In the Shadow of a Willow Tree: A Community Garden Experiment in Decolonising, Multispecies Research

In 2014 I commenced a postdoctoral project that involved collaboratively planting and maintaining a community garden on a block of land that was once part of the East Armidale Aboriginal Reserve in the so-called New England Tableland region of New South Wales, Australia. At the edge of this block of land is an introduced, invasive willow tree. In this article I write with and alongside the willow tree to interrogate the potential and limitations of anticolonial projects undertaken from colonial subject positions predicated on relations of social and environmental privilege. Anticolonial scholarly activism demands a critique of individual and institutional complicity with ongoing colonial power structures. The following analysis offers a personal narrative of what it has been like to be involved in an anticolonial multispecies research project while working within the confines of the neoliberal university. Exploring the intersection of academic, social and environmental ecologies, I position the community garden as an alternative pedagogical and public environmental humanities research site that interrupts the reproduction of settler colonial power relations by cultivating tactics of collective resistance in alliance with the nonhuman world

The hiv stigma: duty or defence?

Abstract: This article will outline and analyse the current stance of English criminal law regarding the transmission of HIV. The issues that surround consent, particularly in circumstances involving HIV, will be examined in conjunction with the defence of ‘reasonable precautions’ with a particular focus on condom use and antiretroviral therapy. Attention will be paid to the contribution of case law and the various circumstances which may fall within this realm in order to gain insight into the social and personal difficulties that the virus presents both infected and uninfected parties. The paternalistic nature of the current legal approach to HIV sufferers will be critiqued and finger-pointing at vulnerable infected parties will be analysed, with a view to exploring alternative possibilities which value dignity and equality over self-preservation

Creating a Category V: Conservation Perceptions and Cultural Changes in the Anjozorobe-Angavo Forest Corridor

Local communities have long played an integral role in the realization of conservation goals and the success of protected areas in Madagascar. Since the appearance of human civilizations approximately 2,000 years ago (Brown 1995), the physical landscape of the island has undergone processes of adaptation to the practices of Malagasy people, while Malagasy cultures have in turn molded to fit their surroundings. The coevolution of nature and culture has produced a delicate environmental situation where human practices exploit but also conserve important natural resources, a situation that has been historically misinterpreted as intentional environmental destruction on the part of local communities (Talbot 2009). Continued pressure, from international as well as domestic actors, to preserve Madagascar’s well-enumerated biodiversity and unique habitat (Mittermeier et al 1998) has often resulted in the neglect of community development. In a country with as unique an ethnodiversity as its biodiversity, nature and culture have become increasingly at odds, to the detriment of both parties

Debbie’s Gift

I attended Debbie’s last public lecture at the Australian Museum in Sydney in 2018. I remember her saying ‘the gift of life is a gift that must keep moving’ (‘Gifts’). For Debbie, the gift of life was a way of expressing the complex entanglement of ethics, time, relationality, entropy, energy, memory, culture, and inheritance, in living, mortal systems. The gift of life is not something we choose or something we can opt out of. The gift is fundamental for survival as living systems weave webs of togetherness in a planet that tends toward dissolution. The gift, Debbie wrote elsewhere, ‘is the way life evades entropy’ (‘Multispecies’ 136)

Building a Model of Tumorigenesis: A small group activity for a cancer biology/cell biology course

The multistep nature of tumorigenesis is a foundational concept in the context of Cancer Biology. Many students do not appreciate the complex nature of cancer development nor do they understand how scientists are able to unravel the molecular pathways that lead to tumorigenesis. In this small group activity, students are presented with background information about the multistep nature of tumorigenesis and complete a priming activity that allows them to brainstorm and discuss experimental design. Students are then presented with data from the landmark manuscript, published in 1998 by Vogelstein et al., describing the first pathway of genetic alterations associated with colorectal tumor development. Using selected pieces of the manuscript, students answer discussion questions and analyze the data presented in the paper. Using their analysis, students are able to create a scientifically valid molecular model of colorectal development that matches the model presented in the literature. The group activity can be followed by a whole class discussion about current knowledge about colorectal tumor development

One little Lebanese cucumber is not going to break the bank: Price in the choice of fresh fruits and vegetables

This paper reports on empirical research into individual consumer behaviour in the context of fresh fruit and vegetable purchases. The discussion draws on research results from two studies conducted around the actual shopping process. The findings suggest that consumers’ price response behaviour may not be consistent with that predicted by economic theory and that this could be significant at the aggregate level. The existence of ‘acceptable price ranges’ points to the presence of price thresholds within which consumers are relatively insensitive to price movements. Also of relevance is that the primary influence of the budget constraint may be at a broader level rather than at the level of choosing particular products.Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Neutrinos from type Ia supernovae: the deflagration-to-detonation transition scenario

It has long been recognized that the neutrinos detected from the next core-collapse supernova in the Galaxy have the potential to reveal important information about the dynamics of the explosion and the nucleosynthesis conditions as well as allowing us to probe the properties of the neutrino itself. The neutrinos emitted from thermonuclear - type Ia - supernovae also possess the same potential, although these supernovae are dimmer neutrino sources. For the first time, we calculate the time, energy, line of sight, and neutrino-flavor-dependent features of the neutrino signal expected from a three-dimensional delayed-detonation explosion simulation, where a deflagration-to-detonation transition triggers the complete disruption of a near-Chandrasekhar mass carbon-oxygen white dwarf. We also calculate the neutrino flavor evolution along eight lines of sight through the simulation as a function of time and energy using an exact three-flavor transformation code. We identify a characteristic spectral peak at $\sim 10$ MeV as a signature of electron captures on copper. This peak is a potentially distinguishing feature of explosion models since it reflects the nucleosynthesis conditions early in the explosion. We simulate the event rates in the Super-K, Hyper-K, JUNO, and DUNE neutrino detectors with the SNOwGLoBES event rate calculation software and also compute the IceCube signal. Hyper-K will be able to detect neutrinos from our model out to a distance of $\sim 10$ kpc. At 1 kpc, JUNO, Super-K, and DUNE would register a few events while IceCube and Hyper-K would register several tens of events.Comment: 44 pages, 29 figures & 2 tables. Updated to match Phys. Rev. D version, including a new event channel discussion and improved IceCube result

Meiosis: A Play in Three Acts, Starring DNA Sequence

Meiosis is well known for being a sticky topic that appears repeatedly in biology curricula. We observe that a typical undergraduate biology major cannot correctly identify haploid and diploid cells or explain how and why chromosomes pair before segregation. We published an interactive modeling lesson with socks to represent chromosomes and demonstrated that it could improve student understanding of ploidy (1). Here we present an improvement on that lesson, using DNA paper strips in place of socks to better demonstrate how and why crossing over facilitates proper segregation. During the lesson, student volunteers act out the roles of chromosomes while the whole class discusses key aspects of the steps. Strips of paper with DNA sequences are used to demonstrate the degrees of similarity between sister chromatids and homologous chromosomes and to prompt students to realize how and why homologous pairing must occur before cell division. We include an activity on Holliday Junctions that can be used during the main lesson, skipped, or taught as a stand-alone lesson