[Review of] Adelaida Reyes. Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience

This important book documents two areas, the history of the Vietnamese traumatic emigration to the U.S. from 1975 to the early 1990s and the central role of music in Vietnamese responses to diaspora. Because ethnographic studies of the Vietnamese diaspora are still limited in number, and this is the first focused on Vietnamese expressive practices, Songs of the Caged is a major contribution on both fronts. Unlike many accounts of the Vietnamese American experience, Reyes\u27 book is based on extended field research and addresses big issues with attention to history and to real people in real situations often conveyed through intimate portraits. The breadth of Reyes\u27 often difficult research (over many years and thousands of miles) grants this study a remarkable scope. She presents Vietnamese refugees as a diverse group of people with different histories and priorities. Reyes argues that music making is central to the ongoing construction of difference within Vietnamese American communities: she demonstrates how music, particularly singing, looks back nostalgically to pre-1975 Vietnam as well as forward to new Vietnamese American identities and even optimistically to the reclamation of a non-communist Vietnam

Drumming Through Princess of China: Intercultural Encounters in a Hollywood Music Video

La poderosa retórica de la ejecución del taiko de América del Norte relata una historia de supervivencia, resistencia y alegría japonesa y asiática-americana. Me pregunto si el politizado cuerpo asiático-americano creado por el taiko, puede ser reconciliado con los lugares de la performance que están disponibles para sus músicos. Exploro cómo varios miembros de un grupo de taiko de Los Ángeles, al cual yo pertenezco, ejecutan Princess of China (2012), un video musical de Chris Martin, integrante de Coldplay, que incluye a Rihanna. El video es una mezcla orientalista de estilos que no tiene reparos y que libremente toma prestados elementos chinos, japoneses, tailandeses e hindúes. Su vaga narrativa está basada en dos films chinos de arte marcial, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon y House of Flying Daggers, con la inserción de un héroe anglo-blanco y una heroína negra, Rihanna como princesa china. Me pregunto cómo y por qué mi maestro y mis compañeros de ejecución decidieron presentarse como músicos de taiko ninjas. Presento la opinión de dos ejecutantes de taiko sobre la filmación y la lucha por la auto-representación en un medio de la música popular que tiene poca o ninguna responsabilidad cultural. Concluyo reflexionando sobre la falta de espacios puros para la auto-representación de los asiáticos y japoneses-americanos.A poderosa retórica de performance dos tambores taiko da america do norte, conta uma história de sobrevivência, desafio e alegria dos asiáticos e nipo-americanos. Entretanto, indago se o corpo politizado asiático-americano criado pelo taiko pode ser reconciliado com os locais de espetáculos atualmente disponíveis para seus músicos. Eu exploro como vários membros do grupo de taiko sediado em Los Angeles, ao qual pertencia, se apresentaram em Princess of China (2012), um videoclipe de Chris Martin, do Coldplay, com a participação de Rihanna. Este vídeo é uma miscelânea orientalista sem remorso, que se baseia livremente em elementos chineses, japoneses, tailandeses e indianos. Sua narrativa frouxa é baseada em dois filmes chineses de artes marciais, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon e House of Flying Daggers, com a inserção de um herói branco/anglo e uma heroína morena, Rihanna, como uma princesa chinesa. Eu pergunto como e por que meu professor e colegas intérpretes escolheram se apresentar como músicos de taiko ninjas. Eu ofereço dois pensamentos de performers de taiko sobre a filmagem e a luta pela auto-representação em um ambiente musical popular com pouca ou nenhuma responsabilidade cultural. Concluo refletindo sobre a falta de espaços puros para a autonomia de Ásiaticos e Japoneses da América do Norte.The powerful performance rhetoric of North American drumming tells a story of Japanese American and Asian American survival, defiance, and joy, but I ask whether the politicized Asian American body created by taiko can be reconciled with the performance venues actually available to its musicians. I explore how several members of the Los Angeles based group to which I belonged performed in Princess of China (2012) a music video by Chris Martin from Coldplay featuring Rihanna. This video is an unapologetic orientalist mash up, drawing freely from Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Indian elements. Its loose narrative is based on two Chinese martial arts films, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon House of Flying Daggers, with the insertion of a White/Anglo hero and a dark heroine, Rihanna as a Chinese princess. I ask how and why my teacher and fellow performers would choose to perform in it as like players. I offer two performers’ thoughts on the shoot and the struggle for self representation in a popular music environment with little or no cultural accountability. I conclude by reflecting on how there are no pure spaces for Asian American or Japanese American self determination

