Historically Black Colleges and Universities Access to Digital Media

Black women entrepreneurs have invested in and supported HBCUs since their inception. Communication and technologies are not neutral carriers of information, but transport messages that are embedded in histories of capitalism, exploitation, and inequality. Black women social entrepreneurs view education as a liberating force, with the potential to bring equality within social and political culture. This study will investigate (1) the role of HBCUs in broadband internet access, (2) distance learning at HBCUs, (3) Black women entrepreneurs as charitable givers, and (4) Black alumnae social networking for economic gains. Findings will identify how Black women social entrepreneurs can develop strategies for broadband digital connectivity in conjunction with HBCUs, where digital media communication technologies are used for instruction.

Costume in the dance archive: Towards a records-centred ethics of care

Focusing on the archival records of the production and performance of Dance in Trees and Church by the Swedish independent dance group Rubicon, this article conceptualizes a records-oriented costume ethics. Theorizations of costume as a co-creative agent of performance are brought into the dance archive to highlight the productivity of paying attention to costume in the making of performance history. Addressing recent developments within archival studies, a feminist ethics of care and radical empathy is employed, which is the capability to empathically engage with others, even if it can be difficult, as a means of exploring how a records-centred costume ethics can be conceptualized for the dance archive. The exploration resulted in two ethical stances useful for better attending to costume-bodies in the dance archive: (1) caring for costume-body relations in the dance archive means that a conventional, so-called static understanding of records as neutral carriers of facts is replaced by a more inclusive, expanding and infinite process. By moving across time and space, and with a caring attitude finding and exploring fragments from various, sometimes contradictory production processes, one can help scattered and poorly represented dance and costume histories to emerge and contribute to the formation of identity and memory. (2) The use of bodily empathy with records can respectfully bring together the understanding of costume in performance as inseparable from the performer’s body with dance as an art form that explicitly uses the dancing costume-body as an expressive tool. It is argued that bodily empathy with records in the dance archive helps one access bodily holisms that create possibilities for exploring the potential of art to critically expose and render strange ideological systems and normativities.

Fabrication and properties of calcium pectinate hydrogel nanoparticles with trans-cinnamic acid

Hydrogel negatively charged (–13.5 ± 5.0 mV) calcium pectinate nano- and submicroparticles (50–150 nm) were obtained. A technique for entrapment of a plant growth regulator (trans-cinnamic acid) in the particles up to 40 wt. % has been developed. It has been established that the complete release of trans-cinnamic acid in the Murashige–Skoog medium takes 2.5 hours. The obtained particles of calcium pectinate do not affect the growth processes of cells in suspension culture and can be used as neutral carriers for growth regulators.

Sea Power and Neutrality: The American Experience in Europe during the French Wars, 1793–1812

This chapter analyses the systemic effects of the Franco-British revolutionary and Napoleonic wars on American trade and shipping. The recourse to neutral carriers consistently reduced the impact of belligerents’ economic warfare against enemy trade, but it also alleviated the consequences of the enemy’s disruptive policy on its own economy. Merchants of neutral countries took advantage of the context to expand their business, but the range of their opportunities varied in time and space, as they depended on the evolving needs of each of the belligerents, and the sea power in a given area. As a result, American ships met with different opportunities in Bordeaux, with its rich agricultural hinterland – where they considerably sustained local interests – and in the Mediterranean, where they faced the fierce competition of other neutral carriers, and met consistent difficulties in preserving their neutrality with regards to European belligerents and Barbary States. While pointing at the difficulty of concretely implementing economic warfare, the comparison also illustrates the need to precisely contextualise the effects of economic warfare.

Modified Diamide and Phosphine Oxide Extracting Compounds as Membrane Components for Cross-Sensitive Chemical Sensors

This research is devoted to the development and study of novel cross-sensitive sensors based on modified extracting ligands. According to the previous results of liquid extraction studies, the chemical modification of membrane active components would change the analytical characteristics of a sensor comprising them. The sensing elements of the studied sensors consisted of various derivatives of N,N,N′,N′-tetraoctyldiamide of diglycolic acid (TODGA) and di-phenyl-N,N-di-i-sobutylcarbamoylmethylen phoshine oxide (CMPO) used as neutral carriers, CCD (chlorinated cobalt dicarbollide) as a lipophilic additive, different plasticizers, and poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) as a polymer. TODGA-based sensors demonstrated a stable and reproducible response towards rare earth cations in acidic media (pH = 2). Changing the concentrations and ratio of neutral carriers and the lipophilic additive, it is possible to modify the sensitivity and selectivity of the sensors towards the same target ions. Bonded ligands, such as cobalt dicarbollide covalently attached to TODGA and CMPO, exhibited lower selectivity and sensitivity to rare earth cations. A possibility to vary the cross-sensitivity patterns of the sensors in a wide range might be of great interest for the development of multisensor systems allowing the simultaneous determination of several analytes in multicomponent solutions.

INFLUENCE OF THE NATURE OF TRIFLUOROACETOPHENON DERIVATIVES ON SELECTIVITY OF SULFATE AND CARBONATE-SELECTIVE ELECTRODES

UV-spectrophotometric and chromatographic studies of the distribution of trifluoroacetophenone (TFAF) and a number of its derivatives (heptyl ether of p-trifluoroacetylbenzoic acid (HE p-TFABA), p-methyltrifluoroacetophenone (p-MTFAF), 2,4-dimethyltrifluoroacetophenone (DMTFAF), 2,4,6-trimethyltrifluoroacetophenone (TMTFAF)) in a hexane-water system, which simplifies the modeling of a polyvinyl chloride membrane carbonate and sulfate-selective electrodes, were performed. These substances are used as neutral carriers (NC) in membranes of ion-selective electrodes, reversible to double-charged inorganic anions. A systematic study of the hydration of TFAF and a number of its derivatives was carried out. TFAF has increased solubility in water (the distribution coefficient D is 415) as compared to p-MTFAF, DMTFAF, TMTFAF and HE p-TFABA (D within 1360–2700), which does not allow to recommend it as an NC for making electrode membranes. The strongest hydration occurs for the HE p-TFABA in the alkaline medium. It has been found that p-MTFAF and HE p-TFABA form crystalline hydrates. The selectivity coefficients of carbonate and sulfate-selective electrodes were determined for all the NC studied and a number of them were made to improve the selectivity of the electrodes: TFAF k p-MTFAF k DMTFAF k TMTFAF k p-BTFAF (p-buthyltrifluoroacetophenone) k HE p-TFABA.