Transcending Boundaries: Moroccan Political Thought as a Transnational Platform, and Communities in the Realm of Activism

My research concerns how individual protestors of the February 20th Movement relate to the rest of the Arab Spring and their own society. I conducted several interviews during November 2012 with participants of the movement currently living in Rabat, each one lasting between 30 minutes to two hours. I initially intended this study to focus on the movement’s relations to the rest of the Arab Spring, but found in my interviews that this question is much more tangential than the question of how participants of the movement relate to their own society. What I discovered was that while the events of the Arab Spring were instrumental in initiating the movement, the intranational perception of the movement, propagated by the movement and the media, was much more salient in the outcomes and the state of the movement today. The February 20th Movement, described by some analysts as a branch of a global phenomenon, an unremarkable footnote to the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi and the protests of Tahrir Square, is therefore more effectively analyzed in light of these national forces, in addition to the international Arab Spring phenomenon. This is important to keep in mind when discussing the future of activism in Morocco. While the February 20th Movement is no longer as active as it once was (at least, as of writing this paper), political dialogue between the state of Morocco and its people is far from over

Experimental In-Vivo Models Used in Fat Grafting Research for Volume Augmentation in Soft Tissue Reconstruction

As the popularity of fat grafting research increases, animal models are being used as the source of pre-clinical experimental information for discovery and to enhance techniques. To date, animal models used in this research have not been compared to provide a standardized model. We analyzed publications from 1968-2015 to compare published accounts of animal models in fat grafting research. Data collected included: species used, graft characteristics (donor tissue, recipient area, amount injected, injection technique), time of sacrifice and quantification methods. Mice were most commonly used (56% of studies), with the athymic nude strain utilized most frequently (44%). Autologous fat was the most common source of grafted tissue (52%). Subcutaneous dorsum was the most common recipient site (51%). On average, 0.80+/-0.60 mL of fat was grafted. A single bolus technique was used in 57% of studies. Fat volume assessment was typically completed at the end of the study, occurring at less than 1 week to one year. Graft volume was quantified by weight (63%), usually in conjunction with another analysis. The results demonstrate the current heterogeneity of animal models in this research. We propose that the research community reach a consensus to allow better comparison of techniques and results. One example is the model used in our laboratory and others; this model is described in detail. Eventually, larger animal models may better translate to the human condition but, given increased financial costs and animal facility capability, should be explored when data obtained from small animal studies is exhausted or inconclusive

Experimental Benchmarks and Initial Evaluation of the Performance of the PASM System Prototype

The work reported here represents experiences with the PASM parallel processing system prototype during its first operational year. Most of the experiments were performed by students in the Fall semester of 1987. The first programming, and the first timing measurements, were made during the summer of 1987 by Sam Fineberg. The goal of the collection of experiments presented here was to undertake an Application-driven Architecture Study of the PASM system as a paradigm for parallel architecture evaluation in general. PASM was an excellent vehicle for experimenting with this evaluation technique due to its unique architectural features. Among these are: 1. A reconfigurable, partitionable multistage circuit-switched network. 2. Support for both SIMD and MIMD programs. 3. Ability to execute hybrid SIMD/MIMD programs. 4. An instruction queue which allows overlap of control-flow and data manipulation between micro-control (MC) units and processing elements (PE). It had been hypothesized that superlinear speed-up over the number of PEs could be attained with this feature, and experimental results verified this. 5. Support for barrier synchronization of MIMD tasks. This feature was exploited in some non-standard ways to show the ability to decouple variant length SIMD instructions into multiple MIMD streams for an overall performance benefit. This type of study is expected to continue in the future on PASM and other parallel machines at Purdue. This report should serve as a guide for this future work as well

Model for an Intelligent Operating System for Executing Tasks on a Reconfigurable Parallel Architecture

Parallel processing is one approach to achieve the large computational processing capabilities required by many real-time computing tasks. One of the problems that must be addressed in the use of reconfigurable multiprocessor systems is matching the architecture configuration to the algorithms to be executed. This paper presents a conceptual model that explores the potential of artificial intelligence tools, specifically expert systems, to design an Intelligent Operating System for multiprocessor systems. The target task is the implementation of image understanding systems on multiprocessor architectures. PASM is used as an example multiprocessor. The Intelligent Operating System concepts developed here could also be used to address other problems requiring real-time processing. An example image understanding task is presented to illustrate the concept of intelligent scheduling by the Intelligent Operating System. Also considered is the use of the conceptual model when developing an image understanding system in order to test different strategies for choosing algorithms, imposing execution order constraints, and integrating results from various algorithms

