(Re)Storying Obama: An Examination of Recently Published Informational Texts

American publishers have published numerous children’s books about Barack Obama over the past several years; most take the form of informational biographies. This article reports on a research project aimed at how these books incorporate sociohistorical narratives, particularly those related to the civil rights movement. Though the features of the books might cause the reader to presume political neutrality, the books link readers to distinct Discourses (Gee, 1996), suggesting particular ideologies. In this article, we identified the following differences: (1) specific happenings from Obama’s life were included in some texts while omitted in others; (2) when the events were included, how they were framed differed; and (3) the narrative constructions of the events varied. We use the differences amongst these texts to argue for the importance of critical literacy in elementary classrooms

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

The alterations of tonus and movements through the interplay between the cerebral hemispheres and the cerebellum

This paper deals with the experimental production of involuntary movenients and abnormal tonus in macaques ( Macacu mulatta ) and their alterations in these animals and in children with cerebral palsy and other cerebral lesions. The first major subdivision of the paper has three parts. The first part describes the effects of lesions in the macaque cerebral hemispheres, ranging from a small destructive lesion in area 4 to an essentially complete bicortectomy. The case histories of a few patients document some of the results. The second part reports the effects of lesions in the macaque cerebellum ranging from small vermal injuries to complete cerebellectomies. The third part is concerned with successive lesions in the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres of macaques and with planned cerebellar lesions in a few children with grave hypertonicity and marked involuntary movements. This subdivision is illustrated with photographs of the monkeys and the children at various stages of the procedures, photographs of many monkey brains at postmortem, and some photomicrographs showing lesions. The second major subdivision has a discussion of the anatomic and the physiologic bases for the experimental results obtained and for the operations on the children. It correlates the material presented with data from the literature and is illustrated with photomicrographs of degenerated tracts and with diagrams. The paper stresses the balancing of cerebral hemisphere and cerebellar discharges in the regulation of tonus and in the stabilizing of movements. It discusses the possibility of producing more effective tonus by making carefully planned lesions in cerebellar areas of animals or of children with highly handicapping hypertonicity.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/49991/1/901270502_ftp.pd

Influence of anthropogenic sulfate and black carbon on upper tropospheric clouds in the NCAR CAM3 model coupled to the IMPACT global aerosol model

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95099/1/jgrd14985.pd

Alcohol consumption and lung cancer risk: A pooled analysis from the International Lung Cancer Consortium and the SYNERGY study

Background: There is inadequate evidence to determine whether there is an effect of alcohol consumption on lung cancer risk. We conducted a pooled analysis of data from the International Lung Cancer Consortium and the SYNERGY study to investigate this possible association by type of beverage with adjustment for other potential confounders. Methods: Twenty one case-control studies and one cohort study with alcohol-intake data obtained from questionnaires were included in this pooled analysis (19,149 cases and 362,340 controls). Adjusted odds ratios (OR) or hazard ratios (HR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated for each measure of alcohol consumption. Effect estimates were combined using random or fixed-effects models where appropriate. Associations were examined for overall lung cancer and by histological type. Results: We observed an inverse association between overall risk of lung cancer and consumption of alcoholic beverages compared to non-drinkers, but the association was not monotonic. The lowest risk was observed for persons who consumed 10-19.9 g/day ethanol (OR vs. non-drinkers = 0.78; 95% CI: 0.67, 0.91), where 1 drink is approximately 12-15 g. This J-shaped association was most prominent for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The association with all lung cancer varied little by type of alcoholic beverage, but there were notable differences for SCC. We observed an association with beer intake (OR for >= 20 g/day vs nondrinker = 1.42; 95% CI: 1.06, 1.90). Conclusions: Whether the non-monotonic associations we observed or the positive association between beer drinking and squamous cell carcinoma reflect real effects await future analyses and insights about possible biological mechanisms

Connecting Land–Atmosphere Interactions to Surface Heterogeneity in CHEESEHEAD19

The Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-Balance Study Enabled by a High-Density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) is an ongoing National Science Foundation project based on an intensive field campaign that occurred from June to October 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine how the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) responds to spatial heterogeneity in surface energy fluxes. One of the main objectives is to test whether lack of energy balance closure measured by eddy covariance (EC) towers is related to mesoscale atmospheric processes. Finally, the project evaluates data-driven methods for scaling surface energy fluxes, with the aim to improve model–data comparison and integration. To address these questions, an extensive suite of ground, tower, profiling, and airborne instrumentation was deployed over a 10 km × 10 km domain of a heterogeneous forest ecosystem in the Chequamegon–Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin, United States, centered on an existing 447-m tower that anchors an AmeriFlux/NOAA supersite (US-PFa/WLEF). The project deployed one of the world’s highest-density networks of above-canopy EC measurements of surface energy fluxes. This tower EC network was coupled with spatial measurements of EC fluxes from aircraft; maps of leaf and canopy properties derived from airborne spectroscopy, ground-based measurements of plant productivity, phenology, and physiology; and atmospheric profiles of wind, water vapor, and temperature using radar, sodar, lidar, microwave radiometers, infrared interferometers, and radiosondes. These observations are being used with large-eddy simulation and scaling experiments to better understand submesoscale processes and improve formulations of subgrid-scale processes in numerical weather and climate models

Evolutionary origins of invasive populations

What factors shape the evolution of invasive populations? Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that an evolutionary history of disturbance might be an important factor. This perspective presents hypotheses regarding the impact of disturbance on the evolution of invasive populations, based on a synthesis of the existing literature. Disturbance might select for life-history traits that are favorable for colonizing novel habitats, such as rapid population growth and persistence. Theoretical results suggest that disturbance in the form of fluctuating environments might select for organismal flexibility, or alternatively, the evolution of evolvability. Rapidly fluctuating environments might favor organismal flexibility, such as broad tolerance or plasticity. Alternatively, longer fluctuations or environmental stress might lead to the evolution of evolvability by acting on features of the mutation matrix. Once genetic variance is generated via mutations, temporally fluctuating selection across generations might promote the accumulation and maintenance of genetic variation. Deeper insights into how disturbance in native habitats affects evolutionary and physiological responses of populations would give us greater capacity to predict the populations that are most likely to tolerate or adapt to novel environments during habitat invasions. Moreover, we would gain fundamental insights into the evolutionary origins of invasive populations

Genetic Basis of Inherited Macular Dystrophies and Implications for Stem Cell Therapy

Untreatable hereditary macular dystrophy (HMD) presents a major burden to society in terms of the resulting patient disability and the cost to the healthcare provision system. HMD results in central vision loss in humans sufficiently severe for blind registration, and key issues in the development of therapeutic strategies to target these conditions are greater understanding of the causes of photoreceptor loss and the development of restorative procedures. More effective and precise analytical techniques coupled to the development of transgenic models of disease have led to a prolific growth in the identification and our understanding of the genetic mutations that underly HMD. Recent successes in driving differentiation of pluripotent cells towards specific somatic lineages have led to the development of more efficient protocols that can yield enriched populations of a desired phenotype. Retinal pigmented epithelial cells and photoreceptors derived from these are some of the most promising cells that may soon be used in the treatment of specific HMD, especially since rapid developments in the field of induced pluripotency have now set the stage for the production of patient-derived stem cells that overcome the ethical and methodological issues surrounding the use of embryonic derivatives. In this review we highlight a selection of HMD which appear suitable candidates for combinatorial restorative therapy, focusing specifically on where those photoreceptor loss occurs. This technology, along with increased genetic screening, opens up an entirely new pathway to restore vision in patients affected by HMD