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This article follows the academic literacy learning trajectory of Farah, an undergraduate anthropology major at the American University in Cairo. In charting her path from the Egyptian public schooling system to a Western-based transnational university, this study offers a perspective in which a writer created and navigated a challenging trajectory and adapted Western-based literacies to aid in the development of an academic and professional agenda based in personal and national interests. This article draws on frameworks in composition studies and transnational literacy studies to suggest that theorizing such trajectories may require new concepts that can account for literacy learning trajectories for writers like Farah.

This essay turns to the writing of William James in “A Word of Pure Experience” as a methodological framework for reading The Souls of Black Folk. While most readings of Souls emphasize the unfolding of black consciousness, or the mind, this essay brings the body into critical focus, specifically in tracing the ways in which Du Bois appeals to the plasticity of bodies—their ability to affect and to be affected—as a creative textual means of redressing racial strife and crisis. To this end, I argue that Souls both diagnoses what I am calling a “gothic” ontology of racial division (after James) and appeals to moments of vital affect which overspill and thus critically challenge the boundaries of such racial disjuncture endemic to modernity and race relations at the dawn of the twentieth century. My reading thus resituates Souls in a literary-philosophical genealogy running from James to Du Bois, yet one that emphasizes their convergence via James’s “radical empiricism” rather than his more familiar pragmatism. Keywords: James; Du Bois; Ontology; Affect; Racism; Radical empiricism.

Recent decades have seen an exponential rise in the application of machine learning in geoscience. However, fundamental differences distinguish geoscience data from most other data types. Geoscience datasets are typically multi-dimensional, and contain 1D (drill holes), 2D (maps or cross-sections), and 3D volumetric and point data (models/voxels). Geoscience data quality is a product of the data's resolution and the precision of the methods used to acquire them. The dimensionality, resolution, and precision of each layer within a geoscience dataset translate into limitations to the spatiality, scale, and uncertainty of resulting interpretations. Historically, geoscience datasets were overlaid cartographically to incorporate subjective, experience-driven knowledge and variances in scale and resolution. These nuances and limitations that underpin the reliability of automated interpretation are well understood by geoscientists but are rarely appropriately transferred to data science. For true integration of geoscience data, such issues cannot be overlooked without consequence. To apply data analytics to complex geoscience data (e.g. hydrothermal mineral systems) effectively, methodologies that characterise the system quantitatively at a common scale, using collocated analyses, should be sought. This paper provides research and exploration insights from an innovative district-wide, scale-integrated geoscience data project, which analysed 1590 samples from 23 mineral deposits and prospects across the Cloncurry district, Queensland, Australia. Nine different analytical techniques were used, including density, magnetic susceptibility, remanent magnetisation, anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility, radiometrics, conductivity, automated mineralogy based on scanning electron microscopy (SEM), geochemistry, and short-wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral data with 561 columns of scale-integrated data (+2151 columns of SWIR data). All data were collected on 2.2 cm × 2.5 cm sample cylinders, a scale at which the confidence in the coupling of data from techniques can be high. These data are integrated by design to eliminate the need to downscale coarser measurements via assumptions, inferences, inversions, and interpolations. This scale-consistent approach is critical to the quantitative characterisation of mineral systems and has numerous applications in mineral exploration, such as linking alteration paragenesis with structural controls and petrophysical zonation. The Cloncurry METAL dataset is made freely available via the AuScope Data Repository: 10.60623/82trleue (Austin et al., 2024). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of transboundary animal diseases (TADs) among wild pigs (Sus scrofa) will aid in preventing the introduction or containment of TADs among wild populations. Given the challenges associated with studying TADs in free-ranging populations, a surrogate pathogen system may predict how pathogens may circulate and be maintained within wild free-ranging swine populations, how they may spill over into domestic populations, and how management actions may impact transmission. We assessed the suitability of Torque teno sus virus 1 (TTSuV1) to serve as a surrogate pathogen for molecular epidemiological studies in wild pigs by investigating the prevalence, persistence, correlation with host health status and genetic variability at two study areas: Archbold's Buck Island Ranch in Florida and Savannah River Site in South Carolina. We then conducted a molecular epidemiological case study within Archbold's Buck Island Ranch site to determine how analysis of this pathogen could inform transmission dynamics of a directly transmitted virus. Prevalence was high in both study areas (40%, n = 190), and phylogenetic analyses revealed high levels of genetic variability within and between study areas. Our case study showed that pairwise host relatedness and geographic distance were highly correlated to pairwise viral genetic similarity. Molecular epidemiological analyses revealed a distinct pattern of direct transmission from pig to pig occurring within and between family groups. Our results suggest that TTSuV1 is highly suitable for molecular epidemiological analyses and will be useful for future studies of transmission dynamics in wild free-ranging pigs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of phenotypic traits and two genetic assays to distinguish between Mercenaria mercenaria, an important aquaculture species, and Mercenaria campechiensis, a conspecific species that is partially sympatric, but that has not been successfully farmed. The objectives were to evaluate (1) four established diagnostic phenotypic traits (lunule shape, thickness of concentric shell ridges, prominence of anterior side of the concentric ridges, and presence of purple nacre inside of the shells) to distinguish between species, (2) size polymorphism of PCR fragments from four genes [16S rRNA, 18S rRNA, Internal Transcribed Spacer genes (ITS1 and ITS2)], and (3) PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) on three of these genes (16S, ITS1, and ITS2). Phenotypic traits correctly distinguished two geographically distant conspecific populations (two locations in Maine for M. mercenaria and in Bradenton, FL, for M. campechiensis); however, among all other locations, both species had overlapping phenotypic trait values. Although PCR fragments were obtained for all genes tested, size polymorphism was not identified between the two species. Restriction enzyme digestion of PCR fragments resulted in diagnostic fragments distinguishing the two species for 16S. ITS1, and ITS2. Although phenotypic scores failed to delineate between the two species in most locations, PCR-RFLP results failed to identify hybrids in wild or hatchery samples. Further investigation is needed to apply the PCR-RFLP assays on known hybrid offspring from crosses of M. mercenaria and M. campechiensis. Results have elucidated the difficulties in confidently detecting hybridization in quahogs; however, determining effective methods for species identification and hybrid detection will be important to address issues such as the prevalence and distribution of hybridization in aquaculture and in wild populations, and to determin the presence of M. campechiensis which are currently difficult to find. KEY WORDS: phenotypic score, species identification. PCR-RFLP, northern quahog, Mercenaria mercenaria, southern quahog, Mercenaria campechiensis, INTRODUCTION The northern quahog Mercenaria mercenaria (family Veneridae) is an important aquaculture and fishery species that is naturally distributed along the Atlantic west coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, [...]

Mentoring has become an important tool in education. Types of mentoring in education include: (1) peer mentoring among middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students; (2) cooperating teachers mentoring student teachers; (3) expert mentoring of novice or early-career teachers; (4) career mentoring of doctoral students by faculty; and (5) mentoring of tenure-track faculty by senior faculty. These various forms or stages of mentoring provide an educative-translative bridge between the hard knowledge and explicit skills associated with formal curricula/policy and the soft knowledge and implicit skills developed in spaces that lie outside of formal curricula/policy. Put more simply, effective mentoring allows an individual to connect common knowledge to common sense and people of common interest. While built into formal mentoring systems, this connectivity also is the stuff of informal mentoring -- hallway conversations before or after class, drop-in meetings during office hours, or other exchanges of a more spontaneous, serendipitous, or authentic nature. The author examines the potential value of informal mentoring situated within higher education academic contexts or workplace environments.