Affiliation: University of Kentucky

Research: https://bio.as.uky.edu/users/bohara

Abstract: Sleep is conserved across all birds and mammals, and perhaps all animals, and yet its primary functions and reason for existence are still unclear.  We still cannot answer the simple question of why we sleep at all.  A major bottleneck in understanding sleep is the time and cost involved with EEG/EMG analysis (the gold standard for sleep in birds and mammals).  Therefore, my lab has spent the past twenty years developing a simple, noninvasive alternative using sensitive piezoelectric films, which has allowed for large scale genomic studies, more efficient drug screens, and the testing of sleep in a wide variety of rodent models for human disease.  Although we do not know the central functions of sleep very well, we now know that it strongly impacts almost all diseases including infections, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, Alzhiemer’s, and essentially every disease examined thus far.  Sufficient sleep is also critical for optimal performance and our sense of well-being.  Even a modest reduction of sleep from 7hrs/night to 5hrs/night reduces the average person’s performance to that of someone who is legally “drunk”.  Sleep traits, like almost all traits, are complex, and the specific alleles of specific genes that influence these traits in people and in mice have been difficult to determine.  However, we and other labs have begun to find patterns and pathways that may shed light on the most critical processes.  Sleep appears to serve many different functions that impact health and disease, a few of which are beginning to be understood, and will be highlighted in this talk.

Abstract: Soft materials are found in a host of application areas, from biotechnology and 3D printing to adhesives and soft devices. However understanding and controlling the behavior of very soft materials is an ongoing challenge. The Soft Materials and Interfaces group focuses on understanding the physics and mechanics of soft polymeric materials, including but not limited to gels, elastomers, and viscoelastic fluids, with an emphasis on responses at or near interfaces. When materials are sufficiently soft or the characteristic size scale is sufficiently small, soft solids display liquid-like characteristics – properties traditionally reserved for liquids emerge as an important part of the material response. In this talk, we introduce situations where combinations of solid and liquid characteristics control the mechanics of deformable interfaces. In particular, we discuss the importance of surface tension, surface stress, and phase separation for the interaction between a small adhesive particle and a soft elastomer. Based on confocal microscopy and colloidal probe experiments, a modified contact mechanics model is proposed. In the second part, we demonstrate tunable adhesive behavior of transient hydrogel networks that are crosslinked with metal-coordination bonds. Time permitting, we will introduce our current knowledge on how a liquid drop interacts with the surface of a soft polymer gel.

Bio: Jonathan Pham is an Assistant Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Kentucky. He received a PhD in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he investigated nanoparticle assembly and mechanics. During this time, he was a Chateaubriand fellow at ESPCI-ParisTech investigating deformation of microscale helical filaments in microfluidics. Prior to joining Kentucky, he was a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research working on a range of topics, including cell-surface interactions and liquid drop impact.

Research: http://pham.engineering.uky.edu/team/

Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., is Director of Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS), Associate Professor of History (School of Arts & Sciences) and Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences (Mailman School of Public Health). He writes, teaches, and lectures widely on African-American history, medical and public health history, urban history, issues of policing and criminal justice, and the history of social movements. His book, Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation (UNC Press, 2009), demonstrates the historical and continuing links between legal and de facto segregation and poor health outcomes. In 2013-14, Dr. Roberts served as the Policy Director of Columbia University’s Justice Initiative, where he coordinated the efforts of several partners to bring attention to the issue of aging and the growing incarcerated elderly population. This work led to the publication of the widely-read landmark report, Aging in Prison Reducing Elder Incarceration and Promoting Public Safety (New York: Columbia University Center for Justice. November 2015).

Dr. Roberts currently is researching a book project on the history of drug addiction policy and politics from the 1950s to the present, a period which encompasses the various heroin epidemics between the 1950s and the 1980s, therapeutic communities, radical recovery movements, methadone maintenance treatment, and harm reduction approaches.

Dr. Roberts tweets from @SamuelKRoberts.

Part of the Africana Saturday School Double Lecture Series

Dr. Steven Kniffley presents “Do You: Developing Black Masculinity in Racist Spaces”

The second hour features David Cozart's presentation, “You LOOK Just Like Yo Daddy: Fatherhood as a Vision and Social Determinant of BMoC”

A scholar of science, technology, and social inequality, Nelson is the author most recently of The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome. Her publications also include a symposium in the British Journal of Sociology on history, genealogy, and the #GU272, and the books Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination; Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History; and Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. In 2002, she edited “Afrofuturism,” an influential special issue of Social Text

The Digital In/Equalities Speaker Series brings leading scholars to campus to share their research and perspectives on issues of social justice across a range of digital topics, including apps, social media, geographic information systems (GIS), big data, genomic research and coding. While each of our proposed speaks across different software, hardware, and platforms, they are bound in their interrelated concerns about inequality and justice, both online and in everyday life.

Walter Mosley is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than 43 critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 23 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy and PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

Free and open to the public.

Black women turn out to vote at higher rates than any other group of Americans. They are also incarcerated at twice the rate of white women, and have been incarcerated at higher rates than black men since 1980. This interdisciplinary panel explores black women's experiences at the intersection of citizenship and criminal justice from the perspectives of law, social science, literature, and lived experience.

Damaris Hill. Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and English literature in the Department of English at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Hill is the author of A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing, a book of poetry on black women’s incarceration, and Amazon #1 best seller in African American Poetry.

Melynda J. Price. William L. Matthews, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky and Director of the Gaines Center for the Humanities. Dr. Price’s research focus on black women’s activism and criminal justice.

Bridgett King. Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the MPA program at Auburn University. Dr. King is an expert on felony disenfranchisement and black political participation.

Tanya Fogle, Alumnus of University of Kentucky, former Lady Cat, Community activist with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.  Ms. Fogle draws on her own experiences with felony conviction and political rights restoration to advocate for the re-enfranchisement of individuals with felony convictions in Kentucky.