Trinity Christian College

Oxidations make up an important class of functional group transformations in organic chemistry, allowing access to aldehydes, ketones, and carboxylic acids from alcohols and even alkenes. Traditionally, chromium VI (hexavalent chromium)-based oxidants serve as robust but nonselective oxidants. Nitric acid and potassium permanganate also serve as more robust and, therefore, even less selective oxidants. Interestingly, many lab curricula continue to focus on oxidations using harsher conditions, while many oxidations with bleach and even air under catalytic conditions are available. We report a novel, safe-at-home oxidation with readily available sodium carbonate (and readily available oxygen) and benzoin from previously reported work, with a mechanism that likely mimics vitamin C activity. While the reaction in the laboratory could easily be replaced by other mild oxidations, this report offers a rare organic chemistry experiment that could be performed and observed at home despite the limits of characterization available to students outside of a laboratory setting. In the lab, the simple base-catalyzed formation of the dienolate offers an opportunity for students to think about screening and optimizing the reaction conditions.

This book is a collection of 15 essays written by advocates and leaders in the farmed animal protection movement specifically, and the animal protection, animal rights, animal welfare, and animal liberation movements broadly speaking. These essays written by several individuals active in the movement were first published by Sentient Media, a nonprofit journalism organization that reports on animal rights and animal welfare issues with a goal of bringing the well-being of animals into the mainstream media. The title alone, Antiracism in Animal Advocacy, is one that stands out as antiracism has yet to be seen as an essential part of the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement. As such, this collection of writings is an important, valuable, and necessary contribution to the narrative and advocacy efforts seeking the well-being of animals and fighting to end their exploitation and oppression.Four themes outline the trajectory of the various essays and their particular focus/emphasis. The first group of essays focuses on the theme of awakening to the plight of animals and gaining an understanding of the issues they face. Awakening is followed by various authors’ journeys of introspection, whereby they explore their experiences of looking inward and unlearning the disconnect and separation of human issues and animal issues. The third grouping of essays emphasizes accountability and what that might look like individually and within organizations and systems within the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement. And last, the final group of essays engages in reflections on antiracist leading and structural transformation within the movement. In addition to the structure of four distinctive essay themes, the book provides a glossary of terms to clearly articulate what the authors mean when they write about topics such as the following: anti-Blackness; antiracism; Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority (BIPGM); colonialism; diversity; equality; equity; implicit bias; inclusion; intersectionality; microaggressions; power; racial justice; racism; tokenism; White fragility; White privilege; and White supremacy culture. Such a glossary is a helpful tool to minimize assumptions of what is meant by the terminology being used and to assist the readers in understanding what the authors mean by these precise terms.The primary goal the authors present within each of their individual essays is to build a racially equitable animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement—particularly one that emphasizes the intersection of racial equity, inclusion, and animal advocacy versus the covert expectation of assimilation to White norms and White culture within the movement (i.e., perpetuation of covert White supremacy). Strictly speaking, the collection of essays was compiled to center racial justice in the work done for animals and to make the case for an expanded understanding of antiracism to include the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement. The movement is comprised of people who bring their various identities as well as implicit bias and microaggressions, which can be a hindrance to the collaboration and communication necessary to identify issues and goals for implementing strategies that seek to end exploitation, violence, and oppression of animals. As one author put it in her essay entitled “Oppression without Hierarchy: Racial Justice and Animal Advocacy”: Systems of oppression are interconnected in a web and regularly benefit from one another. In other words, speciesism is made stronger by racism, which is made stronger by sexism, which is made stronger by heterosexism, ableism, and on and on. But instead of being ordered in sequence, each node of oppression is connected to every other node, creating a very strong and resilient system. (Rojas-Soto, p. 150)Therefore, any work to achieve liberation for animals can only truly be effective if the spaces in which this work is being done are spaces that are antiracist, diverse, equitable, and inclusive. As such, the authors argue that it must be the opposite of a movement that has historically been rooted in White culture, White norms, and White voices. The author of the essay “Racism in Me, the Movement, and the Meat Industry” highlights this argument: Some might argue (and indeed many white animal protection movement leaders have argued) that other organizations exist to address racism in our food system and society, and therefore we have little obligation to confront this issue. This is not only naïve to the inherent interconnectedness of oppressions, but it is also based on the false, individualistic belief that animal advocates can do this work in isolation and that we can achieve our mission alone. To think that we, a tiny movement of people who cuddle with chickens and see fish as friends, can reform a global, trillion-dollar industry by ourselves is preposterous and self-aggrandizing. (Berger, p. 82)The authors of these essays represent a mixture of racial and ethnic identities whose experiences within the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement vary depending on whether they identify as White or as BIPGM. Some of the authors of the essays identify as White and share their journey of doing the work to understand the role their Whiteness has had in opening doors, providing access to leadership opportunities and spaces in the movement, and how that exclusiveness perpetuates racism and implicit bias with the movement. Authors of essays who identify as BIPGM share their experiences of striving to fight for animals while also facing the challenges and pressures they have faced to assimilate to the White dominant culture in the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement. Pushing back against the voices within the movement who argue that antiracism and equity at all levels has nothing to do with animal liberation is central to the argument they each explore within their own journey. The author of the essay “As a Black Man, I Felt Uncomfortable Being an Animal Activist” describes his experience: On the surface, I understood that many marginalized people don't feel they have the luxury of advocating for others when their own freedom is—and has historically been—attacked. But what I hadn't before considered was whether the animal rights movement put much effort into making Black, Indigenous, and people of the global majority feel included. (Eubanks, p. 71)This book of essays is an invitation for readers to consider how they are upholding racism and do the work of dismantling it. Otherwise, the animal protection/rights/welfare/liberation movement cannot truly move forward without racial equity. Antiracism in Animal Advocacy: Igniting Cultural Transformation makes an important contribution to the broader conversation about the intersecting injustices between the human and nonhuman animal worlds and how much more can be accomplished when matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the animal rights and animal welfare movement are addressed. It is arguably an essential read for individuals seeking to change the world for animals raising numerous opportunities within its pages for engaging in self-reflection and self-awareness for thinking about how to decenter Whiteness and push against White supremacy as a major part of the work to liberate animals and humans. In conclusion, to quote the editor of the book in her introduction, “Self-Discovery and the Pursuit of Racial Equity in Animal Advocacy”: We must do the hard work to propel our movement to that inclusive, ethical place where no one is oppressed for the sake of someone else's liberation. To accomplish this, individually and collectively, we have to unwaveringly challenge the white supremacist-infused ideals and values that largely provided the foundation upon which the institutional animals rights movement was built. We must rebuild something better. (Singer, pp. 25–26)

