2021 Colin Garfield Fink Postdoctoral Summer Fellowship – Summary Report Luciferase – Functionalized 3D Highly Porous Gold-based Electrochemical Biosensors

Recent advances in electrochemical biosensors have focused on new materials and strategies to improve specificity, sensitivity, stability, and response time. Herein, we aim to develop an electrochemical biosensor device by modification of a screen-printed electrode (SPE) with highly porous Au nanostructures and a bioluminescence (BL)-producing enzyme (luciferase). This approach leverages the enhanced electrochemically active surface area and the mass transport effect and offers an alternative configuration for optical output from the enzyme. The BL presents an instantaneous measurement of enzyme activity and can be exploited to show that the enzyme is being electrochemically controlled (an ON-OFF switchable sensor).

PREDICTIVE MODELING OF MIXED HALIDE PEROVSKITE CELL USING HYBRID L27 OA TAGUCHI-BASED GA-MLR-GA APPROACH

Perovskite photovoltaic cell is regarded as an alternative configuration for the conventional photovoltaic cells predominantly due to its high efficiency. In this paper, a predictive modeling using a hybrid L27 orthogonal array (OA) Taguchi-based Grey relational analysis (GRA), multiple linear regression (MLR) and genetic algorithm (GA) was proposed to optimize the device parameters for better overall performance. The Perovskite photovoltaic cell model is initially constructed and simulated using solar cell capacitance simulator (SCAPS). The final results reveal that the proposed hybrid L27 OA Taguchi-based GRA-MLR-GA approach has effectively optimized the device parameters in which SnO2:F thickness, SnO2:F donor density, ZnO thickness, ZnO donor density, CH3NH3PbI3-xClx thickness, CH3NH3PbI3-xClx donor density, Spiro-OMeTAD thickness and Spiro-OMeTAD acceptor density are predictively tuned at 0.198 μm, 8.973 x 1018 cm-3, 0.039 μm, 8.827 x 1017 cm-3, 0.386 μm, 1.929 x 1013 cm-3, 0.233 μm and 8.984 x 1018 cm-3 respectively. After the predictive modeling, both FF and PCE of the perovskite photovoltaic cell have been improved for ~5.93% and ~5.78% respectively.

Ground tissue circuitry regulates organ complexity in cereal roots

Most plant roots have multiple cortex layers that make up the bulk of the organ and play key roles in physiology, such as flood tolerance and symbiosis. However, little is known about the formation of cortical layers outside of the highly reduced anatomy of the model Arabidopsis. Here we use single-cell RNAseq to rapidly generate a cell resolution map of the maize root, revealing an alternative configuration of the tissue formative SHORT-ROOT (SHR) signaling pathway adjacent to an expanded cortex. We show that maize SHR protein is hypermobile, moving at least eight cell layers into the cortex. Higher-order SHR mutants in both maize and Setaria have reduced numbers of cortical layers, showing that the SHR pathway controls expansion of cortical tissue in grasses that sets up anatomical complexity and a host of key traits.One sentence summarySingle-cell RNA-seq maps the maize root transcriptome uncovering a mechanism that regulates cortex layer number.

Structural Batteries: A Review

Structural power composites stand out as a possible solution to the demands of the modern transportation system of more efficient and eco-friendly vehicles. Recent studies demonstrated the possibility to realize these components endowing high-performance composites with electrochemical properties. The aim of this paper is to present a systematic review of the recent developments on this more and more sensitive topic. Two main technologies will be covered here: (1) the integration of commercially available lithium-ion batteries in composite structures, and (2) the fabrication of carbon fiber-based multifunctional materials. The latter will be deeply analyzed, describing how the fibers and the polymeric matrices can be synergistically combined with ionic salts and cathodic materials to manufacture monolithic structural batteries. The main challenges faced by these emerging research fields are also addressed. Among them, the maximum allowable curing cycle for the embedded configuration and the realization that highly conductive structural electrolytes for the monolithic solution are noteworthy. This work also shows an overview of the multiphysics material models developed for these studies and provides a clue for a possible alternative configuration based on solid-state electrolytes.

