#Postdoctoral Fellow

[dr-afsaeed]

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[tenth-sentence]

Hsu had come from Chekiang University in China in 1948 to take a Ph.D at the University of Texas; now a postdoctoral fellow in human cytology at the medical branch of the university in Galveston, he was looking at cell nuclei in preparations of fetal spleen tissue.

"In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity" - Daniel J. Kevles

[sagunpaudel]

Postdoctoral Opportunity in Public Health/Global Health

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health’s vision is better health for all. We produce, summarize and communicate knowledge for the public health sector and healthcare services. Our main activities are emergency preparedness, knowledge and infrastructure. Infrastructure comprises registries, health surveys, biobanks and laboratory services. The Institute is a government organization under the…

[amnhnyc]

Learn about the science behind fall foliage with Daniel Hooper, a postdoctoral fellow at the Museum. The next time you’re out leaf peeping or bird watching, give thought to carotenoids—the incredible pigments that make our worlds a little rosier. 🍂🦩🍁

[wachinyeya]

A historically and culturally significant lake in California's San Joaquin Valley that first disappeared in 1898 has returned after last year's atmospheric rivers flooded the region.

Tulare Lake, known as Pa'ashi — or "big water" — to the local Tachi Yokut Tribe, was "once the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi River," per Earth.com.

Vivian Underhill, who published a paper on Tulare Lake as a postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University, noted it was mostly sustained by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains and was 100 miles long and 30 miles wide at its peak.

The lake served as a key resource for Indigenous Peoples and wildlife and was once robust enough to allow steamships to transport agricultural goods throughout the state.

However, government officials persecuted and displaced the indigenous communities in the late 1800s to convert the area for farming through draining and irrigation.

"They really wanted to get [land] into private hands so that indigenous land claims — that were ongoing at that time — would be rendered moot by the time they went through the courts," Underhill told the Northeastern Global News. "It was a deeply settler colonial project."

While Pa'ashi periodically reappeared during the 1930s, '60s, and '80s, the barrage of atmospheric rivers California experienced in 2023 revived the lake despite the region receiving just 4 inches of rain annually. According to Underhill, Tulare Lake is now the same size as Lake Tahoe, which is 22 miles long and 12 miles wide.

Its resurgence has led to the return of humid breezes at least 10 degrees cooler than average and native species, including fish, amphibians, and birds. Lake Tulare was once a stopping point for migratory birds traveling a route known as the Pacific Flyway.

"Something that continues to amaze me is — [the birds] know how to find the lake again," Underhill told the Northeastern Global News. "It's like they're always looking for it."

The Tachi Yokuts have also returned to Pa'ashi's shores, once again practicing their ceremonies and planting tule reeds and native sage.

[mindblowingscience]

Strawberries could be fewer and more expensive because of higher temperatures caused by climate change, according to research from the University of Waterloo. Using a new method of analysis, the researchers found that a rise in temperature of 3 degrees Fahrenheit could reduce strawberry yields by up to 40%. Canada is a major importer of strawberries from California. In 2022, Canadian imports of strawberries from California were worth US$322.8 million. "This research shows how climate change can directly impact the foods we love, emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming practices to maintain a stable food supply for everyone," said Dr. Poornima Unnikrishnan, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at Waterloo.

Continue Reading.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Brigham and Women’s study: Drug-free nasal spray could protect against COVID, flu - Published Sept 25, 2024

The problem with such drugs is that they do not and cannot work in the throat and lung, other notable infection sites of both these viruses. Masking remains the best way to protect yourself from airborne pathogens, but this is an interesting development for prophylaxis. Studies have shown that neuro-covid symptoms are worst for people whose ACE2 receptors in the sinuses were infected. This could help combat that. The idea that it could also offer drug-free protection from allergens is also interesting. Further study is needed.

By Grace Zokovitch

A new study found a new drug-free nasal spray may protect against respiratory infections like COVID and the flu, according to Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“The COVID pandemic showed us what respiratory pathogens can do to humanity in a very short time,” said Jeffrey Karp, co-senior author of the study and chair in Anesthesiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “That threat hasn’t gone away.

“We need new, additional ways to protect ourselves and reduce the transmission of the disease,” Karp added.

The preclinical studies show the nasal spray called Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray or PCANS may be able to block respiratory illnesses, the hospital announced. The study was done out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and published in the journal Advanced Materials.

