Proceedings of a Workshop on Antarctic Meteorite Stranding Surfaces

The discovery of large numbers of meteorites on the Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the most exciting developments in polar science in recent years. The meteorites are found on areas of ice called stranding surfaces. Because of the sudden availability of hundreds, and then thousands, of new meteorite specimens at these sites, the significance of the discovery of meteorite stranding surfaces in Antarctica had an immediate and profound impact on planetary science, but there is also in this discovery an enormous, largely unrealized potential to glaciology for records of climatic and ice sheet changes. The glaciological interest derives from the antiquity of the ice in meteorite stranding surfaces. This exposed ice covers a range of ages, probably between zero and more than 500,000 years. The Workshop on Antarctic Meteorite Stranding Surfaces was convened to explore this potential and to devise a course of action that could be recommended to granting agencies. The workshop recognized three prime functions of meteorite stranding surfaces. They provide: (1) A proxy record of climatic change (i.e., a long record of climatic change is probably preserved in the exposed ice stratigraphy); (2) A proxy record of ice volume change; and (3) A source of unique nonterrestrial material

The Upregulation of α2δ-1 Subunit Modulates Activity-Dependent Ca2+ Signals in Sensory Neurons.

As auxiliary subunits of voltage-gated Ca(2+) channels, the α2δ proteins modulate membrane trafficking of the channels and their localization to specific presynaptic sites. Following nerve injury, upregulation of the α2δ-1 subunit in sensory dorsal root ganglion neurons contributes to the generation of chronic pain states; however, very little is known about the underlying molecular mechanisms. Here we show that the increased expression of α2δ-1 in rat sensory neurons leads to prolonged Ca(2+) responses evoked by membrane depolarization. This mechanism is coupled to CaV2.2 channel-mediated responses, as it is blocked by a ω-conotoxin GVIA application. Once initiated, the prolonged Ca(2+) transients are not dependent on extracellular Ca(2+) and do not require Ca(2+) release from the endoplasmic reticulum. The selective inhibition of mitochondrial Ca(2+) uptake demonstrates that α2δ-1-mediated prolonged Ca(2+) signals are buffered by mitochondria, preferentially activated by Ca(2+) influx through CaV2.2 channels. Thus, by controlling channel abundance at the plasma membrane, the α2δ-1 subunit has a major impact on the organization of depolarization-induced intracellular Ca(2+) signaling in dorsal root ganglion neurons

A unified approach to computer analysis and modeling of spacecraft environmental interactions

A new, coordinated, unified approach to the development of spacecraft plasma interaction models is proposed. The objective is to eliminate the unnecessary duplicative work in order to allow researchers to concentrate on the scientific aspects. By streamlining the developmental process, the interchange between theories and experimentalists is enhanced, and the transfer of technology to the spacecraft engineering community is faster. This approach is called the UNIfied Spacecraft Interaction Model (UNISIM). UNISIM is a coordinated system of software, hardware, and specifications. It is a tool for modeling and analyzing spacecraft interactions. It will be used to design experiments, to interpret results of experiments, and to aid in future spacecraft design. It breaks a Spacecraft Ineraction analysis into several modules. Each module will perform an analysis for some physical process, using phenomenology and algorithms which are well documented and have been subject to review. This system and its characteristics are discussed

Disrupting Privilege: A High School Curriculum

Current privilege pedagogy scholarship demonstrates the importance of understanding privilege as an entryway into critical studies and everyday community engagement. Thus, this dissertation argues that privilege must be introduced into education earlier, such as high school. In order to demonstrate ethical possibilities of meeting the need for care, this project integrates social work and critical pedagogy scholarship that explores teaching privilege in the classroom, with culture and communication scholarship. This dissertation connects culture and communication, critical pedagogy, and performance to demonstrate an applied use of communication scholarship in two classroom settings to explore dialogues of privilege through a curriculum titled “Disrupting Privilege.” To do this, this dissertation uses critical pedagogy as a method of teaching “Disrupting Privilege” in the two classrooms and narrative ethnography as a method of analysis of what happened communicatively and performatively in the classrooms. The use of narrative ethnography forefronts student voices to guide the analysis of this dissertation. In “Disrupting Privilege,” an analysis of communication components shows how communication was used to structure and facilitate critical conversations of privilege in the classroom. This structure and facilitation of communication created a space where emotion was brought into the classroom through privilege, pedagogy, and performance. By looking at the communicative and emotional aspects of these two classrooms we see demonstrations of classroom change and transformation. Therefore, this dissertation sets an example of how the use of communication and emotion, as seen in the “Disrupting Privilege” curriculum, can be used in high school to transform individuals and communities by analyzing what happened in each of these classrooms. The hope is that, through these narratives, student voices and experiences become a way to understand the capacity for high school students to struggle through critical conversations and performances about privilege. Involving high school students more often in these conversations, can teach students to think critically and engage in disrupting systems of power and, in return, potentially transform communities as well as pave the way for deeper, more sophisticated conversations in college

