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"Luke, Elmer"
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A bento box of horrors; Out: A Novel, Natsuo Kirino , Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, Kodansha International: 360 pp., $22.95
As the murder investigation unfolds, [Masako Katori] assumes the responsibility for the coverup. She may be just another worker on the bento-making line, but she has a brain and a fierce sense of self-worth. She is uncowed by authority, police or otherwise. She is intent, for reasons not immediately understandable to herself, on doing this job right. It becomes a point of pride. And it is through Masako's eyes, and heart, that the story is now told. The story is told in layers of complexity, at times with \"Rashomon\" deftness, with a view into personal lives and social dimensions that is both illuminating and unsettling -- not unlike, say, the work of Patricia Highsmith. Kirino's is not the narrative of happy, fulfilled middle-class women: \"Once, a while ago, Masako had compared her career to an empty, spinning washing machine... She could see now why she'd crossed over the line. She hadn't understood that it was despair... If they came now and arrested her, they'd never be able to find out why she'd done it.\" Kirino's depiction of relationships and human needs is unsparing. The weak need help and pity, but they can be despicable. The strong, in their attempt to escape life's dead ends, are tragic, but it is better to be strong. Stupidity is irreversible -- and fatal. So is victimhood. Women in particular have not the luxury of inaction. Society deals them a lousy hand, but if they are to draw even (forget about winning), they must be resolute.
Newspaper Article
Vector species-specific association between natural Wolbachia infections and avian malaria in black fly populations
Artificial infection of mosquitoes with the endosymbiont bacteria
Wolbachia
can interfere with malaria parasite development. Therefore, the release of
Wolbachia
-infected mosquitoes has been proposed as a malaria control strategy. However,
Wolbachia
effects on vector competence are only partly understood, as indicated by inconsistent effects on malaria infection reported under laboratory conditions. Studies of naturally-occurring
Wolbachia
infections in wild vector populations could be useful to identify the ecological and evolutionary conditions under which these endosymbionts can block malaria transmission. Here we demonstrate the occurrence of natural
Wolbachia
infections in three species of black fly (genus
Simulium
), which is a main vector of the avian malaria parasite
Leucocytozoon
. Prevalence of
Leucocytozoon
was high (25%), but the nature and magnitude of its association with
Wolbachia
differed between black fly species.
Wolbachia
infection was positively associated with avian malaria infection in
S. cryophilum
, negatively associated in
S. aureum
, and unrelated in
S. vernum
. These differences suggest that
Wolbachia
interacts with the parasite in a vector host species-specific manner. This provides a useful model system for further study of how
Wolbachia
influences vector competence. Such knowledge, including the possibility of undesirable positive association, is required to guide endosymbiont based control methods.
Journal Article
The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER)
The Primordial Inflation Polarization ExploreR (PIPER) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to measure the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background on large angular scales. PIPER will map 85% of the sky at 200, 270, 350, and 600 GHz over a series of 8 conventional balloon flights from the northern and southern hemispheres. The first science flight will use two 32x40 arrays of backshort-under-grid transition edge sensors, multiplexed in the time domain, and maintained at 100 mK by a Continuous Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator. Front-end cryogenic Variable-delay Polarization Modulators provide systematic control by rotating linear to circular polarization at 3 Hz. Twin telescopes allow PIPER to measure Stokes I, Q, U, and V simultaneously. The telescope is maintained at 1.5 K in an LHe bucket dewar. Cold optics and the lack of a warm window permit sensitivity at the sky-background limit. The ultimate science target is a limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio of r ~ 0.007, from the reionization bump to l ~ 300. PIPER's first flight will be from the Northern hemisphere, and overlap with the CLASS survey at lower frequencies. We describe the current status of the PIPER instrument.
Paper
The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER)
The Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) is a balloon-borne cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarimeter designed to search for evidence of inflation by measuring the large-angular scale CMB polarization signal. BICEP2 recently reported a detection of B-mode power corresponding to the tensor-to-scalar ratio r = 0.2 on ~2 degree scales. If the BICEP2 signal is caused by inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs), then there should be a corresponding increase in B-mode power on angular scales larger than 18 degrees. PIPER is currently the only suborbital instrument capable of fully testing and extending the BICEP2 results by measuring the B-mode power spectrum on angular scales \\(\\theta\\) = ~0.6 deg to 90 deg, covering both the reionization bump and recombination peak, with sensitivity to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio down to r = 0.007, and four frequency bands to distinguish foregrounds. PIPER will accomplish this by mapping 85% of the sky in four frequency bands (200, 270, 350, 600 GHz) over a series of 8 conventional balloon flights from the northern and southern hemispheres. The instrument has background-limited sensitivity provided by fully cryogenic (1.5 K) optics focusing the sky signal onto four 32x40-pixel arrays of time-domain multiplexed Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers held at 140 mK. Polarization sensitivity and systematic control are provided by front-end Variable-delay Polarization Modulators (VPMs), which rapidly modulate only the polarized sky signal at 3 Hz and allow PIPER to instantaneously measure the full Stokes vector (I, Q, U, V) for each pointing. We describe the PIPER instrument and progress towards its first flight.
Paper
