Physiology

Superhero science: Super speed and underwater breathing – Scope

Normally, Stanford hospitalistErrol Ozdalga, MD, is careful to make diagnoses for his patients based on their symptoms and test results. Not long ago, however, he had the opportunity to create medical explanations for superheroes using only his imagination and fascination with the human body.

In a series ofvideos, Ozdalga accounts for the fantastical powers of superheroes and supervillains using real-life explanations. For example, how does Aquaman breathe underwater? The secret is taking up oxygen through his skin like a frog. I caught up with Ozdalga to learn more.

Are you a big comics fan?

I've always loved comic-related things like Superman since I was a kid, but I should tell you I'm not a die-hard comics and superheroes person. I have a friend who is an editor for a company that published a book on the physiological properties that allow superheroes and supervillains to do what they do. I thought the idea for this book was really cool so when she asked, I was happy to volunteer.

I wasn't aware that anything like this had ever been explored and thought it would be fun to look at how these superpowers might be possible from a physiological standpoint.

So, this project was rooted in your interest in medicine?

That was the fun part for me. What got me interested in medicine was physiology. When I first started college, I thought I was going to be a therapist because I like talking with people and that feeling of helping people. But then I took a human biology class, and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is amazing."

All the different physiological processes that are going on inside our bodies right now, from a molecular to a cellular level, are just unbelievable. It's like when an astronomer looks at the stars and it's this amazing feeling of wonder. That's kind of how I look at the human body. I knew immediately that medical school was my trajectory.

How do you develop your explanations for these fictional superpowers using actual biology? For example,how did Superman get his super speed?

I was looking at it through that same lens I had when I first fell in love with the human body. I would take known things in the human body and then extrapolate from there -- so, what if someone didn't just have a little bit more of one thing, but they had a thousand times more to make it to turn it into a superpower?

For example, with Superman and his super speed, why are some people faster than others? I would take that and then extrapolate it to a much higher degree.

People have certain types of muscles, fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, and people with a certain type of muscle fiber are better at short-term running. And so, Superman can run really fast because he has more of that type of muscle fiber, but he has, like, a hundred times more.

Or, take Aquaman and how he might breathe underwater. Air is composed of 21% oxygen but water is only around 1%. Aquaman, therefore, needs an efficient way to extract the low amount of available oxygen. Certain amphibians like frogs breathe through their skin. It's possible that Aquaman can "breathe" through a similar mechanism. To enhance this process, he might have numerous hair-like projections, which are also present on many amphibians, to increase the skin's surface area and absorb much more oxygen.

Do you have a favorite superhero?

I would say Superman. I'm going with the most popular one here, but from the days when I was a kid, I still remember watching the original Superman movies and the feeling you get watching those. He's my favorite go-to guy.

If you could pick one superpower what would it be?

Oh, to be able to fly, especially living in the Bay Area any not having to worry about traffic. That would be fantastic. I wouldn't have to pay for gas or a car -- it'd be great. And if something really bad happens, I can fly around the world really fast and then reverse time. It's a great superpower.

Top photo by Yogi Purnama; Photo by Steve Fisch

Read more:
Superhero science: Super speed and underwater breathing - Scope

Physiology

Researcher leads a team of 94 undergrads to explore gut health – Mirage News

Getting a big team on the same page

While admitting she was initially fazed by the size of her class, which averages 100 students, Gamberi has found strength in numbers. She splits the large class into groups of four or five students and assigns one article to each.

Every student in the course learned how to perform an initial guided research of published literature, Gamberi says.

Next, the students learned to compose a written contribution as a group. After the course was over, three students volunteered to assemble and edit the article under Gamberis direct mentorship and supervision.

Tarin Sultana is one of the studys co-editors. This initiative moved forward as a pedagogical approach that demonstrated the value of teamwork, collaboration and painstaking review of original research works, she says.

This undertaking has marked a milestone in many next-generation scientific careers.

Susannah Selber, a fellow co-editor and the articles first author, adds that opportunities to write scientific papers at the undergraduate level are scarce.

This writing project was my second grand endeavour with Dr. Gamberi (Selber participated in Gamberis first co-published paper).

Many assignments involve writing, yet few require the tools and skills necessitated in published works. Dr. Gamberis approach adds great value to the other regular skills students obtain from their university education.

Dr. Gamberi brought a whole new meaning to the classroom experience, where a simple assignment may lead to a concrete contribution to the scientific community, says third co-editor W, adding they hope the project inspires others.

This next-generation approach allows students involved in a course to create something that can be remembered.

Gamberi also credits the Georges P. Vanier Library team as an invaluable resource in helping students to navigate the world of academic publishing and avoiding the perils of plagiarism.

Katharine Hall has been a tremendous resource, she says. Hall is the biology and health, kinesiology and applied physiology subject librarian. The two faculty members co-authored an article about the subject.

