Showing papers by "Williams College published in 2022"

Planetary Nebulae: Sources of Enlightenment

Abstract: Abstract In this review/tutorial we explore planetary nebulae as a stage in the evolution of low-to-intermediate-mass stars, as major contributors to the mass and chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium, and as astrophysical laboratories. We discuss many observed properties of planetary nebulae, placing particular emphasis on element abundance determinations and comparisons with theoretical predictions. Dust and molecules associated with planetary nebulae are considered as well. We then examine distances, binarity, and planetary nebula morphology and evolution. We end with mention of some of the advances that will be enabled by future observing capabilities.

Brown Tumors Belong to the Spectrum of KRAS-driven Neoplasms

Abstract: Brown tumors are rare and generally self-limiting mass lesions of bone occurring in the context of hyperparathyroidism. Although commonly regarded as endocrine-driven tumor-like lesions, we detected pathogenic hotspot KRAS mutations in 10/16 brown tumors (62%) with similar frequencies found in cases affecting the peripheral and axial skeleton. Pathogenic mutations in other driver genes of the RAS-MAPK pathway were not identified. Our findings suggest brown tumors to represent true neoplasms driven by the activation of the RAS-MAPK signaling pathway. The frequent regression of brown tumors after normalization of hyperparathyroidism points to a second hit mediated by endocrine stimulation to be required for tumor development. Our findings underline the pathogenic relation of brown tumors to nonossifying fibroma and giant cell granuloma of the jaws which both appear histologically similar to brown tumors and are also driven by RAS-MAPK signaling pathway activation.

Capturing dynamics of time-varying data via topology

Abstract: <p style='text-indent:20px;'>One approach to understanding complex data is to study its shape through the lens of algebraic topology. While the early development of topological data analysis focused primarily on static data, in recent years, theoretical and applied studies have turned to data that varies in time. A time-varying collection of metric spaces as formed, for example, by a moving school of fish or flock of birds, can contain a vast amount of information. There is often a need to simplify or summarize the dynamic behavior. We provide an introduction to topological summaries of time-varying metric spaces including vineyards [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b19">19</xref>], crocker plots [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b55">55</xref>], and multiparameter rank functions [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b37">37</xref>]. We then introduce a new tool to summarize time-varying metric spaces: a <i>crocker stack</i>. Crocker stacks are convenient for visualization, amenable to machine learning, and satisfy a desirable continuity property which we prove. We demonstrate the utility of crocker stacks for a parameter identification task involving an influential model of biological aggregations [<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b57">57</xref>]. Altogether, we aim to bring the broader applied mathematics community up-to-date on topological summaries of time-varying metric spaces.</p>

A tandem duplication in Drosophila melanogaster shows enhanced expression beyond the gene copy number.

Abstract: Tandem duplicated genes are common features of genomes, but the phenotypic consequences of their origins are not well understood. It is not known whether a simple doubling of gene expression should be expected, or else some other expression outcome. This study describes an experimental framework using engineered deletions to assess any contribution of locally acting cis- and globally acting trans-regulatory factors to expression interactions of particular tandem duplicated genes. Acsx1L (CG6300) and Acsx1R (CG11659) are tandem duplicates of a putative acyl-CoA synthetase gene found in Drosophila melanogaster. Experimental deletions of the duplicated segments were used to investigate whether the presence of 1 tandem duplicated block influences the expression of its neighbor. Acsx1L, the gene in the left block, shows much higher expression than either its duplicate Acsx1R or the single Acsx1 in Drosophila simulans. Acsx1L expression decreases drastically upon deleting the right-hand duplicated block. Crosses among wildtype and deletion strains show that high tandem expression is primarily due to cis-acting interactions between the duplicated blocks. No effect of these genes on cuticular hydrocarbons was detected. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis suggest that the duplication rose to fixation in D. melanogaster and has been subject to extensive gene conversion. Some strains actually carry 3 tandem copies, yet strains with 3 Acsx1s do not have higher expression levels than strains with 2. Surveys of tandem duplicate expression have typically not found the expected 2-fold increase in expression. This study suggests that cis-regulatory interactions between duplicated blocks could be responsible for this trend.

