Anthropology and Open Access

While still largely ignored by many anthropologists, open access (OA) has been a confusing and volatile center around which a wide range of contentious debates and vexing leadership dilemmas orbit. Despite widespread misunderstandings and honest differences of perspective on how and why to move forward, OA frameworks for scholarly communication are now part of the publishing ecology in which all active anthropologists work. Cultural Anthropology is unambiguously a leading journal in the field. The move to transition it toward a gold OA model represents a milestone for the iterative transformation of how cultural anthropologists, along with diverse fellow travelers, communicate more ethically and sustainably with global and diverse publics. On the occasion of this significant shift, we build on the history of OA debates, position statements, and experiments taking place during the past decade to do three things. Using an interview format, we will offer a primer on OA practices in general and in cultural anthropology in particular. In doing so, we aim to highlight some of the special considerations that have animated arguments for OA in cultural anthropology and in neighboring fields built around ethnographic methods and representations. We then argue briefly for a critical anthropology of scholarly communication (including scholarly publishing), one that brings the kinds of engaged analysis for which Cultural Anthropology is particularly well known to bear on this vital aspect of knowledge production, circulation, and valuation. Our field’s distinctive knowledge of social, cultural, political, and economic phenomena should also—but often has not—inform our choices as both global actors and publishing scholars

A Case Report of Acute Heart Failure Due to Infective Aortic Endocarditis Diagnosed by Point-of-care Ultrasound

Introduction: Infective endocarditis (IE) is a life-threatening condition with significant morbidity and mortality, and can require surgical repair.Case Report: A 36-year-old man presented to the emergency department for worsening dyspnea and chest pain. Point-of-care echocardiography demonstrated a mobile oscillating mass on the aortic valve with poor approximation of the valve leaflets, suggesting aortic valve insufficiency secondary to IE as the cause of acute heart failure. The patient underwent emergent aortic valve replacement within 24 hours.Discussion: While point-of-care echocardiography has been well documented in identifying tricuspid vegetations, aorticvalve involvement and subsequent heart failure is less well described. Earlier recognition of aortic valve vegetations and insufficiency can expedite surgical intervention, with decreased complication rates linked to earlier antimicrobial therapy.Conclusion: This case report highlights the ability of point-of-care ultrasound to identify aortic vegetations, allowing for the earlier diagnosis and therapy

The effect of bond coat oxidation on the microstructure and endurance of two thermal barrier coating systems

A series of isothermal and cyclic oxidation tests were carried out on two thermal barrier coating systems consisting of a CMSX-4 nickel-based superalloy substrate, NiCoCrAlY overlay bond coat applied by two different techniques and a yttria stabilised zirconia topcoat applied by electron beam physical vapour deposition (EBPVD). The bond coats were applied by either high velocity oxy-fuel spraying (HVOF) or EBPVD. Isothermal oxidation tests were carried out at 950°C, 1050°C and 1150°C for both coating system for up to 3000 hours. Cyclic oxidation testing was conducted at 1150°C in one hour cycles to coating failure on both coatings. A detailed examination on the oxide thickness was conducted on all specimens, along with characterisation of the bond coat and TGO. This was coupled with examination of specimen cross-sections for cracking and signs of coating degradation. Isothermal oxidation showed sub parabolic oxide growth consistent with the literature. Detailed analysis of oxide thickness showed a normal distribution but with increasing standard deviation with increasing oxidation time. Both bond coats were dual phase, β + γ. The EBPVD applied bond coat only, was found to contain yttrium rich precipitates in the bond coat and TGO. Both coatings showed no increase in surface roughness after either isothermal or thermal cycle testing. Short sub-critical cracks were observed at the TGO/topcoat interface in the HVOF applied bond coat only associated with the flanks of asperities. Coating failure in both coatings occurred at the TGO/bond coat interface on cooling and was likely driven by the thermal expansion mismatch between the TGO, topcoat and substrate. The initial mechanism of crack formation was not determined conclusively but could be a wedge cracking type mechanism

Minimizing the Pervasiveness of Women’s Personal Experiences of Gender Discrimination

Given the Rejection-Identification Model (Branscombe, et al., 1999) which shows that perceiving discrimination to be pervasive is a negative experience, it was suggested that there would be conditions under which women would instead minimize the pervasiveness of discrimination. Study 1 (N = 91) showed that when women envisioned themselves in a situation of academic discrimination, they defined it as pervasive but when they experienced a similar laboratory simulation of academic discrimination, its pervasiveness was minimized. Study 2 (N = 159) showed that women who envisioned themselves experiencing discrimination minimized its pervasiveness more so than women reading about discrimination happening to someone else. Further, mediation analysis showed that minimizing the pervasiveness enhanced positive affect about personal discrimination. Implications for minimizing on both an individual and social level are discussed

