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In this paper we use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how death investigations in Los Angeles County jails disproportionately naturalize death among Black and Latino incarcerated people. Our study is based on an assessment of 58 autopsies, coroner investigator narratives, and toxicology reports produced between 2009 and 2018. We found that the Medical Examiner frequently arrived at natural or undetermined death determinations that minimized the culpability of carceral staff for loss of life that occurred within county jail. In our dataset, Black people were disproportionately classified as natural. Undetermined deaths were almost exclusively Latino. More than 75% of the cases in our study were deaths that occurred before standing trial. Our findings reveal how biomedical knowledge about incarcerated Black and Latino people is used to erase the life-diminishing effects of punishment, neglect, and maltreatment that are central to the project of mass incarceration.

Quantifying the colors of objects is useful in a wide range of applications, including medical diagnosis, agricultural monitoring, and food safety. Accurate colorimetric measurement of objects is a laborious process normally performed through a color matching test in the laboratory. A promising alternative is to use digital images for colorimetric measurement, due to their portability and ease of use. However, image-based measurements suffer from errors caused by the non-linear image formation process and unpredictable environmental lighting. Solutions to this problem often perform relative color correction among multiple images through discrete color reference boards, which may yield biased results due to the lack of continuous observation. In this paper, we propose a smartphone-based solution, that couples a designated color reference board with a novel color correction algorithm, to achieve accurate and absolute color measurements. Our color reference board contains multiple color stripes with continuous color sampling at the sides. A novel correction algorithm is proposed to utilize a first-order spatial varying regression model to perform the color correction, which leverages both the absolute color magnitude and scale to maximize the correction accuracy. The proposed algorithm is implemented as a "human-in-the-loop" smartphone application, where users are guided by an augmented reality scheme with a marker tracking module to take images at an angle that minimizes the impact of non-Lambertian reflectance. Our experimental results show that our colorimetric measurement is device independent and can reduce up to 90% color variance for images collected under different lighting conditions. In the application of reading pH values from test papers, we show that our system performs 200% better than human reading. The designed color reference board, the correction algorithm, and our augmented reality guiding approach form an integrated system as a novel solution to measure color with increased accuracy. This technique has the flexibility to improve color reading performance in systems beyond existing applications, evidenced by both qualitative and quantitative experiments on example applications such as pH-test reading.

In this paper we resituate discussions of community-based science beyond the emancipatory rhetoric of democratization, creative commons, and the blurring of the bulwarks of expertise to include consideration of the potentially constrictive instrumentalist scientific idiom produced by and through these practices. Collectively, we apply four interrelated insights already available within STS literature to the chemical ecologies that we are immersed within and perpetuate: 1) projects engaged in the use of science for justice claims cannot fully escape reproducing hierarchies of knowledge-power, type, and knower; 2) the pursuit of science in these instances has the potential to foreclose imaginative horizons of “how” and “why” in favor of “how much”; 3) the pursuit of more data sets the stage for adversarial epistemological encounters that can lead to entrenchment rather than resolution; and 4) these practices have the resultant effect of defining and confining (democratic) participation to one in which data become an essential gateway to having a voice. Following from this, we ask: what are the approaches to apprehending the environment that might not so easily boil down to binaries of benevolence or harm, or to renderings of uncertainty confined to the specifications of statistical confidence intervals, that in turn justify further scientific inquiry? We gesture towards an expansive conversation that we call “inviting apprehension.” Such approaches beckon multiple strata of apprehending the environment to provoke public inquiry and intervention into the questions that undergird what we assume are the problems of today and the avenues through which we must engage them.

Chronic domestic chemical exposures unfold over protracted timelines and with low velocity. In this article I argue that such microscopic encounters between bodies and toxicants are most readily sensed by less nameable and more diffuse sensory practices. The apprehension of conventionally insensible toxic exposures is informed by sustained attention to barely perceptible alterations of somatic function and atmosphere. Slight biochemical impressions, which at first appear simply meaningless or puzzling, accumulate in the bodies of the exposed and reorient them to the molecular constituents of the air and the domestic infrastructure from which such chemicals emanate. Through the articulation of these small corrosive happenings, residents of contaminated homes can accumulate minute changes to body and atmosphere across time and space in a process I call the “chemical sublime,” which elevates minor enfeebling encounters into events that stir ethical consideration and potential intervention. The chemical sublime is a late industrial experience that inverts an Enlightenment-era, yet still dominant, conception of the sublime. Across authoritative and questioned bodies, companion species and humans, this essay asks: in what ways do diffuse sensory practices generate knowledge of, attention to, and engagements with the chemical world?

In this paper we use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how death investigations in Los Angeles County jails disproportionately naturalize death among Black and Latino incarcerated people. Our study is based on an assessment of 58 autopsies, coroner investigator narratives, and toxicology reports produced between 2009 and 2018. We found that the Medical Examiner frequently arrived at natural or undetermined death determinations that minimized the culpability of carceral staff for loss of life that occurred within county jail. In our dataset, Black people were disproportionately classified as natural. Undetermined deaths were almost exclusively Latino. More than 75% of the cases in our study were deaths that occurred before standing trial. Our findings reveal how biomedical knowledge about incarcerated Black and Latino people is used to erase the life‐diminishing effects of punishment, neglect, and maltreatment that are central to the project of mass incarceration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore and contextualize changes at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the first 6 months of the Trump administration, arguing that its pro-business direction is enabling a form of regulatory capture. We draw on news articles, public documents, and a rapid response, multisited interview study of current and retired EPA employees to (1) document changes associated with the new administration, (2) contextualize and compare the current pro-business makeover with previous ones, and (3) publicly convey findings in a timely manner. The lengthy, combined experience of interviewees with previous Republican and Democratic administrations made them valuable analysts for assessing recent shifts at the Scott Pruitt-led EPA and the extent to which these shifts steer the EPA away from its stated mission to "protect human and environmental health." Considering the extent of its probusiness leanings in the absence of mitigating power from the legislative branch, we conclude that its regulatory capture has become likely--more so than at similar moments in the agency's 47-year history. The public and environmental health consequences of regulatory capture of the EPA will probably be severe and far-reaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motor units are known to display type-specific differences in passive and active electrical properties, and attempts to predict motor unit type based on the measurement of membrane properties have been rather successful. Quantitative models of motoneurons have also grown in complexity and their predictive power is predicated upon the accurate description of basic membrane properties. This paper presents results from a modeling study which sought to specify a small and simple set of "design rules" that motoneurons might obey during type-specific differentiation.

Motoneurons are known to possess the latent ability to amplify their inputs in a voltage-dependent manner. Additionally, this synaptic amplification is known to be under neuromodulatory control. This paper presents results from a computer modeling study for one possible mechanism, termed electrotonic compression, which could underlie this behavior.