Occidental College

In An American Health Dilemma (2000), W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton synthesized historical scholarship to trace the devastating health impacts of chattel slavery, White supremacy, and racial science. Their study exposed disparate levels of death and illness experienced by generations of enslaved African Americans. My retrospective review of An American Health Dilemma demonstrates how subsequent scholarship has reinforced Byrd and Clayton's analysis of the roots of African American health disparities but also illuminated some of the limitations of the authors' physician perspectives. By decentering biomedical frameworks and introducing new interdisciplinary approaches, historians of enslaved health and healing complicate the authors' conceptualization of the "slave health deficit" and challenge their assumptions about the "slave health subsystem." New studies of slavery and capitalism, gender, reproduction, and disability expand the account of slavery's full impact on African American health. Furthermore, rather than viewing enslaved healers as members of a subsystem of superior Euro-American professional training, a new body of literature today explores the spiritual and intellectual worlds of Black healers grounded in Black mobility and the cultures of the African diaspora. (Am J Public Health. 2026;116(5):649-656. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2026.308422).

This descriptive-correlational study assessed the health services status in the island barangays of San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. It focused on resource availability, accessibility, service coverage, and infrastructure quality. It also investigated the area of responsiveness of health workers in terms of technical health competence, resilience and adaptability, communication skills, and empathy. Furthermore, it measured community satisfaction with healthcare delivery in terms of timeliness, quality of care, facilities, and effectiveness of services. The study aimed to disclose how health service status and healthcare workers' responsiveness influence community satisfaction. A total of 370 residents, selected through stratified random sampling, were the study’s respondents. Data was collected using a researcher-made survey instrument and face-to-face interviews. Descriptive statistics summarized the services, responsiveness, and satisfaction, while correlation analyses identified the relationships among the variables. Findings revealed that the resource availability and accessibility are at a moderate level, with notable limitations in infrastructure and service coverage. Health workers were mostly responsive, particularly in communication and empathy, though there are deficiencies in technical training and adaptability. Community satisfaction ranged from moderate to high, with stronger ratings in quality of care and timeliness, and lowest ratings in facility adequacy and effectiveness of services. There is a significant relationship between the status of health services and the level of satisfaction in the community, as well as between the health workers' responsiveness and satisfaction, revealing that the quality of the service in the community is influenced by both structural and human factors. The study highlights the need for community health infrastructure enhancements, better resource allocation, and continuous capacity building for healthcare workers to foster more responsive services and increase community satisfaction. Strengthening these key areas is important for sustainable and equitable healthcare delivery in the island barangays of San Jose, Occidental Mindoro.

Cartilage provides critical structural support for the upper airway and facial framework, and its reshaping is central to reconstructive and aesthetic procedures in the head and neck. While a range of non-scalpel techniques have been explored as minimally invasive approaches to modifying cartilage shape, achieving deformation without compromising tissue integrity remains a challenge. Electromechanical reshaping (EMR) offers a promising, minimally invasive approach to cartilage modification but is similarly limited by tissue injury that compromises cellular viability. This study investigates a pulsed EMR strategy designed to address these limitations and evaluates its feasibility using optical imaging in ex vivo rabbit septal cartilage.

Abstract This article is an edited transcription of the 2022 PAMLA Forum “City of Refuge: Exile, Dispossession, and Cultural Renaissance.” PAMLA Officers Yolanda Daub, Jeremiah Axelrod, and Peter Schulman discuss racial identity, exile, belonging, gentrification, and cultural resistance with scholars Alison Rose Jefferson, Benno Herz, and Jan Lin.

Abstract In the twentieth century, Los Angeles developed an ambitious vision of architecture revolving around its novel sprawling urban configuration. Inspired by the channelization of the L.A. River and the contemporary freeway system, iconic works of midcentury modern architecture explored the possibilities inherent in a horizontal metropolis. But that midcentury urbanism was also deeply imbricated in systems of exclusion and segregation. Amidst that social and architectural landscape, several quite different creative and defiant expressions of modernity emerged in midcentury Los Angeles, suggesting an alternative way to understand the artistic and democratic potential of the era.

Multisensory integration is often assumed to increase when visual input is degraded, yet it remains unclear whether low vision enhances susceptibility to cross-modal illusions or whether such effects depend on local variations in visual reliability. We tested low vision and sighted control participants on the Double Flash Illusion across 24 visual-field locations while separately measuring flash-detection accuracy. Both groups showed the expected auditory-driven increase in perceived flash numerosity, but only sighted controls reliably experienced the classic “double-flash” percept. Illusion strength did not vary with eccentricity; instead, it was strongly predicted by local flash detection accuracy, indicating that sound-induced percepts depend on the availability of a reliable visual signal. Bayesian Causal Inference modeling revealed substantially weaker and more variable fits for low vision observers, with poorer fits associated with reduced visual sensitivity. Although model parameters did not differ significantly between groups, the similarity in estimated visual noise likely reflects model limitations rather than true equivalence in sensory precision. Together, these findings show that low vision does not globally amplify audiovisual interactions; rather, auditory enhancement depends on local visual reliability, and degraded vision leads to weaker alignment with Bayesian-optimal predictions.

Abstract The potential of the intense secondary muon, neutrino, and (hypothetical) light dark matter beams at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is explored. These are produced in the high-power dumps with high-current electron beams. Light dark matter searches with the approved Beam Dump eXperiment (BDX) are driving the realization of a new underground vault behind Hall A that could be extended to a Beamdump Facility with little additional installations. High-energy muons created via the Bethe–Heitler process uniquely do not proceed through the more common pion production and decay channels. Several possible muon physics applications are highlighted. Neutrino detector technologies and experiments suitable for a beamdump facility are outlined.

In this article, I discuss several ways in which keyboard pedagogy can be more inclusive. First, curricula can include more popular and world music, which represents a greater diversity of traditions in the classroom, and also creates more familiar access points for students without prior classical training. Second, keyboard pedagogy can be framed to help students develop and pursue their own interests. Third, assessments can be structured in a way that gives students more agency and flexibility to improve at their own pace. I describe a weekly multi-level musicianship challenge format which implements these principles to create student-centered keyboard pedagogy.

Structural variants (SVs) are widespread in vertebrate genomes, yet their evolutionary dynamics remain poorly understood. Using 45 long-read de novo genome assemblies and pangenome tools, we analyze SVs among three closely related species of North American jays (Aphelocoma, scrub-jays) displaying a 55-fold range in effective population size. We find rapid evolution of genome architecture, including ~100-megabase decreases in genome size driven by shifts in complex satellite landscapes. SVs exhibit slightly deleterious dynamics modulated by variant length and population size, with consistent evidence of adaptive fixation only in the largest population. Gene copy number variants exhibit an inverse relationship with population size, indicating strongly deleterious dynamics, with consequences for gene expression. Our long-read dataset and pangenome analysis demonstrate how population size shapes genome complexity.