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1. “I can do data for my people”: experiences of giving back for Native undergraduates in computing

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-023-10172-5  

   Jaumot-Pascual, Nuria; DeerInWater, Kathy; Ong, Maria; Silva, Christina B. (September 2023, Cultural Studies of Science Education)

   Abstract This paper focuses on the undergraduate experiences in computer sciences (CS) disciplines of eight Native women and two-spirit undergraduates and how their values and experiences around the communal goal of giving back enable them to persist in computing. The paper draws from a one-year study that included participants across the U.S.A from predominantly White institutions, Native serving institutions, and tribal colleges. Utilizing the decolonizing and participant-centered methods of photo elicitation, our interviews used photographs taken by participants as starting points for conversations. This method resulted in deep understandings of participants’ experiences of the supports and barriers in their CS programs, and of the importance of giving back for persistence. We adapt Page-Reeves and colleagues’ 2019 framework for giving back and Native students in STEM—particularly the concepts of giving back as a Native value and giving back in the context of CS education—to illuminate the ways in which participants persisted and navigated their identities as Native students and emergent computer scientists. We also introduce a new concept, culturally connected giving back, to describe the ways in which Native undergraduates in computing contributed, or planned to contribute, towards technology sovereignty and cultural preservation. CS, like many STEM fields, is typically viewed as highly individualistic and not aligned with communal goals of helping others. However, Native participants in this study identified computing as having the potential for giving back. They incorporated a broad range of giving back actions into their computing professional identities through teaching, mentoring, serving as role models, creating counterspaces, or preserving their cultures using their computing skills. Through giving back, participants fulfilled a sense of obligation to their communities or counteracted negative stereotypes about Native learners. Beneficiaries of these acts of giving back included Native and other minoritized peers, younger students, home communities, and other Native communities. Importantly, opportunities to give back served as strong motivators to persist in CS in spite of challenges. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy and practice and also explore the implications for how institutions and CS departments can support Native student recruitment, retention, and success. 

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2. Documentary linguists and risk communication: views from the virALLanguages project experience

   https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2021-0021  

   Di Carlo, Pierpaolo; Lukschy, Leonore; Rey, Sydney; Vita, Vasiliki (February 2022, Linguistics Vanguard)

   Abstract Linguists are seldom, if ever, engaged in work aimed at communicating risk to the general public. The COVID-19 global pandemic and its associated infodemic may change this state of affairs, at least for documentary linguists. Documenting languages may bring researchers in direct contact with communities speaking minority or marginalized languages and gain key insights into their communicative ecologies. By being both immersed in local networks and more or less knowledgeable about the community’s communicative habits, documentary linguists appear to be placed in a unique position to contribute to communicating risk in ways that are better tailored to the community and, therefore, potentially quite effective locally. Furthermore, adding work in risk communication to their agenda may also stimulate documentary linguists to find new models for “giving back” to the communities they work with. In order to provide a concrete example of how all this may play out in concrete terms, we illustrate the virALLanguages project. 

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3. Time inconsistent charitable giving

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104391  

   Andreoni, James; Serra-Garcia, Marta (June 2021, Journal of Public Economics)

   We usually assume purchasers of commodities experience utility at the point of transacting a purchase, when money and ownership are exchanged. With charitable giving, the social rewards from giving can begin being enjoyed the moment a decision to give has been made. Later, when the gift is transacted, the donor can again experience utility from giving and seeing their donations at work. We show both theoretically and experimentally that these early flows of social utility can generate time inconsistent charitable giving. A fundraiser can get more donations (50 percent more in our Experiment 1) by allowing a donor to decide now to give later. We develop a theoretical model of social utility gained through social image concerns, and in two additional experiments examine its implications for commitment demand and test the model predictions for how charities can manipulate information to influence time inconsistent charitable giving. 

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4. Mammalian herbivores reinforce ecological state transitions in the Chihuahuan Desert

   Andreoni, Kieran (May 2024, www.ideals.illinois.edu)

   Woody plant encroachment is a main driver of landscape change in drylands globally. In the Chihuahuan Desert, past livestock overgrazing interacted with prolonged drought to convert vast expanses of black grama (Bouteloua eriopoda) grasslands to honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) shrublands. Such ecosystem state transitions have greatly reduced habitat for grassland wildlife species, increased soil erosion, and inhibited the delivery of ecosystem services to local communities. The potential for wild herbivores to trigger or reinforce shrubland states may be underappreciated, however, and few studies compare herbivory effects across multiple consumer taxa. Here, I address the roles of multiple mammalian herbivores in driving or reinforcing landscape change in the Chihuahuan Desert by examining their effects on plant communities over multiple spatial and temporal scales, as well as across plant life stages. Moreover, I studied these herbivore effects in the context of precipitation pulses, long-term climate influences, competitive interactions, and habitat structure. I used two long-term studies that hierarchically excluded herbivores by body size over 25 years (Herbivore Exclosure Study) and 21 years (Ecotone Study), and a perennial grass seedling herbivory experiment. Native rodents and lagomorphs were especially important in determining grass cover and plant community composition in wet periods and affected perennial grass persistence over multiple life stages. Conversely, during drought, climate drove declines in perennial grass cover, promoting shrub expansion across the landscape. In that shrub-encroached state, native small mammals reinforced grass loss in part because habitat structure provided cover from predators. This research advances our understanding of an underappreciated component of ecosystem change in drylands – small mammal herbivory – and highlights the need to incorporate positive feedbacks from native small mammals into conceptual models of grassland-shrubland transitions. 

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5. Temporal sequences of brain activity at rest are constrained by white matter structure and modulated by cognitive demands

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-0961-x  

   Cornblath, Eli J.; Ashourvan, Arian; Kim, Jason Z.; Betzel, Richard F.; Ciric, Rastko; Adebimpe, Azeez; Baum, Graham L.; He, Xiaosong; Ruparel, Kosha; Moore, Tyler M.; et al (December 2020, Communications Biology)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract A diverse set of white matter connections supports seamless transitions between cognitive states. However, it remains unclear how these connections guide the temporal progression of large-scale brain activity patterns in different cognitive states. Here, we analyze the brain’s trajectories across a set of single time point activity patterns from functional magnetic resonance imaging data acquired during the resting state and an n-back working memory task. We find that specific temporal sequences of brain activity are modulated by cognitive load, associated with age, and related to task performance. Using diffusion-weighted imaging acquired from the same subjects, we apply tools from network control theory to show that linear spread of activity along white matter connections constrains the probabilities of these sequences at rest, while stimulus-driven visual inputs explain the sequences observed during the n-back task. Overall, these results elucidate the structural underpinnings of cognitively and developmentally relevant spatiotemporal brain dynamics. 

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