Some Socio-Cultural Aspects of Growing up Black

Excerpt from the full-text article: Black people, like other people, grow up in families. This simple observation is a suprise to people who are accustomed to associate the experiences of Black people with slavery, crime, delinquency, civil disorders. The Black historian, Benjamin Quarles (1967) has observed that white America tends to have a distorted perspective on Black life, and the fact of Blacks growing up in a family is a fresh approach to the understanding of socio-cultural aspects of growing up Black (cf. Billingsley, 1968). The family is society\u27s primary context for meeting a child\u27s biological needs, directing his development into an integrated person living in a society, and transmitting to him its cultures (Lidz, 1974). It is also the setting in which a child\u27s basic trust, autonomy, initiative and sense of industry toward life (cf. Erikson, 1959) are developed. The interaction between societal needs and individual wants (cf. Parsons and Bales, 1955; Winch, 1971) or between the demands of super ego and id defines the family as a mediational setting even though its structure is presently in transition (cf. Skolnick and Skolnick, 1971). Any attempt at studies of child development as an autonomous process, independent of the family, distorts as much as it simplifies the understanding of the growth process

A proposal for 3d quantum gravity and its bulk factorization

Recent progress in AdS/CFT has provided a good understanding of how the bulk spacetime is encoded in the entanglement structure of the boundary CFT. However, little is known about how spacetime emerges directly from the bulk quantum theory. We address this question in an effective 3d quantum theory of pure gravity, which describes the high temperature regime of a holographic CFT. This theory can be viewed as a $q$-deformation and dimensional uplift of JT gravity. Using this model, we show that the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of a two-sided black hole equals the bulk entanglement entropy of gravitational edge modes. In the conventional Chern-Simons description, these black holes correspond to Wilson lines in representations of \PSL(2,\mathbb{R})\otimes \PSL(2,\mathbb{R}) . We show that the correct calculation of gravitational entropy suggests we should interpret the bulk theory as an extended topological quantum field theory associated to the quantum semi-group \SL^+_{q}(2,\mathbb{R})\otimes \SL^+_{q}(2,\mathbb{R}). Our calculation suggests an effective description of bulk microstates in terms of collective, anyonic degrees of freedom whose entanglement leads to the emergence of the bulk spacetime.Comment: Appendix expanded. Discussion of extended TQFT is expanded and moved to section 6. Added discussion of entropy formula in eq 4.2, comparison to Liouville theory below eq 2.41, and expanded remarks on relation to Teichmuller TQFT in section 6.4 and section

Service-learning as a means to help social enterprises

In Hong Kong, the term social enterprise is a relatively new term. As a result, those living in Hong Kong often do not understand the term\u27s meaning or what a social enterprise is and how it works. In fact, many people living in Hong Kong tend to confuse social enterprises with charitable organizations - thinking that the two terms have the same meaning. In addition to the many misconceptions about the concept of social enterprise, it is also important to recognize the difficulties that operating social enterprises (SEs) face in Hong Kong. Many SEs are struggling to survive because of the economic structure in Hong Kong. Due to the money supremacist economy of Hong Kong, many residents of Hong Kong place emphasis on making money and acquiring profit, rather than acknowledging their civic responsibility for addressing social issues. Business-minded and profit-driven individuals believe that it is the government\u27s responsibility to fix society\u27s problems and issues. As a result of this social mindset, it is often difficult for SEs to sustain in Hong Kong. Service-Learning, in effect, can be a way to help SEs with their difficulties and help t hem continue to exist in Hong Kong. The Service-Learning project Strategic Planning for \u27Natural Network,\u27 organized by the Office of Service -Learning (OSL), serves as a case study for how university students can help benefit social enterprises and vice versa. This research will demonstrate how students from the Strategic Management course at Lingnan University have partnered with the social enterprise Natural Network to support its efforts and services. Findings show that by partnering with Natural Network, Lingnan students have helped Natural Network brainstorm ideas to outreach to more schools and NGOs and assisted in developing pricing strategies for Natural Network\u27s services. The project has also e enhanced students\u27 knowledge of SEs and the difficulties SE\u27s face, along with increasing students\u27 academic knowledge and research skills

Genomic signatures of heterokaryosis in the oomycete pathogen Bremia lactucae.