Bringing the Frame Into Focus: How Cable News Pundits Protect the Glass Ceiling

In many nations, the 21st century has been about women in politics. Not only are they running for prominent political offices, but they are winning them. The trend toward success for American female politicians has been slower to progress, however, as no women have been elected to the U.S. Presidency to date, and social science research suggests persistent gender biases exist in their news coverage. In order to explore the potential role that media play in continuing this gender disparity in U.S. politics, this comparative study investigates how cable pundit programs – a dramatic, partisan genre of “news” that has risen in popularity since the 2008 election – frame female candidates for the highest national office. A content analysis of pre-election coverage of three prominent U.S. politicians on the national scene, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, on The O’Reilly Factor, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show reveals a small incidence of gendered coverage across these shows overall. Among said coverage found, however, trends in the data suggest that conservative programs employ more gendered frames than liberal programs, and that those frames are particularly negative when referring to liberal candidates (Clinton), and positive when referring to conservative (Palin and Bachmann) candidates. Further, the gender of the pundits, the gender of the cable network production staff members, and the political party affiliations of executive staff/owners correspond to the frames employed by these programs in unique ways

Making “Milky Matches” Globalization, Maternal Trust and “Lactivist” Online Networking

One of the most recent, and global breastfeeding activist or lactation activist movements was launched on the Internet in 2010. This mother-to-mother, sometimes called peer-to-peer, milk sharing Internet based networking does not support the selling of breastmilk, but facilitates, on a global scale, the establishment of local relationships. Issues of trust and exchange are key, as are questions of medicalization or biomedicalization, secrecy about cross-nursing, as well as the historical pejorative demonization of the lactating body. Discourses from government authorities, media outlets, and breastfeeding organizations have often created a sense of antagonism between this type of milk sharing, and the older form of donor human milk banking. However those who study these two visions argue for a synergy between the global Internet based milk sharing community and the donor human milk banking community as an important next step within the global culture of breastfeeding, and that synergy is not only possible, but necessary to ensure the primary interests of mothers and infants. As the mother of two infants, one of whom received donor human milk, while the other developed a fatal disease linked to lack of exclusive breastmilk feeding, I am particularly in favour of a world where all infants have the right to breastmilk, and that this right is not the sole responsibility of a single maternal body. Arguing that in the ideal world, we recognize it takes a village to feed that child

On the Subject of Nativeness: Marsden Hartley and the New England Regionalism

During the depression, Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) redefined his European style of painting to reflect the changing tastes of an American society grown increasingly nativist and isolationist. Americans were searching for a unique style that contrasted with that of Hartley\u27s benefactor and avant-gardist, Alfred Stieglitz. Inspired by the painting of Albert Ryder, Hartley developed a New England regional style in harmony with the regionalist movement. His subjects included the rocky Maine coast, the Mount Katahdin wilderness, and stylized portraits of local folk. His art reflected the tastes of a growing tourist and consumer society

Race to the Park: Simmel, The Stranger and The State

In 1909, Georg Simmel opens his essay entitled ‘Bridge and Door’ in the following way, ‘[t]he image of external things possesses for us the ambiguous dimension that in external nature everything can be considered to be connected, but also as separated’ (Simmel, 1997: 170). Ambivalence, meaning occupying two spaces at one and the same time, provides a stabilising social paradigm, and not a provisional condition of uncertainty. This paper discusses a socio-political drama in Ireland which makes active use of an ambivalent rhetoric, specifically linking notions of transcending boundaries