A Beating Worse Than Death: Imagining and Contesting Violence in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Between 1995 and 2005, it is conservatively estimated that over 3,600 migrants died while trying to cross clandestinely into the United States from Mexico. Unsanctioned crossings of the U.S.-Mexico boundary have long been dangerous. But the number of deaths has increased significantly over the last several years. Despite the large and rapidly growing death toll, these fatalities have received little critical public scrutiny--especially when compared with other acts of violence involving unauthorized immigrants and state authorities. In trying to ascertain why, this paper compares and contrasts the reaction to two incidents in southern California in early April 1996: the beating of two migrants by police officers, and the deaths of several migrants killed while fleeing the U.S. Border Patrol. This paper argues that the reasons for the unevenness in terms of response relate to hegemonic and interrelated notions regarding national territory, the "illegal" immigrant, and violence. These assumptions reflect and reproduce particular notions of security and rights that conflict with those of migrant, and thus make it difficult to perceive and challenge the factors ultimately responsible for the deaths

A Time to Die: The « American Way of Life » in the Anthropocene

Nous vivons à une époque de multiples crises écologiques qui se chevauchent et menacent les fondements mêmes sur lesquels repose le monde contemporain. Cet article affirme que la source de ces crises est ce que nous pourrions appeler le « mode de vie américain ». Ce mode de vie est étroitement lié à des niveaux élevés de consommation et au consumérisme, ainsi qu’à une forme particulière de l’économie politique étroitement associée aux États-Unis. Or, ce mode de vie et le pouvoir politico- économique et militaire qui le permet et le soutient s’étend bien au-delà des limites territoriales des États‑Unis. C’est parce qu’ils sont insérés dans une constellation globale de relations socio‑géographique, c’est aussi parce que des populations en dehors des États-Unis, membres de ce que nous pourrions envisager comme une classe écologiquement privilégiée de la planète, a adopté et mis en pratique les niveaux élevés de consommation et le consumérisme qui reflètent et reproduisent le style de vie "américain" . Il s’agit d’un mode de vie fondé sur le dys‑écologisme : l’appropriation d’une part insoutenable et socialement injuste des ressources de la biosphère et, en corollaire, d’une distribution très inégale des conditions de vie et de mort à travers la planète. Ainsi, tandis que le « mode de vie américain » bénéficie certainement à beaucoup, il contribue à la mort prématurée de beaucoup plus d’habitants de la Terre. Il est donc insoutenable à la fois d’un point de vue écologique et en termes de justice socio-spatiale. Pour cette raison, et d’autres, selon le propos de cet article, le « mode de vie américain » doit être mis à mort.We live in a time of multiple, overlapping ecological crises, ones that threaten the very foundations upon which the contemporary world sits. This article asserts that the source of these crises is what we might call the “American way of life.” This way of life is tightly linked to high levels of consumption and consumerism, as well as to a particular form of political economy closely associated with the United States. Yet the way of life and the political-economic and military power that enables and upholds it go far beyond U.S. territorial boundaries. This is because they are embedded in a global constellation of socio-geographical relations; it is also because populations beyond the United States, members of what we might consider the planet’s ecologically privileged class, embrace and practice the high levels of consumption and consumerism that reflect and reproduce the “American” lifestyle. It is a lifestyle predicated on dys‑ecologism: the appropriation of an unsustainable and socially unjust share of the biosphere’s resources and, relatedly, the grossly unequal allocation of life and death circumstances across the planet. Thus, while the “American way of life” certainly benefits many, it contributes to the premature death of many more of the Earth’s denizens. It is, therefore, unsustainable in both an ecological sense and a socio-spatial justice one as well. For this reason and more, the article argues, the “American way of life” must be made to die

Phylogenetic simulation of promoter evolution: estimation and modeling of binding site turnover events and assessment of their impact on alignment tools

Phylogenetic simulation of promoter evolution were used to analyze functional site turnover in regulatory sequences

Smart Borders or a Humane World?

On January 20, 2021, his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order pausing the remaining construction of the southern border wall initiated during the Trump administration. Soon after, the White House sent a bill to Congress, the US Citizenship Act of 2021, calling for the deployment of "smart technology" to "manage and secure the southern border."This report delves into the rhetoric of "smart borders" to explore their ties to a broad regime of border policing and exclusion that greatly harms migrants and refugees who either seek or already make their home in the United States. Investment in an approach centered on border and immigrant policing, it argues, is incompatible with the realization of a just and humane world.The report concludes by arguing that we must move beyond a narrow debate limited to "hard" versus "smart" borders toward a discussion of how we can move toward a world where all people have the support needed to lead healthy, secure, and vibrant lives. A just border policy would ask questions such as: How do we help create conditions that allow people to stay in the places they call home, and to thrive wherever they reside? When people do have to move, how can we ensure they are able to do so safely? When we take these questions as our starting point, we realize that it is not enough to fix a "broken" system. Rather, we need to reimagine the system entirely

