Clever Ways Research Articles

How To Catch Creation by Christina Anderson

Reviewed by: How To Catch Creation by Christina Anderson Isaiah Matthew Wooden HOW TO CATCH CREATION. By Christina Anderson. Directed by Niegel Smith. Goodman Theatre Company, Chicago. Streamed, March 18, 2021. In addition to forcing most performing arts institutions around the globe to go dark for an interval previously unimaginable, the COVID crisis also challenged many of them to think expansively about ways to keep audiences engaged. Chicago’s Goodman Theatre responded to the predicament of mandated social and physical distancing by launching a streaming series called “Encore,” which aimed to grant audiences opportunities to experience several of the company’s recent productions from the comfort of their homes. Free and available on-demand, the series presented a diverse range of projects, including Goodman artistic director Robert Falls’s 2013 staging of Measure for Measure and the company’s 2014 production of Noah Haidle’s Smokefall, directed by Anne Kauffman. Perhaps most excitingly, it also featured the 2019 production of Christina Anderson’s How to Catch Creation, a sweeping contemporary drama that offers rich meditations on the complexities of life, art, creativity, inspiration, and legacy. While such themes would no doubt captivate audiences during ordinary times, they took on even greater urgency during our long season of sequestering, inviting viewers to wrestle and reckon with the conversations the play activates about the inconstancy of the spark of creation. Filmed to approximate the live theatregoing experience as best as possible, the Encore presentation provided a closer look at some of the ways the Goodman’s production brought necessary coherence to the many temporal and tonal shifts that animate Anderson’s dramaturgy. Anderson’s script toggles between the Obama years and the 1960s (with brief stops in the 1980s) to weave together the story-lines of six Black artists and thinkers living in and around a place reminiscent of San Francisco. Griffin and Tami are forty-something urbanites whose friendship has endured his wrongful conviction and twenty-five-year stint in prison, as well as her periodic bouts of insecurity about her artistic and pedagogical work. Their worlds interestingly and unexpectedly collide with a young couple in their late twenties, Stokes and Riley, who count painting, writing, graphic design, and computer programming as passions between them. A shared love for the work of Black feminist, lesbian writer G. K. Marche is what initially connects Griffin and Stokes and, later, Tami and Riley. While the fictional Marche was purportedly prolific and beloved during the height of civil rights and Black Power activism, her work has mostly fallen out of favor by the time Stokes happens upon a collection of it at a street sale. Notably sustaining Marche during her peak in the 1960s was an intense romance with a seam-stress named Natalie who, it turns out, is Griffin’s late mother. Although such confluences might read too dramaturgically convenient, Anderson finds clever and compelling ways to avoid trafficking in clichés. Indeed, when Tami and Riley begin having an affair, their feelings for each other seem as much of a surprise to them as they are to us. Anderson’s poetic dialogue and measured plotting invite her characters and audiences to remain present to all the discoveries she threads throughout her script. Click for larger view View full resolution Maya Vinice Prentiss (Riley) and Karen Aldridge (Tami) in How to Catch Creation. (Photo: Liz Lauren.) Anderson was powerfully aided in this effort at the Goodman by the skillful direction of Niegel Smith and a dynamic cast that included both company veterans—Karen Aldridge (Tami), Jasmine Bracey (Natalie), Bernard Gilbert (Stokes), and Keith Randolph Smith (Griffin)—and newcomers to its stages—Ayanna Bria Bakari (Natalie) and Maya Vinice Prentiss (Riley). Aldridge and Smith’s chemistry was especially palpable onscreen. The tender relationship they crafted for Griffin and Tami provided a vital anchor throughout the show, bringing necessary seriousness and levity to the play’s many twists and turns. An expert interpreter of August Wilson’s plays, Smith proved particularly adept at finding and mining the grace notes in Anderson’s evocative language. He brought a contemplativeness [End Page 555] and optimism to Griffin that belied the bitterness one might expect the character to...

