Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Kidney Disease in Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes

dentification of sequence variants robustly associated with predisposition to diabetic kidney disease (DKD) has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of DKD in type 2 diabetes (T2D) using eight complementary dichotomous and quantitative DKD phenotypes: the principal dichotomous analysis involved 5,717 T2D subjects, 3,345 with DKD. Promising association signals were evaluated in up to 26,827 subjects with T2D (12,710 with DKD). A combined T1D+T2D GWAS was performed using complementary data available for subjects with T1D, which, with replication samples, involved up to 40,340 subjects with diabetes (18,582 with DKD). Analysis of specific DKD phenotypes identified a novel signal near GABRR1 (rs9942471, P = 4.5 x 10(-8)) associated with microalbuminuria in European T2D case subjects. However, no replication of this signal was observed in Asian subjects with T2D or in the equivalent T1D analysis. There was only limited support, in this substantially enlarged analysis, for association at previously reported DKD signals, except for those at UMOD and PRKAG2, both associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate. We conclude that, despite challenges in addressing phenotypic heterogeneity, access to increased sample sizes will continue to provide more robust inference regarding risk variant discovery for DKD.Peer reviewe

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Gaia Early Data Release 3: Structure and properties of the Magellanic Clouds

We compare the Gaia DR2 and Gaia EDR3 performances in the study of the Magellanic Clouds and show the clear improvements in precision and accuracy in the new release. We also show that the systematics still present in the data make the determination of the 3D geometry of the LMC a difficult endeavour; this is at the very limit of the usefulness of the Gaia EDR3 astrometry, but it may become feasible with the use of additional external data. We derive radial and tangential velocity maps and global profiles for the LMC for the several subsamples we defined. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the two planar components of the ordered and random motions are derived for multiple stellar evolutionary phases in a galactic disc outside the Milky Way, showing the differences between younger and older phases. We also analyse the spatial structure and motions in the central region, the bar, and the disc, providing new insights into features and kinematics. Finally, we show that the Gaia EDR3 data allows clearly resolving the Magellanic Bridge, and we trace the density and velocity flow of the stars from the SMC towards the LMC not only globally, but also separately for young and evolved populations. This allows us to confirm an evolved population in the Bridge that is slightly shift from the younger population. Additionally, we were able to study the outskirts of both Magellanic Clouds, in which we detected some well-known features and indications of new ones

Excerpt from The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States

Mapping representations of post-1980s immigration from the former Soviet Union to the United States in interviews, reality TV shows, fiction, and memoirs, Claudia Sadowski-Smith shows how this nationally and ethnically diverse group is associated with idealized accounts of the assimilation and upward mobility of early twentieth-century arrivals from Europe. As it traces the contributions of historical Eastern European migration to the emergence of a white racial identity that continues to provide privileges to many post-Soviet migrants, the book places the post-USSR diaspora into larger discussions about the racialization of contemporary US immigrants under neoliberal conditions. "The New Immigrant Whiteness" argues that legal status on arrival — as participants in refugee, marriage, labor, and adoptive migration — impacts post-Soviet immigrants’ encounters with growing socioeconomic inequalities and tightened immigration restrictions, as well as their attempts to construct transnational identities. The book examines how their perceived whiteness exposes post-Soviet family migrants to heightened expectations of assimilation, explores undocumented migration from the former Soviet Union, analyzes post-USSR immigrants’ attitudes toward anti-immigration laws that target Latina/os, and considers similarities between post-Soviet and Asian immigrants in their association with notions of upward immigrant mobility. A compelling and timely volume, "The New Immigrant Whiteness" offers a fresh perspective on race and immigration in the United States today

Neoliberalism, Global “Whiteness,” and the Desire for Adoptive Invisibility in US Parental Memoirs of Eastern European Adoption

This essay explores the recent surge in US parental memoirs of adoption from Russia and Ukraine. This analysis of the most influential works speculatively highlights underexamined connections between the US media focus on adoption failures and the centrality of race in adoptions from Eastern Europe. In the memoirs under examination, parents eschew the traditional humanitarian narrative of adoption and portray themselves as consumers who have the right to select “white” children from an international adoption market in order to form families whose members look as though they could be biologically related. The authors’ belief that they share a preexisting racial identity with children from Eastern Europe expands to the global plane the US notion that “whiteness” accords racial and economic privilege to all those of European descent in the United States. While the myth of a shared racial identity confers immense and immediate privilege onto Eastern European adoptees even before their arrival in the United States, it also enables parents to ignore their children’s national differences, as well as the neoliberal transformations in the former USSR that have shaped the conditions for their children’s relinquishment and displacement from their birth countries, languages, and cultures through transnational adoption. Coupled with the emergence of a neoliberal adoption market, the search for adoptive invisibility may help explain the significant numbers of abuse and death cases of Eastern European adoptees at the hands of US parents as compared to other adoptee populations

Neoliberalism, Global “Whiteness,” and the Desire for Adoptive Invisibility in US Parental Memoirs of Eastern European Adoption

This essay explores the recent surge in US parental memoirs of adoption from Russia and Ukraine. This analysis of the most influential works speculatively highlights underexamined connections between the US media focus on adoption failures and the centrality of race in adoptions from Eastern Europe. In the memoirs under examination, parents eschew the traditional humanitarian narrative of adoption and portray themselves as consumers who have the right to select “white” children from an international adoption market in order to form families whose members look as though they could be biologically related. The authors’ belief that they share a preexisting racial identity with children from Eastern Europe expands to the global plane the US notion that “whiteness” accords racial and economic privilege to all those of European descent in the United States. While the myth of a shared racial identity confers immense and immediate privilege onto Eastern European adoptees even before their arrival in the United States, it also enables parents to ignore their children’s national differences, as well as the neoliberal transformations in the former USSR that have shaped the conditions for their children’s relinquishment and displacement from their birth countries, languages, and cultures through transnational adoption. Coupled with the emergence of a neoliberal adoption market, the search for adoptive invisibility may help explain the significant numbers of abuse and death cases of Eastern European adoptees at the hands of US parents as compared to other adoptee populations