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"Armstrong, Melanie"
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Germ wars : the politics of microbes and America's landscape of fear
\"The United States government has spent billions of dollars to prepare the nation for bioterrorism despite the extremely rare occurrence of biological attacks in modern American history. Germ Wars argues that bioterrorism has emerged as a prominent fear in the modern age, arising with the production of new forms of microbial nature and changing practices of warfare. In the last century, revolutions in biological science have made visible a vast microscopic world, and in this same era we have watched the rise of a global war on terror. Germ Wars demonstrates that these movements did not occur separately but are instead deeply entwined--new scientific knowledge of microbes makes possible new mechanisms of war. Whether to eliminate disease or create weapons, the work to harness and control germs and the history of these endeavors provide an important opportunity for investigating how biological natures shape modern life. Germ Wars aims to convince students and scholars as well as policymakers and activists that the ways in which bioterrorism has been produced have consequences for how people live in this world of unspecifiable risks\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Downregulation of natural killer cell–activating ligand CD155 by human cytomegalovirus UL141
Natural killer (NK) cells are crucial in the control of cytomegalovirus infections in mice and humans. Here we show that the viral UL141 gene product has an immunomodulatory function that is associated with low-passage strains of human cytomegalovirus. UL141 mediated efficient protection of cells against killing by a wide range of human NK cell populations, including interferon-α-stimulated bulk cultures, polyclonal NK cell lines and most NK cell clones tested. Evasion of NK cell killing was mediated by UL141 blocking surface expression of CD155, which was previously identified as a ligand for NK cell-activating receptors CD226 (DNAM-1) and CD96 (TACTILE). The breadth of the UL141-mediated effect indicates that CD155 has a key role in regulating NK cell function.
Journal Article
Security and Sacrifice
The sun had not yet risen when a hundred tourists boarded two luxury coaches idling in an Albuquerque Walmart parking lot. It was the first Saturday in April, one of the two days per year when the White Sands Missile Range opens its gates to allow visitors to see the Trinity Site, where the first nuclear device exploded in 1945. As we pulled onto the interstate and the suburban lights gave way to starry desert skies, a subdued chatter took over the bus. The travelers were nuclear hobbyists of many varieties, including employees of Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories
Book Chapter
When the wilderness burns: an analysis of current fire management and the case for prescribed fire in designated wilderness in the United States
Background
United States wilderness areas face increasing challenges from altered fire regimes and climate change, and land managers face ever more complex decisions about fire use. While federal policies permit various fire management strategies in wilderness, including prescribed fire, managers predominantly rely on suppression despite broad support to restore and sustain fire's natural role in these landscapes. Consequently, wilderness fire regimes continue to diverge from historical norms. To better understand wilderness fire management, we used surveys and interviews with wilderness and fire managers to assess current fire management strategies, how they differ in wilderness versus non-wilderness areas, and the rationales behind wilderness fire management decisions.
Results
Respondents identified public perception, resource availability, and administrative hurdles as primary barriers to prescribed fire and managed wildfire. Notably, these constraints stem more from implementation challenges than from wilderness policy restrictions. Though prescribed fire is rarely used in wilderness, research participants expressed strong support for its expanded application.
Conclusions
Adequate plans, policies, and practices must accompany wilderness fire management ideals. Addressing risk aversion among decision-makers and building public trust will also benefit wilderness fire management. While allowing natural ignitions to burn in wilderness might be viewed as ideal, many wilderness areas may require active management through prescribed fire to restore historical conditions before natural fire regimes could safely resume. Our research demonstrates the need for wilderness fire management that balances sustaining wilderness qualities with the realities of historical fire regimes that were shaped in part by Indigenous people and challenges posed by legacies of fire exclusion compounded by a changing climate.
Journal Article
Untrammeling the wilderness: restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire
Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the USA’s landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of
trammeling
. Through a framework that recognizes
four orders of trammeling
, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire exclusion on the natural conditions of fire-adapted wilderness ecosystems. In order to
un
trammel more than a century of fire exclusion, the implementation of active programs of intentional burning may be necessary across some wilderness landscapes. We also suggest greater recognition and accommodation of Indigenous cultural burning, a practice which Tribes used to shape and maintain many fire-adapted landscapes for thousands of years before Euro-American colonization, including landscapes today designated as wilderness. Human-ignited fire may be critical to restoring the natural character of fire-adapted wilderness landscapes and can also support ecocultural restoration efforts sought by Indigenous peoples.
Journal Article
A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado
A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado (www.coloradonuclearatlas.org) is a digital public humanities project that documents and interprets nuclear geographies and legacies of the Cold War. The essays, issue briefs, artworks, and interpretive works that compose the Atlas engage with nuclear materials and ecologies through different approaches, engagements, and scales of operation in relationship to nuclear geographies. Creators Shiloh R. Krupar and Sarah Kanouse use the atlas format to provide context to thousands of nuclear sites that dot the map of Colorado, showing how the landscape and its maps were created over time.
Sarah Kanouse is an interdisciplinary artist and writer
Book Chapter