New EUV Fe IX emission line identifications from Hinode/EIS

Four Fe IX transitions in the wavelength range 188--198 A are identified for the first time in spectra from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer on board the Hinode satellite. In particular the emission line at 197.86 A is unblended and close to the peak of the EIS sensitivity curve, making it a valuable diagnostic of plasma at around 800,000 K - a critical temperature for studying the interface between the corona and transition region. Theoretical ratios amongst the four lines predicted from the CHIANTI database reveal weak sensitivity to density and temperature with observed values consistent with theory. The ratio of 197.86 relative to the 171.07 resonance line of Fe IX is found to be an excellent temperature diagnostic, independent of density, and the derived temperature in the analysed data set is log T=5.95, close to the predicted temperature of maximum ionization of Fe IX.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, submitted to ApJ Letter

Coupled microbial and human systems: evidence for a relationship between infectious disease and gross national product

AbstractWe provide evidence that maternal metabolic energy is diverted to increased birth rates in nations experiencing high infectious disease risk. The “economic stoichiometry” of such situations limits the availability and distribution of metabolic resources available for national production. Lowering disease risk, and thus the metabolic energy required for replacement human biomass production, makes energy available for national production during the demographic transition, and increases the national GDP

The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining the Dynamics and Potential of Local History

Stephen Bromage explores the Maine Historical Society’s experience creating, nurturing, and sustaining the Maine Memory Network (www.mainememory.net), a nationally recognized statewide digital museum. In particular, the article focuses on the opportunities that the digital humanities create to foster collaboration, to engage communities in the practice of history, and to collapse traditional geographic and institutional boundaries

Local History: A Gateway to 21st Century Communications

Stephen Bromage discusses the important role libraries are playing through collaboration with the Maine Historical Society and local historical societies in documenting local history and making it accessible online

The Scanning Electron Microscopy/Replica Technique and Recent Applications to the Study of Fossil Bone

The SEM/replica technique employs high resolution replica materials in order to reflect microstructural details of specimens, such as fossil bones, which cannot be observed directly. The described technique is simple, provides excellent resolution, is maximally adaptable to field and laboratory settings, and is applicable to large and topographically complex bone surfaces. The advent of the technique has made it largely possible to address certain issues in anthropology and paleontology. These contributions have principally been concerned with taphonomy as the study of the bone damage process, and bone biology as it relates to bone growth remodeling processes characterizing the facial growth of our early fossil hominid ancestors

Narratives of Feminist Resistance: Women\u27s Bodily Autonomy and the Dystopian Mode

This undergraduate thesis examines how dystopian fiction has responded to the sociopolitical issue of restrictions on women’s bodily autonomy, a question that has become more timely since the reversal of Roe v. Wade in Summer 2022. Particularly, I aim to understand how readers can use dystopian novels to shape real-world dialogue and how authors can use narrative strategies to encourage readers to resist oppression. My first chapter takes a broad approach, tracing the development of dystopian fiction from a genre to a mode and using Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) as a case study of how an author can use the dystopian mode to model resistance. My second chapter analyzes how, with its plausible predictions and intimate first-person stream-of-consciousness narrative style, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) has become a cultural intervention that many women still turn to as a symbol of protest almost four decades after its publication. Finally, my third chapter considers how Octavia Butler’s Dawn (1987) has become a feminist resistor’s narrative–especially for Black women like its protagonist, Lilith, who resists the aftereffects of slavery as well as patriarchal oppression–that shows readers how women can gain power, especially by using their voice in protest, exhibiting empathy, and never losing hope. My thesis is prefaced and concluded by a personal memoir, tracing my identity as a feminist in twenty-first century America