Mahafuj Alam
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🗞️ Mahafuj Alam | News Curator & Independent Media Voice
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Fair Play: Finding Clarity in the Clues
Even when very little does make sense, we humans use narratives to make sense of the world around us. We tell ourselves stories to relax and amuse ourselves. In tumultuous times, people frequently turn to escapist forms of entertainment as a means of disengaging from the broader world. We also find that we frequently turn to detective fiction. People became increasingly interested in bridge, mahjong, and crossword puzzles after the First World War, and this "play fever" quickly spread to detective novels. Murder mystery writers began to write books that were puzzles to be solved and that complied with the fair play doctrine – the concept that the reader should have a fair chance to solve the mystery before the grand reveal. The trick was to give the reader enough clues to have "a sporting chance to solve the mystery," as TS Eliot put it. The authors of Golden Age detective novels were concerned about fairness that does not exist in the real world. In a whodunnit, where everyone knows their part and the story is new and exciting, but ultimately familiar and comforting, life is so much easier. There are solutions, conclusions, and a person you can blame in detective novels. Someone will always be to blame. Someone to haul off to the scaffold. “Once the murderer leaves, the world of the novel begins to approach its former peacefulness...cleansed of guilt, free of complication and obstacles, recreated anew from the shambles of a temporary disorder...the happy and orderly end toward which the detective has been working,” George Grella writes in his essay Murder and Manners: The Formal Detective Novel. However, reality is clearly not like that. It may be tempting to view life as a mystery that must be resolved. And indeed, tempting to believe that everything has a clear and single explanation. Because there is always a solution, we enjoy solving puzzles. We enjoy detective tales because we are aware that there will ultimately be a satisfying reveal—a straightforward narrative that makes everything make sense. Party games based on murder mysteries like Wink Murder and Murder in the Dark gained a lot of popularity during the Golden Age. This gamification of death took the power, the sting, out of a terrible tragedy and emphasised that of course none of this was actually real – it was in fact just a game. the ideal remedy for dealing with the public aftermath of World War I. The popularity of escape rooms, the rise in sales of jigsaw puzzles during the pandemic, and crime logic gamebooks like GT Karber's Murdle series have all occurred more recently, during our own turbulent times. A piece titled "Why do People Read Detective Stories?" was published in The New Yorker in 1944 by American literary critic Edmund Wilson. He came to the conclusion that the "all-pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility" was the reason for the popularity of detective fiction in the years between the two world wars. Who was responsible for the first crime and who would be responsible for the subsequent one? The murderer is suddenly discovered, and relief! He is not, after all, a person like you or me. Nobody appears innocent or safe. He is a bad guy who is known as George Gruesome in the industry. He has been caught by an invincible Power, the egotistical and omniscient detective who knows exactly how to get rid of the guilt. In more recent times, detective fiction, particularly those written in the Golden Age style, has once more attracted readers. The Guardian reported in July 2020, as UK bookshops reopened, that nearly 120,000 more crime and thriller books were purchased in the final two weeks of June 2020 than at the same time the previous year. Crime was, during this period, the UK’s most popular book genre. Another indication of their growing popularity was the Crime Writers' Association's announcement in 2023 that their awards for classic or "cosy crime" novels would now include a Whodunnit Dagger. With Mystery in White by J, The British Library's Crime Classics series has continued to sell well. Jefferson Farjeon became a number one bestseller for Waterstone’s.In my novel Fair Play, I use the fair play rules together with the familiar structure of a Golden Age detective novel – with its murder, its suspects, its Watson and its reveal – to explore the emotions around grief. Abigail, the main character, alternates between the real world and the fictional world of the detective novel following the sudden death of her brother. She is looking for clues—answers—in both worlds to comprehend her circumstances. In the midst of the unpredictability of real life, the murder mystery provides her with a familiar path and much-needed comfort during her grief. In a detective novel, we are aware that we are getting closer and closer to a conclusion—the answer we have been looking for—within each chapter. At least, that's what Abigail hopes for. "We are lost and unhappy in a universe that seems to make no sense, and cling to science, machines, and detective fiction, just because, within their limited fields, the problems do work out, and the end corresponds to the intention," Dorothy L. Sayers writes in her book "Begin Here," which was published during the Second World War.
