For the Dead Homie: Black Male Rappers, Homicide Survivorship Bereavement, and the Rap Tribute of Nipsey Hussle

Ermias “Nipsey Hussle” Asghedom’s murder represented a cultural cataclysmic event that startled the Hip Hop community and triggered previous memories of Black men’s homicidal deaths in the world. Nipsey Hussle’s death inspired touching rap tribute songs by Black male rappers, who sought to commemorate his cultural legacy and express their bereavement as homicide survivors. Rap tribute songs occupy a significant history, as rappers historically employed them to honor Hip Hop’s fallen soldiers, communicate their homicide survivorship bereavement processes, and speak about social perils in the Black community. Framed by critical race (CRT) and gender role conflict theoretical frameworks, this study investigated twenty-six rap tribute songs, which were authored by twenty-eight Black male rap artists in commemoration of Nipsey Hussle’s life and legacy. We sought to understand how the examined Black male rappers use their music to grieve and communicate their bereavement experiences as homicide survivors. The findings yielded complex, yet contradictory themes related to existing scholarship on Black men’s homicide survivorship bereavement strategies, rap’s homicide-related lyrics, and the sociocultural functions of rap tribute songs as rhetorical expressions of Black men’s homosociality and as laments of deceased friends and rappers. The examined rap tribute songs advanced three dominant themes in relation to the Black male rappers’ articulations of their homicide survivorship bereavement of Nipsey Hussle, which were 1) Black men’s grief, homosociality, and complex vulnerability narratives, 2) fear and paranoia declarations, and 3) and resolution of internal conflict and grief with vengeance. This investigation was significant to Hip Hop studies, for it illustrated how twenty-eight Black male rap artists leveraged the rhetorical power of rap tribute songs to articulate their complex homicide survivor bereavement processes, advance vital counternarratives concerning Black men’s mental health experiences with repeated exposure to homicide deaths and violence in rap and urban communities, and offer rich criticisms of gun violence, internalized racism, poverty, and systemic oppression

AFFINITY OF CHOLESTEROL FOR POLYUNSATURATED FATTY ACID-CONTAINING PHOSPHOLIPIDS

poster abstractA wide range of health benefits is associated with the consumption of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). One possible mechanism is that through our diet, they are incorporated into the phospholipids of the plasma membrane and disrupt the molecular organization of membrane do-mains due to the high disorder of PUFA. Our focus is the interaction of PUFA with cholesterol, a major component in plasma membranes. The objective here is to measure the affinity of cholesterol for PUFA-containing phospholip-ids by observing how cholesterol partitions between large unilamellar vesi-cles (LUVs) and Cyclodextrin (CD). Crucial to this determination, we need to be able to determine the concentration of cholesterol in LUVs and CD using an enzymatic colorimetric assay to create a standard curve of light absorb-ance (at 570nm wavelength) as a function of cholesterol concentration. The assay and its application to measuring binding coefficients for cholesterol will be described

Musical borrowing in hip-hop music: theoretical frameworks and case studies

'Musical borrowing in hip-hop' begins with a crucial premise: the hip-hop world, as an imagined community, regards unconcealed intertextuality as integral to the production and reception of its artistic culture. In other words, borrowing, in its multidimensional forms and manifestations, is central to the aesthetics of hip-hop. This study of borrowing in hip-hop music, which transcends narrow discourses on 'sampling' (digital sampling), illustrates the variety of ways that one can borrow from a source text or trope, and ways that audiences identify and respond to these practices. Another function of this thesis is to initiate a more nuanced discourse in hip-hop studies, to allow for the number of intertextual avenues travelled within hip-hop recordings, and to present academic frameworks with which to study them. The following five chapters provide case studies that prove that musical borrowing, part and parcel of hip-hop aesthetics, occurs on multiple planes and within myriad dimensions. These case studies include borrowing from the internal past of the genre (Ch. 1), the use of jazz and its reception as an 'art music' within hip-hop (Ch. 2), borrowing and mixing intended for listening spaces such as the automobile (Ch. 3), sampling the voice of rap artists posthumously (Ch. 4), and sampling and borrowing as lineage within the gangsta rap subgenre (Ch. 5). By no means are the case studies intended to be exhaustive, but they provide examples which demonstrate that a thorough study of musical borrowing in hip-hop requires attention to the texts (hip-hop recordings), their reception, and wider cultural contexts

Sex differences in the association of photoperiod with hippocampal subfield volumes in older adults : A crosssectional study in the UK Biobank cohort

© 2020 The Authors. Brain and Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Chronic brain stimulation using Micro-ECoG devices

Recording and stimulating brain activity has had great success both as a research tool and as a clinical technique. Neural prosthetics can replace limbs, restore hearing, and treat disorders like Parkinson’s and epilepsy, but are relatively crude. Current neural prosthetic systems use penetrating electrodes to achieve high precision, but the invasive nature of these devices provoke a strong immune response that limits chronic use. (Polikov et al) In our study we evaluate micro-electrocortiographic (micro-ECoG) devices which sit under the skull and on the surface of the brain for stimulation over chronic timescales. We anticipate these devices with their less invasive placement will evoke less extreme immune responses compared to penetrating electrodes and allow for stable stimulation over long periods of time (months to years). These devices were developed by the NITRO Lab of University of Wisconsin. (Thongpang et al) In short, Sprague Dawley rats were implanted with micro-ECoG devices over either somatosensory or auditor cortex. They were stimulated electrically through these devices on a daily basis to evaluate their chronic performance in vivo. Sensitivity to stimulation was determined via an operant behavioral task and the implants’ electrical properties were measured daily to monitor functionality and approximate of the immune response. After at least two months of implantation, animals were perfused and a histological analysis was performed to evaluate the chronic immune response. From preliminary results we expect to see that the micro-ECoG devices are capable of long term stimulation and evoke a smaller immune response from the brain than penetrating neural implants. In addition, we have found that removing the dura in rats for device implantation causes significant brain swelling, which indicates a strong immune response preventing effective stimulation. This research shows that micro-ECoG devices can chronically stimulate brain tissue and show great promise as a less invasive method of neural interfacing compared to traditional penetrating electrodes

Complex impedance spectroscopy for monitoring tissue responses to inserted neural implants

A series of animal experiments was conducted to characterize changes in the complex impedance of chronically implanted electrodes in neural tissue. Consistent trends in impedance changes were observed across all animals, characterized as a general increase in the measured impedance magnitude at 1 kHz. Impedance changes reach a peak approximately 7 days post-implant. Reactive responses around individual electrodes were described using immuno- and histo-chemistry and confocal microscopy. These observations were compared to measured impedance changes. Several features of impedance changes were able to differentiate between confined and extensive histological reactions. In general, impedance magnitude at 1 kHz was significantly increased in extensive reactions, starting about 4 days post-implant. Electrodes with extensive reactions also displayed impedance spectra with a characteristic change at high frequencies. This change was manifested in the formation of a semi-circular arc in the Nyquist space, suggestive of increased cellular density in close proximity to the electrode site. These results suggest that changes in impedance spectra are directly influenced by cellular distributions around implanted electrodes over time and that impedance measurements may provide an online assessment of cellular reactions to implanted devices.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58178/2/jne7_4_007.pd