A Traveller Who Laughs

Chapter 2 discusses Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) by Isabella Bird, focusing on textual manifestations of intimacy between Bird and Japanese people, particularly her interpreter-guide Ito. Drawing on theoretical discussions in feminist anthropology and affect theory, it reveals the complexity of the politics between the traveller and hosts as well as Bird’s fluid identity and exceptional openness towards the alterity of Japanese culture. It also carries out a textual analysis of Itō no koi (Itō’s Romance) (2005), a retelling of Bird’s journey from Ito’s perspective by the twenty-first-century Japanese writer Nakajima Kyōko. It argues that Nakajima’s rewriting accords Bird and her contemporary Japanese women literary afterlife through their intergenerational female friendship. It also presents a thorough critique of the traditional androcentric paradigm of survival and friendship. It thus indicates the exciting possibility of travel writing in the field of world literature.

Orbital Habitability: Architectural Design for Extra-Terrestrial Habitation

<p>Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are privatising the space industry. This privatisation will allow more and more people to inhabit space for more extended periods, with less training than prior astronauts. Space habitation brings with it a vast array of issues, which significantly limit the designs that are possible in orbit. This thesis explores how the challenges of inhabiting outer space can be mitigated through architectural design. The theoretical basis for this exploration is research into habitability. Habitability is how conducive an environment is to living and working. This is crucial to understanding the risks of inhabiting environments in orbit and how these can be challenged through design. The Framework for this exploration’s site and program is asteroid mining. Asteroid mining is an exciting possibility for the next stage of human presence in space. Utilising asteroid resources could greatly aid in establishing orbital infrastructure around the Earth and allowing us to travel even further. As a framework, this defines a tighter scope than looking at space habitation in general and allows this thesis to dive deeper into the finer details of habitability for a specific group of people. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate designed solutions to issues of habitability within the constraints necessary to construct a space station. This thesis considers how a design might be; designed and modelled, deployed in space, constructed, and most fundamentally, how it could mitigate the psychological and physiological issues of long-term space habitation. This is accomplished through a research-led design process centred on self-evaluation through the habitability principles defined in this thesis. This thesis fundamentally collates and builds upon our existing knowledge of space habitation and presents one possibility for the future of space habitation. This is merely one small step for the furthering of human habitability in space.</p>

Orbital Habitability: Architectural Design for Extra-Terrestrial Habitation

<p>Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are privatising the space industry. This privatisation will allow more and more people to inhabit space for more extended periods, with less training than prior astronauts. Space habitation brings with it a vast array of issues, which significantly limit the designs that are possible in orbit. This thesis explores how the challenges of inhabiting outer space can be mitigated through architectural design. The theoretical basis for this exploration is research into habitability. Habitability is how conducive an environment is to living and working. This is crucial to understanding the risks of inhabiting environments in orbit and how these can be challenged through design. The Framework for this exploration’s site and program is asteroid mining. Asteroid mining is an exciting possibility for the next stage of human presence in space. Utilising asteroid resources could greatly aid in establishing orbital infrastructure around the Earth and allowing us to travel even further. As a framework, this defines a tighter scope than looking at space habitation in general and allows this thesis to dive deeper into the finer details of habitability for a specific group of people. The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate designed solutions to issues of habitability within the constraints necessary to construct a space station. This thesis considers how a design might be; designed and modelled, deployed in space, constructed, and most fundamentally, how it could mitigate the psychological and physiological issues of long-term space habitation. This is accomplished through a research-led design process centred on self-evaluation through the habitability principles defined in this thesis. This thesis fundamentally collates and builds upon our existing knowledge of space habitation and presents one possibility for the future of space habitation. This is merely one small step for the furthering of human habitability in space.</p>

Masses of White Dwarf Binary Companions to Type Ia Supernovae Measured from Runaway Velocities

The recently proposed “dynamically driven double-degenerate double-detonation” (D6) scenario posits that Type Ia supernovae (SNe) may occur during dynamically unstable mass transfer between two white dwarfs (WDs) in a binary. This scenario predicts that the donor WD may then survive the explosion and be released as a hypervelocity runaway, opening up the exciting possibility of identifying remnant stars from D6 SNe and using them to study the physics of detonations that produce Type Ia SNe. Three candidate D6 runaway objects have been identified in Gaia data. The observable runaway velocity of these remnant objects represents their orbital speed at the time of SN detonation. The orbital dynamics and Roche lobe geometry required in the D6 scenario place specific constraints on the radius and mass of the donor WD that becomes the hypervelocity runaway. In this Letter, we calculate the radii required for D6 donor WDs as a function of the runaway velocity. Using mass–radius relations for WDs, we then constrain the masses of the donor stars as well. With measured velocities for each of the three D6 candidate objects based on Gaia EDR3, this work provides a new probe of the masses and mass ratios in WD binary systems that produce SN detonations and hypervelocity runaways.

Four Principles for Cultivating Alternate Cultural Paradigms in Psychology: Summary Reflections on Innovative Contributions

The contributors to this special issue have demonstrated the potency and promise of cultivating Alternate Cultural Paradigms (ACPs) in psychology that reflect and express the lived realities of non-White communities in America. Based on my past research engagement with several distinct American Indian and First Nations communities, I offer for consideration four principles for psychologists who seek to further cultivate ACPs: (a) attend independently to culture and power, (b) anchor conceptual abstractions in empirical examples, (c) complicate stock oppositions and essentialisms, and (d) integrate emancipation with application. Adoption of these four principles should assist with the development of robust ACPs that accurately reflect the lived experiences of non-White communities. The promotion of these in psychology represents the exciting possibility for a more just and equitable future in which the injuries of White racism are remedied and all Americans are granted equal opportunities to live and thrive in self-determined fashion.