I am extremely grateful to her for all she has done to support my students and her collaboration in this educational initiative, Gamberi says.

Encouraged by two successful iterations of her model, Gamberi is ready to move ahead with a third, this one focusing on the role hormones play in regulating kidney function.

Now we know the model works. I dont plan to stop, she says.

I love working closely with students, to encourage their curiosity and to see how much it opens minds and doors to foster their love of learning and of science.

Read the cited paper, Metabolic networks of the human gut microbiota.

See original here:
Researcher leads a team of 94 undergrads to explore gut health - Mirage News

Physiology

The Planet We Think Were Living on No Longer Exists: 3 Profound Ways the Art World Can Address the Climate Crisis – artnet News

While the art worlds habit of jetting from one art fair or biennial to the next becomes increasingly untenable as the climate crisis looms, a group of art industry leaders headed to the Swiss mountaintops last weekend to discuss how the field can reduce its complicity in environmental collapse.

The irony of traveling to a remote alpine village to discuss the climate at the fourth annual Verbier Art Summit was not lost on some of its speakers. Across two days of programming, Resource Hungry: Our Cultured Landscape showcased presentations by artists including Joan Jonas as well as organizations like Julies Bicycle, but it was finally on the last afternoon that Stefan Kaeg of art group Rimini Protokoll voiced what everyone had been thinking the whole time: Could the knowledge shared in Verbier have happened in a different form, without any of us being there?However noble the cause, one wonders if luxurious symposia like Verbier are even close to sustainable.

While the art world drags its heels on structural overhauls, this years organizerJessica Morgan, director of Dia Art Foundation nevertheless pulled together a fascinating crop of creatives to tackle formidable questions around the industrys ecological impact.

Here are three of the weekends biggest takeaways.

Artist Andrea Bowers said it plainly on Saturday afternoon: The earth is not out there, we are part of it.

Indeed, as we sat glassed-in on the third floor of the resplendent W Hotel, with the occasional paraglider-on-skis floating by, this could be easy to forget. Many speakers referenced the need to break down the divide between the museums, galleries, art fair halls, and the real, exterior world. Offering a Global Warming 101 reminder, French architect Philippe Rahm, who works in the fields of physiology and meteorology, stressed that 42 percent of CO2 emitted today is from the cooling, heating, and general operation of buildings.

So, how can a climate-controlled storage space, gallery, or museum reduce its energy consumption, or is that besides the point? Rahm said we need to look beyond updates to wall insulation and instead completely redesign space in line with what he calls climactic architecturea method that utilizes a buildings own convection, radiation, and conduction capabilities to optimize renewable resources. Architecture, said Rahm, is no longer [based on the idea of] form following function or function following form. Its function for the form that follows climate.

Djamila Ribeiro, Joan Jonas, El Ultimo Grito, and Jessica Morgan at Verbier Art Summer. Alpimages

Renowned professors of design practice Rosario Hurtado and Roberto Feocollectively known as El ltimo Gritotook the question raised by Rahm to a more speculative level: What would it mean if museums were free from fixed spaces altogether? While humans continuously create permanent structures, many of these places deteriorate or get demolished relatively soon after. Meanwhile, structures initially built with ephemeral intentions (take the Eiffel Tower, for example, which was supposed to be a temporary installation for the Worlds Fair) survive for centuries.

With this, Hurtado and Feos question seemed to push back against the status quo of the art worlds usual haunts, underscoring that the museums and galleries that we have become so familiar with need to be fundamentally reconsidered. While spacious, pristinely white, and climate-controlled venues may feel like theyre here to stay, art historian Dorothea von Hantelmann pointed to exhibition spaces of the 18th-century which were extremely crowded, with walls crammed with art from the floor to the ceiling. We need to strive against the white cube, said von Hantelmann. We need to bring things that weve been separating back together.

One of the most significant changes professors Hurtado and Feo said they witnessed in their students over the past decade was the shift away from individualistic thinking towards collaboration. Its a shift seen beyond the confines of art and architecture schools, of course, as todays youth bring forth new ideas and fight collectively for their future, most notably through the Fridays for Future movement.

Artists Joan Jonas and Andrea Bowers echoed this hope in young activists. Jonas explained that children have become subjects in her work about the future and the environment (theyre the ones who are going to inherit it, she added, simply). With similar motivations, Bowerss new video My Name Means Future, which is currently on view at New Yorks Andrew Kreps Gallery, spotlights Tokata Iron Eyes, a 16-year-old member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and her involvement with the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. But what was missing in both presentations was a consideration of the changing role youth plays in viewership; both artists were mute on whether they even considered the importance of young people seeing their work.

Andrea Bowers,My Name Means Future (2020). Image courtesy of the Artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.

To place the crisis of climate change on the shoulders of one generation and await a solution is clearly not the answer; Catherine Bottrill from Julies Bicycle, a London-based charity that supports creative industries transformations towards sustainability, stressed the need to support young people who are going to bring about solutions, while operating at all ages and levels laterally, collaborating across organizational boundaries and typical hierarchies.