Abstract COVID-19 remote learning forced instructors to scramble for meaningful organic laboratory experiences safe enough to perform at home. While resources are available for laboratory experiments at home, organic synthesis suffers from issues involving safety, availabilities of reagents, difficulties measuring reagents, and difficulties analyzing products. We report a new take on the classic benzoin condensation using safe and commonly available reagents, capable of being setup with commonly available kitchen materials, and displaying visible and distinctive product. This experiment is aimed at reinforcing concepts of carbonyl chemistry in the undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory.

We present a class of nonsupersymmetric models in which the so-called critical Higgs inflation [Formula: see text] can be naturally realized without using specific values for Higgs and top quark masses. In these scenarios, the Standard Model (SM) vacuum stability problem, gauge coupling unification, neutrino mass generation and Higgs inflation mechanism are linked to each other. We adopt in our models Type I seesaw mechanism for neutrino masses. An appropriate choice of the Type I seesaw scale allows us to have an arbitrarily small but positive value of SM Higgs quartic coupling around the inflation scale. We present a few benchmark points where we show that the scalar spectral indices are around 0.9626 and 0.9685 for the number of [Formula: see text]-folding [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively. The tensor-to-scalar ratios are of the order of [Formula: see text]. The running of the scalar spectral index is negative and is of the order of [Formula: see text].

Abstract Marilynne Robinson’s achievement in the third novel of the Iowa trilogy can be seen more clearly if measured against Erich Auerbach’s ambivalence about the novel of consciousness. Using Auerbach’s final chapter of Mimesis, on Virginia Woolf, as the horizon for Robinson’s work clarifies two points: Robinson’s work should be viewed within a novel-of-consciousness tradition that is as much European as American; and Robinson’s religious interests turn that tradition toward a more anthropological concern with the complexity of consciousness framed by the concern for justice. While Nicholas Damas’s recent essay in The Atlantic, “The New Fiction of Solitude” (April 2016), claimed that much new fiction “imagines teaching us how to be separate” and Walter Benjamin already wrote at mid-century that “the ability to exchange experiences” disappeared sometime after World War I, in Lila it is as if Marilynne Robinson set out to show both the difficulty and the possibilities of such exchange.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between the microbiota of the gastrointestinal system and relative gene expression of miRNAs and mRNAs in the brain. This research utilizes C57BL/6 mice as a control group and BALB/c mice, a strain of mice that demonstrate abnormal social and developmental characteristics, as an experimental group. The mice are divided into four groups, a control group for each mouse strain and a probiotic group for each mouse strain. The control groups are fed a bacterial media as a negative control and the experimental groups are fed Bifidobacterium longum. This bacterial species is a well‐characterized probiotic shown to change behavior and improve sociability of BALB/c mice. The mice were fed probiotic bacteria or media control daily for three weeks. To determine the effects on gene expression in the brain the mice were sacrificed and the RNA was extracted from whole brains. Both general and neurological PCR arrays were performed to determine changes in the gene expression of brain‐specific miRNAs. The results of these PCR arrays reveal that the relative gene expression of miR‐652 in the BALB/c mice is substantially more similar to the miRNA’s expression in C57BL/6 only following the B. longum probiotic treatment. qPCR was completed on miR‐652 and on Dab1, an mRNA target of this miRNA. The final goal of this study is to further understand the relationship between changes in gut microbiota and its impacts on neurological gene expression and brain function.

Abstract On two occasions, Matthew places the words of Hos 6:6a, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” on the lips of Jesus (Matt 9:9–13; 12:1–8). This essay proposes a new reading of the Hos 6:6a quotations in those Matthean contexts. Rather than reading ἔλεος (“mercy”)— in the sense of either human compassion or covenant faithfulness—as what the Pharisees lack (and Jesus has), ἔλεος may denote the covenant faithfulness that the tax collectors and sinners (9:9–13) and disciples (12:1–8) have toward Jesus. Θυσία (“sacrifice”), then, would represent the sacrificial system, which was the other means, besides covenant faithfulness to Jesus, to receive forgiveness and divine reconciliation.