The hospital stated that protection methods like vaccines and masks can be beneficial but aren’t perfect, noting that “influenza and COVID-19 infections cause thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of cases of severe disease every year.”

Most viruses enter through human’s noses, the release stated, spreading when infected people breathe out tiny droplets of fluid. Healthy people inhale the droplets, the hospital said, infecting “cells that line the nasal passageways.”

Researchers formulated the nasal spray to stop the infection in the nose using ingredients that the FDA has approved for use in other nasal sprays or determined safe. The spray was tested in a laboratory setting using replicas of human noses and mice and has not been tested on humans.

“We developed a drug-free formulation using these compounds to block germs in three ways — PCANS forms a gel-like matrix that traps respiratory droplets, immobilizes the germs, and effectively neutralizes them, preventing infection,” said co-senior author Nitin Joshi, an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology.

When sprayed in a nasal cavity replica, the release stated, “PCANS captured twice as many droplets as mucus alone.” Mice treated with the spray showed it block the influenza virus at 25 times the lethal dose, giving them “complete protection,” researchers said.

“PCANS forms a gel, increasing its mechanical strength by a hundred times, forming a solid barrier,” said primary author John Joseph, a former postdoctoral fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“It blocked and neutralized almost 100% of all viruses and bacteria we tested, including Influenza, SARS-CoV-2, RSV, adenovirus, K Pneumonia and more.”

Researchers added that the inflammatory cells and cytokines in the lungs of animals treated with the spray were “normal.”

The hospital stated that the study “provides a strong foundation for future research” into PCANS and researchers are already exploring whether the spray may block allergens.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW OLD IS PHOENIX A* BLACK HOLE??

Blog#380

Saturday, March 2nd, 2024.

Welcome back,

Black holes are the most massive objects that we know of in the Universe. Not stellar mass black holes, not supermassive black holes (SMBHs,) but ultra-massive black holes (UMBHs.) UMBHs sit in the center of galaxies like SMBHs, but they have more than five billion solar masses, an astonishingly large amount of mass. The largest black hole we know of is Phoenix A, a UMBH with up to 100 billion solar masses.

How can something grow so massive?

UMBHs are rare and elusive, and their origins are unclear. A team of astrophysicists working on the question used a simulation to help uncover the formation of these massive objects. They traced UMBH’s origins back to the Universe’s ‘Cosmic Noon‘ around 10 to 11 billion years ago.

Their paper is “Ultramassive Black Holes Formed by Triple Quasar Mergers at z = 2,” and it’s published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The lead author is Yueying Ni, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics/Harvard & Smithsonian.

“We found that one possible formation channel for ultra-massive black holes is from the extreme merger of massive galaxies that are most likely to happen in the epoch of the ‘cosmic noon,'” said Ni.

UMBHs are extremely rare. Creating them in scientific simulations requires a massive, complex simulation. This is where Astrid comes in. It’s a large-scale cosmological hydrodynamical simulator that runs on the Frontera supercomputer at the University of Texas, Austin. Astrid’s large-scale simulations can track things like dark matter, temperature, metallicity, and neutral hydrogen.

Simulations like Astrid are ranked by the number of particles their simulations contain, and Astrid is at the top of that list.

“The science goal of Astrid is to study galaxy formation, the coalescence of supermassive black holes, and re-ionization over the cosmic history,” said lead author Ni in a press release. (Ni is a co-developer of Astrid.) A powerful tool like Astrid needs a powerful supercomputer. Luckily, UT Austin has the most powerful academic supercomputer in the USA.

“Frontera is the only system that we performed Astrid from day one. It’s a pure Frontera-based simulation,” she explained.

Astronomers know that galaxies grow large through mergers, and it’s likely that SMBHs grow more massive at the same time. But UMBHs are even more massive and much rarer. How do they form?

The team’s work with Astrid delivered an answer.

“What we found are three ultra-massive black holes that assembled their mass during the cosmic noon, the time 11 billion years ago when star formation, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and supermassive black holes, in general, reach their peak activity,” Ni said.

Originally published on www.universetoday.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, March 6th, 2024)

"A GALAXY THAT HAS NO STARS??"

[theburialofstrawberries]

"1987’s Fatal Attraction is generally credited with kicking off the erotic thriller craze proper, though the format had been germinating in mainstream cinema since the start of the decade via Brian de Palma’s Hitchcockian 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill and Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 steamfest Body Heat. In her 2008 memoir Send Yourself Roses, Body Heat star Kathleen Turner argues that it was precisely because they were working in an old-Hollywood framework that they were able to get away with the sexual explicitness that would set the tone for the ensuing decade: “Film noir has a formality and shape to it. Its very familiar form allowed people to accept more readily the daring content that we were presenting.”