The calls to decolonize the art world might not immediately conjure a connection to climate change. However, Brazilian philosopher Djamila Ribeiro emphasized that, more than listening to the voices of indigenous cultures, we need to begin to act upon their novel ways of thinking and apply them to the ways we treat the natural world. In order to hear those voices that are so often drowned out, current power structures need to be dismantled, he argued.Other speakers, including Bottrill of Julies Bicycle, concurred: Hierarchies have to be disrupted. This was a major talking point, as architect and urban designer Adrian Lahoud pushed for a similar upheaval, adding that the planet we think were living on no longer exists.

One of the most effective ways to fight climate change will be to redefine our values. Lahoud shared a movingstory behind a paintingon view in the current edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which he curated. A group of 40 Aboriginal artists painted an 8-by-10-meter canvas, collectively depicting the story of their cultural history; they then submitted the piece to the Australian government as proof of their rights over nearly 30,000 square miles of land. Amazingly, the Australian government accepted this painting as evidence of ownership and, in 2007, granted them the rights over the disputed territory.

Alternative modes of existence embody different ways of being in the world, outside of the xenophobic, extractive, capitalist modes of relating that currently dominate the world, that lead us to exhaustion, and soon to extinction, according to Lahoud. And, at least in some cases, art can be a welcome bridge to these new ways of thinking.

The rest is here:
The Planet We Think Were Living on No Longer Exists: 3 Profound Ways the Art World Can Address the Climate Crisis - artnet News

Physiology

Maternity LeaveNot Higher PayIs the WNBAs Real Win – The Atlantic

But even with these anecdotes, exactly how to safely and most effectively pair athletics and motherhood is still a bit of a scientific gray area. Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist, sports nutritionist, and senior research fellow at the University of Waikato, in New Zealand, studies sex differences among athletes. She told me that only in the past five to seven years have scientists begun to seriously approach physiological questions related to the female athlete and pregnancy, reproductive systems, hormones, and the menstrual cycle. The enactment of the WNBAs maternity policy could do more than help support moms in the league, Sims said. It could also help researchers like herself have more incentive, and more cases, to study the physiology of pregnant and postpartum athletes. The WNBA saying, Hey, were putting this in? Im like, Its about effing time, Sims said. Now that the sports culture is changing to be more accepting of pregnant athletes, she said, the research that needs to be done comes down to the health and safety of the athletes.

According to Sims, some physiological effects of being pregnant could actually have a positive effect on athletic performance, such as increased blood volume, higher pain tolerance, and a better ability to access the parasympathetic nervous system (managing stress better). The new policy could also help reduce the risk of injuries that women who give birth are more likely to face, especially mothers in the postpartum period, when womens bodies tend to need more rest and recovery. This maternity leave is really going to help female athletes to have that ability to relax and not worry about losing [pay] and not have the pressure to perform [too soon], Sims said. But there are still many unknowns that she hopes to dive into. The research is still very archaic.

Georgie Bruinvels, a research scientist who co-created FitrWoman, an app that tracks menstrual cycles and physical activity, agreed, telling me that pregnancy isnt the only unknown. The discussion of female athletes and how theyre affected by everything from puberty to menopause has historically been avoided in research in the medical and sports-science worlds. This is due, at least in part, to the constant fluctuation of womens hormones throughout the menstrual cycle, which makes them more complex to perform research on, she said. Not long ago, for instance, women and girl athletes were often told it was normal to lose their periods while training hard, something now known as a sign of a probable nutrient deficiency.

Thats why Bruinvels, an elite runner herself, has started studying the effect of the menstrual cycle on female athletes; her research reportedly gave the U.S. Womens National Soccer team an edge in their 2019 World Cup championship run. Just tracking this kind of information, Bruinvels said, can empower women with the understanding of how to use it to their advantage.

Read the original post:
Maternity LeaveNot Higher PayIs the WNBAs Real Win - The Atlantic

Physiology

An Out of This World Conversation with Astronaut Jessica Meir – UC San Diego Health

UC San Diego alumna discusses her journey from STEM to Stars during live Q&A from International Space Station

NASA astronaut and UC San Diego alumna Jessica Meir called her alma mater from space to participate in a live stream Q&A sessionat the Scripps Seaside Forum. Photos by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego Publications

Its not every day that you are given the chance to talk to an astronaut, let alone one thats currently residing at the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth. But the doors of possibility were kicked wide open on Jan. 27, when Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego welcomed more than 150 middle school students to campus for the opportunity to engage in a live Q&A session with NASA astronaut and UC San Diego alumna Jessica Meir.