SAT-636 The Fast-Evolving Connected Diabetes Care Landscape: Transforming Diabetes Care with Telehealth and Technology

Background and AimsRecent years have brought about a new form of “connected diabetes care,” defined as digital diabetes management systems based around (1) smartphone apps, (2) devices with built-in connectivity, and (3) remote human and automated coaching and support. Given their potential to help improve health outcomes, the rapid pace of innovation, and the dearth of information about them to guide patients, providers, and payers, we provide an update on the landscape of and trends in connected diabetes care offerings.MethodsProminent connected diabetes care providers that have published results are categorized and characterized. Similarities and differences are identified and the state of available evidence is evaluated.ResultsConnected diabetes care offerings were analyzed for items including: health conditions managed, care team composition, connected medical devices, and evidence. We expect these players will further expand offerings across chronic conditions, strive to integrate more deeply with the traditional healthcare system, deploy greater automation to promote scalability, and find clever ways to promote and support the use of continuous glucose monitoring in type 2 diabetes. Future evidence generation for this field should have more standardized methodology.ConclusionsThe field of connected diabetes care has tremendous potential to improve outcomes, but it is in its infancy in terms of awareness, uptake, and effectiveness. Further, questions regarding offerings’ abilities to support most people with diabetes sustainably remain. However, existing evidence is sufficient to support further exploration and refinement of the model as the next step in team-based diabetes care.

Radio-Silent Communications [Future Directions

The ability to open the radio-frequency (RF) spectrum in radio silence, where there is no interference with airwaves, is extremely valuable. By many estimates, even narrow slices of the spectrum are measured in billions of dollars. With the world on the precipice of largescale Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous vehicle adoption, already crowded airwaves have reached their limits or soon will. Clever ways to maximize airwave channel capacities will not solve the ever-expanding need for more throughput and people's insatiable demand for more data. Pabellon, a Silicon Valley-based start-up, has developed Surface Plane Magnetics (SPM) technology to open the untapped and unregulated RF spectrum.

Skate eyes adapt subtly to see but not be seen

![Figure][1] A little skate ( Leucoraja erinacea ) resting on sand. Photo credit: Lydia Mathger. For both hunters and the hunted, being cryptic is imperative. By mimicking the patterns, shapes and architecture of their surroundings, animals have evolved extraordinarily clever ways of

Chávez, Alex E. 2017. Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño . Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Chávez, Alex E. 2017. Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño . Durham, NC: Duke University Press

My Life, My Heart, and My(osin) Binding Protein-C.

Although I currently lead a team of cardiovascular investigators at the University of Cincinnati, my beginnings were humble as I came from a farming family in a small village in the southernmost part of India. The path I traveled was arduous, and it involved significant struggles, but I’ve finally realized many of my career goals. My story recapitulates the essence of some of the common career hurdles that many early-career cardiovascular scientists must overcome these days, and in this article, these career hurdles are discussed, as well as some strategies to overcome them. This article presents common hurdles encountered by developing and early-career cardiovascular scientists and outlines some effective strategies to overcome these challenges. Students, whether at the undergraduate level or beyond, often do not establish clearly defined career goals, and even established long-term plans can encounter daunting, unforeseen stumbling blocks. It is convenient to blame our failure to succeed on a lack of resources, including family support or time constraints. Sometimes, however, our lack of success may simply depend on not being at the right place at the right time. Yet, fundamentally, it is the lack of resourcefulness, not resources, that poses the greatest barrier to achieving our goals. Resourcefulness is defined as the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. Resourcefulness involves optimizing the resources available to you by finding alternative ways to push forward. In the recesses of our minds, we all have an idea of our potential. In this sense, we are all obligated to create, make, or change our environment, academic, or otherwise so that we can achieve our potential. Therefore, we must all strive to find the environment that will best nourish our innate abilities. I grew up in a village named Pattiveeranpatti located in the state of Tamil Nadu in …

Smart packaging of food for the 21st century – A review with futuristic trends, their feasibility and economics

Smart packaging is about clever ways to package a product, providing quick, cheap and efficient ways to monitor environmental conditions of food in the supply chain.The termsactive,intelligent andsmart packagingrefer to systems used forfoods,pharmaceuticals and other products. Nanomaterials have been explored for their exceptional mechanical, thermal, optical and antimicrobial properties. Nanosensors have been researched extensively. Theories exist today for applications of these in food packaging industry. There is a vast scope for innovation and application of smart packaging materials based on various types of polymer nanocomposites and nanosensors for detecting quality of the stored food based on various parameters like pH, fermentation etc. and also to extend shelf life. These devices allow for conservation of food, maintaining freshness and flavour, being able to perform quality control, easy traceability and maintain compliance with health standards. This paper reviews these technologies and their future trends.