By Mahafuj Alam9 months ago in Fiction
The Fixers:Behind the ACA lifeline.
They are the fixers, and they step in when enrollees under the Affordable Care Act encounter a problem with their coverage, such as when they discover that a rogue broker signed them up or changed their plan without their consent. Caseworkers with specialized training assist in resolving issues like these, which could otherwise cause patients or members of their families to be denied access to medical care. Now, though, the broad federal reduction in force set in motion by the Trump administration has cut the ranks of those caseworkers, slashing two out of six divisions of caseworkers, according to one affected worker and a former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services official familiar with the situation, Jeffrey Grant.
By Mahafuj Alam9 months ago in Humans
América: A New History of Empire and Resistance
The most common way to tell the history of the United States is to frame it as a series of important times, like Colonial America, the American Revolution, the Age of Expansion, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age, among other times. With the exception of looking to Europe and England, this is the manner in which US history is typically taught in high schools and survey courses at colleges. These courses typically present the country's historical self-understanding and founding political identity in a rather self-contained manner. In América: A New History of the New World, the historian Greg Grandin challenges this approach to US history. It provides a ground-breaking 500-year history of how Latin America was "indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the North," and how the United States' identity and historical self-understanding are inextricably linked to those of Latin America. To put it another way, Grandin argues that a hemispheric perspective of their long and complicated relationship from the beginning of the New World is necessary for truly comprehending the history of North and South America. A hemispheric perspective on the Spanish conquest, the Age of Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Monroe Doctrine, the World Wars, and the coups and revolutions of the 20th century are exactly what this book provides. He also shows how the current crisis of democracy in the United States can be better understood from a broader hemispheric perspective and how the history of Latin American resistance movements against authoritarianism offers solutions for the authoritarian era. The Nation spoke with Grandin about his approach to North and South American history, as it specifically concerns the legacy of the Spanish conquest, the differences between the revolutions for independence in the US and Latin America, how pan-Americanism inspired the League of Nations and the United Nations, the threat of fascist movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, both in the past and in the present, and what history teaches us about how they can be overcome. The interview has been edited to be shorter and more clear.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in History
Pope Francis (2013–2025): A Shepherd of the Streets
Pope Francis flashed a wide, easy smile frequently. He thrived on direct, informal encounters: phone calls, penned notes, hugs, audiences with small groups. He broke protocol by busing his own tray at the cafeteria, carrying his own overnight bag, and responding to reporters' questions extemporaneously. He was attentive, determined, testy, mercurial, sometimes deliberate, sometimes in a hurry, hard to read, and hard to pin down. When Francis was elected to the papacy at the age of 76, he brought those characteristics to the position for a period of twelve years—until he passed away on Monday—and over time, they became more refined rather than altered. That seems to have been the most important part of his time as Pope. He brought Roman Catholicism back to the street level and the papacy down to earth through pure personability, similar to what John XXIII had done six decades earlier when he convened the Second Vatican Council. It doesn't seem that long ago that Benedict XVI unexpectedly resigned—the first Pope to do so in six centuries—and Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, was elected Pope. He remained a man who wasn't defined by his role despite Church scandals involving clerical sexual abuse and Vatican finances and open resistance from doctrinal and liturgical traditionalists. That was March, 2013, and the images from Francis’s first weeks in office are still fresh in mind: returning to the hotel where he’d stayed prior to his election to pay his bill, setting up residence in a plain modern guesthouse rather than the Apostolic Palace, trading the papal Mercedes-Benz for a Fiat. This Pope was new in many respects: the first Jesuit Pope, the first Pope from the Americas, the first to take the name Francis, after the Italian saint known for his embrace of poverty and his care for the natural world.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Earth
Vanishing Freshwater: A Hidden Driver of Sea Level Rise