Louder and Faster

Louder and Faster is a study of taiko in California, focused on the play of sound, performance, identity, ethnicity, race, gender, and politics. Wong explores taiko as a music/dance art form that creates spaces in which memories of the WW2 Japanese American incarceration, Asian American identity, and a desire to be seen/heard intersect with global capitalism, the complications of mediation, and legacies of imperialism. Based on two decades of participatory ethnographic work, the book offers a vivid glimpse of an Asian American presence both loud and fragile

Exploring String Patterns with Trees

The combination of the fields of probability and combinatorics is currently an object of much research. However, not many undergraduates or lay people have the opportunity to see how these areas can work together. We present what we hope is an accessible introduction to the possibilities easily available to many more people through the use of many examples and understandable explanations. We introduce topics of generating functions and tree structures formed through both independent strings and suffixes, as well as how we can find correlation polynomials, expected values, second moments, and variances of the number of nodes in a tree using indicator functions. Then we show a higher order example that includes matrices as the basis for its generating functions. The study of this unique field has many applications in areas including data compression, computational biology with the human genome, and computer science with binary strings

Clinicopathological and targeted exome gene features of a patient with metastatic acinic cell carcinoma of the parotid gland harboring an ARID2 nonsense mutation and CDKN2A/B deletion

We describe the presentation, treatment, clinical outcome, and targeted genome analysis of a metastatic salivary acinic cell carcinoma (AciCC). A 71-year-old male presented with a 3 cm right tail of a parotid lesion, first detected as a nodule by the patient seven months earlier. He had a right total parotidectomy with cranial nerve VII resection, right facial nerve resection and grafting, resection of the right conchal cartilage, and right modified radical neck dissection. The primary tumor revealed AciCC with two distinct areas: a well-differentiated component with glandular architecture and a dedifferentiated component with infiltrative growth pattern associated with prominent stromal response, necrosis, perineural invasion, and cellular pleomorphism. Tumor staging was pT4 N0 MX. Immunohistochemistry staining showed pankeratin (+), CD56 (−), and a Ki67 proliferation index of 15%. Upon microscopic inspection, 49 local lymph nodes resected during parotidectomy were negative for cancer cells. Targeted sequencing of the primary tumor revealed deletions of CDKN2A and CDKN2B, a nonsense mutation in ARID2, and single missense mutations of unknown significance in nine other genes. Despite postoperative localized radiation treatment, follow-up whole body PET/CT scan showed lung, soft tissue, bone, and liver metastases. The patient expired 9 months after resection of the primary tumor

Vaginal Microbicides: Detecting Toxicities in Vivo that Paradoxically Increase Pathogen Transmission