The Scripps Seaside Forum was buzzing with anticipation as eighth grade students from Fulton K-8 and Memorial Preparatory for Scholars and Athletes, two schools supported by Birch Aquariums Price Philanthropies Ocean Science Education Fund, waited for the chance to ask Meir their burning questions. UC San Diego astrophysicist Brian Keating emceed the event, which was also attended by Meirs friends, mentors, and former Scripps colleagues. Thousands more tuned in remotely via live stream and through a special viewing at Birch Aquarium.

Scripps graduate students Anai Novoa, Kiefer Forsch, Tashiana Osborne, and Ivan Moreno participate in a pre-event science panel, sharing their path to science with local eighth graders.

The theme of the event was STEM to Stars, a nod to Meirs trailblazing path from ocean science to space. A trained marine biologist, Meir earned her Ph.D. in 2009 from Scripps Oceanography, where she studied the physiology of deep-diving animals in extreme environments. She credits this research with helping her stand out for NASAs astronaut program. Since launching to the International Space Station in September 2019 for a six-month mission, Meir has conducted three spacewalks, making history in October 2019 when she and astronaut Christina Koch conducted the worlds first all-female spacewalk.

Prior to the live stream, the visiting students heard from four current Scripps graduate students in a pre-event science panel. The studentsKiefer Forsch, Ivan Moreno, Anai Novoa, and Tashiana Osbornediscussed what they research at Scripps, what its like to be a graduate student, their path to science, and challenges theyve overcome. Graduate students from the Scripps group Women & Minorities in Science (WMIS) also participated in the event, showcasing hands-on research demos in the main lobby.

Kicking off the main event, Keating told the students some fun facts about Meirs adventures in space. When shes in space currently, shes traveling about 5 miles per second; she gets to witness sunrise and sunset 16 times a day, but I bet it never gets old for her, and shes traveling many thousands of miles an hour, he said, explaining that it only takes 90 minutes for Meir to travel the entire circumference of Earth.

Scripps Director Margaret Leinen also spoke to the students, describing some of the amazing places science can take you, whether here on Earth or up in space, and she congratulated Meir for utilizing her love of science to reach the stars.

Eighth grade students from two San Diego schools, Fulton K-8 and Memorial Preparatory for Scholars and Athletes, attend the live stream Q&A event with astronaut Jessica Meir.

I want to make sure you know how proud we are of everything that youve done with this extraordinary background in oceanography, and being able to realize this dream of yours to go to space, Leinen said.

Ashley and Alicia, two eighth graders from Memorial Preparatory, were among the lucky students who got to ask Meir a question.

Her being up in space shows us that mostly anything is possible. As long as you try your best, then you can succeed, said Ashley, who plans to one day be a software developer.

Alicia said she felt honored to talk to Meir and was inspired by her determination to pursue something that she really loves.

She inspired me to want to do my best, and even if I know I am doing my best, to try even harder, because theres always a good outcome, Alicia said. Even though she plans to pursue a career outside of STEM, she said she hopes to learn more about science because it never hurts to know more.

Below is an excerpt from Meirs Q&A session, condensed and edited for clarity. View the full livestream on Facebook and YouTube.

Q. Were you afraid of the takeoff? - Andres (Memorial Preparatory)

A. I wasnt afraid, actually, and I think one of the reasons why we dont really have that fear response, or at least I didnt, is because we receive so much incredible training at NASA. I have been training for my mission up here for six years, so we have been over and over all of the different things that well be experiencing.

In the last two years, I spent a lot of time in Russia training with the Russian space program since we launched to space on the Soyuz rocket. We spent a lot of time in simulators, preparing for every step and every phase of the mission. So, it was really interesting. I had been through that so many times in a simulator, which looked exactly like the real thing, that sometimes during the actual liftoff, I had to remind myself that this was finally real. You get so immersed in what youre doing and so focused with all the steps and actions you have to take as an operator, that sometimes you forget that its not just the same as all the practice youve been doing.

There were a few not so subtle reminders though, when the rocket started groaning and shifting a little bit, and then as the different stages of the rocket separated and we got higher and higher away from the earth, you could actually see those things falling off of the rocket outside of the window. Once I started seeing those signs I realized it was true, but it really wasnt any sort of fear; it was really just excitement and a little bit of disbelief and incredulity that my dream was actually finally coming true.

Q. What kind of classes did you take in school that helped you become an astronaut? - Ariana (Fulton K-8)

A. The common theme in everything we do up here is the STEM fieldscience, technology, engineering, and math. Now the nice thing is, there are a lot of different options within those fields. All of those fields could lead to a career like this one. To become an astronaut, you do have to have a degree in one of those areas, but the choices are really broad. For example, Im a life scientist, a biologist, and physiologist, and up here with me on my crew theres an electrical engineer, theres a military doctor, theres a military test pilot with a background in engineering, and then our two Russian cosmonauts up here as well with their engineering and military backgrounds. All of these different backgrounds are basic paths that you can use to get up here, so spending time in any of those STEM courses really helped us all get where we are today.