Earth's landmasses are losing a lot more water than they used to, and this is happening not just because ice sheets are melting. Terrestrial water storage, which includes water in underground aquifers, lakes, rivers and the tiny pore spaces within soil, declined by trillions of metric tons in the early 21st century, researchers report in the March 28 Science.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Earth
Cosmic Bloom: The Awakening Within
Mis-splicing of ASD-risk genes in DM1 prefrontal cortex Executive functions are coordinated by the prefrontal cortex, which undergoes transcriptome-wide changes in individuals with ASD25,34. We looked at RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data from Brodmann area 10 (BA10) of the human DM1 brain to see if the DMPK-CTGexp mutation causes ASD-risk gene RNA mis-splicing in the prefrontal cortex. To reduce age and sex biases, unaffected control samples were matched (Fig. 1a)35,36,37. We calculated the change in "percent spliced in" (PSI) for five AS event types for differential AS analysis (Fig. 1b). 1 percent (1,844) of the 184,000 AS events and 16,000 genes in DM1 met our mis-splicing criteria (PSI > 0.1, FDR 0.05) out of the total pool of 7 percent (1,261) of mis-spliced genes (Extended Data Fig. 1a). All mis-spliced events, including retained intron (RI) events, had a strong positive correlation between CTGexp repeat length and mean PSI values (Fig. 1c and Extended Data Fig. 1b). Consistent with previous research, we observed a negative correlation between the level of intron inclusion and the steady-state level of the host transcript (Extended Data Fig. 1c)38,39, despite the fact that not all RIs introduce a premature termination codon that causes nonsense-mediated decay. We retrieved 38 gene sets and available databases to assess the relevance of DM1 mis-splicing to ASD (Supplementary Table 1), and found that some mis-spliced RI events represented additional RNA species, such as an elevated circular intronic RNA level in DM1 (Extended Data Fig. 1d). After applying more stringent mis-splicing criteria (|PSI| > 0.2), we discovered a significant enrichment of mis-spliced events in 61% of the gene sets (Extended Data Fig. 1e), indicating a consistent trend (Pearson's r = 0.79, P 0.0001). Negative control gene sets (such as genes related to the immune system or metabolism) did not show any enrichment. Notably, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) database and two large Autism Speaks MSSNG-based whole-genome sequencing studies, MSSNG-2017 (ref. 40) and MSSNG-2022 (ref. 40), both showed significant enrichment of ASD-risk genes. 41) (Fig. 1d and Fig. 1e of the Extended Data). SCN2A, ANK2, and SHANK2 were misspliced in DM1 out of 36 overlapping high-confidence ASD-risk genes in both the MSSNG-2017 and MSSNG-2022 studies (Fig. 1e, f, and Extended Data Fig. 1f). In addition, we discovered missplicing in the DMD gene, which is known to be the cause of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and ASD42,43. In addition, we found a strong positive correlation between misspliced events in ASD-risk genes and CTGexp length (Fig. 1g and Extended Data Fig. 1g). These findings, taken as a whole, suggested that the DMPK-CTGexp in the DM1 prefrontal cortex alters the splicing of genes associated with ASD risk.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Humans
MBNL Sequestration Links Myotonic Dystrophy to Autism via RNA Mis-Splicing
Abstract Autism spectrum disorder has been linked to enrichment of gene-specific tandem repeat expansions across the genome. The CTG tandem repeat expansion in the DMPK gene's 3′ untranslated region, which is known to cause myotonic muscular dystrophy type 1, is one such mutation. Myotonic dystrophy and autism have a clear clinical connection, but the molecular basis for this connection is unknown. During brain development, the RNA splicing patterns of autism-risk genes, particularly a class of autism-relevant microexons, are altered when mutant DMPK RNAs with expanded CUG repeats sequester MBNL splicing factors. We show that both DMPK-CTG expansion and Mbnl null mouse models replicate autism-relevant mis-splicing profiles, as well as altered responses to novelty and social behavioral deficits. Our hypothesis that developmental mis-splicing of autism-risk genes causes myotonic dystrophy-associated autism is supported by these findings.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Humans
Theory of Cell-by-Cell Color Perception in Oz Vision
Theory of color from cell to cell Barycentric coordinates are used to plot the colors produced by our Oz prototype on a Maxwell triangle (19). . This triangle projects its total activation (L, M, and S) while simultaneously displaying the color's chromaticity in two dimensions (2D). The natural human gamut, which encompasses all chromaticities that are attainable through normal spectral mixtures of light, is depicted in these diagrams as a color-filled subregion plotted at the bottom. In theory, the fundamentally larger color gamut that is accessible via cell-by-cell stimulation in Oz is the full area of the chromaticity triangle, assuming ideal conditions that produce perfect localization of light to target cones. However, in practice, a small amount of light will miss target cones and stimulate nearby cells, shifting the activation pattern away from the intended Oz color and toward the laser's natural color. In Fig., it is predicted how this stray cone activation will affect the colors that can be achieved. 