Trowels, Trenches, and Transformation: A Case Study of Archaeologists Learning, Teaching, and Enacting Environmentally-Friendly, Community-Inclusive Practices

Guided by the framework of “critical transformative learning,” this study explores archaeologists as adult learners and seeks to understand how they are learning to practice a new vision of archaeology in Mexico. In this project, personal transformation is linked to disciplinary and social transformation

Guerrilla Girls and Raging Grannies: Critical, Informal, and Performative Pedagogy

This paper offers two important historical examples, The Guerrilla Girls and The Raging Grannies, as ways to explore, experience, and better understand the value of embodied learning through culture jamming and critical performative pedagogy

High-Throughput Drug Screening Identifies a Potent Wnt Inhibitor that Promotes Airway Basal Stem Cell Homeostasis.

Mechanisms underpinning airway epithelial homeostatic maintenance and ways to prevent its dysregulation remain elusive. Herein, we identify that β-catenin phosphorylated at Y489 (p-β-cateninY489) emerges during human squamous lung cancer progression. This led us to develop a model of airway basal stem cell (ABSC) hyperproliferation by driving Wnt/β-catenin signaling, resulting in a morphology that resembles premalignant lesions and loss of ciliated cell differentiation. To identify small molecules that could reverse this process, we performed a high-throughput drug screen for inhibitors of Wnt/β-catenin signaling. Our studies unveil Wnt inhibitor compound 1 (WIC1), which suppresses T-cell factor/lymphoid enhancer-binding factor (TCF/LEF) activity, reduces ABSC proliferation, induces ciliated cell differentiation, and decreases nuclear p-β-cateninY489. Collectively, our work elucidates a dysregulated Wnt/p-β-cateninY489 axis in lung premalignancy that can be modeled in vitro and identifies a Wnt/β-catenin inhibitor that promotes airway homeostasis. WIC1 may therefore serve as a tool compound in regenerative medicine studies with implications for restoring normal airway homeostasis after injury

Detection of magnetic dipole lines of Fe XII in the ultraviolet spectrum of the dwarf star Epsilon Eri

We report observations of the dwarf star Epsilon Eri (K2 V) made with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The high sensitivity of the STIS instrument has allowed us to detect the magnetic dipole transitions of Fe XII at 1242.00A and 1349.38A for the first time in a star other than the Sun. The width of the stronger line at 1242.00A has also been measured; such measurements are not possible for the permitted lines of Fe XII in the extreme ultraviolet. To within the accurcy of the measurements, the N V and the Fe XII lines occur at their rest wavelengths. Electron densities and line widths have been measured from other transition region lines. Together, these can be used to investigate the non-thermal energy flux in the lower and upper transition region, which is useful in constraining possible heating processes. The Fe XII lines are also present in archival STIS spectra of other G/K-type dwarfs.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS letters (11 Jan 2001

Metal-rich absorbers at high redshifts: abundance patterns

(Abbreviated) From six spectra of high-z QSOs, we select eleven metal-rich, Z>=Z_solar, and optically-thin to the ionizing radiation, N(HI)<10^17 cm^-2, absorption systems ranging between z=1.5 and z=2.9 and revealing lines of different ions in subsequent ionization stages. The majority of the systems (10 from 11) show abundance patterns which relate them to outflows from low and intermediate mass stars. All systems have sub-kpc linear sizes along the line-of-sight with many less than 20 pc. In several systems, silicon is deficient, presumably due to the depletion onto dust grains in the envelopes of dust-forming stars and the subsequent gas-dust separation. At any value of [C/H], nitrogen can be either deficient, [N/C]0, which supposes that the nitrogen enrichment occurs irregularly. In some cases, the lines of MgII 2796, 2803 appear to be shifted, probably as a result of an enhanced content of heavy isotopes 25Mg and 26Mg in the absorbing gas relative to the solar isotopic composition. Seven absorbers are characterized by low mean ionization parameter U, log U<-2.3, among them only one system has a redshift z>2 whereas all others are found at z ~= 1.8. Comparing the space number density of metal-rich absorbers with the comoving density of star-forming galaxies at z ~= 2, we estimate that the circumgalactic volume of each galaxy is populated by 10^7 - 10^8 such absorbers with total mass <=1/100th of the stellar galactic mass. Possible effects of high metal content on the peak values of star-forming and AGN activities at z~2 are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in A&

Spectroscopic Coronal Observations during the Total Solar Eclipse of 11 July 2010

The flash spectrum of the solar chromosphere and corona was measured with a slitless spectrograph before, after, and during the totality of the solar eclipse, of 11 July 2010, at Easter Island, Chile. This eclipse took place at the beginning of the Solar Cycle 24, after an extended minimum of solar activity. The spectra taken during the eclipse show a different intensity ratio of the red and green coronal lines compared with those taken during the total solar eclipse of 1 August 2008, which took place towards the end of the Solar Cycle 23. The characteristic coronal forbidden emission line of forbidden Fe XIV (5303 {\AA}) was observed on the east and west solar limbs in four areas relatively symmetrically located with respect to the solar rotation axis. Subtraction of the continuum flash-spectrum background led to the identification of several extremely weak emission lines, including forbidden Ca XV (5694 {\AA}), which is normally detected only in regions of very high excitation, e.g., during flares or above large sunspots. The height of the chromosphere was measured spectrophotometrically, using spectral lines from light elements and compared with the equivalent height of the lower chromosphere measured using spectral lines from heavy elements.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, 1 table; Solar Physics, 2012, Februar

Situating preparedness education within public pedagogy

Both ‘disaster preparedness’ and ‘public pedagogy’ have been broadly defined and diversely utilised. Preparedness has been dealt within the disciplines such as civil engineering, sociology of disasters, public health and psychology, rather than education. Recently, inquiries into the learning and teaching of preparedness is increasing in the field of education, and some of them position preparedness education within the field of public pedagogy. However, conceptual discussion as to how and why the two fields are associated has been limited. The primary aim of this paper is to fill this gap by drawing on public pedagogy literature that conceptualises ‘publics’ and ‘pedagogies’. By doing so, the paper attempts to respond to Burdick et al’s call for Problematizing Public Pedagogy