Q. What type of research do you do on the space station? Do you do any experiments outside the space station? - Naomi (Fulton K-8)

A. Its really amazing how many different types of experiments we conduct up here, and as a scientist, it is so exciting because as you can imagine, once you eliminate these gravity-driven effects that are always present no matter where you are on the earth, you might unveil a whole variety of responses and results that we never even thought possible. So we do experiments ranging from physiology and medicine, how the space flight environment affects our human bodies; we do experiments about combustioneven flames burn differently in space without gravity, without convection driving that motion. So in a chamber we study how different things burn in terms of flammability and safety responses, also in terms of fuel efficiency that might enhance fuel efficiency on earth and also for future spacecraft. We do biotechnology experiments; I did a DNA sequencing experiment called Genes in Space up here, and we do fluids experiments. We do any type of experiment and it is really an amazing playground as a scientist to be up here.

I was fortunate enough to go outside the space station three times now on spacewalks, and those are actually not for scientific experiments; those are for repair jobs. We have hardware both inside and outside the space station thats critical to making sure the systems work up here to accomplish our mission, and one of the things that needed to be upgraded were our batteries. So we conducted a series of spacewalks to upgrade those batteries to more efficient lithium ion batteries, just like youre using down on Earth. And that was one of the most amazing things that Ive done while Im up here is venturing out of the hatch in a spacesuit, and having really nothing between you and the earth below, except for the visor of your helmet. It really is an extraordinary experience.

Q. What advice do you have for young women who want to be astronauts? - Alma Renero (Instagram)

A. I think the most important thing to do is to make sure that you identify your passion and do what it is that you really care about. Once youve done that, you do need to work really hard to make those dreams come true, and it sounds a bit trite when I say it, but it really is true! I think this is proof that your dreams can come true. Ive been saying I wanted to be an astronaut since I was 5 years old, and because I had identified that as my passion, and also identified other aspects of science and exploration that led me down that road and pursued itwith a lot of hard work and dedication and perseveranceand then a lot of luck, all wrapped together to actually get me where I am today. The point is really, anybody can do it if thats what you set your mind to.

Q. Before you got accepted as an astronaut, did you ever consider any other careers? Jhiana (Fulton K-8)

A. Well I certainly did! I had a whole other career and that is thanks to Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego and all of the mentors and colleagues that I had during my time as a graduate student there. My time at Scripps was invaluable; it really taught me how to think as a critical thinker, how to form and conduct something efficiently using the scientific method, and most importantlyrelevant to my job todayit taught me a lot about working with a team.

I was working as a comparative physiologist so I was studying animals, in particular animals that live in extreme environments, and trying to understand how those animals can do the incredible things they can. I was particularly intrigued by animals that live and work at extraordinary depths, so diving animals like emperor penguins, and elephant seals, and also high-altitude animals, birds that migrate over the tallest mountains on the planet. It was just fascinating to understand how these animals could live in these very oxygen-deprived zones.

I was working as a scientist at various universities and academia conducting research with animals in the wild and it was a very fulfilling career, but when the opportunity came to have this childhood dream job, I couldn't pass this up.

Stay informed about Meirs latest activities by following her on Twitter and Instagram.

More:
An Out of This World Conversation with Astronaut Jessica Meir - UC San Diego Health

Physiology

Waltz into something new with Wildcat Dancesport – Arizona Daily Wildcat

Wildcat Dancesport has been waltzing around as the official ballroom dance club at the University of Arizona for over 20 years and serves as one of the universitys most unique way of making friends, according to club president Brenna Hall.

The club held its most recent showcase on Feb. 1, where dancers got the chance to show off their skills to everyone in attendance and hoped to gain some more attention from students who may want to join.

Ballroom is inherently a social dance; you have to dance with other people, Hall said. You get a chance to meet a lot of different, fun people who are all interested in the same thing.

Hall has been in the club for five years. She graduated from the UA with a bachelors degree in ecology and evolutionary biology and is currently studying for her masters degree in epidemiology at the UA.

Hall said that she became interested in the club because of her interest in dance and desire to be more social and meet new people.

Sometimes in college things get really busy, so its a great way to be both active and social, Hall said. Its also a good way to take a break from studying for a bit.

Wildcat Dancesport focuses on two genres of ballroom dance: American Smooth, which includes the waltz, tango, foxtrot and Viennese waltz, and international Latin, which consists of the cha cha, rumba, paso doble, samba and jive.

The club has two different levels of dancers: beginners, and intermediate and advanced. Beginners are taught lessons by the more experienced dancers in the intermediate and advanced level, while dancers in the intermediate and advanced level are taught by a professional instructor.

We welcome everyone from any level of experience, Hall said. Whether they have danced ballroom before or even if theyve never danced a day in their life.

The club is not exclusive to current students. Some members, like Athena Simmons, are alumni that just couldnt step off the dance floor after college.