Williams writes that erotic thrillers “operate with a constant awareness of masturbation as a prime audience response and index of the film’s success,” and it only follows that they thrived on home video. A 1993 USA Today article called the erotic thriller “one of the fastest-growing genres in video stores,” reporting that these “dressed-up and sexed-up B-movies,” could be made cheaply and quickly. But while the direct-to-video market was an important part of the overall narrative of the erotic thriller, I’m much more interested in what Hollywood got away with in the light of day (which is to say, the glow of the multiplex’s silver screen).

“The best thing to me about the erotic thriller is it takes everything that is usually sort of treated in ellipses and film and just looks at it directly for as long as it takes,” Dr. Veronica Fitzpatrick told me recently by phone. Fitzpatrick is a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in modern culture and media at Brown University, an erotic thrillers enthusiast, and a contributor to the online magazine Bright Wall/Dark Room, whose July issue focuses on the erotic thriller. Fitzpatrick recalled being “blown away” by the camera lingering on the sex between Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke during a recent viewing of 9 1/2 Weeks. “It just goes on so much past the duration of what it takes for you to understand, OK, they’re having sex now,” she said."

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Off-the-shelf thermoelectric generators can upgrade CO₂ into useful chemicals, which could aid Mars colonization

Readily available thermoelectric generators operating under modest temperature differences can power CO2 conversion, according to a proof-of-concept study by chemists at the University of British Columbia (UBC). The findings open up the intriguing possibility that the temperature differentials encountered in an array of environments—from a typical geothermal installation on Earth to the cold, desolate surface of Mars—could power the conversion of CO2 into a range of useful fuels and chemicals. "The environment on Mars really got me interested in the long-term potential of this technology combination," says Dr. Abhishek Soni, postdoctoral research fellow at UBC and first author of the paper published in Device. "This is a harsh environment where large temperature differences could be leveraged to not only generate power with thermoelectric generators, but to convert the abundant CO2 in Mars' atmosphere into useful products that could supply a colony."

Read more.

[cellarspider]

Good lord I take a week off of tumblr and now there’s a lot of you

Hello to everyone who’s just followed me in the past week! Most of you have come from a long ramble of mine on interdisciplinary learning, medieval head trauma, and Gallus’ well-wishings on my recent graduation (https://www.tumblr.com/gallusrostromegalus/727017193756327936), thank you to Gallus for that. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented with kind words as well. Specific shout-outs, links to relevant rambles, and questions are below, in the section “Link Roundup and Shoutouts”.

Yes, this is a post with sections. This is how we roll here.

Introduction to Spider

For those who don’t know, I’m Spider! I’ve just gotten my PhD in Mammalian Genetics, having gotten a Masters in Informatics and a Bachelors in Medieval Studies before that. I’ll quite happily ramble about any of them, with the following caveats: an undergraduate degree means I know the basics, but they may be increasingly out of date. And advanced degrees are increasingly specialized in their scope as you go along—you gain the skills to more easily understand things from related specialties, but you only become truly, deeply knowledgeable on very specific topics. However, these topics are not always limited to the field of study generally expected by the degree-granting institution! My focus ended up being significantly divergent from everyone else’s, which resulted in an interesting challenge of communicating my project to others at the institute.

The field I dove into for my PhD was systems genetics. Rather than studying individual genes and how they function, my work examined the wider view: think the difference between a local weather forecast versus modeling the global climate. Both synthesize vast amounts of information, just on different scales and levels of detail.

Many people love studying the tiny details around individual genes, because they can dig down into the mechanisms that make the gene work, how it might break and cause disease, and maybe how to fix those diseases. My love is for the global view of things, which gives you the ability to characterize general statements about how genes are regulated and modified. It’s a field that’s very hard to study without good data that’s complicated to acquire, so it’s a very exciting subject to work on! I’m looking forward to carrying that on into a postdoctoral study, in which I’ll work with a new lab and learn the dreaded skill of grant writing. I’ll be starting this month!

…As Gallus mentioned, my time until then is very much devoted to Baldur’s Gate 3. Happily for me, the new research group I’ll be joining has also been going nuts for Baldur’s Gate 3, so I’ll have a lot to talk about with my coworkers once I’m back to the lab.

