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Based on in-depth interviews conducted with several women ethnographers of Hip Hop dances, this chapter explores experiences of critical hiphopography—a method that combines multiple grounded approaches through the social imperatives of Hip Hop culture and critical research strategies. The interview content touches on three themes: Hip Hop’s show and prove ethos, the complications of researching in community, and the impact of academic institutional power on research. The chapter emphasizes the challenges of doing hiphopography and explores how folks have attempted to work through them. It argues that critical hiphopography in practice provides research strategies that center community, are attentive to power, and disrupt academic conventions.

Laying out a groundwork for the emerging area of scholarship devoted to Hip Hop dance, the introduction contextualizes the structure and content of this anthology. It emphasizes the advantages of including practitioners, practitioner-scholars, dance scholars, and community workers in understandings of the experience of Hip Hop dance(s). Framed as a “love letter” to students of the dances that fall under the rubric of Hip Hop, the editors point to the future possibilities of the field of Hip Hop dance studies, in relation to its political, cultural, aesthetic, and institutional frameworks. The introduction also seeks to name the motivations and stakes of this emerging field and provides a brief overview of the content of each chapter of this Handbook.

Women ethnographers have played prominent roles in shaping the field of Hip Hop dance studies. This chapter analyzes the insights from some of those women ethnographers, particularly practitioner-researchers, on Hip Hop streetdances in relation to three themes: self-presentation and identity in the field; strategies for navigating interpersonal relationships while maintaining personal and professional boundaries; and the bodily realities (or corporealities) of race, gender, age, and nation as they shape those experiences. The ethnographers interviewed include a variety of women who approach ethnography in both academic and non-academic professions. They deal with what the chapter calls “hard love,” which speaks to their commitment to balancing scholarly obligations and Hip Hop cultural imperatives, in spaces where women are often a minority and researchers are distrusted. The chapter expands on what we know about researching in these sites, and offers new areas of inquiry for future research.

The dance circle (called the cypher) is a common signifier of breaking culture, known more for its spectacular moves than as a ritual practice with foundations in Africanist aesthetics. Yet those foundations—evident in expressive qualities like call and response, the aural kinesthetic, the imperative to be original, and more—are essential to cyphering’s enduring presence on the global stage. What can cyphers activate beyond the spectacle? What lessons do cyphers offer about moving through and navigating the social world? And what possibilities for the future do they animate? With an interdisciplinary reach and a riff on physics, Johnson centers the voices of practitioners in a study of breaking events in cities across the US, in Canada, and parts of Europe. Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: the Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop draws on over a decade of research, providing a detailed look into the vitality of Africanist aesthetics and the epistemological possibilities of the ritual circle.

Opening with a thick descriptive story of an ethnographic experience of the invisible force or spirit of cyphering titled “Dark Matter,” chapter 1 goes on to center a comparative look at multiple African diasporic circle practices, drawing attention to their extraphenomenal, spiritual, and liberatory feelings and experiences, articulated differently by each practitioner. In this chapter, the main interlocutors—including Float, Silky Jones, Poe One, Triple7, Miss Little, Aby, Pia, and Jaekwon —discuss this little-recognized dimension of the cypher. By amplifying Africanist aesthetics, we can better understand breakers’ broad articulations of overlapping experiences of spirit and liberation. The chapter further explores the epistemic violence involved in invisibilizing Africanist aesthetics.

Opening with a thick descriptive story of a live breaking event titled “Being There” and a preface that quickly situates the author’s foregrounding of Africanist aesthetics, the introduction unpacks the book’s titular keywords: the dark matter metaphor about Africanist aesthetics, breaking (versus b-boying/b-girling and breakdancing), and cyphers. The author gives readers the scope and meaning of these terms within their cultural context. The introduction also details the book’s interdisciplinary approach—referred to as a “methodological mixtape”—which draws on ethnography, archival research, movement analysis, and the central role of the storytelling practices of practitioners. It ends with a chapter summary.