BACKGROUND: Microbicides must protect against STD pathogens without causing unacceptable toxic effects. Microbicides based on nonoxynol-9 (N9) and other detergents disrupt sperm, HSV and HIV membranes, and these agents are effective contraceptives. But paradoxically N9 fails to protect women against HIV and other STD pathogens, most likely because it causes toxic effects that increase susceptibility. The mouse HSV-2 vaginal transmission model reported here: (a) Directly tests for toxic effects that increase susceptibility to HSV-2, (b) Determines in vivo whether a microbicide can protect against HSV-2 transmission without causing toxicities that increase susceptibility, and (c) Identifies those toxic effects that best correlate with the increased HSV susceptibility. METHODS: Susceptibility was evaluated in progestin-treated mice by delivering a low-dose viral inoculum (0.1 ID50) at various times after delivering the candidate microbicide to detect whether the candidate increased the fraction of mice infected. Ten agents were tested – five detergents: nonionic (N9), cationic (benzalkonium chloride, BZK), anionic (sodium dodecylsulfate, SDS), the pair of detergents in C31G (C14AO and C16B); one surface active agent (chlorhexidine); two non-detergents (BufferGel®, and sulfonated polystyrene, SPS); and HEC placebo gel (hydroxyethylcellulose). Toxic effects were evaluated by histology, uptake of a 'dead cell' dye, colposcopy, enumeration of vaginal macrophages, and measurement of inflammatory cytokines. RESULTS: A single dose of N9 protected against HSV-2 for a few minutes but then rapidly increased susceptibility, which reached maximum at 12 hours. When applied at the minimal concentration needed for brief partial protection, all five detergents caused a subsequent increase in susceptibility at 12 hours of ~20–30-fold. Surprisingly, colposcopy failed to detect visible sign of the N9 toxic effect that increased susceptibility at 12 hours. Toxic effects that occurred contemporaneously with increased susceptibility were rapid exfoliation and re-growth of epithelial cell layers, entry of macrophages into the vaginal lumen, and release of one or more inflammatory cytokines (Il-1β, KC, MIP 1α, RANTES). The non-detergent microbicides and HEC placebo caused no significant increase in susceptibility or toxic effects. CONCLUSION: This mouse HSV-2 model provides a sensitive method to detect microbicide-induced toxicities that increase susceptibility to infection. In this model, there was no concentration at which detergents provided protection without significantly increasing susceptibility.JHU Woodrow Wilson Fellowship; National Institutes of Health (Program Project A1 45967

Genetic Structure of the Rice Blast Pathogen (Magnaporthe oryzae) over a Decade in North Central California Rice Fields.

Rice blast, caused by the ascomycete Magnaporthe oryzae, is one of the most destructive rice diseases worldwide. Even though the disease has been present in California since 1996, there is no data for the pathogen population biology in the state. Using amplified fragment length polymorphisms and mating-type markers, the M. oryzae population diversity was investigated using isolates collected when the disease was first established in California and isolates collected a decade later. While in the 1990 samples, a single multilocus genotype (MLG) was identified (MLG1), over a decade later, we found 14 additional MLGs in the 2000 isolates. Some of these MLGs were found to infect the only rice blast-resistant cultivar (M-208) available for commercial production in California. The same samples also had a significant decrease of MLG1. MLG1 was found infecting the resistant rice cultivar M-208 on one occasion whereas MLG7 was the most common genotype infecting the M-208. MLG7 was identified in the 2000 samples, and it was not present in the M. oryzae population a decade earlier. Our results demonstrate a significant increase in genotypic diversity over time with no evidence of sexual reproduction and suggest a recent introduction of new virulent race(s) of the pathogen. In addition, our data could provide information regarding the durability of the Pi-z resistance gene of the M-208. This information will be critical to plant breeders in developing strategies for deployment of other rice blast resistance genes/cultivars in the future

Fast label-free multilayered histology-like imaging of human breast cancer by photoacoustic microscopy

The goal of breast-conserving surgery is to completely remove all of the cancer. Currently, no intraoperative tools can microscopically analyze the entire lumpectomy specimen, which results in 20 to 60% of patients undergoing second surgeries to achieve clear margins. To address this critical need, we have laid the foundation for the development of a device that could allow accurate intraoperative margin assessment. We demonstrate that by taking advantage of the intrinsic optical contrast of breast tissue, photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) can achieve multilayered histology-like imaging of the tissue surface. The high correlation of the PAM images to the conventional histologic images allows rapid computations of diagnostic features such as nuclear size and packing density, potentially identifying small clusters of cancer cells. Because PAM does not require tissue processing or staining, it can be performed promptly and intraoperatively, enabling immediate directed re-excision and reducing the number of second surgeries