Simmons has been a member of Wildcat Dancesport for 10 years now. She graduated from the UA in 2015 with a degree in psychology and now works at a physical therapy office. Simmons said that since non-students are able to be in the club, she has been able to remain a member.

I love this club with all my heart for a reason, I just wanna see it prosper, Simmons said. Its been a part of my life for these past 10 years and Ive enjoyed every moment of it.

Simmons said that although she has been in the club for many years, she is still constantly learning and working hard.

Theres always something to improve upon, Simmons said. Dance teaches you how to persevere. You definitely learn about yourself.

UA junior Jessica Guise, a physiology major, has been a member of the club for two years. According to Guise, she truly began dancing through the club. She said her mother is a ballroom dance teacher and encouraged her to join while in college.

As a freshman, Guise said she was lonely and not very outgoing. But through Wildcat Dancesport, she met new friends.

She found getting to be more social in college and actually being involved in something refreshing. According to Guise, the club serves as a creative outlet for a lot of science, technology, engineering and math majors like herself who might have otherwise struggled to find one.

It feels really great to have a connection with another person when you dance, Guise said. I think you can express your creativity, meet new friends and find a new passion.

According to Hall, the club holds weekly practices, dance socials and about three competitions per year.

All dance lessons take place at the Student Recreation Center, so all attendants must have a Rec Center membership. The beginners lessons take place in the Multi-Activity Court at the Rec Center on Sundays from 10 - 11 a.m. Intermediate and advanced lessons take place Mondays in room A from 8 - 10 p.m. The beginner review lessons take place Wednesdays from 8 to 10 p.m., and open dance sessions occur every Monday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. and Wednesday from 9 - 10 p.m.

To learn more about Wildcat Dancesport visit their website at wildcatdancesport.com or their Facebook page, UADancesport.

Follow Isabella Barron in Twitter

Here is the original post:
Waltz into something new with Wildcat Dancesport - Arizona Daily Wildcat

Physiology

Franke Program, blending science and humanities, hits the right note – Yale News

Ambre Dromgoole and Davis Butner are hitting their scholarly stride in the sweet spot between art and science.

Their projects are quite different from each other. Dromgoole, a third-year doctoral student in religious studies and African American studies, is rediscovering a black female composer who was missing from the historical record. Butner, who earned a masters degree in architecture last year, is mapping the sounds of the sacred architecture of different faiths.

They do have one important thing in common. Theyre both bolstered by Yales Franke Program in Science and the Humanities.

Created as a launchpad for interdisciplinary projects, the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities is a Yale initiative that both lessens the isolation of academic specialization and encourages boundary-breaking projects.

We are creating an expanded community of interdisciplinary scholars across academic stages, said Priyamvada Natarajan, the Yale professor of astronomy and physics who directs the program. The radical, transformative ideas that will reshape and impact the world will come out of cross-disciplinary engagement. Our goal is to foster collaborations that will inspire creative thinkers at Yale who will leverage these new strengths to make breakthroughs.

Mapping and Knowing is the broader theme of the program, which annually supports highly imaginative projects by 15 undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows senior Alexis Hopkins analysis of mental illness within slave populations, for example, and senior Addison Lucks study of how law and environmental policy intersect in Ecuador.

Graduate student Mary Yap is using photography and drone videos to look at urbanization across Southeast Asia and Scandinavia. Another graduate student, Luna Zagorac, is creating a diagram of the ancient Egyptian heavens. Postdoctoral fellow David Merritt Johns is conducting a historical analysis of the cultural and scientific debate over elevated salt consumption.

The problems and challenges we face today are exceedingly complex and will require new approaches to tackle them, Natarajan said. Cross-fertilization of ideas developed in one discipline, applied to another, are clearly strategies needed to make advances. This requires us to boldly venture beyond our intellectual silos.

Dromgooles Franke Program project started in a taxi.

She was on her way to an academic symposium in Texas in 2017, sharing a cab with a documentary filmmaker named Jerry Zolten. During the ride, Zolten mentioned a long-abandoned project of his own: an interview with a gospel music songwriter named Roxie Ann Moore, who had since died.

Dromgoole said she immediately felt an emotional and scholarly tug. Just from Zoltens brief description, Moore sounded like so many of the talented choir directors and gospel singers Dromgoole had known while growing up in Nashville, Tennessee.

Moore was an innovative composer and guitarist who collaborated with such luminaries as Count Basie and the Dixie Hummingbirds, but often didnt get a songwriting credit for her compositions. Her songs included Love Your Fellowman, Jesus He Looked on Me, and It Wont Be Long.

Fortunately, Moore kept a trove of letters, diaries, interviews, and other documents detailing her work from 1935 until her death in 2012.

She saved copies of every letter she ever wrote, Dromgoole said. There is a deep kind of hope in that. She may have been viewed as insignificant by society at large, but she was still trying to show the importance of her work even if no one ever came along later, looking for her.