From the plantation to the deep blue sea: Naturalising debt, <i>ordinary</i> disasters, and postplantation ecologies in the Caribbean

Abstract: This paper critically assesses debt as a response to ecological, fiscal, and climate disasters that have emerged within the “blue economy” agenda in the Caribbean. Caribbean countries routinely suffer major losses of life, internal social and economic displacement, increased debt burdens, and significant economic damages due to hurricanes and ecological disasters in the context of an ongoing fiscal crisis. In response, regional public and national agencies have proposed “blue economy” initiatives to address the regional need for finance, to rejuvenate financial flows, and to compensate for extremely constrained fiscal resources and externally imposed austerity (or debt bondage). Major recent hurricanes and ecological shocks illustrate uneven and interconnected spatial histories of anti-Black dispossession, disenfranchisement, and deprivation, offering important empirical terrain from which to appreciate how contemporary ‘disasters’ have become new means to extend hierarchical plantation formations to the seascape through debt-driven finance and austerity. The paper demonstrates the ways in which coercive financial instruments like catastrophe insurance, debt swaps, ‘blue bonds’, and traditional public debt constitute tools to further integrate these societies differentially into racialised financial geographies and entrench a coloniality of being. As traditional plantation structures become exhausted and lack capacity to effectively ensure growth, these innovative finance mechanisms are required for “blue” accumulation. We situate spiralling debt burdens and these new instruments spurred by socially produced and postcolonial disasters within postplantation ecologies that describe socio-political relations and spatial dependencies linked to interwoven logics of disaster-based financial capitalism that seek to extend the extractive capacity of the plantation anew. These arrangements tend to naturalise and render disaster, death, and debt as ordinary events and obligations arising from postcolonial statehood, and take for granted their origins in racialised plantation structures.

New York City jails: COVID discharge policy, data transparency, and reform

Abstract: During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the release of individuals incarcerated in New York City jails who were at high risk of contracting the disease and at low risk of committing criminal reoffense. Using public information, we construct and analyze a database of nearly 350,000 incarceration episodes in the city jail system from 2014—2020, paying special attention to what happened during the week of March 23—29, 2020, immediately following the mayor’s order. In concordance with de Blasio’s stated policy, we find that being discharged during this focus week is associated with a lower probability of readmission as compared to being discharged during the same calendar week in previous years. Furthermore, comparing the individuals discharged during the focus week of 2020 to those discharged during the same calendar week in previous years, we find that the former group was, on average, slightly older than the latter group, although the difference is not large. Additionally, the individuals in the former group had spent substantially longer in jail than those in the latter group. With the release of long-serving individuals demonstrated to be feasible, we also examine how the jail population would have looked over the past six years had caps in incarceration been in place. With a cap of one year, the system would experience a 15% decrease in incarceration. With a cap of 100 days, the reduction would be over 50%. Because our results are only as accurate as New York City’s public-facing jail data, we discuss numerous challenges with this data and suggest improvements related to the incarcerated individual’s age, gender, race, and more. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our work, highlight some opportunities and challenges posed by incarceration caps, and suggest key areas for reform. One such reform might involve identifying and discharging low-risk individuals sooner in general, which might be feasible given the de Blasio administration’s actions during the early stages of COVID-19.

Seeing myself in a storefront window

Abstract: This publication is a digital comic short story based on autoethnographic research. The story takes as its foundation a photo of an African storefront window in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France in summer 2019. The narrative queries from multiple perspectives and types of information my relationship as an African American woman with several things: the West African jewellery and cloth on display, the window that framed the products for sale, the store, and the neighbourhood that featured a predominately African diasporic population. In this publication, I also address some of the following questions: 1) Can I see myself in this Black, French and African diasporic site of commerce? 2) How does this marketing display relate to American and French marketing and media history’s invisibility of Black women as desired consumers? 3) Has my shared ascribed status of race and increased awareness of West African culture after travels to Ghana and Senegal changed my fit in this Francophone African space?

Finishing the Line

Abstract: Based on an investigation of all of Sondheim’s shows, this chapter describes his approach to rhyme and to the musical setting of rhymes, focusing particularly on the role of rhyme in characterization. It first identifies a few specific figures (Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter) who shaped Sondheim’s approach to rhyme and traces his own discussion of this subject over the decades. It considers the differences between diegetic and nondiegetic rhyming and speculates on audience perception of the source of witty and elaborate rhyming within the experience of a live performance. It also addresses Sondheim’s use of poignant “phantom rhymes,” moments when an expected rhyme fails to appear, and notes a surprising allusion in Sunday in the Park with George to Igor Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. “Getting Married Today” from Company serves to illustrate Sondheim’s virtuosity in wedding words and music. Finally, the chapter briefly looks further ahead in Broadway history to the work of more recent rhyming songwriters (Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda) to illustrate Sondheim’s profound and lasting impact on the sound and setting of lyrics.

