Commentary: African American Scientist and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Inventor and chemical engineer, Joycelyn Harrison was born in 1964. She received her B.S. in chemistry from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1987. She then went on later that year to earn her B.S. in chemical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. Harrison remained at Georgia Tech as a graduate student and completed her M.S. in chemical engineering in 1989 and her Ph.D. in 1993. She completed her dissertation on the "Structure-Dielectric Property Relationships in An Epoxy System: A Free Volume Analysis."
After graduate school Harrison went on to work at the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch (AMPB) of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia in 1994 as a research engineer under the tutelage of Terry L. St. Clair. While at Langley, Harrison conducted much of her research in the field of piezoelectric materials, a class of polymers capable of producing mechanical motion when introduced to an electric current and conversely capable of generating an electric charge when subjected to stress. Her research culminated with her participation on the Thin-Layer Composite-Unimorph Piezoelectric Driver and Sensor ("THUNDER") project with several colleagues, including senior engineer Robert Bryant. The THUNDER team innovated new piezoelectric polymers that improved upon the existing commercial varieties by providing better durability, energy efficiency, and production costs. In 1999, Harrison became chief of AMPB, which required her to supervise more than 40 research scientists conducting research on polymer composites and ceramics synthesis. NASA recognized Harrison's contributions to the AMPB branch by awarding her the Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2000 and the Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2006.....Read More
News Round Up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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O’Day Short, a black refrigeration engineer from Los Angeles, defied local racism when he bought land in a traditionally white neighborhood of Fontana, California, in 1945. Short and his family—wife, Helen; children, Carol and Barry—were building a home on the five-acre lot when they started getting threats of trouble, cloaked as warnings. (A sheriff’s deputy came to tell them their neighbors were disturbed by their presence; the person who sold them their land, who had apparently thought they were white, advised them that the local vigilante committee might cause trouble.) On Dec. 16 of that year, their house exploded, and all four Shorts died of their injuries. Law enforcement wrote the fire off as an accident.
The all-too-common story of O’Day Short and his family shows the lengths to which white vigilantes have been willing to go to enforce housing segregation in American cities. But,writes historian Matt Delmont on his new website Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers, the Short story also illustrates how important black newspapers have been to people rallying to combat exclusions and seek justice for wrongs done.
O’Day Short visited the Los Angeles Tribune, a local black newspaper, after receiving the threats that preceded the bombing. Hisaye Yamamoto, a writer for the paper at the time, remembered Short’s plea for an investigation and wrote that the father “was making the rounds of the three Negro newspapers in town to enlist their assistance.” After the family died, black newspapers insisted that the fire be investigated in light of what Short had reported and interviewed an arson expert who “flatly denied” the theory that the fire was accidental. The black press, while unable to save Short and his family, gave their story a public voice it wouldn’t have otherwise had.
This could’ve been a great serious-minded drama about escaping slaves. Instead, it’s obsessed with trying to entertain us. Slate: Underground.
Turning historical atrocities into entertainment is a tricky proposition. Doing it on television is trickier still, because most TV, unlike other art forms, still equates entertainment with escapism and fun. Literature, art, theater, and film are permitted, on occasion, to entertain in more painful ways. The pleasures we wring from them can be hard-won and stinging. We turn to these mediums knowing they can hurt, but leave us bettered for having spent time in the company of something excruciating and true. We don’t, historically, turn to TV for this.
One exception to this rule is Roots, the towering and hugely successful 1970s miniseries based on Alex Haley’s novel, which traced a black family from Africa, through slavery, and into the 20thcentury. (Another example is HBO’s The Leftovers, currently pioneering territory for agonizing television.) And nowUnderground, a new period drama about a group of slaves running for freedom, hopes to be another. Its timing is auspicious. The series, which airs on the upstart cable network WGN, arrives in the midst of a feverish national conversation about race, on-screen diversity, and the long-term consequences of slavery. Race and racism is Underground’s central subject; its cast is largely, though not exclusively, black; it was co-created by a black woman and a white man; and it is executive produced by the singer John Legend, among others. But Underground’s provocative premise is shortchanged by a corny and anxious tendency to goose the narrative. It is hard to imagine a more inherently gripping premise than escaping slaves, butUnderground tosses in pop music, lurid sex scenes, and a breakneck pace, undermining its own ambition.
The show opens as Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” plays and a black man, a slave, breathing in time to the beat, runs through the undergrowth, trying to evade slave catchers. This is Noah (Aldis Hodge), a field slave alit with the promise of freedom. Returned to the plantation from which he escaped, he gathers together a group of slaves with a plan to travel 600 miles to freedom—in six days time. Undergroundcontains whippings, torture, cruelty, and a woman who drowns her infant son rather than see him live as a slave, but any attempts at realism serve as backdrop for a needlessly frantic plot.