Structural and Functional Characterization of the Essential RNA Helicase Mtr4

The essential protein Mtr4 is a conserved Ski2-like RNA helicase that maintains the integrity of nuclear RNA by promoting the 3\u27 end decay of a wide variety of RNA substrates. Mtr4 activates the multi-protein exosome in RNA processing, surveillance, and turnover pathways by unwinding secondary structure and/or displacing associated proteins from RNA substrates. While Mtr4 may be able to promote decay independently, it is often associated with large multi-protein assemblies. Specifically, Mtr4 is the largest member of the TRAMP (Trf4/Air2/Mtr4 polyadenylation) complex which targets a plethora of RNA substrates for degradation by appending them with small (~5nt) poly(A) tails via the polymerase activity of Trf4. Mtr4 preferentially binds and unwinds RNAs with short poly(A) tails. Notably, the mechanism by which Mtr4 recognizes the length and identity of the RNA 3\u27 end is coupled to the modulation of poly(A) polymerase activity of Trf4. The lack of structural data for Mtr4 and associated complexes severely limits the understanding of Mtr4 function. Particularly, it is unclear how Mtr4 senses RNA features, acts on RNA substrates, delivers RNA substrates to the exosome, and assembles into larger protein complexes. Presented here is the x-ray crystal structure of Mtr4 combined with detailed structural and biochemical analysis of the enzyme. The structure reveals that Mtr4 contains a four domain helicase core that is conserved in other RNA helicases and a unique arch-like RNA binding domain that is required for the in vivo processing of 5.8S rRNA. Furthermore, kinetic and in vivo analysis of conserved residues implicated in the poly(A) sensing mechanism demonstrates that ratchet helix residues regulate RNA unwinding and impact RNA sequence specificity. A comparison of the apo Mtr4 structure with the RNA/ADP bound structure (determined elsewhere) provides a view of the range of motion that individual domains of Mtr4 adopt upon substrate binding as well as the possible conformations that occur during RNA translocation. These studies provide an important framework for understanding the fundamental role of Mtr4 in exosome-mediated RNA decay, and more broadly describe common themes in architecture and function of the Ski2-like helicase family

Deep Ecology in Action: A Cross-Cultural Series of Case Studies on the Conservation Efforts of Monks and Religious Leaders in India, Mongolia, and Thailand

Deep ecology is a relatively new branch of study which combines different fields of knowledge such as philosophy, religion, and sociology, on the one hand, with environmental studies, on the other. The basic premise of deep ecology is the interconnectedness of all life and consequently, a concern for the ecological well-being of our planet, which is increasingly threatened by the impact of modern human lifestyles. Recently, there has been a lot of recent attention given to deep ecology movements in Asia. However, these studies often lack the interdisciplinary background in science necessary to assess a real ecological impact. This study is based on a series of case studies was conducted in India, Mongolia, and Thailand across a variety of faiths and locations. By investigating specific cases across cultures and religions and drawing comparisons between the impacts of minority religions and majority religions, the true environmental potential and value of deep ecology movements is analyzed

Fable: Finite automata based learning engine

The purpose of this thesis will be to demostrate the feasibility of building a system that is capable of automatically learning how to increase performance at a task that is presented to it by means of modeling the problem with a finite automation and the learning engine of FABLE. Current work in the field of automatic learning of FA\u27s (Finite Automation) is mostly focused on the building of the FA itself. This thesis will instead focus on the automated building of FA models to allow better decisions to be made in the future

Architectures for a Future South: Posthumanism and Ruin in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy

This thesis reads the novels of Cormac McCarthy as posthuman southern literature to explain why fiction from the South after World War II could no longer convey a sense of place during postmodernity: that is, because the region\u27s culture and economy were transitioning from predominantly humanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans [and especially southern humans] are supreme beings) to predominantly posthumanistic thinking (i.e., believing that humans are not as supreme as they think they are). It argues that we can trace this ideological change over time via structural shifts in the South’s architectural record, which we see in the ruins of McCarthy’s novels. It concludes that applying posthuman theory to southern literature affords us an alternative (and non-supremacist, non-exceptionalist) way to read southern literature, as well as a way to understand the American South as a space that is constantly undergoing a broader, transideological movement away from humanism (read: human exceptionalism) and toward posthumanism (read: non-, anti-, or after human exceptionalism)

The Globular Cluster System of NGC 3115

The evolution of galaxies through cosmic time remains a key question in Extra- galactic Astronomy. Globular Clusters (GCs) are believed to be good tracers of this evolution as they form during large star formation events. In this thesis we use spectroscopic data of GCs, taken using the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope, to create a catalogue of kinematics and metallicities for GCs in the S0 galaxy of NGC 3115. In order to do this the data was reduced using the ESO RE- FLEX program, creating 1D spectra for each of the GC targets. These were then fed into a modified version of the full spectrum fitting method ’pPXF’ to extract the kinematics, metallicities and ages of each target. The dataset created via this method was then compared to, and combined with, supplementary data from other surveys to create a more complete catalogue of GCs in NGC 3115. From this cata- logue there is evidence that the bimodal colour distribution is caused by a underlying bimodal metallicity distribution. Implying that at least two major star formation events have occurred in the history of NGC 3115