In my free time, I’m happy to ramble upon request about the subjects I love, including but not limited to my fields of academic study, my constructed language hobby, scientific ethics and its portrayal in media, creepy-crawlies (always appropriately tagged for people’s phobias), and Baldur’s Gate 3.

…Lots of Baldur’s Gate 3. (I’ve only just reached the Lost Light Inn, please no spoilers!)

Link Roundup and Shoutouts

For those who are interested to see my ramble about why European medical texts in the medieval period tended to be terrible, it’s available here: https://www.tumblr.com/cellarspider/680342023316930560/hi-please-rant-about-medieval-european-medical

Thank you to all those who dug up the name of the academic text I’d forgotten! Its title, in all its wordy glory, is Injuries of the skull and brain, as described in the myths, legends, and folk-tales of the various peoples of the world, with some comments on the significance and reliability of this information in evaluating contemporary concepts as to their nature and lethality by Cyril B. Courville, 1967. It’s a fantastic book, and good lord that title just does not stop

Thank you to fellow spiders @one-spider-from-mars and @vaspider for their comments. We are many. We are mighty.

Thank you to @belovedbright for the fantastic story of the death of Conchobar mac Nessa via brain trauma inflicted by a brain https://www.tumblr.com/belovedbright/727132485919604736

To @doomhamster's question on whether egg whites were used in the medieval treatment of burns: I don’t know! Unfortunately I can’t access the translation of the medical manual I referred to back then (https://worldcat.org/title/1123716578), and the only version I can find online at the moment is in 14th century French (https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_1977). Egg whites do appear 33 times in the translation, according to the limited ability I have to search the text, and they show up throughout the book.

[docgold13]

Batman: The Animated Series - Paper Cut-Out Portraits and Profiles

Harleen Quinzel

Once a talented albeit unscrupulous psychiatrist, Doctor Harleen Frances Quinzel came to work at Arham Asylum for her postdoctoral internship. Therein she met The Joker and in her youthful ambition believed that she could successfully treat the so-called clown prince of crime. At first it seemed as though Dr. Quinzel was making excellent progress with The Joker.  And yet it turned out that The Joker was slowly and successfully indoctrinating the young woman into his own twisted outlook on the world.  Employing a string of lies and false accounts, The Joker was able to make Quinzel see him as the victim.  Before she knew it, Quinzel was hopelessly and nearly irrevocably entranced by the villain. 

Fashioning herself a harlequin outfit along with a variety of thematic weapons, Quinzel broke The Joker out of Arkham and thus began a colorful career as Harley Quinn, the Joker’s partner in crime.  In her delusional state, Harley never saw The Joker as actually hurting anyone; he was merely bringing mirth and mayhem into their otherwise dull lives.  Similarly, Harley was unable to appreciate the abusive nature of her relationship with The Joker, how he mistreated her and took her for granted.  It was only through her loving relationship with fellow villainess, Poison Ivy, that Harley enjoyed a respite from the toxic thrall of The Joker.  

The wonderful Arleen Sorkin provided the voice for Quinzel, with the character first appearing in the seventh episode of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, ‘Joker’s Favor.’       

[krchar]

To all W.I.T.C.H. folks:

An online colleague in the field of w.i.t.c.h. fan-vibes informed us that there is an actual research on w.i.t.c.h. fans and the role of magical girl stories going on at the University of Toronto, yes, people, we are that important to the world

So if you have a while you can take part in this survey, it is really fun :)

[mariacallous]

A 32-year-old man in Pennsylvania posted a video on YouTube this week where he picked up a clear plastic bag containing the severed head of his father and held it in front of the camera.

“This is the head of Mike Mohn, a federal employee of over 20 years, and my father,” Justin Mohn said in the now-deleted video reviewed by WIRED. “He is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country.”

Over the course of the next 14 minutes, he ranted about a myriad of far-right talking points and conspiracies including Black Lives Matter, taxes, the LGBTQ community, and the Biden administration. He also urged viewers to kill all federal employees and seize federal offices, while railing against “far-left woke mobs.” He claimed to be the head of an American militia network known as Mohn’s Militia. “I am now officially the acting president of America under martial law,” he said.

But there was one issue that he focused on more than any other: migrants along the southern US border.

“The federal government of America has declared war on the American citizens and the American states,” the man says. “America will be less protected when the fifth column of illegal immigrants strikes Americans on our own soil.”

