideology dominates discourse about higher education admissions

Improved split fluorescent proteins for endogenous protein labeling.

Self-complementing split fluorescent proteins (FPs) have been widely used for protein labeling, visualization of subcellular protein localization, and detection of cell-cell contact. To expand this toolset, we have developed a screening strategy for the direct engineering of self-complementing split FPs. Via this strategy, we have generated a yellow-green split-mNeonGreen21-10/11 that improves the ratio of complemented signal to the background of FP1-10-expressing cells compared to the commonly used split GFP1-10/11; as well as a 10-fold brighter red-colored split-sfCherry21-10/11. Based on split sfCherry2, we have engineered a photoactivatable variant that enables single-molecule localization-based super-resolution microscopy. We have demonstrated dual-color endogenous protein tagging with sfCherry211 and GFP11, revealing that endoplasmic reticulum translocon complex Sec61B has reduced abundance in certain peripheral tubules. These new split FPs not only offer multiple colors for imaging interaction networks of endogenous proteins, but also hold the potential to provide orthogonal handles for biochemical isolation of native protein complexes.Split fluorescent proteins (FPs) have been widely used to visualise proteins in cells. Here the authors develop a screen for engineering new split FPs, and report a yellow-green split-mNeonGreen2 with reduced background, a red split-sfCherry2 for multicolour labeling, and its photoactivatable variant for super-resolution use

Hydrodynamic effects on the filtered dark matter produced by a first-order phase transition

Motivated by current status of dark matter (DM) search, a new type of DM production mechanism is proposed based on thedynamical process of a strong first-order phase transition in the early universe, namely, the filtered DM mechanism. We study the hydrodynamic effects on the DM relic density. By detailed calculations, we demonstrate that the hydrodynamic modes with the corresponding hydrodynamic heating effects play essential roles in determining the DM relic density. The corresponding phase transition gravitational wave could help to probe this new mechanism.Comment: Published version in Physical Review D, 39 pages, 13 figures, 4 table