Opening with “Superheroes Among Us,” which recounts a community cypher in the Bronx, chapter 2 recognizes the imprint of New York City and specifically the South Bronx on breaking. Aspects of Hip Hop’s quintessential qualities that are captured in the warrior aesthetics of breaking are also wrapped up in life and living in New York City during the 1970s. The chapter deploys two key terms, “social choreography” and “outlaw culture,” to capture that imprint on breaking’s battling culture specifically, and how it gets lived by practitioners and shaped by their corporealities. Battling principles, as introduced by Trac2, are elaborated on in oral histories from Aby, Cartoon, Baby Love, and Kwikstep. I draw attention to the possibilities enabled by an outlaw sensibility, which I argue developed in the margins of society and intersect with Africanist aesthetics. Those sensibilities helped early practitioners navigate the cypher and everyday life in the Bronx.

Opening with a story of a contentious cypher exchange in Germany, marked by differences in race and gender, titled “Crossing the Line,” chapter 3 pivots to the possibilities of cyphers primarily comprised of b-girls. Through a focus on two Africanist aesthetics (rituals of derision and the imperative for originality) and a reconsideration of a previously published discussion of badass femininity, it explores how b-girls embody battling imperatives through “burns” and playing in the profane, thereby contending with normative notions of femininity whether they intend to or not. At the same time, their practice cannot be reduced to an assessment of gender, and, as they bring their whole selves to identities as b-girls, they enact a mode of relationality that fosters a competing sensibility on sociality, one that makes breaking a more inclusive space for future b-girls. The chapter focuses on Emiko, Black Pearl, Rokafella, and Hanifa Queen, and puts their oral histories in conversation with recent scholarship on b-girls internationally to expand a comparative analysis.

Chapter 4 draws our attention to the ways that difference is dealt with discursively—displaced onto conversations about moves—and negotiated alongside tradition or “foundation” among breakers around the world. In contrast to an idealized multiculturalism that elides difference, breakers’ own articulations of their relationships to the dance hearken back to the culture’s Africanist qualities, which help to bring breaking’s transnational scenes “on the one.” With insights from Q Rock, Frostalino, Hanifa Queen, Profo Won, and Rokafella, this chapter explores how the everyday ways that breakers negotiate differences in race, ethnicity, gender, and nationality can tell us something important about the on-the-ground tensions that can play out in coalitional political projects that share a similar set of differences. It opens with “Circles or Cyphers,” an account of a circle that was not a cypher in Germany.

Background: Hormone receptor (HR) low (1-10%) HER2-negative breast cancer (BC) is emerging as a distinct subtype with similarities in clinical outcomes to triple-negative BC. However, there is a lack of consensus on treatment recommendations for chemo-immunotherapy and endocrine therapy in this subset. Here, we present results from a US National Cancer Database (NCDB) analyses of patients with HER2-negative BC evaluating response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) and patterns of care by HR expression. Methods: Patients with stage I-III HER2-negative BC diagnosed in 2018 were identified in NCDB, a nationwide oncology outcomes database in the US. Quantitative HR expression was unavailable prior to 2018. Data were categorized into four groups by estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) expression: ER< 1% & PR< 1% (HR-Neg), ER 1-10% and/or PR 1-10% (HR-Low), ER >11-30% and/or PR>11-30% (HR-Int), ER> 30% and/or PR > 30% (HR-High). Those with undocumented HR status (3%) or without curative intent surgery (5%) were excluded. The primary outcome was pathologic complete response (pCR) by HR expression in those undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Key secondary objectives included assessment of clinicopathologic characteristics and practice patterns. The categorical variables were compared between the four groups using a Chi-square test. Age was compared using a Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: Out of 104,205 incident cases, 2541 (2.4%) were HR-Low and 1241 (1.2%) were HR-Int. Significant differences were found between HR groups with higher grade, clinical stage, and Ki-67 in HR-Low vs. HR-Int or HR-High groups (Table 1). Patients with HR-Low and HR-Int BC were more likely to receive chemotherapy than HR-High (74%, 70% vs. 20%; p < 0.001) and the use of adjuvant endocrine therapy correlated with HR expression. Only half of patients in the HR-Low group received any endocrine therapy compared to higher rates in the HR-Int and HR-High groups (52% vs. 74%, 92%; p< 0.001). pCR rates in those receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy were significantly different by HR status, with higher pCR rates in HR-Low vs. HR-High groups (p< 0.001) (Table 2). NAC utilization significantly differed between groups. A higher proportion of patients with HR-Low BC received NAC than other HR-positive groups (p < 0.001). Additionally, there was an increased use of NAC in patients with HR-Low BC treated at academic vs. community cancer centers (p< 0.001). Conclusions: This is one of the largest real-world analyses comparing key differences in biology and practice patterns of HR-Low, HER2-negative BC. Consistent with prior studies, we report HR-Low BC to be a rare and distinct subtype with higher pCR rates compared to HR-High BC. Practice patterns show wide variability in utilization of neoadjuvant chemotherapy and endocrine therapy for these patients. Future studies should address this disparity and enhance representation of patients with HR-Low BC in clinical trials to improve long-term outcomes. Table 1: Patient demographics Table 2: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy response amongst differing HR expression levels Citation Format: Dionisia Quiroga, Michael Grimm, Julie Stephens, Kai Johnson, Nicole Williams, Preeti K. Sudheendra, Mathew A. Cherian, Daniel Stover, Ashley C. Pariser, Margaret Gatti-Mays, Robert Wesolowski, Jose G. Bazan, Sasha Beyer, Ko Un Park, Bridget Oppong, Bhuvaneswari Ramaswamy, Julia White, Sachin R. Jhawar, Sagar Sardesai. Impact of low hormone receptor expression on neoadjuvant chemotherapy response and patterns of care in early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer: a US National Cancer Database analysis [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr P4-02-17.