He also made demands that the US close its borders to immigrants and for “the mass deportation of the millions of illegal immigrants who have entered the country under the Biden regime, which has put Americans in direct harm.”

Over the past few weeks, right-wing rhetoric around a so-called migrant invasion reached new heights as the standoff between Texas governor Greg Abbott and President Joe Biden’s administration over the removal of razor wire on the Texas-Mexico border has continued. A convoy of far-right extremists is driving to the border and Republican politicians around the country have come out in support of Abbott.

Multiple researchers tell WIRED that the events and rhetoric surrounding the Texas-Mexico border could be linked to the violent video Mohn posted this week. This border controversy and the incendiary rhetoric surrounding it appeared to be something that deeply angered Mohn, highlighted by his YouTube video and the rest of his extensive online footprint of books, pamphlets, music and social media posts, many of which are steeped in far-right conspiracies. In a 2020 essay entitled “America’s Coming Bloody Revolution,” Mohn claims a violent revolution against the government is not only necessary but will succeed.

“For individuals in this conspiratorial mindset who have been subjected to countless hours of extremist narratives and grievances, every new flashpoint—from the Texas border crisis to the Israel/Hamas war to Taylor Swift—is evidence that their worldview is the reality,” Jon Lewis, a research fellow with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, tells WIRED. “This act of violence represents the threat posed by mainstreaming hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric.”

“I listened to his diatribe about 20 times to write it all out and there is zero doubt in my mind that he was influenced by the recent events involving Texas,” Caroline Orr, a behavioral scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland who tracks extremism online, wrote on X. “This was expected and there will be others.”

Investigators have not mentioned a motive for the alleged decapitation, but Mohn was formally charged early Wednesday morning with first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and possession of an instrument of crime with intent. Police said in a statement posted to Facebook that they were alerted to the incident when Mohn’s mother called 911 and said she had come home to find her husband’s decapitated body on the floor of their bathroom. Mohn was arrested 100 miles away on Tuesday evening when he was discovered armed and wandering around a Pennsylvania National Guard training center at Fort Indiantown Gap, AP reported.

Multiple experts believe that extremism and conspiracy theories could still be at the root of what happened. “Some have been quick to write Mohn off as mentally unwell and while this may be accurate, this incident illustrates the threat of anti-government extremism and conspiracy theories, which have become all too common since the 2020 election,” Katherine Kenealy, the head of threat analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, tells WIRED. “He was so steeped in anti-government beliefs that he not only viewed his father as a ‘traitor’ because of his purported job, but selected him as a target because of it.”

Following the alleged murder, far-right figures immediately began boosting conspiracies about the beheading being a false flag in favor of the Democrats—something that has virtually become a reflex action among far-right figures following major news.

One of the main narratives shared was a claim that the Democrats were behind the incident as a way of boosting support for the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity bill currently making its way through Congress. One of those pushing this narrative was Laura Loomer, a close ally of former president Donald Trump.

“Justin Mohn sure looks like the perfect Democrat Patsy for the sake of demonizing people who call out the invasion on the border, and for the sake of getting support to ban militia,” Loomer wrote on X, adding: “Just another ‘coincidence.’”

“False flag and ‘psyop’ conspiracy theories have rapidly spread online since the incident,” Kenealy tells WIRED. “These narratives detract from the severity of the incident and attempt to minimize the threat posed by anti-government ideologies.”

But despite a long history of Mohn expressing his disturbing views on platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, as well as publishing music on YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer, experts say that it would have been virtually impossible to identify him as a threat before his alleged beheading of this father this week.

“It’s more or less impossible to track this stuff in advance most of the time,” Orr tells WIRED. “We can make an educated guess about what will happen when politicians are putting out inflammatory rhetoric that has incited violence previously, but it’s extremely hard to identify who is going to be the one who responds to the ‘call.’”

As the convoy heads toward the border and rallies are organized in Eagle Pass, Texas, Republican lawmakers, including former president Donald Trump, continue to push violent rhetoric. These kinds of actions, experts say, could lead to potential violence.

“It's hard to determine when acts of violence like this will occur, but given the panic being spread about the border, it's highly likely that more will act on these narratives,” Samantha Kutner, an extremism researcher and CEO of counter-terrorism company GlitterPill, tells WIRED. “Not everyone who gets exposed to conspiratorial worldviews and beliefs and theories about the border wall engages in violence, but the proliferation of disinformation and conspiracy theories does impact certain subsets of the population who are perhaps more vulnerable to that messaging than others.”