Evaluating the Status of Theories of Emotion in Political Science and Psychology

Abstract: Emotion is an increasing influential area of research in psychology, political psychology, political science and other social sciences. Research is best when driven by theory because the absence of theory generates research that is subject to vagaries of meaning, interpretation, and lack of coherence, study to study. In brief, theory provides essential foundations that enable scientific explanations to be rigorously tested. As I demonstrate below, absence of, or reliance on, incomplete theories have generated results that are demonstrably flawed. I evaluate the extent to which current emotion research programs rely on a full blown theory. The programs under consideration, in alphabetical order, are: appraisal theories in psychology and political science; emotion regulation; and, valence based accounts. After a brief overview of the elements, individually and collectively, that constitute a theory of emotion. I find this worthy ambition awaits fulfillment.

Allusion in the Composition of Contemporary Opera

Abstract: Abstract In memoriam Contemporary opera exhibits a wide range of motivations for and approaches to making musical allusions to the past, more so than in any other period in the genre's history. I find, contrary to common definitions of musical postmodernism, that allusions are typically meaningful and symbolic in recent postmodern operas. I briefly consider musical collage in operas that represent a proverbial ‘postmodern’ approach to the past, with operas by Cage and Corigliano serving as extreme cases. The core sections of the article are devoted to three of the most prominent contemporary composers whose operas illustrate the range of forms and motives musical allusion has taken over the past few decades: John Adams's Nixon in China (1987), Louis Andriessen's ‘film opera’ La Commedia (2008) and The Exterminating Angel (2016) by Thomas Adès. By detailing musical allusion in these works, I offer evidence in support of a revisionary understanding of these operas and the aesthetic stances of these composers, who each engaged extensively in musical allusion to varying degrees. I conclude with rather unexpected examples of operatic allusion by composers (Glass, Nova, Mazzoli) who typically do not reference the past in their works. For numerous recent composers, opera appears to function as a particularly powerful magnetic attraction to the past, pulling into its orbit the most unlikely figures and warping their proclaimed aesthetic profiles. For opera audiences, allusion is experienced differentially and shapes popular perceptions of the genre as a whole.

Territorial Disputes

Abstract: Territorial disputes are critical for understanding war and peace between states in the international system. Indeed, most wars between states over time are explicitly about a contested allocation of territory. However, scholarship interested in territorial disputes in international politics needed to wrestle with important conceptual and operational definitions and advance theoretical arguments for why territory is so central to international relations. This article reviews these findings, offering clarifications of what is meant by “territorial dispute” and the different interpretations of territory's importance. It closes with important questions for a future research agenda that amount to rethinking our conceptual and operational definitions.

Worker Power in Twenty-First-Century Capitalism

Abstract: Chapter 2 presents the theory of worker power that will be developed in the four case studies that follow. First, it situates the study in the context of the recent wave of union revitalization, which has reinforced the importance of mobilizing to worker power, but has largely overlooked the centrality of workplace discourse. Second, the chapter illustrates why workplace discourse is so important to worker power by presenting evidence showing the pervasiveness of market fundamentalism in the tech sector, and how it obstructs workers from mobilizing against employer discretion. The chapter then outlines three tactics that workers can use to exercise power in digital transformation, where management has established the discourse of market fundamentalism as hegemonic. Workers must build strategic capacity and economic leverage, but the most important tactic for worker power in the current era is recoding, which enables workers to transform management’s techniques for control into resources for collective action.

Economic Transition in the Workplace

Abstract: Chapter 3 traces how workers were able to mobilize against layoffs at an IBM facility in Burlington, Vermont, because they recoded management’s discourse. The chapter shows how digital transformation unfolds in the workplace through shifts in management’s discursive techniques for control. While executives attempted to establish market fundamentalism as hegemonic at IBM, managers at Burlington clung to the normative discourse that had defined the firm for decades. Workers recoded management’s normative discourse to demonstrate that collective action could be effective in protecting their jobs, which motivated a broad swath of workers to pursue a collective legal case against IBM. The chapter illustrates that, despite the ascendance of market fundamentalism, workplaces are always characterized by multiple discourses, providing organizers an opportunity to develop counterhegemonic tactics and build worker power.