Thermal physiology and psychophysics are complex and nuanced, with significant variability between individuals. Wearable devices have the potential to offer customizable microclimate control. However, individual experiences with different supplemental heating strategies are likely to vary considerably in unconstrained environments. The physiological responses, psychophysical effects, and qualitative experiences of participants using five readily available heating strategies were collected in a quasi-field study environment ( n=17). Although all devices maintained or increased fingertip temperature, effects observed from controlled studies of thermal physiology are not clearly seen. Physiological, perceptual, and experiential data are presented, exploring heating technologies and thermal comfort in typical indoor environments.

This article closely examines oral histories of b-boys Aby and Kwikstep, b-girl Baby Love, and poppers Cartoon and Wiggles, and the social choreography necessary to navigate the streets of the South Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s that has an indelible link to four core battling principles as articulated by 1970s b-boy Trac2: survivalism, strategizing, nomadism, and illusionism. By comparing and contrasting foundational elements of battling techniques with life lessons about growing up in the Bronx, the comparison signals the impact of “outlaw culture” within hip-hop, and the counterdominant sensibilities taught in battle cyphers.

In this paper, a robotic platform is designed to allow a telescope mounted on this platform to track stars. To avoid the use of conic sections, a 3-degree of freedom robotic platform is proposed. With this design, however, the solution to the inverse kinematics problem defines the plane of the platform - not the location of specific points on the robotic platform as is traditionally done with inverse kinematics. Once the inverse-kinematics problem is solved, the equatorial platform is built, tested, and shown to track Jupiter over a span of two minutes.

This article introduces the concept of badass femininity, a marginalized femininity captured in the performances of contemporary b-girls (women breakdancers) and blues women of the 1920s. The author uses the work of Hortense Spillers, Maria Lugones, Chela Sandoval, and Angela Davis to argue that non-normative gender performances from the fringes of society are necessary consequence of histories of enslavement, genocide, and exploitation. Badass femininity is a one version of a multiplicity of femininities. It re-signifies qualities typically associated with masculinity through women whose work in dance and music move these gender performances from the margins to center stage.

In this paper, a modified printed quasi-yagi antenna is presented. In particular, meander open complementary split-ring resonator (MOCSRR) elements are introduced to the design of a printed quasi-yagi antenna to reduce the operating frequency ƒ o . It is shown that ƒ o of the antenna can be reduced by 35% by designing the MOCSRR elements to resonate at approximately 2ƒ o . This lower operating frequency is achieved by taking advantage of the inductive properties of the MOCSRR elements and not increasing the size of the antenna layout. Furthermore, discussion on designing a printed dipole with MOCSRR elements embedded in the layout is presented.