Utilization of Genomic Signatures to Identify Phenotype-Specific Drugs

Genetic and genomic studies highlight the substantial complexity and heterogeneity of human cancers and emphasize the general lack of therapeutics that can match this complexity. With the goal of expanding opportunities for drug discovery, we describe an approach that makes use of a phenotype-based screen combined with the use of multiple cancer cell lines. In particular, we have used the NCI-60 cancer cell line panel that includes drug sensitivity measures for over 40,000 compounds assayed on 59 independent cells lines. Targets are cancer-relevant phenotypes represented as gene expression signatures that are used to identify cells within the NCI-60 panel reflecting the signature phenotype and then connect to compounds that are selectively active against those cells. As a proof-of-concept, we show that this strategy effectively identifies compounds with selectivity to the RAS or PI3K pathways. We have then extended this strategy to identify compounds that have activity towards cells exhibiting the basal phenotype of breast cancer, a clinically-important breast cancer characterized as ER-, PR-, and Her2- that lacks viable therapeutic options. One of these compounds, Simvastatin, has previously been shown to inhibit breast cancer cell growth in vitro and importantly, has been associated with a reduction in ER-, PR- breast cancer in a clinical study. We suggest that this approach provides a novel strategy towards identification of therapeutic agents based on clinically relevant phenotypes that can augment the conventional strategies of target-based screens

Origin of bistability underlying mammalian cell cycle entry

Mammalian cell cycle entry is controlled at the restriction point by a bistable and resettable switch, which is shown to emerge from a minimal gene circuit containing a mutual-inhibition feedback loop between Rb and E2F modules, coupled with a feed-forward loop between Myc and E2F modules

Migration and Mortality: Social Death, Dispossession, and Survival in the Americas

This panel presents research from the new edited volume Migration and Mortality (edited by Longazel and Hallett, Temple University Press, 2021). Death threatens migrants physically during perilous border crossings between Central and North America, but many also experience legal, social, and economic mortality. Rooted in histories of colonialism and conquest, exclusionary policies and practices deliberately take aim at racialized, dispossessed people in transit. Once in the new land, migrants endure a web of systems across every facet of their world—work, home, healthcare, culture, justice—that strips them of their personhood, denies them resources, and creates additional obstacles that deprive them of their ability to live fully. As laws and policies create ripe conditions for the further extraction of money, resources, and labor power from the dispossessed, the contributors to Migration and Mortality examine immigration policies as not only restrictive, but extractive. The work presented denounces the violence of such policies and critiques the inadequacy of current human rights protections, while nonetheless highlighting the power of migrants’ collective resistance and resilience. The case studies and theoretical interventions presented in this panel explore the complicity of mainstream human rights discourses with global apartheid and examine the limitations of liberalism and minimal humanitarianism, as well as describe the oppressive system itself from points all along the migrant trail from Central America north. Ultimately, these examples of oppression and survival contribute to understanding contemporary movements for life and justice in the Americas

An integrative approach to characterize disease-specific pathways and their coordination: a case study in cancer

BACKGROUND: The most common application of microarray technology in disease research is to identify genes differentially expressed in disease versus normal tissues. However, it is known that, in complex diseases, phenotypes are determined not only by genes, but also by the underlying structure of genetic networks. Often, it is the interaction of many genes that causes phenotypic variations. RESULTS: In this work, using cancer as an example, we develop graph-based methods to integrate multiple microarray datasets to discover disease-related co-expression network modules. We propose an unsupervised method that take into account both co-expression dynamics and network topological information to simultaneously infer network modules and phenotype conditions in which they are activated or de-activated. Using our method, we have discovered network modules specific to cancer or subtypes of cancers. Many of these modules are consistent with or supported by their functional annotations or their previously known involvement in cancer. In particular, we identified a module that is predominately activated in breast cancer and is involved in tumor suppression. While individual components of this module have been suggested to be associated with tumor suppression, their coordinated function has never been elucidated. Here by adopting a network perspective, we have identified their interrelationships and, particularly, a hub gene PDGFRL that may play an important role in this tumor suppressor network. CONCLUSION: Using a network-based approach, our method provides new insights into the complex cellular mechanisms that characterize cancer and cancer subtypes. By incorporating co-expression dynamics information, our approach can not only extract more functionally homogeneous modules than those based solely on network topology, but also reveal pathway coordination beyond co-expression

The Grizzly, April 19, 1985

Ursinus Greek Week \u2785 is Here • Discussion Prompts Student Response • Meistersingers to Give Two Concerts • Students in Politics • Letters: Kane Compliments Students; Rape Joke Offends • A Classic Professor of the Classics • Final Exam Schedule • Bears Hit Some Hard Times • Lacrosse Team Has Mediocre Week • Trackmen Continue Streak • Legacy of the Jam Lives On • Evening School to Offer Four Workshops • Shorts: Fantasy Weekend; Library auction; Friends\u27 Book Salehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1140/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, September 28, 1984

Limerick: Nuclear Power Comes to Montgomery County • Communication Arts\u27 Newest Member • News of Yesteryear: Is There a Ghost in UC\u27s Haunted Hall? • Shorts: PA German Studies; Political Ad Forum; Appointment • Soccer Rebounds From Loss to Drexel • X-Country Competes in Invitational • Hockey Player Named to US Squad • Pro Football Wrap-Up • Grizzlies Lose to W. Marylandhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1122/thumbnail.jp