Dromgoole applied for a Franke Fellowship in 2018. By then she had a mountain of material about Moore to sift through and evaluate. She said other students and faculty mentors in the Franke Program whose expertise range from applied physics and computer science to history and comparative literature offered insights and suggested scientific tools to help her corral the data effectively. She also studied vocal physiology and pedagogy to gain a better understanding of how voice and vocal timbre are produced.

Music analysis is a science, she said. Im doing in-depth musical analysis of chord structures.

Dromgoole said Moores compositions perfectly reflect the influence of other musical genres in gospels formative years. Moore had listened to ragtime music when she was a child; she became friends with rock/gospel pioneer Rosetta Tharpe when they were both teenagers. Moore later said gospel and blues music sounded similar to her.

These cross-genre collaborations are all the more significant given Moores involvement in the Black Holiness-Pentecostal tradition, known for its strict doctrinal delineations between sacred and secular, Dromgoole said.

The project has become Dromgooles dissertation subject. She said Moores life and work offer a window into important aspects of African American culture and American religious history in the 20th century. Dromgoole plans to create a digital archive of Moores documents.

Shes been overlooked for far too long, she said.

While Dromgoole was re-establishing the relevance of a singular 20th-century gospel composer, Butner was busy mapping the sounds that fill religious buildings across the globe.

His project, Sounding Sacred, looks at the how the architectural and acoustic characteristics of temples, mosques, churches, and other religious buildings reflect the specific ways those buildings are used. The survey project includes churches in New Haven, synagogues in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, koothambalams in India, and mosques in Turkey.

For instance, Butner said, in analyzing the wooden Pogost monasteries of Northern Russia, he found that their highly ornamented exteriors masked strikingly intimate interiors and dampened acoustical properties reinforcing the collective choral techniques practiced there. Closer to home, Butner led a performance tour featuring Yales Schola Cantorum, New Havens Trinity Church on the Green, St. Thomas More Cathedral, and Christ Church, to demonstrate acoustical properties and aural techniques tailored to each worship space.

Its a project that looks at the indescribable nature of sound and how that sound plays into religious spaces, said Butner, who is continuing his Franke project while participating in a Luce Fellowship in Asia this year.

Sounding Sacred includes 40 religious buildings, representing four faith groups. It also includes animated, 3D visualizations of the way sound moved through some of the structures.

I had never done curation of this kind before, Butner said. The ways one can archive and document material are wide-ranging. The Franke Program made it easy to collaborate with scholars in other fields and get feedback.

As Butner and Dromgooles projects near completion, a new batch of Franke Program projects will soon commence. The application deadline for undergraduate fellowships is March 6 (the deadline for graduate and postdoctoral researchers is Aug. 1). Details for applying can be found at the Franke Program website.

See more here:
Franke Program, blending science and humanities, hits the right note - Yale News

Anatomy

Ride With Blake Lively in a Car Chase Scene From The Rhythm Section – The New York Times

In Anatomy of a Scene, we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series each Friday. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

After watching dozens of car chase scenes in movies, the director Reed Morano said that the scariest place to be visually as an audience member was inside the car.

Anytime Ive watched one and we cut out of the car, the tension drops for me, she said in an interview.

So for her action thriller The Rhythm Section, about a woman, Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively), who becomes an assassin, Morano wanted to build maximum tension with a car chase sequence that didnt ever leave the car. Instead, all the action is shot hand-held from the passengers seat, the camera panning front and back to capture the chaos and danger happening outside the car, as well as Stephanies expressions as she navigates the car.

The sequence appears as an unbroken shot (though it was a few stitched together) and involved some elaborate staging to put together. Moranos director of photography, Sean Bobbitt, shot from the passengers side seated on top of a sliding rail system that gave him mobility to shoot either closer to the windshield, or slide toward the back.

Outside the car, Morano said, we had these amazing stunt people that, all the way down the line, had things to do: cars, motorcycles, guys jumping out in the street, people on bikes.

It was definitely the most fun thing to shoot, she said.

Read the Rhythm Section review.

Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics Picks and more.

See the original post here:
Ride With Blake Lively in a Car Chase Scene From The Rhythm Section - The New York Times

Anatomy

Dead Vs Virtual: Will 3-D Dissection Help Anatomy Students At SCB? – Odisha Television Ltd.

Cuttack: Sans required number of donated human bodies, MBBS students of SCB Medical College and Hospital here are facing hardship during their Anatomy classes and medical research. As per the Medical Council of India (MCI) guidelines, only eight students are allowed to have anatomy dissection class by using one dead body. However, in SCB, there are only eight bodies (five men & three women) for 250 medical students of the government college, which means one body is used by at least 30 students for anatomy.

