Blackbody Research Articles

Sexual Objectification Racial Microaggressions Amplify the Positive Relation Between Sexual Assault and Posttraumatic Stress Among Black Women

Black women report higher rates of adult sexual assault (ASA) and sexual objectification compared to White women. Sexual objectification serves as a reminder that Black women's bodies are viewed as sexual objects based on racist/sexist ideologies, though trauma research rarely includes race-specific stressors. In this study, we examined sexual objectification racial microaggressions as a moderator of the relation between ASA severity and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among Black women. Data were collected from 129 Black college and community women ( Mage = 33.84). ASA severity was associated with greater overall PTSD symptoms and symptom clusters. The interaction between ASA severity and sexual objectification microaggressions was associated with greater PTSD symptoms and the PTSD symptom cluster, negative alterations in cognition and mood. ASA severity was associated with PTSD at mean and high sexual objectification racial microaggressions but not low levels. Associations with other PTSD symptom clusters were not significant. Findings suggest sexual objectification racial microaggressions amplify the positive relation between ASA and PTSD symptoms, specifically symptoms related to cognition and mood. It is essential that clinicians assess for race-specific stressors during trauma interventions to help reduce mental health disparities. Post-assault interventions should be tailored with multiculturally sensitive practices to address the ways racial discrimination can exacerbate trauma symptoms.

Structural optimization design of BIW using NSGA-III and entropy weighted TOPSIS methods

Multi-objective optimization is always a difficult and hot problem for the static and dynamic performance and lightweight optimization design of a body-in-white (BIW). In this regard, a hybrid method coupled with NSGA-III and entropy weighted TOPSIS methods was put forward here. Effects of each design variable on the BIW performance was studied by means of the contribution method so as to optimize various design variables. Further, an experimental design was carried out by means of a radial basis function model to approximate each performance index of the automotive body. On the base of that, a comprehensive method where the Pareto frontier is searched by means of NSGA-III while the optimal solution is selected by means of the entropy weighted TOPSIS method was proposed based on lightweight, static and dynamic performances to analyze BIW performances to determine the contradictory optimal solution among various BIW factors. Afterward, our numerical verifications demonstrate that the BIW performances are improved significantly so that it can be feasible to optimize static and dynamic BIW performances and the lightweight performance of the BIW can be guaranteed accordingly.

Caste and Black intergenerational racial trauma in the United States of America.

The United States (U.S.) racial caste system and White dominance began in slavery, culminating in Black intergenerational racial trauma. Until recently, Black intergenerational racial trauma largely was ignored by family scholars and therapists. Given that Black intergenerational racial trauma is inseparable from racial caste in the United States, it should be regarded as a wider, systemic problem, requiring intervention at the micro (e.g., family) and macro (e.g., society) levels. The U.S. dominant White society's investment in conserving racial caste furthers the ideological (e.g., political) and sentimental (e.g., democratic ideals) nullification of Black intergenerational racial trauma. Therefore, Black intergenerational racial trauma is often disenfranchised and can hamper Black people's experience of racial trauma as a collective. As passive bystanders, family scholars and therapists are co-conspirators in the long, enduring suffering of Black people. As advocates, family scholars and therapists are called upon to name the racial hierarchy in the United States as a caste system and to advance Black humanization. Specifically, Wilkerson's (Caste: The origins of our discontents. Random House, 2020) notion of the U.S. racial hierarchy as a functioning caste system frames the discussion of Black intergenerational racial trauma and includes the following topics: Black racial trauma, disenfranchised Black intergenerational racial trauma, collective Black intergenerational racial trauma, Black intergenerational racial trauma and the U.S. academy (traditionally White institutions of higher learning), history and its impact on Black intergenerational racial trauma, the Black body and racial trauma, intersectionality and the U.S. caste system, and collective hope and resilience.

The domestication of a problematic hair: The black body as a territory in dispute in the novel-essay by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida

Resumo Este estudo propõe uma leitura do romance-ensaio Esse cabelo, da escritora angolana Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. Em termos mais específicos, pretende-se demonstrar que o cabelo afro de Mila, personagem narradora da obra, pode ser compreendido como uma arena de disputa de questões identitárias que envolvem um tensionamento e um trânsito contínuos entre os polos fixos do colonizador e do colonizado. Para tanto, serão discutidas algumas concepções teóricas referentes à negritude e ao racismo propostas por nomes como bell hooks (2019), Claudia Rankine (2021), Frantz Fanon (2020), Grada Kilomba (2019) e Ingrid Banks (2000), bem como reflexões acerca do feminino desenvolvidas por pensadoras como Lucía Guerra (1995), Rita Laura Segato (2014) e Sherry Ortner (1979).