Generation of Functional Human Adipose Tissue in Mice from Primed Progenitor Cells

Adipose tissue (AT) is used extensively in reconstructive and regenerative therapies, but transplanted fat often undergoes cell death, leading to inflammation, calcification, and requirement for further revision surgery. Previously, we have found that mesenchymal progenitor cells within human AT can proliferate in three-dimensional culture under proangiogenic conditions. These cells (primed ADipose progenitor cells, PADS) robustly differentiate into adipocytes in vitro (ad-PADS). The goal of this study is to determine whether ad-PADS can form structured AT in vivo, with potential for use in surgical applications. Grafts formed from ad-PADS were compared to grafts formed from AT obtained by liposuction after implantation into nude mice. Graft volume was measured by microcomputed tomography scanning, and the functionality of cells within the graft was assessed by quantifying circulating human adiponectin. The degree of graft vascularization by donor or host vessels and the content of human or mouse adipocytes within the graft were measured using species-specific endothelial and adipocyte-specific quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction probes, and histochemistry with mouse and human-specific lectins. Our results show that ad-PADS grafted subcutaneously into nude mice induce robust vascularization from the host, continue to increase in volume over time, express the human adipocyte marker PLIN1 at levels comparable to human AT, and secrete increasing amounts of human adiponectin into the mouse circulation. In contrast, grafts composed of AT fragments obtained by liposuction become less vascularized, develop regions of calcification and decreased content of PLIN1, and secrete lower amounts of adiponectin per unit volume. Enrichment of liposuction tissue with ad-PADS improves vascularization, indicating that ad-PADS may be proangiogenic. Mechanistically, ad-PADS express an extracellular matrix gene signature that includes elements previously associated with small vessel development (COL4A1). Thus, through the formation of a proangiogenic environment, ad-PADS can form functional AT with capacity for long-term survival, and can potentially be used to improve outcomes in reconstructive and regenerative medicine

EXPORTS North Atlantic eddy tracking

The EXPORTS North Atlantic field campaign (EXPORTS-NA) of May 2021 used a diverse array of ship-based and autonomous platforms to measure and quantify processes leading to carbon export in the open ocean. The success of this field program relied heavily on the ability to make measurements following a Lagrangian trajectory within a coherent, retentive eddy (Sections 1, 2). Identifying an eddy that would remain coherent and retentive over the course of a monthlong deployment was a significant challenge that the EXPORTS team faced. This report details the processes and procedures used by the primarily shore-based eddy tracking team to locate, track, and sample with autonomous assets such an eddy before and during EXPORTS-NA.This field deployment was funded by the NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry program and the National Science Foundation Biological and Chemical Oceanography programs. Initial gliders deployments were performed by the RRS Discovery and the authors thank the Porcupine Abyssal Plain – Sustained Observatory of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC, UK), which is principally funded through the Climate Linked Atlantic Sector Science (CLASS) project supported by NERC National Capability funding (NE/R015953/1) and by IFADO (Innovation in the Framework of the Atlantic Deep Ocean) EAPA_165/2016. Technical assistance with glider deployment was provided by Marine Autonomous Robotic Systems (NOC). The authors thank Inia Soto Ramos for assistance in publishing this manuscript through the NASA Technical Memorandum series. This is PMEL contribution number 5372

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Critical Memetic Analysis to Grow Youth Understanding and Meaning Making

For this study, we wondered what benefit studying memes would have on traditional markers of literacy. Memes are compact units of cultural transmission, a multimodal design that imitates society and culture (Dawkins, 2006; New London Group, 1996). Memes’ intertextual layers of images, words, and design reflects popular culture and society, thus reading a meme is a complex meaning making process that demands language, literacy skills, and connections to global issues and themes (Duff & Zappa-Hollman, 2013). Further, memes are composed by creators who leverage design to “package a message for a target culture” (Beskow, Kumar, & Carley, 2020, p. 2) which, when examined, can raise sociopolitical consciousness (Brikich & Barko, 2013). This presentation reports the findings from a mixed methods multiple case study of a virtual critical memetic analysis intervention used with adolescents to support comprehension and meaning making. The interventions focused on the, “ability to engage with and question all parts of the meme (re)production and consumption cycle” (Harvey & Palese, 2018). Findings include the elements of the intervention that supported students’ meaning making from memes and how meme composition is an act of resistance for youth during a time of social isolation and racial unrest (Arlington, 2018)