2Opens in a picture viewer The point-spread function (PSF) of the laser microdoses on the retina in relation to the spacing of cone cells, the cone's spatial light-gathering function (20–22), errors in microdose targeting during eye movement, the proportion of L:M:S cones in the retina, and the stimulating wavelength are the most important factors. In the image viewer, Figure 2AOpens shows how the range of Oz chromaticities that are possible would be affected by fractional light leak. When stimulating the retina at 4° eccentricity, as shown, a diffraction-limited PSF would theoretically enable Oz to address nearly all possible chromaticities in the lms triangle, but not in the foveola, where cone cells are at their smallest. In reality, the total leakage of light includes more than just diffraction because of things like residual aberrations following adaptive optics focusing and microdose targeting errors caused by computational latency during eye movement. It is difficult to measure these factors directly, but the model shown in Fig. 2AOpens compared to the experimental color matching data in the upcoming "Color matching experiments" section suggest that two-thirds of the light captured by cones is captured by neighboring cones, while one-third is confined to the target cell. In spite of this unintentional light leak, our Oz prototype displays color beyond the normal human gamut with this level of accuracy. In the image viewer, Figure 2BOpens shows how the range of Oz chromaticities that could be achieved would be affected by the stimulating wavelength. Depending on the number of different cone types that respond to a given stimulating wavelength, the shape of this gamut can be a triangle, a line, or a single point. This shape reflects the relative responses of the L, M, and S cone cells. Prototype design An AOSLO (14), which simultaneously images and stimulates the retina using a raster scan of near-diffraction-limited laser light over a 0.9° square field of view, serves as the foundation for our Oz prototype. We are able to monitor the eye's movement in real time by imaging the retina with almost invisible infrared light. We dynamically target each cone cell in the field of view with pulses of visible-wavelength laser light to compensate for this motion. A population of 103 cones receives these laser microdoses at a rate of 105 per second. The spectral type of each cone needs to be known in order for cone-targeted stimulation to result in the intended LMS activation. Using recently developed optoretinography techniques in an AO-OCT system, cone cells in the subject's retina are categorized according to their spectral type in a preparatory step (15, 23). We use a classified region with 1000 to 2000 cones near a 4° eccentricity from the foveola for this study. We conduct the following experiments on human subjects: color matching with uniform Oz color squares and image/video recognition. The stimulated area falls within the classified region of the retina because all Oz stimuli are presented within the 0.9° square field of view, 4° adjacent to a gaze fixation point. Stimuli are randomly repeated in a control condition, and the microdose delivery is intentionally compromised. Each microdose in these control trials is randomly "jittered" so that it lands two cones away from the target. Studies on matching colors In order to officially measure the chromaticity coordinates of Oz colors, we carry out color matching experiments. Both 488 nm, which can activate all three L, M, and S cone types, and 543 nm, which is close to the peak of L and M but only minimally activates S, are tested as stimulation wavelengths. A red-green-blue (RGB) projector and a near-monochromatic laser with a tunable wavelength that can be mixed with white projector light are the two color matching systems we use. The latter is able to produce colors that are close to the natural human gamut, making it clear that our attempts to display olo do not actually go beyond the natural human gamut. The subject must judge match equality using the same patch of retina in order to eliminate effects from differences in adaptation across the retina because the subject sees 0.9° squares of Oz and controllable color that coincide in space and alternate in time during a color matching trial. Subjects can, as is typical with color matching (1), add light to the Oz color—also known as "negative" light—if necessary to achieve an exact match; the matched color is calculated by subtracting its color coordinates from those of the controllable square. In addition, subjects are asked to qualitatively name the hue and rate the saturation (on a scale of one to four) of the squares of controllable color and Oz color. The color matching experiments' graphs are shown in Figure 3 (opens in an image viewer). 