Lettuce downy mildew caused by Bremia lactucae is the most important disease of lettuce globally. This oomycete is highly variable and rapidly overcomes resistance genes and fungicides. The use of multiple read types results in a high-quality, near-chromosome-scale, consensus assembly. Flow cytometry plus resequencing of 30 field isolates, 37 sexual offspring, and 19 asexual derivatives from single multinucleate sporangia demonstrates a high incidence of heterokaryosis in B. lactucae. Heterokaryosis has phenotypic consequences on fitness that may include an increased sporulation rate and qualitative differences in virulence. Therefore, selection should be considered as acting on a population of nuclei within coenocytic mycelia. This provides evolutionary flexibility to the pathogen enabling rapid adaptation to different repertoires of host resistance genes and other challenges. The advantages of asexual persistence of heterokaryons may have been one of the drivers of selection that resulted in the loss of uninucleate zoospores in multiple downy mildews

Undergraduate students’ perceptions of community engagement: A snapshot of a public research university in Canada

Students who participate in regular community engagement (CE) often experience benefits in different areas of their lives. Many academic institutions have implemented action plans to increase CE within the student population. At the University of Calgary, Canada, this is done primarily through its broader Eyes High strategy. As there remains a gap in the literature about students' perceptions of CE and their awareness of university CE strategies, this study aims to identify undergraduate students’ awareness of the Eyes High strategy, attitudes towards and levels of engagement, and challenges and potential methods to increase CE participation. Data was collected through a voluntary online survey (n=528). Participants were recruited through posters, social media, online faculty platforms and by faculty members. Survey results indicated students lacked knowledge regarding the Eyes High strategy. It was noted that students’ knowledge, attitudes and practices of CE increased as they spent more time at the university. The top perceived challenges to CE were lack of time, accessible information, support and incentives. To increase accessibility and student participation, we suggest introducing the Eyes High Strategy and CE activities early to the undergraduate population through workshops, credit-based courses and/or professional development requirements. Our data suggests that students are not well informed about the Eyes High strategy. There is thus a need for the university to build a campus-wide, student-informed initiative to proactively engage students. This research will serve as a gateway to further explore communicative methods that might better convey university priorities to students

Classifying DME vs Normal SD-OCT volumes: A review

International audienceThis article reviews the current state of automatic classification methodologies to identify Diabetic Macular Edema (DME) versus normal subjects based on Spectral Domain OCT (SD-OCT) data. Addressing this classification problem has valuable interest since early detection and treatment of DME play a major role to prevent eye adverse effects such as blindness. The main contribution of this article is to cover the lack of a public dataset and benchmark suited for classifying DME and normal SD-OCT volumes, providing our own implementation of the most relevant methodologies in the literature. Subsequently, 6 different methods were implemented and evaluated using this common benchmark and dataset to produce reliable comparison

Chile y las inevitables consecuencias de la desigualdad

El martes 22 de octubre, tras los primeros días de disturbios, caceroladas, manifestaciones y reivindicaciones en Chile, el portal de noticias? y una de las principales radios del país? BioBioChile.cl publicaba un artículo con la noticia «La pregunta que se hacen los europeos...¿por qué explotó el país tranquilo de Sudamérica?». La pregunta es interesante, porque ciertamente parece que este estallido social repentino ha tomado por sorpresa a mucha gente. Aunque también es cierto que podría elaborarse la pregunta de forma invertida: ¿cómo ha tardado Chile tanto tiempo en salir a las calles a reclamar una situación a todas luces insostenible socialmente? Y ahí parece estar, en nuestra opinión, el quid de la cuestión