"Designing and Implementing 21st Century Pedagogy and Andragogy Through Redesign and Technology" (part 2)

Whether in person, fully online, or in hybrid format, teaching is a never-ending challenge. Teaching can be a joy and a head-banging experience, sometimes within the span of the same week. Many college faculty may never have had formal training as teachers and so have had to develop their expertise through trial-and-error. By employing techniques examined using the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and also benefitting from the experiences of others who share what they have learned through this process, one can become an expert teacher. By using a SoTL framework, faculty can understand that their teaching methods have moved from intuition-driven to more empirically tested. This second special issue of Family Science Review that focuses on current methods of pedagogical (teaching children) and andragogical (teaching adults) contains great examples of using the scientific method to examine a variety of teaching and learning experiences in family science. It is a delightful extension of many of the wonderful presentations from the National Council on Family Relations annual conference, with many of the same authors who had presented in San Diego in 2018 and in previous years. While the topics are varied, from student perceptions of online and hybrid courses to teaching sexualization and objectification, using active reading methods, studying content delivery in a relationships course and when helping children learn about healthy eating, the theme that runs through these studies is of going beyond just reporting on clever ways of teaching. These articles share the desire to use quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis to determine how learning may best occur. By employing systematic methods of analysis, the authors of these articles show the value of what they are doing in and out of classrooms and question assumptions about the learning process.

Make the web better for everyone [Spectral Lines

The Web has serious problems: peddler of unreliable information, haven for criminals, spawning ground for irrational conspiracy fears, and tool for destructive people to broadcast their violence in real time and with posted recordings. No doubt your list of Web pathologies is different from mine. But surely you agree that the Web disappoints as much as it delights. Now the hard part-what to do about it? Starting over is impossible. The Web is the ground of our global civilization, a pillar of contemporary existence. Even as we complain about the excesses and shortcomings of the Web, we can't survive without it. For engineers and technovisionaries, the solution flows from an admirable U.S. tradition: building a better mousetrap. For redesigners of the broken Web, the popular impulse is to expand digital freedom by creating a Web so decentralized that governments can't censor it and big corporations can't dominate. However noble, the freedom advocates fail to account for a major class of vexations arising from anonymity, which allows, say, Russian hackers to pose as legitimate tweeters and terrorist groups to recruit through Facebook pages. To be sure, escape from government surveillance through digital masks has benefits, yet the path to improved governance across the world doesn't chiefly lie with finding more clever ways to hide from official oppression. More freedom, ultimately, will only spawn more irresponsible, harmful behavior. If more freedom and greater privacy won't cure what ails the Web, might we consider older forms of control and the cooperation of essential public services?

Biocomputer and memory built inside living bacteria [News

Scientists have come up with two clever new ways to harness the programming power of DNA in living bacterial cells. In separate experiments published in Nature in July, researchers reported that they had successfully archived a movie and built a complex biological computer inside living E. coli cells. The experiments expand our ability to exploit DNA's encoding potential. What these papers represent is just how good we are getting at harnessing that power, says Julius Lucks, a bioengineer at the Center for Synthetic Biology, at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., who was not involved in either report.

Item Girls and Objects of Dreams: Why Indian Censors Agree to Bold Scenes in Bollywood Films

The article presents the social background, which helped Bollywood film industry to develop the so-called “item numbers”, replace them by “dream sequences”, and come back to the “item number” formula again. The songs performed by the film vamp or the character, who takes no part in the story, the musical interludes, which replaced the first way to show on the screen all elements which are theoretically banned, and the guest appearances of film stars on the screen are a very clever ways to fight all the prohibitions imposed by Indian censors. Censors found that film censorship was necessary, because the film as a medium is much more popular than literature or theater, and therefore has an impact on all people. Indeed, the viewers perceive the screen story as the world around them, so it becomes easy for them to accept the screen reality and move it to everyday life. That’s why the movie, despite the fact that even the very process of its creation is much more conventional than, for example, the theater performance, seems to be much more “real” to the audience than any story shown on the stage. Therefore, despite the fact that one of the most dangerous elements on which Indian censorship seems to be extremely sensitive is eroticism, this is also the most desired part of cinema. Moreover, filmmakers, who are tightly constrained, need at the same time to provide pleasure to the audience to get the invested money back, so they invented various tricks by which they manage to bypass censorship. The most widely used ways to trick the censors are movie songs, so often underestimated, especially in the West, which however are not, as some would like to see them, only an unnecessary addition. Bollywood films are often called musicals, but the examples show that all the songs, not only item numbers and dream sequences , play quite a different role in Indian movies than in the classic Hollywood musicals. There is a very deep logic lying behind film production, and popular Indian cinema uses its songs to show everything that is impossible to show in the story. Filmmakers know very well that songs are the element of fantasy, which when used in a story about everyday life, can show things that are impossible in natural experience.