Coppélia's Human-Objects: Winding Up Racialized Automata on the Ballet Stage

This article focuses on how dance companies have restaged three of the original automata characters from the ballet Coppélia (Arthur Saint-Léon, 1870), described as the “Negro,” the “Moor,” and the “Chinaman.” In conversation with scholarship on the racialization of objects and the object-ification of humans, I claim these characters embody and reenact the ontological effects of slavery and colonialism, in which notions of human and object collapse into one another. I further argue that such processes vary among the roles, illuminating ways the white colonialist perspective constructs the imagined Chinese body differently than the Black body through human-object relations. As a contribution to discussions within the ballet world surrounding the use of blackface and yellowface, this article exposes how ballet choreography both participates in and reveals object-centered acts of racism through embodiment practices.

Satyendra Nath Bose: quantum statistics to Bose-Einstein condensation

Satyendra Nath (S.N.) Bose is one of the great Indian scientists. His remarkable work on the black body radiation or derivation of Planck’s law led to quantum statistics, in particular, the statistics of photon. Albert Einstein applied Bose’s idea to a gas made of atoms and predicted a new state of matter now called Bose-Einstein condensate. It took 70 years to observe the predicted condensation phenomenon in the laboratory. With a brief introduction to the formative period of Professor Bose, this research survey begins with the founding works on quantum statistics and, subsequently, provides a brief account of the series of events terminating in the experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation. We also provide two simple examples to visualize the role of synthetic spin-orbit coupling in a quasi-one-dimensional condensate with attractive atom-atom interaction.

Black Transmission: Toward a Hieroglyph-Analysis

This meditation is an experimentation with Hortense Spiller’s concept of psychoanalytics. It considers the hieroglyph as a repetitive and enacted (but unrepresentable) force of historical trauma marking black bodies and passed between them generationally (much like the Lacanian object a). Reading the Lacanian pass and erotogenic zones as heuristic features of the hieroglyph, this meditation presents black nihilism as an analytic setting enabling the hieroglyph to speak its ineffable repetition, rather than just a repertoire of hedonistic pleasures and destructive behaviors as described in black optimism.

Zora Neale Hurston, Anthropometrist

Abstract: Zora Neale Hurston's academic scholarship began in physical anthropology, measuring Black bodies and relating their statistical data to racial type. While Hurston's critics have understood her subsequent work in fiction and folklore as fleeing this troubling research, this essay reconsiders her work in anthropometry as well as the narratives of embodiment that she curated in Mules and Men . Employing what Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks theorizes as "a slow composition" (111) of "self as a body," this rereading presents Hurston as an acute critic of eugenic interpretive methods whose writings anticipate the racism built into contemporary facial recognition algorithms.

Police Violence as Containment of Black Bodies during Urban Renewal: A Spatial Analysis of Civilian Deaths by Police in Florida

abstract: This study presents a geospatial analysis of police killings within two areas in Florida over a twenty-year period. Fatalities were mapped against social and economic characteristics of neighborhoods to ascertain if police violence ending in civilian death was concentrated in areas with high-minority and low-income populations, and those areas in proximity to gentrifying neighborhoods. We evaluated the theory that police violence against minority residents serves as a process of containment and ultimately supports the continued generation of wealth by a specific sector of society through the process of gentrification. The cycle of destruction and renewal in the urban landscape is deeply intertwined with processes of capital accumulation, class differentiation, and racial subordination. Both the West Florida and Southeast Florida areas contained a significantly higher proportion of fatal encounters occurring within tracts that were eligible to gentrify than in tracts that were in the process of gentrifying. Fort Lauderdale in particular had little overlap despite containing concentrated hotspots of incidents in combination with high-minority and low–NSES tracts. This same pattern is apparent in the Lakeland area in west Florida. Our findings are consistent with Laniyonu's observation that police interactions tend to increase in tracts just outside of gentrified areas, but seldom within them.

