New World Slave Traders and the Problem of Trade Goods: Brazil, Barbados, Cuba, and North America in Comparative Perspective

This article examines the phenomenon of New World-based slave trading, which encompasses slave-trading voyages that embarked from ports in the Americas. Much of the existing literature takes a European-based ‘triangular trade’ as the norm in the slave trade, but it is now clear that almost 40 per cent of all transatlantic slaving voyages sailed from ports in the New World. Slave traders based in the Americas needed to find appropriate and economical trade goods, which was difficult since European and Asian manufactures dominated African markets for captives. A comparative examination of the four largest American slave-trading polities (Barbados, Brazil, Cuba and British North America/the United States) reveals that all of them succeeded in converting plantation produce—sugar, molasses and tobacco—into African trade goods. However, all of these powers also sought to acquire the more valuable textiles and manufactures in order to improve their ‘assortments’. This finding is significant because it forces historians to consider the slave trade not merely as a ‘triangular’ trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas, but as a truly global system of exchange

H I in group interactions: HCG 44

Extending deep observations of the neutral atomic hydrogen (HI) to the environment around galaxy groups can reveal a complex history of group interactions which is invisible to studies that focus on the stellar component. Hickson Compact Group 44 (HCG 44) is a nearby example and we have combined HI data from the Karoo Array Telescope, Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, and Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA survey, in order to achieve high column density sensitivity (N_HI < 2x10^18 cm^-2) to the neutral gas over a large field-of-view beyond the compact group itself. We find the giant HI tail north of HCG 44 contains 1.1x10^9 M_Sun of gas and extends 450 kpc from the compact group: twice as much mass and 33% further than previously detected. However, the additional gas is still unable to account for the known HI deficiency of HCG 44. The tail likely formed through a strong tidal interaction and HI clouds in the tail have survived for 1 Gyr or more after being stripped. This has important implications for understanding the survival of neutral clouds in the intragroup and circumgroup medium, and we discuss their survival in the context of simulations of cold gas in hot halos. HCG 44 is one of a growing number of galaxy groups found to have more extended HI in the intragroup and circumgroup medium than previously measured. Our results provide constraints for simulations on the properties of galaxy group halos, and reveal a glimpse of what will be seen by future powerful HI telescopes and surveys.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Ecological succession and viability of human-associated microbiota on restroom surfaces

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of American Society for Microbiology for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2014), doi:10.1128/AEM.03117-14.Human-associated bacteria dominate the built environment (BE). Following decontamination of floors, toilet seats, and soap dispensers in 4 public restrooms, in situ bacterial communities were characterized hourly, daily, and weekly to determine their successional ecology. The viability of cultivable bacteria, following the removal of dispersal agents (humans), was also assessed hourly. A late successional community developed within 5-8 hours on restroom floors, and showed remarkable stability over weeks to months. Despite late successional dominance by skin- and outdoor-associated bacteria, the most ubiquitous organisms were predominantly gut-associated taxa, which persisted following exclusion of humans. Staphylococcus represented the majority of the cultivable community, even after several hours of human-exclusion. MRSA-associated virulence genes were found on floors, but were not present in assembled Staphylococcus pan-genomes. Viral abundances, which were predominantly enterophage, human papilloma and herpes viruses, were significantly correlated with bacteria abundances, and showed an unexpectedly low virus-to-bacteria ratio in surface-associated samples, suggesting that bacterial hosts are mostly dormant on BE surfaces.S.M.G. was supported by an EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship and the National Institutes of Health Training Grant 5T-32EB-009412. We acknowledge funding from the Alfred P Sloan Foundation’s Microbiology of the Built Environment Program.2015-05-1

Prospectus, March 9, 2011

FEDERAL AND STATE BUDGET CUTS SPARK CONTROVERSY; Former Parkland student passes on; Student Aid and Taxes Made Easy; Tax time tips; Chuck Shepherd\u27s News of the Weird; An interview with Colour Revolt; Survey educates students on African-American history; Rising to shake off the fear in Libya; The FCC\u27s neutral Net; Not a carbon copy of the U S.; Bonus Stage! The official gaming column of the Prospectus; How social media can affect your college dreams; Both Cobras Basketball teams headed to Nationals; PCTV Broadcast Schedule: March; Candidates for Student Governmenthttps://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2011/1029/thumbnail.jp

An fMRI investigation of the neural correlates underlying the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)

Introduction: The "autonomous sensory meridian response" (ASMR) is a neologism used to describe an internal sensation of deep relaxation and pleasant head tingling which is often stimulated by gentle sounds, light touch, and personal attention. Methods: An fMRI-based methodology was employed to examine the brain activation of subjects prescreened for ASMR-receptivity (n=10) as they watched ASMR videos and identified specific moments of relaxation and tingling. Results: Subjects who experienced ASMR showed significant activation in regions associated with both reward (NAcc) and emotional arousal (dACC and Insula/IFG). Brain activation during ASMR showed similarities to patterns previously observed in musical frisson as well as affiliative behaviors. Conclusion: This is the first study to measure the activation of various brain regions during ASMR and these results may help to reveal the mechanistic underpinnings of this sensation

The Near-Earth Object Surveyor Mission

The Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission is a NASA observatory designed to discover and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets. The mission's primary objective is to find the majority of objects large enough to cause severe regional impact damage ($>$140 m in effective spherical diameter) within its five-year baseline survey. Operating at the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, the mission will survey to within 45 degrees of the Sun in an effort to find the objects in the most Earth-like orbits. The survey cadence is optimized to provide observational arcs long enough to reliably distinguish near-Earth objects from more distant small bodies that cannot pose an impact hazard. Over the course of its survey, NEO Surveyor will discover $\sim$200,000 - 300,000 new NEOs down to sizes as small as $\sim$10 m and thousands of comets, significantly improving our understanding of the probability of an Earth impact over the next century.Comment: accepted to PS