edited by Filip Stabrowski and Liena Vayzman
Learning about our faculty, staff, and students’ histories and experiences is an important part of our learning process itself. This collection of essays and photos about wedding traditions contributed by LaGuardia’s faculty, staff, and students is illustrative of this dynamic. Drawn from their direct knowledge and experiences, this selection of essays explores traditional practices, rituals, and beliefs – and the meanings behind them. Collectively, they weave a wonderful tapestry depicting the variety of ways of thinking about, representing, and performing wedding rituals.
Cover Image Source: personal photo archives of Indira Persaud, Roman Senkov, and Na Xu.
by Lucia Fuentes and Roman Senkov
In our “Interviews” section in this issue, we are excited to share some unique insight into the work and career paths of Sherouk Alzeory, Cristina Rogers and Trevor Taylor, three members of the Natural Science Department. While working as laboratory technicians, Cristina and Sherouk obtained their MSc degree, and Trevor is also presently working in that direction. Read what inspires them, what they’re passionate about and what advice they have for students at LaGuardia.
Spiders are characterized by a unique lifestyles, which requires development of very special sensory organs. In this article LaGuardia Prof. Boris Zakharov discusses trichobothria – mechanoreceptors located on the dorsal surface of tarsus, metatarsus, and tibia of walking legs and pedipalps of spiders. Trichobothria respond to airborne stimuli such as gas particle displacement and have to be regarded not as sound detectors.
Cover Image: Tom Murray (Flickr).
This work was done by LaGuardia students Daniel Gallego and Layla Xholi as a part of the Honors “General Physics I” class, Fall 2021.
The authors studied Lagrange points and tried to locate them in any given binary star system. The obtained equations were applied to both a Sun-Earth-Moon scenario as well as a binary star system. Using Python they mapped the potential energy of various binary systems with different mass ratios and identified their respective Lagrange points.
Today the Lagrange points of our Earth-Sun system are of special interest as the point furthest from the Sun, also known as L2, hosts NASA's newest and most powerful James Webb Telescope.
In this article LaGuardia Chemistry Professor Pratikkumar Rathod attempts to identify one or more novel potential phosphorylation sites across various HIV proteins and to introduce a definitive database of host-cell kinase/HIV phosphorylation substrate interactions, which may prove to be a strong pillar for further investigation of anti-HIV therapeutics.
Cover Image: Human immunodeficiency viruses (Wiki).
LaGuardia students Daniel Gallego, Edda Hobuss, and Layla Xholi participated in a week-long workshop organized by the University of Maryland called GRAD-MAP. During this intense week, they had the chance to meet great physicists, tour labs and observatories, be introduced to Python, and gain some research experience. In this article, they share their experience and invite students to apply to this interesting program.
Cover: Image of an asteroid captured by NASA (Photo: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL).
by LaGuardia STEM club
In this article, LaGuardia students and members of the college STEM club - Selassie Mawuko, Ritika Talwar, and Hui Shan Zhou Peng, present a brief summary of their experiences and learning incurred during the club activities. In particular, they provide here a detailed narrative of the discussions on Remote learning moderated by them on behalf of the club.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash.
by Roman Senkov and Tomonori Nagano
Swahili, also known by its native name Kiswahili, is a Bantu language and the native language of the Swahili people. It is one of two official languages of the East African Community countries. By working on this puzzle you will learn about the diminutive and augmentative prefixes in the Swahili language and more.
★ A solution for the previous puzzle is posted at the end of this article. Check it out!