With such a situation prevailing for the last few months, the medicos have alleged that they are deprived of getting better anatomy classes. If more than 20 students stand around one body, those standing at the front row only can understand the lesson well. The human anatomy dissection class is held for around two hours and it is getting very difficult for us to grasp things within this short period of time, said Biswajit Sahu, president of SCB students union.

Meanwhile, the SCB hospital authorities have decided to use the 3-D dissection table for the purpose. They claimed that the 3-D dissection table which offers the most realistic virtual cadaver can be a great help for the students as they can have very interactive experience by using it.

Sources said the 3-D dissection table also has other facilities like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) scan and microscopic views. Students of surgery, neurosurgery and cardiovascular surgery will also get benefits from this table.

SCB Medical College Dean Jayashree Mohanty said, Maintaining the cadaver is a long and difficult process which includes dissection and putrefaction. The 3-D dissection table, on the other hand, is very helpful for the students which they can operate easily.

On the other hand, students of Anatomy department opined that the natural learning experience is missing when bodies are replaced by a 3-D dissection table. Cadaver cant be replaced. In future, we will have to conduct surgery on a body and conducting surgery on a body is different than seeing something that is virtual, said Amrita Nalini Manabikata, a student of Anatomy department.

Anyone can donate his/her body after death for medical research. Besides, the State Assembly had passed the Odisha Anatomy (Amendment) Act in 2013.

However, with no or very less donors, intellectuals have said that there is a necessity to create awareness among people which might inspire them to pledge their bodies and organs for donation after death. We urge the State government to encourage people so that they can donate their bodies which will help the medical students in their research and they can become good doctors, said Odisha Jana Jagaran Mancha, President, Choudhary Prabhat Keshari Mishra.

View original post here:
Dead Vs Virtual: Will 3-D Dissection Help Anatomy Students At SCB? - Odisha Television Ltd.

Anatomy

TV Ratings Thursday: ‘The Good Place’ series finale improves, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ drops – TV by the Numbers

Broadcast primetime live + same-day ratings for Thursday, January 30, 2020

The numbers for Thursday:

The Good Place went out with a minor uptick in this weeks Thursday primetime ratings.

The 1-hour series finale of the NBC comedy scored a solid 0.7 rating among adults 18-49 with 2.35 million viewers. That puts The Good Place up a tick from its penultimate episodes 0.6 rating and 2.12 million viewer audience last week, and also makes it the shows highest-rated and most-watched outing since its season premiere back in September. A post-finale Good Place special also raked in a 0.6 rating with 2.06 million viewers.

Additionally, Superstore stayed steady on NBC by matching its 0.7 from a week ago, and Law & Order: SVU (0.6) returned from a week off in steady fashion as well.

Elsewhere, it was a down night across for the board for ABC, starting with Station 19, which fell from its season premieres 1.2 rating last week to a 1.0 this time around. Greys Anatomy (1.1) similarly dropped three-tenths week-to-week, but remained the nights no. 1 show in the 18-49 demo, while A Million Little Things slipped from a 0.7 to a 0.6.

FOXs Thursday night lineup also experienced a variety of upticks and downticks this week, as Last Man Standing (0.7) and Outmatched (0.6) both inched down one-tenth from their last outings, but Deputy (0.6) ticked up a tenth. The CWs Supernatural (0.3) and Legacies (0.3) each rose one-tenth from their ratings a week ago as well.

On CBS, Young Sheldon (1.0), The Unicorn (0.6), Mom (0.7), and Carols Second Act (0.6) all returned from a week off with the same ratings as their previous episodes. Sheldon also, once again, raked in the largest audience of any of the nights shows (8.6 million viewers). Meanwhile, the season finale of Evil capped off the night for CBS with a 0.5 rating, up one-tenth from its penultimate outing.

Network averages:

Definitions:

Rating: Estimated percentage of the universe of TV households (or other specified group) tuned to a program in the average minute. Ratings are expressed as a percent.Fast Affiliate Ratings: These first national ratings are available at approximately 11 a.m. ETthe day after telecast. The figures may include stations that did not air the entire network feed, as well as local news breaks or cutaways for local coverage or other programming. Fast Affiliate ratings are not as useful for live programs and are likely to differ significantly from the final results, because the data reflect normal broadcast feed patterns.Share (of Audience):The percent of households (or persons) using television who are tuned to a specific program, station or network in a specific area at a specific time.Time Shifted Viewing:Program ratings for national sources are produced in three streams of data Live, Live +Same-Day and Live +7 Day. Time-shifted figures account for incremental viewing that takes place with DVRs. Live+SD includes viewing during the same broadcast day as the original telecast, with a cut-off of 3 a.m. local time when meters transmit daily viewing to Nielsen for processing. Live +7 ratings include viewing that takes place during the 7 days following a telecast.

Source: The Nielsen Company.

See the original post here:
TV Ratings Thursday: 'The Good Place' series finale improves, 'Grey's Anatomy' drops - TV by the Numbers