Agency, Identity, and Writing: Perspectives from First-Generation Students of Color in Their First Year of College

This paper highlights the perspectives of first-generation students of color in their first year of college, and the ways in which they exercised agency in their writing. Framed by definitions of agency as mediated action that creates meaning, the paper reports on qualitative data collected from a summer writing program for first-generation students and students of color, and from writing samples and follow-up interviews with six students who participated in the summer program. Findings suggest that students in their first year of college leveraged their social and discoursal identities to offer new ways of understanding an issue. They also wrote using a translingual approach, integrating different discourses and forms of knowledge, and challenging views of academic writing as monolithic. The findings also suggest the link between awareness and action, meaning that what and how students wrote were informed by their awareness of writing and awareness of themselves as writers and cultural beings. The study’s findings have implications for advancing more nuanced views of agency and academic literacies, and redesigning writing instruction at the high school and college level. Copyright © 2023 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All Rights Reserved

We\u27re in Charge of What We\u27re Saying, What We Discuss, What We Want to Read : A Qualitative Inquiry Into Adolescent Girls\u27 After-School Book Clubs

This qualitative study examines the ways in which 23 early adolescent and adolescent girls and their literacy teacher co-constructed, participated in, and experienced an after-school book club located in a school setting. The book club met biweekly to discuss a student-selected text (e.g., fiction, non-fiction, song lyrics) over the course of one academic year. Using ethnographic methods, I explored what happened in the after-school book club, and how the girls’ race, gender, and class identities informed their readings of texts and emerged in their talk. From the data I identified several critical themes and learnings. First, the girls understood, talked about, and practiced reading as deeply relational and embedded in human relationships. Social relationships, family networks, and peer groups were identified as important factors that motivated the girls to read, and that sustained the girls’ commitment to reading. Second, the social aspect of book clubs—reading with others—fostered critical readings of and deeper engagement with texts. In and through reading and talking together, the girls reflected on, questioned, and debated the role of race, gender, and class. The girls also initiated and sustained conversations that reflected the ways in which they understood themselves, other people, and their worlds. As readers the girls assumed a critical inquiry stance, inquiring into and grappling with difficult social and economic realities. Third, the girls assumed a range of roles and responsibilities for forming and sustaining the book club. Lastly, the girls demonstrated their understanding of in-school and out-of-school contexts as reciprocal–i.e., that texts, social practices, knowledge and identities travel between and across contexts. The implications emerging from this study are relevant to the work of teachers, researchers, literacy-curriculum writers, after-school program coordinators, and others committed to supporting adolescent learners in both in-school and out-of-school settings. This study can prompt educators to re-imagine and reconstruct learning environments—both in and out of school—that can engage, challenge, and inspire adolescent learners. It can also generate conversation within the education research community about the possibilities and challenges involved in studying after-school spaces of literacy learning and engagement

Controlling structures of battery electrodes

Manufacturing an electrode by forming an electrode structure on a grounded conductive substrate and applying a voltage across the electrode structure to generate an electric field through the electrode structure to arrange the dipolar particles within the electrode structure

Sonochemical Degradation of Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in Landfill Groundwater: Environmental Matrix Effects

Perfluorinated chemicals such as perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) are environmentally persistent and recalcitrant to most conventional chemical and microbial treatment technologies. In this paper, we show that sonolysis is able to decompose PFOS and PFOA present in groundwater beneath a landfill. However, the pseudo first-order rate constant for the sonochemical degradation in the landfill groundwater is reduced by 61 and 56% relative to MilliQ water for PFOS and PFOA, respectively, primarily due to the presence of other organic constituents. In this study, we evaluate the effect of various organic compounds on the sonochemical decomposition rates of PFOS and PFOA. Organic components in environmental matrices may reduce the sonochemical degradation rates of PFOS and PFOA by competitive adsorption onto the bubble−water interface or by lowering the average interfacial temperatures during transient bubble collapse events. The effect of individual organic compounds depends on the Langmuir adsorption constant, the Henry’s law constant, the specific heat capacity, and the overall endothermic heat of dissociation. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are identified as the primary cause of the sonochemical rate reduction for PFOS and PFOA in landfill groundwater, whereas the effect of dissolved natural organic matter (DOM) is not significant. Finally, a combined process of ozonation and sonolysis is shown to substantially recover the rate loss for PFOS and PFOA in landfill groundwater