Toward a Marxist Concept of Community

In this paper, it is argued that even though the concept of community does not play a significant role in Marxist theory, Marxism needs a notion of community, and the paper sets out to theorize how to make sense of this concept in a Marxist theoretical setting. The paper claims that Althusser’s philosophy, especially his elaboration of the concept of practice, may assist us in this task, and it sets out to explore what can be gained by redefining community in terms of practice. In Althusser’s theory, practice and ideology are very closely linked. While recognizing the importance of Althusser’s theory of ideology, the paper then subsequently explores an alternative configuration of the concepts community and ideology. Finally, it is claimed that this analysis may help us to better understand ideologies such as racism and nationalism.

Introduction

Through close readings of 16 novels by male and female Arab writers, the study traces the gradual move from an ahistorical homogeneous traditional ideology of ageing into an incongruous, diverse and fluid representation. It centres on ageing as a biological phenomenon viewed in essentialist terms. The cultural view perceives the ageing process as an unstable entity that intersects with sex, gender and changing political and social configurations. The novels range from tropes of elderly men and women within paternalistic structures to more open-ended models generated by social and demographic factors. The study concentrates on the inextricable link between the biological and constructionist models, creating an alternative configuration that fuses the biological with the discursive, making the ageing process multiple and plural.

Satire, masculinity and the rhetoric of conflict resolution in War Chhod Na Yaar and Kya Dilli Kya Lahore

Unlike its western counterparts, Hindi war films constitute a rather peripheral genre, one that has understandably received scant critical attention over the last two decades. The conventional aesthetic registers and thematic templates of these films reveal an explicit engagement with questions relating to heroic masculinity, exceptional leadership and nationalist triumphalism. And yet, movies such as War Chhod Na Yaar (‘Quit the war, dude’) (Haider 2013) and Kya Dilli Kya Lahore (‘Delhi and Lahore are not so different after all’) (Raaz 2014) categorically denounce idealistic notions of armed conflicts and sensationalized portrayals of ostensibly justified violence. This article examines the rhetoric of conflict resolution that constitutes the organizing principle of these two films. It demonstrates how War Chhod Na Yaar discursively satirizes the earlier Hindi war films through a pronounced emphasis on the fanciful camaraderie that exists between the respective battalion captains of India and Pakistan. By contrast, the anti-war rhetoric of Kya Dilli Kya Lahore is not only historically situated within the larger framework of Partition narratives, but is also facilitated by an alternative configuration of masculinity that resists territorial divisions in favour of affective solidarities and shared lived experiences.

The Social Cost of Urban Sprinkling

Low-density dispersed urban development, known as “sprawl” or “sprinkling”, is an alternative configuration that best expresses the structure of the Italian urban system and is taking on increasingly significant dimensions. This phenomenon has increased in recent decades due to a weakening of the urban agglomeration force that had characterized the first half of the last century. Partial abandonment of agricultural activities and socio-economic changes led to the progressive urbanization of rural areas and the birth of widespread cities. This work discusses the externalities generated by sprawl, focusing on the tangible costs that this urban development model unloads on the people. In particular, the territory of the Basilicata Region is analyzed. Based on the data of some municipalities in the region, a relationship between the marginal costs relating to the greater linear infrastructure that sprinkling requires and an index already described in the literature to provide a quantitative measure of this phenomenon was built and verified with a regression model.

Transborder Disasters and Vulnerability: The Case of the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti

This paper examines how disasters unfold in transborder contexts. Using ethnographic research collected in the Haitian-Dominican border town of Comendador, Elías Piña after the 2010 earthquake, this paper reveals how transborder social relations distribute disaster damage beyond the bounded and static frameworks that characterized post-disaster discourse. It also exposes the limitations of utilizing geopolitical boundaries to frame hazards and disasters. The concept of disaster fields is proposed as an alternative configuration that considers interconnections between direct impact areas and distant locations.

Suicidal Tendencies

This essay concentrates on a series of suicide plots in which the risk of one’s undoing does not indicate a refusal of one’s existing life as much as it performs a fantastic desire to live a different one. Willa Cather’s short story “Paul’s Case” (1905), Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991), and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014) help us think about how suicide functions as a sustaining fantasy and a queer narrative strategy. In each, the main character’s retreat into suicidal fantasy is not limiting but productive: it creates a space of protection for otherwise damaged individuals, allowing them to imagine an alternative configuration as/at the end of their world. This essay thus makes the counterintuitive claim that the suicide plot should be read non-tragically. It considers how acts of self-annihilation force us to think about the binding narratives of gendered and sexualized person-hood. If these narratives most readily seem to forward a critique of the hetero and sexist norms for life, they also offer a compelling argument about how the use of death works to imagine new forms, narratives, and possibilities of living.