By Jessica Colarossi | Photos by Sena Ozcanli (banner); courtesy of G\u00fcne\u015f (below)<\/p>\n Anthropologist S\u00fcmeyra G\u00fcne\u015f is a regular at Istanbul, Turkey, comedy clubs, but she\u2019s not there just for the jokes. G\u00fcne\u015f researches how comedians are making marginalized communities visible through humor, often toeing the line of what\u2019s considered an \u201cacceptable\u201d joke to make in public.<\/p>\n \u201cI look at how stand-up comedians claim visibility and carve themselves alternative spaces on the stage in a highly censored public space,\u201d says G\u00fcne\u015f (GRS\u201927), a PhD candidate in anthropology.<\/p>\n The ambiguity of the Turkish Criminal Code\u2014specifically Article 216, which, she says, is against \u201cprovoking the public to hatred, hostility, and degradation\u201d\u2014makes it hard to know what\u2019s considered a criminal offense. \u201cThey\u2019re not sure what will make them end up in jail or what could get them canceled,\u201d says G\u00fcne\u015f, who grew up in Turkey. \u201cBut at the same time, they cannot resist the urge to try, because the boundaries are there to be pushed.\u201d<\/p>\n The stand-up comedians she\u2019s interested in hail predominantly from underrepresented communities, like LGBTQ+ people, as well as religious and ethnic minority groups. Through humor, \u201cthey\u2019ve been trying to resist systemic silencing and assimilation,\u201d G\u00fcne\u015f says. \u201cIt\u2019s actually a way of claiming voice over your own identity.\u201d<\/p>\n G\u00fcne\u015f believes that interrogating where lines are drawn between acceptable representation and offense opens the door to bigger conversations about how to regulate speech in other spaces, like on social media platforms.<\/p>\n View extended version of the story<\/a><\/p>\n Rayea Jain (COM\u201926)<\/p>\n In 2017, Ukraine imposed economic sanctions on Donbas, an eastern region of the country bordering Russia. Pro-Russian secessionists had infiltrated the government and declared independence. Ukraine announced a blockade on trade as a way of using financial pressure to encourage policy change.<\/p>\n For the past 10 years, Russo-political occupation has been a threat to Eastern Ukraine and has used economic sanctions to gain leverage. But while these tactics are politically popular, do they make economic sense?<\/p>\n Raymond Fisman, the Slater Family Professor in Behavioral Economics, explored the financial consequences of Ukraine\u2019s Donbas sanctions in a paper coauthored by Giovanna Marcolongo (GRS\u201920) and Meng Wu (GRS\u201922,\u201922) and published in Social Science Research Network<\/em> (January 2024).<\/p>\n The team examined whether the use of sanctions undermined Ukraine\u2019s political intentions. Donbas is Ukraine\u2019s primary source of anthracite coal. The sanctions didn\u2019t cut off Donbas from global coal markets. Rather, the region used Russia as an intermediary to get its out-put onto world markets. Cutting off direct trade simply meant that Ukraine ended up purchasing Donbas coal at an inflated price. \u201cCutting off trade with the breakaway republic made for good politics but was harmful to Ukraine\u2019s economy,\u201d Fisman says.<\/p>\n He adds that a similar \u201cworkaround\u201d is arising with the current blockade of Russia by NATO and other international partners. Germany can\u2019t export cars to Moscow, for example, but Dubai can import German cars and resell them to Russia. While Russia may be paying an inflated price, the nation still has access to the same consumer goods.<\/p>\n Economic sanctions are a popular tool for encouraging policy change\u2014but the research team\u2019s findings show that they can often be self-defeating.<\/p>\n View extended version of the story<\/a><\/p>\n Marc Chalufour<\/p>\n Exploding stars. Colliding galaxies. A mountaintop camera that can see the beginning of time. These aren\u2019t plot points in the latest sci-fi series. They\u2019re the real-world building blocks of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), a decade-long effort to map the universe and to understand what it\u2019s made of.<\/p>\n Since DES launched, Dillon Brout, an assistant professor of astronomy and physics, and his peers on the cosmological analysis team have conducted the largest survey of supernovae ever, identifying approximately 1,500 of the exploding stars and using each one as a precise point in their map of the expanding universe.<\/p>\n To collect their data, they photographed the sky with the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera, mounted on a telescope in the Chilean Andes. The researchers then took precise measurements from each photographed supernova to determine the movement of galaxies and the rate of the universe\u2019s expansion.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re doing with the supernovae is using them as a measuring stick to study the interplay between the gravitational pull of dark matter inwards and the outward pressure of dark energy,\u201d Brout says. Approximately 95 percent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, opposing forces that scientists know must exist but can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n Some of the supernovae they photographed were more than eight billion light-years away. \u201cThis means that we get to see the universe as it was more than half of the way back to the big bang,\u201d says Brout.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/cas\/files\/2024\/10\/Su\u0308meyra-Gu\u0308nes_CAS-e1732030680219-528x636.jpg\")
\nDo Economic Sanctions Do More Harm Than Good?<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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\nMapping the Universe<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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