Haunted Flesh and Chaos Theory: Gender, State Violence and the Afterlife of Slave Rebellions

Abstract: This article explores the gendered afterlife of slave rebellions, building on historical and sociological scholarship that takes death and haunting as central analytics. It focuses on a moment of state repression in Cuba in 1844, in the aftermath of two substantive slave insurgencies, and the movement of enslaved and free people of color known as La Escalera. While a voluminous colonial record has documented the spectacle of public punishment in 1844, I trace an invisible, largely unarchived form of punishment that haunted Black people who were forced to witness acts of torture and execution, stalking their psychic worlds. Alongside the masculinization of this public punishment, this article explores a phenomenon that I call encumberment, which encompasses the absorption of state terror on the most intimate of levels; the act of contending and coping with torture's impact on wider communities; and the labor of rebuilding and caring for traumatized loved ones—all of which were deeply gendered processes. Yet if haunting was a central feature of moments like 1844, these moments were also characterized by a counter-haunting, illustrating how the aftermath of slave insurgencies also stalked and plagued the colonial state, and disrupted the fantasy of the rebellion's undoing. Encompassing the memory of collective Black rage, the colonial pursuit of public tranquility, the care for traumatized Black bodies and the attention to the dead, counter-haunting became central to the afterlife of 1844. The deep entanglement of haunting and counterlife was a critical legacy of this and other slave rebellions.

Racial Dis/Embodiment: A Discourse Theoretical Analysis of University International Offices’ Websites

This paper explores the relationship between embodiment and visual representations of racial diversity on university campuses. The study analyzes the visuals found on the websites of international student offices at all twelve Swiss universities. Using a discourse theoretical approach as a basis for qualitative document analysis, the paper identifies examples of racially embodied and disembodied presence and absence that govern context-specific forms of representation (Hook, 2008; Lentin, 2019). These findings suggest a novel interdisciplinary understanding of Whiteness in Switzerland that characterizes racialized space as not only characterized by the presence of White bodies but also their (partial) absence. Furthermore, this research brings the undertheorized aspect of race to the fore within studies of international higher education, particularly in the underrepresented topic of visual discourses in Europe. Finally, the paper discusses the need for nuanced understandings of diversity representation in education.

Recent Development of Hot-Rolled AHSS for Lightweight Chassis

The development of ultra-high-strength automotive steel sheets for lightweight automobiles is still an effective strategy from the material point of view. In the case of cold-rolled steels for BIW(Body In White), it has been a long time since steel with 980MPa of UTS or higher were commercialized, and the use of 1.2GPa and 1.5GPa of cold-rolled steels is also increasing. However, in the case of hot-rolled steel for chassis, the increase in strength is not as fast as that of cold-rolled steel, because chassis parts are the lower structure of a vehicle and are very sensitive to durability.

House of Hunger

Abstract In South Africa, the politicisation of COVID-19 widened structural fissures, unearthed underlying inequalities, and exposed the ‘rainbow nation’ fallacy. The pandemic highlighted the struggles faced by marginalised households whose income streams were wiped out during lockdown. Public unrest emerged in townships and manifested as food protests, which undermined the perception of South Africa as a food secure country. Whilst the state and mainstream media dismissed these protests as criminal incidences, a contextualised analysis exposes the desperation of certain groups’ experiences of hunger and disillusionment in Black South African townships. Framing ‘food as political’, this paper interrogates the weaponisation of food by the government, which violently used state security forces to subdue marginalised populations. The paper draws on Dambudzo Marechera’s 1978 novella House of Hunger to condemn the gendered and militarised state response to ‘starving black bodies.’ It exposes the ruthlessness of how the state worked with mainstream media to protect corporate capital and foreign investments in the name of ‘security’ and ‘wellbeing,’ and explores the ultimate ‘logic’ of food protests in South African urban areas. In conclusion, the paper argues that the mainstream media hyper-visualised Black bodies as unruly, criminal, and therefore disposable, in order to dismiss their human right to food.

A new species of social wasp from Madagascar with an inverted nest architecture (Hymenoptera, Vespidae)

Ropalidia jemmaesp. nov. is described from the protected Ankafobe evergreen forest in central Madagascar. This species is characterized by a variable black and green body colour pattern and a unique nest architecture within the genus Ropalidia. The nests of this species have an inverted cell opening orientation that exposes the cell bottoms outwardly, mimics the tree bark, and provides excellent visual nest concealment.

A scoping review and index of body stimuli in psychological science.