Scanning probes investigate nanoscale phenomena

More than 30 years after achieving atomic resolution with scanning probe microscopes, scientists remain endlessly fascinated with the ability to “see” and study individual atoms and molecules. For years, that fascination drove researchers to devise clever ways to use these tools to do more than just record high-resolution images. They came up with numerous methods to manipulate molecules one at a time and measure chemical spectra and other properties of individual molecules. That innovation shows no sign of slowing down. In the past few months, scientists have demonstrated new ways to couple scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) and atomic force microscopes (AFMs) with powerful tools for spectroscopy and electrochemical analysis. They’ve also come up with novel ways of improving AFMs’ and STMs’ key sensor element—a microscopic probe tip, which may be made from various metals, silicon, and other materials, depending on the application. Researchers have also developed theoretical tools that underpin

Particle Filters for nonlinear data assimilation in high-dimensional systems

Particle Filters are Monte-Carlo methods used for Bayesian Inference. Bayesian Inference is based on Bayes Theorem that states how prior information about a system, encoded in a probability density function, is updated when new information in the form of observations of that system become available. This process is called data assimilation in the geosciences. This contribution discusses what particle filters are and what the main issue is when trying to use them in the geosciences, in which the data-assimilation problem is typically very high dimensional. An example is numerical weather forecasting, with a state-space size of a billion or more. Then it discusses recent progress made in trying to beat the so-called 'curse of dimensionality', such as localisation and clever ways to slightly change the model equations to obtain better approximations to the posterior probability density via so-called proposal densities. This culminates in a new class of particle filters that is indeed able to provide estimates of the posterior probability density. The emphasis is not on mathematical rigour but on conveying the main new ideas in this rapidly growing field.

'Green hell' has long been home for humans.

For centuries, tropical rainforests were seen as the very definition of wilderness, largely untouched by humans. As late as the 1970s, anthropologists described rainforests as a counterfeit paradise, arguing that their soil lacked the nutrients to sustain agriculture or complex human societies. It9s now becoming clear, however, that human ancestors not only lived in the rainforest but transformed it over tens of thousands of years. Archaeologists have found clever ways to uncover ancient humans9 impact on today9s jungles, from ancient collagen in bones to laser scanning by aircraft. At a recent conference on the topic, organized by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, presentation after presentation highlighted how prehistoric people burned the forest, cleared it, farmed it, nurtured certain of its tree species, and even built cities in it, leaving lasting, if subtle, marks.

Perspectives in Super-Resolved Fluorescence Microscopy: What Comes Next?

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2014 has been awarded to three scientists involved in the development of STED and PALM super-resolution fluorescence microscopy (SRM) methods. They have proven that it is possible to overcome the hundred year old theoretical limit for the resolution potential of light microscopy (of about 200 nm for visible light), which for decades has precluded a direct glimpse of the molecular machinery of life. None of the present-day super-resolution techniques have invalidated the Abbe limit for light optical detection; however, they have found clever ways around it. In this report, we discuss some of the challenges still to be resolved before arising SRM approaches will be fit to bring about the revolution in Biology and Medicine envisaged. Some of the challenges discussed are the applicability to image live and/or large samples, the further enhancement of resolution, future developments of labels, and multi-spectral approaches.

Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia by Winifred Tate

Winifred Tate, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 304 pp.Working on human rights in Colombia in the 1990s was an exercise in dread and frustration. The dread anticipated each morning's headlines. There seemed to be no floor to the violence, as fighters on all sides seemed committed to finding ever more clever ways to mutilate the human body and devastate the human spirit. The main paramilitary leader, Carlos Castano, led a private army known as the Moche Cabezas, or Head Splitters. Often, they'd dismember bodies or leave them posed in macabre dioramas on the side of the road.The guerrillas weren't any better. As a Human Rights Watch researcher, I remember quite clearly the day the news arrived about a tiny village called Machuca, in the same department (state) as Colombia's second largest city, Medellin. At 2 a.m. on October 18, 1998, members of the National Liberation Army ([Ejercito Nacional de Liberacion] ELN) dynamited one of Colombia's oil pipelines. An enormous, viscous glob of aerosolized oil spilled out, slid down a hill, jumped the narrow Pocune River, and landed on the town, bursting into flame with the spark of the lanterns poor people use throughout this rural region. In an instant, 84 people burned to death.Meanwhile, Colombia's military routinely helped the paramilitaries conduct a cleansing campaign that cost thousands their lives and tens of thousands their homes and livelihoods, forcing them to flee to the country's major cities. A common military tactic was to kill civilians, then dress them in old guerrilla uniforms already marked with bullet holes, assuming that investigators would fail to match the wound to the tear. High body counts meant faster promotions and more praise.For their part, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ([Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] FARC) launched their own massacre campaign against banana workers who refused to support them and coca farmers who resisted their takeover of the cocaine business in the country's vast, southern lowlands. As Winifred Tate, a fellow human rights researcher and now anthropologist, describes in her fascinating new book, Drugs, Thugs, and Diplomats: US Policymaking in Colombia, this was afrantic world of daily emergencies. Paramilitary gunmen occupied villages for days, killing and dismembering their victims. Activists were pulled off buses and shot by the side of the road. Families fled their homes in the cover of darkness with only what they could carry. (1)Next comes the frustration element, largely supplied by Washington, where in the 1980s, Congress and the White House took a new interest in Colombia due to the country's role in supplying US consumers with cocaine (and, while the opium-hating Taliban briefly ruled, heroin). Tate's introductory summary of the shift in US thinking is crisp and detailed, showing how a focus on drugs as a national health issue during the Nixon administration morphed under President George H. W. Bush and then President William Clinton into a high-tech military campaign meant to eradicate coca plants and send soldiers after traffickers and so-called narco-guerrillas - in other words, directly into the heart of Colombia's decades-long internal conflict. The fact that traffickers were often also the paramilitaries who were massacring and disappearing innocents was the kind of pesky fact I was paid to shout into what was usually a void.As Tate notes, Military aid became a solution to the Clinton Administration's political vulnerability generated by Republican concern about domestic drug consumption and the ongoing culture wars (31). In this calculus, Colombia's military was championed by hawkish Democrats while the Colombian police, newly fitted with body armor, helicopters, and US dollars, were Republican darlings, their long-time chief lauded by Republican Dan Burton (R-IN) as the world's best cop. …

The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication

How to Catch Santa by Jean Reagan (review)

Reviewed by: How to Catch Santa by Jean Reagan Deborah Stevenson, Editor Reagan, Jean How to Catch Santa; illus. by Lee Wildish. Knopf, 2015 32p Library ed. ISBN 978-0-553-49840-0 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-553-49839-4 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-553-49841-7 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5-7 yrs Oh, that elusive Santa—will any kid ever manage to ask him the important questions, [End Page 218] share the crucial information, and just plain get a look at the big guy? The narrator here understands the dilemma and walks viewers through the possibilities, suggesting clever ways to stop Santa in his tracks, such as leaving a note for him filled with glitter (“glitter will sprinkle all over him and he’ll leave a trail”) or setting cookies for him beneath a string booby-trapped with bells. The narrative line is pretty rambly, and most of it isn’t really about how to catch Santa so much as to find ways to prove he’s been there; however, it’s a playful and spirited holiday-themed jest with amusing detail and opportunities for eliciting parental Christmas stories. Digital art employs spidery lines with saturated but not overbright colors, and the spreads are most effective when text and art interweave in lists or diagrams. This might even convince Santa-hunting kids to eschew tablets and nannycams for traditional low-tech (and easier to foil) approaches—and make sure they check out the amusing endpapers featuring letters to Santa. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

How to boost cancer immunotherapy

Cancer Treatment Why does our immune system protect us so well against infection but not against cancer? In part, this is because cancer cells use clever ways to escape immune responses designed to destroy them. A therapeutic strategy called “immune checkpoint blockade” thwarts these escape tactics and renders cancer cells vulnerable to immune attack. Although remarkably effective, only a subset of patients respond to it. Seeking possible explanations for this limited response, Kim et al. identified a specific immune cell population that interferes with the therapy in mouse tumor models. When the authors coadministered drugs that reduced the levels of these cells (called myeloid-derived suppressor cells), the efficacy of immune checkpoint blockade therapy greatly improved. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 10.1073/pnas.1410626111 (2014).