Noah’s group includes Rosalee (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), the show’s other protagonist, and a delicate looking house slave with much inner strength. Rosalee’s mother Ernestine (Amirah Vann) is the head house slave, a position she has sought to protect her children, who include not only Rosalee, but a young boy who may soon have to work in the fields, and Sam (Johnny Ray Gill), a carpenter, who is also part of the escape party. Other would be escapees: a sweet teenager who looks up to Noah; a man who preaches the Bible; his daughter, and his reading, writing wife; a strongman beset by grief; and Cato (Alano Miller), a vicious overseer. Noah’s plan requires that this group gather a number of hard-to-obtain objects—a gun, forged freedom papers—that are assembled with dramatically deflating speed.
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One of the doughtiest campaigners against the Olympic Park in Rio de Janeirowatched as her home was bulldozed on Tuesday, sparking small protests in her neighbourhood and the city centre.
In recent years, Maria da Penha has become a prominent figure in the Vila Autódromo community, which has been decimated to make way for the gymnasiums, pools, arenas and other facilities that will be the focus of the world’s attention when the sporting mega-event opens on 5 August.
After resisting longer than most, her home was brought down by a demolition team that drove in soon after dawn from the neighbouring Olympic site.
Images on the community’s Facebook page show an earthmover pulling and pushing down the walls of the building which were sprayed with defiant slogans affirming Vila Autodromo as “a legitimate community”. Municipal guards were on hand to prevent residents from holding back the Olympic developers.
Supporters at the site and on social networks highlighted the fact that the demolition took place on International Women’s Day and only hours before Penha was due to receive an award from the state legislature for her defense of home and community.
Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, whose public support for refugees polarised Zorneding residents, leaves after receiving hate mail. The Guardian: Congo-born priest in Germany quits over death threats.
Bavarian officials and residents have been rallying in support of a Congolese-born priest who has received death threats since speaking out in defence of refugees.
The Roman Catholic priest, the Rev Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, told parishioners during mass on Sunday that as a consequence of the threats he would no longer serve the congregation in Zorneding, a community of 9,000 people about 15 miles (25km) east of Munich, Germany.
The 66-year-old priest initially said he would still celebrate Easter mass with the congregation this month and stay until 1 April, but he later changed his mind and instead left Zorneding immediately, church officials and community members said. Ndjimbi-Tshiende is expected to take a different position within the church, but details have not been announced.
At the church rectory on Tuesday, there was no sign of anyone inside and nobody answered the door. The church would not say where the priest had gone. Two small cardboard banners had been placed on the ground next to Ndjimbi-Tshiende’s mailbox, reading “solidarity with the priest” and “arrest those who threatened murder”.
Moritz Dietz, a 21-year-old parishioner, said Ndjimbi-Tshiende was a smart and enlightened man. “He even prayed for those who sent him those evil letters,” Dietz said, adding that he was shocked by the priest’s departure and did not know what had triggered his decision to leave.
A global race has begun for one of the world’s most precious resources - land. Financial Times: Ethiopia: The billionaire’s farm.
Saudi Star’s proprietor, a Saudi-Ethiopian tycoon named Mohammed al-Amoudi, has spent more than $200m turning a swath of bush into a farm the size of 20,000 soccer pitches. That puts the sheikh, as he is known, in the vanguard of the global land rush.
As the populations of better-off nations move to cities in ever greater numbers, the gap between the amount they grow and the amount they eat widens. Agricultural trade has long filled this gap. But a price shock in 2007, when staple crop prices doubled in a few months, demonstrated that global markets for food can break down. Then the financial crisis created demand for investments that were not linked to volatile equities and bonds. Governments, multinational companies and institutional funds started to pour millions, then billions, into other countries’ land.
From Southeast Asia to Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, investors are seeking to profit not simply by trading the fruits of the earth — the rice and the coffee, the oil and the gold — but by controlling the land itself.
Few countries have attracted such attention from land-hunters as Ethiopia. A nation plagued by famine now envisages vast commercial farms pumping food around the region. But for millennia, land has been the source both of great advances and of bloodshed. Saudi Star’s patch of earth is no different.
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Despite the recent wave of campus protests over racism, a vast majority of college presidents believe race relations on their campuses are good — and the share of presidents who believe it is even higher this year than it was last year.
Students aren’t nearly so optimistic, as the protests at campuses such asYale and the University of Missouri have demonstrated, and as separate survey data shows. My colleague Leah Libresco has written about student demands to address race relations on campuses nationwide; the most common request is a more diverse faculty.
The data on college leaders’ attitudes comes from the sixth annual Survey of College and University Presidents from Inside Higher Ed and Gallup, which covers 727 presidents at public, private and for-profit institutions.
The survey also asked the presidents about things like the financial health of their institutions and their views of President Obama’s performance on higher education, but the questions on race relations give the first comprehensive look since the fall protests at how administrators are thinking about these issues.
Eighty-four percent of the presidents surveyed said race relations on their campuses were good or excellent — a 3-point increase from last year. When asked how they thought race relations on campus today compare to five years ago, 69 percent said they’re about the same or better. Notably, presidents believe their own campus is doing better on the issue than others across the country, but the overwhelming majority still believe that race relations are “fair” or “good” on campuses nationwide.
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