Reductive defluorination of aqueous perfluorinated alkyl surfactants : effects of ionic headgroup and chain length

Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) are distributed throughout the environment. In the case of perfluorinated alkyl carboxylates and sulfonates, they can be classified as persistent organic pollutants since they are resistant to environmentally relevant reduction, oxidation, and hydrolytic processes. With this in mind, we report on the reductive defluorination of perfluorobutanoate, PFBA (C_3F_7CO_2−), perfluorohexanoate, PFHA (C_5F_(11)CO_2−), perfluorooctanoate, PFOA (C_7F_(15)CO_2−), perfluorobutane sulfonate, PFBS (C_4F_9SO_3−), perfluorohexane sulfonate, PFHS (C_6F_(13)SO_3−), and perfluorooctane sulfonate, PFOS (C_8F_(17)SO_3−) by aquated electrons, eaq−, that are generated from the UV photolysis (λ = 254 nm) of iodide. The ionic headgroup (-SO_3− vs -CO_2−) has a significant effect on the reduction kinetics and extent of defluorination (F index = −[F−]_(produced)/[PFC]_(degraded)). Perfluoroalkylsulfonate reduction kinetics and the F index increase linearly with increasing chain length. In contrast, perfluoroalkylcarboxylate chain length appears to have a negligible effect on the observed kinetics and the F index. H/F ratios in the gaseous fluoro-organic products are consistent with measured F indexes. Incomplete defluorination of the gaseous products suggests a reductive cleavage of the ionic headgroup occurs before complete defluorination. Detailed mechanisms involving initiation by aquated electrons are proposed

Topological superconductivity in three-dimensional centrosymmetric MoTe2_2

One key challenge in the field of topological superconductivity (Tsc) has been the rareness of material realization. This is true not only for the first-order Tsc featuring Majorana surface modes, but also the higher-order Tsc, which host Majorana hinge and corner modes. In this work, we first propose a general material-searching "recipe" for higher-order Tsc with Majorana corner modes. This recipe is obtained from a set of symmetry indicators that can diagnose Majorana boundary patterns in centrosymmetric superconductors. We derive these indicators by establishing the bulk-boundary correspondence through a real- and momentum-space basis matching procedure. Following this recipe, we propose that centrosymmetric MoTe$_2$, which was found superconducting experimentally, is a higher-order Tsc. By performing ab initio calculation and mean-field analysis for a realistic 44-band tight-binding model, we find that centrosymmetric MoTe$_2$ could host Majorana corner and hinge modes. Our recipe and proposed material candidate could provide general guiding principle for material searching and designing of higher-order Tsc and mobilize experimental effort in higher-order Tsc.Comment: 5+3 pages, 3+2 figures. v2: changes in affiliation and acknowledgemen

Ultra-Thin Coating and Three-Dimensional Electrode Structures to Boosted Thick Electrode Lithium-Ion Battery Performance

This paper reports a multiscale controlled three‐dimensional (3D) electrode structure to boost the battery performance for thick electrode batteries with LiMn1.5Ni0.5O4 as cathode material, which exhibits a high areal capacity (3.5 mAh/cm2) along with a high specific capacity (130 mAh/g). This excellent battery performance is achieved by a new concept of cell electrode fabrication, which simultaneously controls the electrode structure in a multiscale manner to address the key challenges of the material. Particles with ultrathin conformal coating layers are prepared through atomic layer deposition followed by a nanoscale‐controlled, thermal diffusion doping. The particles are organized into a macroscale‐controlled 3D hybrid‐structure. This synergistic control of nano‐/macro‐structures is a promising concept for enhancing battery performance and its cycle life. The nanoscale coating/doping provides enhanced fundamental properties, including transport and structural properties, while the mesoscale control can provide a better network of the nanostructured elements by decreasing the diffusion path between. Electrochemical tests have shown that the synergistically controlled electrode exhibits the best performance among non‐controlled and selectively‐controlled samples, in terms of specific capacity, areal capacity, and cycle life