ISROC&amp;#8212;Inundation Signatures on ROcky Coastlines&amp;#8212;A new Research Coordination Network targeting coastal boulder deposits

Abstract: &lt;p&gt;Intertidal and supratidal coastal boulder deposits (CBD) result from extreme marine inundation on rocky shores. They are important for understanding long-term coastal wave patterns, have predictive value for future events and can support coastal hazard assessment. But they are poorly studied, and their interpretation remains contentious, with debate on whether they record storms, tsunami, or both. In the case of older deposits, uncertainties about paleo-sea level contribute additional uncertainty. These ambiguities impact risk analysis: should CBD data be part of tsunami risk catalogues, or storminess indices? The hydrodynamics and climatology leading to CBD generation are also still uncertain. Two main obstacles to deeper understanding have been identified: a lack of data on CBD worldwide; and discrepant approaches that lead to difficulties in comparing data from different sites. Building community and interaction among CBD researchers, and awareness of CBD as research targets, can help grow our knowledge and tackle these obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;ISROC (www.isroc.network)&amp;#8212;Inundation Signatures on Rocky Coastlines&amp;#8212;is an NSF-funded Research Coordination Network to define the CBD problem chain and identify research gaps by developing a broad and diverse network of researchers. The authors of this paper are the PIs and steering group. We plan to extend the community of researchers, in particular to include underrepresented groups; to facilitate development of standards and best practices for gathering and archiving CBD data; to develop cyberinfrastructure for uploading, visualizing, and analyzing data; and train the next generation of CBD researchers. To do this, we will create opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration and exchange. Using CBD to reconstruct coastal inundation history and extreme climatological states is a prime example of convergence research that cannot be solved by one discipline. The network includes geologists, geographers, oceanographers, engineers, hydrodynamicists, geophysicists, climatologists and paleoclimatologists. Activities include meetings, student training and exchanges; sessions in future years at major conferences in geoscience and coastal engineering; consolidation of survey/mapping approaches; building a global database; and user-friendly, fully accessible online data archiving. Understanding past inundation and how CBD form and evolve will both help to quantify present-day risk and will provide guidance for what to expect from future climate and sea level.&lt;/p&gt;

Gabriel García Márquez as Local and Universalist, Traditional cum Modernist Storyteller

Abstract: Abstract García Márquez’s reach as a novelist is vast, in both its breadth of subject matter and its range of readership. He writes with equal mastery about love and sex; family life and loneliness; social conflict, dictatorship, and war; childhood, youth, and old age; and much more. His timeframe can cover entire centuries. With the fame achieved by One Hundred Years of Solitude, he became an iconic figure throughout the Hispanic world, his profile further enlarged by his excellent work as a journalist. Eventually his literary reach also became global, with millions of admirers and avowed artistic disciples in the United States, Japan, China, South Asia, Africa, and the Arab world. At the same time, his writing is very locally and vividly rooted in the Caribbean region of his native Colombia. In a similar combination, his narrative builds to a significant degree on traditional, folk elements as well as on the cosmopolitan, modernist workshop of Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Woolf. And, it goes without saying, he fuses magic with realism in a way so seamless and subtle that it has become part of the available repertory for fiction writers across the globe. This chapter briefly recounts García Márquez’s life and development as a writer, surveys his body of work in the light of the above traits, and describes his overall legacy and place in world literary culture.

Actually Existing Digital Transformation

Abstract: This chapter presents the puzzle of tech workers’ power and proposes how to solve this puzzle. On the one hand, tech workers appear immensely powerful due to their position at the center of digital transformation. On the other hand, tech workers appear powerless, due to their lack of access to labor’s traditional power resources. Indeed, during economic downturns, tech workers are incredibly vulnerable to mass layoffs, indicating that they lack power when it matters most. Turning to the workplace reveals that the main threat to tech workers’ power is not their lack of resources, but instead management’s discursive techniques for control. With the ascendance of financialization, managers have adopted the discourse of market fundamentalism, which they use to prevent workers from mobilizing. The chapter shows why this discourse is so threatening to worker power, but argues that workers can nonetheless build power by transforming management’s discursive techniques for control into resources for collective action.