Naturalistic body stimuli are necessary for understanding many aspects of human psychology, yet there are no centralized databases of body stimuli. Furthermore, there are a high number of independently developed stimulus sets lacking in standardization and reproducibility potential, and a general lack of organization, contributing to issues of both replicability and generalizability in body-related research. We conducted a comprehensive scoping review to index and explore existing naturalistic whole-body stimuli. Our research questions were as follows: (1) What sets of naturalistic human whole-body stimuli are present in the literature? And (2) On what factors (e.g., demographics, emotion expression) do these stimuli vary? To be included, stimulus sets had to (1) include human bodies as stimuli; (2) be photographs, videos, or other depictions of real human bodies (not computer generated, drawn, etc.); (3) include the whole body (defined as torso, arms, and legs); and (4) could include edited images, but still had to be recognizable as human bodies. We identified a relatively large number of existing stimulus sets (N = 79) which offered relative variability in terms of main manipulated factors and the degree of visual information included (i.e., inclusion of heads and/or faces). However, stimulus sets were demographically homogenous, skewed towards White, young adult, and female bodies. We identified significant issues in reporting and availability practices, posing a challenge to the generalizability, reliability, and reproducibility of body-related research. Accordingly, we urge researchers to adopt transparent and accessible practices and to take steps to diversify body stimuli.

South African Food Studies

Abstract Introducing a special issue of Matatu titled “South African Food Studies,” this essay argues for the importance of food as a lens for understanding contemporary culture and society. More specifically, the essay advocates for recentring Global South contexts—in this case South Africa—in a ‘food studies’ conversation that has often been dominated by the American academy; it also underscores the vitality of the humanities, qualitative social sciences, and creative arts for transcending reductive ‘food security’ paradigms often applied in the Global South. The essay first examines the short story “Water No Get Enemy” by South African writer Fred Khumalo, introducing how a focus on food and eating can illuminate globalisation, xenophobia, resource conflict, and environmental change. From here, the authors introduce the evolving field of ‘food studies,’ then outline the eight academic, personal, and creative pieces that constitute this special issue, all authored by contributors from the African continent. Issues raised include the gendered and queer politics of food, breastmilk, and soil; the ongoing coloniality of neoliberal approaches to food inequality; the burdening of Black bodies; the role of so-called ‘ethnic restaurants’ in building transnational and multi-ethnic communities; and the heightened stakes of food access during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A comparative study of flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy for upper urinary tract stones in patients with prior urosepsis following emergency drainage via retrograde ureteral stent or percutaneous nephrostomy

BackgroundPatients with urosepsis associated with upper urinary tract stones require further stone management after emergency drainage.ObjectiveTo evaluate the safety and efficacy of elective flexible ureteroscopic lithotripsy (F-URSL) for upper urinary tract stones in patients with prior urosepsis who have undergone emergency drainage using retrograde ureteral stent(RUS) or percutaneous nephrostomy (PCN).MethodBetween January 2017 and December 2021, clinical data were collected for 102 patients who underwent elective F-URSL following emergency drainage for urosepsis caused by upper ureteral or renal stones. The patients were categorized into two groups based on the drainage method used: the RUS group and the PCN group. The collected data included patient demographics, stone parameters, infection recovery after emergency drainage, and clinical outcomes post F-URSL. Subsequently, the data underwent statistical analysis.ResultsA total of 102 patients were included in the statistical analysis, with 58 (56.86%) in the RUS group and 44 (43.14%) in the PCN group. Among the patients, 84 (82.35%) were female and 18 (17.65%) were male, with an average age of 59.36 years. Positive urine cultures were observed in 71 (69.61%) patients. Successful drainage was achieved in all patients in both groups, and there were no significant differences in the time required for normalization of white blood cell count (WBC) and body temperature following drainage. Additionally, all patients underwent F-URSL successfully, and no statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of operative time, stone-free rates, postoperative fever, and postoperative hospital stay.ConclusionBoth RUS and PCN have been established as effective approaches for managing urosepsis caused by upper urinary tract stones. Furthermore, the impact of these two drainage methods on the subsequent management of stones through elective F-URSL has shown consistent outcomes.

Heat-Transfer Analysis of the Promotion of the CO2 Reduction Performance of a P4O10/TiO2 Photocatalyst Using a Black Body Material

Since photocatalytic reactions are surface reactions, enhancing gas movement around the photocatalyst could improve photocatalytic CO2 reduction performance. A new approach using black body material to enhance the gas movement around the photocatalyst based on the natural thermosiphon movement of gases around a photocatalyst has been proposed and confirmed experimentally, but the heat-transfer mechanism of the phenomena has not yet been clarified. The aim of this study is to clarify the corresponding heat-transfer mechanism. This study calculated the temperature of the CO2/NH3 gas mixture around a P4O10/TiO2 photocatalyst using the heat-transfer formula. No difference was found between the temperature increase (Tg) from the temperature at the beginning of the CO2 reduction experiment (Tini) and the temperature of the CO2/NH3 gas mixture measured experimentally via thermocouple (Te) under the following illumination conditions: a Xe lamp with visible light (VIS) + infrared light (IR) and IR only. The heat-transfer model proposed in this study predicts Tg well under illumination from a Xe lamp with VIS + IR as well as under IR illumination only. On the other hand, the difference found between Tg and Te was as large as 10 °C under illumination from a Xe lamp with ultraviolet light (UV) + VIS + IR.