Improved blind demixing methods for recovering dense neuronal morphology from barcode imaging data

Cellular barcoding methods offer the exciting possibility of 'infinite-pseudocolor' anatomical reconstruction --- i.e., assigning each neuron its own random unique barcoded 'pseudocolor,' and then using these pseudocolors to trace the microanatomy of each neuron. Here we use simulations, based on densely-reconstructed electron microscopy microanatomy, with signal structure matched to real barcoding data, to quantify the feasibility of this procedure. We develop a new blind demixing approach to recover the barcodes that label each neuron. We also develop a neural network which uses these barcodes to reconstruct the neuronal morphology from the observed fluorescence imaging data, 'connecting the dots' between discontiguous amplicon signals.

3D super-resolution fluorescence microscopy maps the variable molecular architecture of the Nuclear Pore Complex

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are large macromolecular machines that mediate the traffic between the nucleus and the cytoplasm. In vertebrates, each NPC consists of ∼1000 proteins, termed nucleoporins, and has a mass of over 100 MDa. While a pseudo-atomic static model of the central scaffold of the NPC has recently been assembled by integrating data from isolated proteins and complexes, many structural components still remain elusive due to the enormous size and flexibility of the NPC. Here, we explored the power of 3D super-resolution microscopy combined with computational classification and averaging to explore the 3D structure of the NPC in single human cells. We show that this approach can build the first integrated 3D structural map containing both central as well as peripheral NPC subunits with molecular specificity and nanoscale resolution. Our unbiased classification of over ten thousand individual NPCs indicates that the nuclear ring and the nuclear basket can adopt different conformations. Our approach opens up the exciting possibility to relate different structural states of the NPC to function in situ.

Flavorful leptoquarks at the LHC and beyond: spin 1

Evidence for electron-muon universality violation that has been revealed in b → sℓℓ transitions in the observables $$ {R}_{KK^{\ast }} $$ R KK ∗ by the LHCb Collaboration can be explained with spin-1 leptoquarks in SU(2)L singlet V1 or triplet V3 representations in the $$ \mathcal{O} $$ O (1 − 10) TeV range. We explore the sensitivity of the high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) and future proton-proton colliders to V1 and V3 in the parameter space connected to $$ {R}_{KK^{\ast }} $$ R KK ∗ -data. We consider pair production and single production in association with muons in different flavor benchmarks. Reinterpreting a recent ATLAS search for scalar leptoquarks decaying to bμ and jμ, we extract improved limits for the leptoquark masses: for gauge boson-type leptoquarks (κ = 1) we obtain $$ {M}_{V_1} $$ M V 1 > 1.9 TeV, $$ {M}_{V_1} $$ M V 1 > 1.9 TeV, and $$ {M}_{V_1} $$ M V 1 > 1.7 TeV for leptoquarks decaying predominantly according to hierarchical, flipped and democratic quark flavor structure, respectively. Future sensitivity projections based on extrapolations of existing ATLAS and CMS searches are worked out. We find that for κ = 1 the mass reach for pair (single) production of V1 can be up to 3 TeV (2.1 TeV) at the HL-LHC and up to 15 TeV (19.9 TeV) at the FCC-hh with $$ \sqrt{s} $$ s = 100 TeV and 20 ab−1. The mass limits and reach for the triplet V3 are similar or higher, depending on flavor. While there is the exciting possibility that leptoquarks addressing the $$ {R}_{KK^{\ast }} $$ R KK ∗ -anomalies are observed at the LHC, to fully cover the parameter space pp-collisions beyond the LHC-energies are needed.

Purification of functional Plasmodium falciparum tubulin allows for the identification of parasite-specific microtubule inhibitors

Cytoskeletal proteins are essential for parasite proliferation, growth, and transmission, and therefore represent promising drug targets. While αβ-tubulin, the molecular building block of microtubules, is an established drug target in a variety of cancers, we still lack substantial knowledge of the biochemistry of parasite tubulins, which would allow us to exploit the structural divergence between parasite and human tubulins. Indeed, mechanistic insights have been limited by the lack of purified, functional parasite tubulin. In this study, we isolated Plasmodium falciparum tubulin that is assembly-competent and shows specific microtubule dynamics in vitro. We further present mechanistic evidence that two compounds selectively interact with parasite over host microtubules and inhibit Plasmodium microtubule polymerization at substoichiometric compound concentrations. The ability of compounds to selectively disrupt protozoan microtubule growth without affecting human microtubules provides the exciting possibility for the targeted development of novel antimalarials.

The Use of 'VocScape' in Vocabulary Acquisition Among Year 2 Pupils in Sarawak

Learning English through games is one of the most preferred strategies in the 21st Century classroom. However, limited digital portability, connectivity, and flexibility throughout Sarawak posed a milestone for teachers to utilize educational games in their classrooms. This research focuses on how the educational game VocScape can be used to facilitate vocabulary acquisition and retention among pupils in Sarawak primary ESL classroom. The action research is therefore conducted in 4 different schools with 100 participants of Year 2 pupils. To seek the capacity VocScape holds in vocabulary acquisition and retention among Year 2 pupils, pre and post-tests are used in this study. Observation checklist and questionnaire are used to determine participants’ perceptions of the educational game. Most students show significant interest and motivation in using the application while others become demotivated due to unfamiliarity and time-constraints of the challenges in the game. Hence, the findings suggest that VocScape is effective to be used in Sarawak primary ESL classroom. It can function as both learning and assessment tools. Therefore, the new application paves an exciting possibility for Sarawak educational settings.