222 color matches were performed by five subjects. We draw attention to four observations. First, around the stimulation wavelength of 488 nm, Oz colors form a triangle (Fig. 3BOpens in the image viewer), as well as a 543 nm color line (Fig. 3AOpens in the image viewer), which is in line with the theory in the section titled "Theory of cell-by-cell color." Second, as anticipated, the color "collapses" toward the stimulation wavelength under the jitter control condition. Thirdly, the further Oz colors are from the color matching system's gamut, the greater the variance in matching lms chromaticity. This pattern is in line with the geometric analysis in the Materials and Methods section titled "Plotting perceptual uncertainty in matching," which explains why perceptual uncertainty in chromaticity rises when light must be added to the test color to match. Fourth, Picture The image viewer's 3COpens provide unambiguous evidence that olo goes beyond the normal human spectrum. To match the (nearly) monochromatic colors shown, which are on the boundary of the natural human gamut, all subjects found it necessary to desaturate olo with projector white in these matches. Under the test subjects' viewing conditions, these matching monochromatic wavelengths between 501 and 512 nm are the most saturated teal hues for normal color vision. Although the Abney effect—a shift in hue with saturation (24)—opens the possibility that the hue of the wavelength at best match may not precisely represent the hue of the undiluted olo color, subjects' qualitative hue naming and saturation ratings support these quantitative findings. The color names "teal," "green," "blue-greenish," and "green, a little blue" were all suggested for olo. Fig.'s near-monochromatic colors have an average saturation rating of 2.9, while subjects consistently give olo a saturation rating of 4. 3Creates in the image viewer. Experiments in image and video recognition In order to investigate the capacity of human subjects to comprehend Oz-generated images, we create image and video recognition experiments. We use four-alternative forced choice (4-AFC) and two-alternative forced choice (AFC) tasks in which participants can only succeed if they use accurate Oz stimulation-generated hue information. Subjects must determine the image's line orientation in the 4-AFC task. Subjects must identify the direction of rotation in a video of a moving disk in the 2-AFC task. With a stimulating wavelength of 543 nm, these stimuli present the lines and disks as red (all-L cone) on an olo background (all-M cone). In the jitter control condition, all hue and luminance cues are eliminated and the task is reduced to guessing after a calibration step is carried out (see the "Image and video recognition experiments" section in Materials and Methods). The results of the 4-AFC line orientation and 2-AFC rotation direction tasks are plotted in Figure 4Opens in an image viewer. Subjects are able to accurately detect both line orientation and motion direction (blue bars) in the experimental condition. Subjects' performance in the jitter control condition is reduced to guessing for both tasks (gray bars). When the task was easy, subjects report seeing red or orange lines and disks on a blue-green or green background, whereas when they were forced to guess, they see a yellow-green square. The first is directly related to precise Oz microdose delivery, and the second is related to the jitter control condition, in which only the natural color of the 543-nm light should be seen. DISCUSSION
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Humans
Oz Vision: Unlocking Colors Beyond Human Perception
Abstract For displaying color images, we present Oz, a principle that involves directly controlling the activity of photoreceptors in the human eye through the delivery of light to individual cells. By exclusively activating M cone cells and avoiding the constraints imposed by cone spectral sensitivities, novel colors are theoretically possible. In practice, we confirm a partial colorspace expansion in that theoretical direction. By formal color matching on human subjects, it has been demonstrated that attempting to activate M cones exclusively elicits a color beyond the natural human gamut. The color, according to them, is a blue-green with unprecedented saturation. Oz colors are perceived by subjects in image and video form in additional experiments. Under fixational eye movement, the prototype delivers laser microdoses to thousands of spectrally classified cones. The programmable control of individual photoreceptors at the population scale is demonstrated by these findings as proof-of-principle.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Humans
2025 NFL mock draft: Scouts predict the top 5 picks out of 10 picks.2
1. Las Vegas Raiders Projected pick from an NFC West national scout: Ashton Jeanty, RB, Boise State The Raiders traded a third-round selection to Seattle for quarterback Geno Smith in March, resolving the biggest need on the roster. Now they must build a better offense around Smith.
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Gamers
2025 NFL mock draft: Scouts predict the top 5 picks out of 10 picks
1. Titans of Tennessee Our designated scout for the Titans' pick didn't shake things up and make a non-quarterback selection. This mock draft starts chalky, as Ward is the clear favorite to be the No. 1 pick on April 24. When asked why Ward was the choice -- even over blue-chip prospects such as Colorado wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter and Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter -- the scout said, "He's the best QB in the class and is the best player at the most important position of need."
By Mahafuj Alam10 months ago in Gamers