Development of Two-Color pyrometry for flame impingement on oxidized metal surfaces

Measuring the temperature on a metal surface exposed to flame impingement is valuable for studying heat transfer. In this study, a non-intrusive two-color pyrometry was developed. It utilized visible light cameras to measure the two-dimensional temperature distribution on different metal surfaces. The experiment involved measuring the temperature distribution of metals (stainless steel, titanium, molybdenum) ranging from 700 °C to 1200 °C under flame impingement conditions. Thermocouple measurements were used as a reference for accuracy and uncertainty assessment. Two monochrome visible-light cameras equipped with optical filters at wavelengths of 750 nm and 905 nm captured different signal intensities corresponding to relative radiation temperatures. Calibration using a black body furnace at multiple temperature points was performed to enhance measurement accuracy. The variation in correction factor was assessed for shutter speeds ranging from 0.01 s to 0.03 s. An uncertainty analysis accounted for factors such as the grey body assumption, monochromatic wavelength assumption, and thermal radiation sources, and the respective uncertainties for these factors were 4.72 %, 2.5 %, and 1.02 %. Despite the presence of severe oxidation layers on the surfaces being measured, the two-color pyrometer successfully detected surface temperatures within an acceptable margin of error; the maximum relative error between the pyrometer and thermocouples was less than 4 %. This paper presents a technique for measuring temperature that produces a two-dimensional temperature distribution. Additionally, this method mitigates the effects of changes in surface emissivity due to temperature or materials.

Revitalizing pond culture system: Harnessing the power of composite nanopeptide C[sbnd]I20, 1,3-1,6-β-glucan, and anthocyanidin biotherapy as an antibiotic substitute for efficient management of bacterial diseases in bullfrogs

Bacterial diseases in aquaculture ponds have significant negative effects on sustainable development. Antibiotic resistance in aquatic pathogens has reduced the effectiveness of traditional treatments. To address this, composite additives that boost the natural defense system are being explored. In this study, we focused on four common symptoms in bullfrog ponds: amyosthenia, black body color, crooked head, and pythiosis. We also observed overlapping symptoms such as amyosthenia + crooked head and black body color + pythiosis. The overall incidence rate of these symptoms was 85.6%, with Aeromonas hydrophila and Elizabethkingia miricola identified as the responsible pathogens. To treat bullfrog bacterial diseases, we used two treatments: florfenicol (FF) at 20 mg/Kg and a composite I20 (CI) containing nanopeptide CI20 (2 g/Kg), β-glucan (1 g/Kg), and anthocyanidin (1 g/Kg). We implemented a staged therapy approach, comprising initial assessment, self-cure intervention, and continuous treatment stages, along with continuous monitoring to assess the effectiveness and usage protocol of CI. In the initial therapy stage, oral CI or florfenicol improved body color and rapidly reduced morbidity rate and daily mortality rate. CI biological agent exerted anti-bacterial infection by improving mucosal barrier, antioxidant enzyme activity (T-AOC and TSOD), and innate immunity index (LZM activity, leukocyte number). The CI treatment demonstrated significant reductions in tissue injury (intestine, liver, spleen) and tissue bacterial load. Following the stage therapy, the CI group exhibited lower morbidity and daily mortality rates compared to the FF group. Additionally, the total protection rate of the CI group surpassed that of the FF and control groups during the stage therapy. The antibiotic resistance and drug resistance genes (FIoR and FexA) and virulence genes (HxlR, ClpP, OmpA, and FlaA) in A. hydrophila and E. mirabilis were markedly induced by florfenicol treatment, respectively. In continuing therapy stage (42 days), the morbidity, protection rate, and daily mortality of the CI group were better than that of the FF group. In conclusion, composite I20 biotherapy effectively treats the bacterial disease of bullfrogs in pond system, providing a prospectively novel strategy for controlling bacterial disease in aquaculture.