Testimony in the Amber Guyger murder trial continued on Thursday as prosecutors continued to interview witnesses who could attest to her culpability in the death of 26-year old St. Lucian accountant, Botham Jean. The prosecution has rested its case and today, Guyger’s attorneys will have their chance to present her side of the story.
Jean, who was an unarmed Black man, was shot to death by Guyger, a former police officer, when she entered the wrong unit in their Dallas apartment building last September. Guyger was off duty at the time, but has since been fired from the police force.
Her defense team has professed that Guyger acted in self-defense after seeing Jean’s “large silhouette” (which she believed to be a burglar) as she opened the door, but the prosecution says that’s a lie.
The Dallas D.A.’s office has taken most of the week to attempt to prove that Guyger used excessive force and that Jean, who was sitting in the dark, watching television as he enjoyed a bowl of ice cream, posed to visible threat to her whatsoever.
Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus shows Botham Jean’s door mat to the jury during his opening statement before the jury. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/Pool)
Called to the stand today were Dallas Officer Tu Nguyen. According to the Dallas News, Nguyen’s was one of the officers on the scene who attepted to help Jean by raising his legs onto a pillow in order to move the blood back to Jean’s heart.
Texas Ranger Michael Adcock who testified that Guyger had a knife and pepper spray in her tool belt, helped to establish the idea that she had other means of stopping a potential intruder if she felt that her life was in danger. The fact that she reached and used her firearm would then not be deemed a reasonable decision.
Assistant District Attorney Jason Hermus questioned firearm/toolmark expert, April Kendrick, who provided details about the 9mm service gun Guyger used to kill Jean including projectile distance and bullet casings. This was to gain a better understanding of whether or not Jean was sitting on the couch when he was shot or standing in front of Guyger.
Independent Criminal Investigator, Michael Grice said on the stand that he collected Jean’s red front door mat three days after the shooting, and not the Dallas Police Department. This is a key piece of evidence since it was a rather huge indicator that Guyger was in front of the wrong apartment, 1478 and not 1378.
Wendy L. Wilson is the managing editor of theGrio. Follow her rants, raves, and reviews on Twitter @WendyLWilson_
The Grammy-winning singer’s son, Izaak Theo Adu, took time out to thank his mom for being his strength as he braved surgery to transition from female to male.
For the last six months, Sade’s 23-year-old on was reportedly in recovery and emerged publicly to give a shout out to his mom by posting a picture hugging her and thanking her for her unwavering support.
“It’s been a long hard road but We did it!! We are coming home!!!!,” he wrote.
“Thank you for staying by my side these past 6 months Mumma. Thank you for fighting with me to complete the man I am.”
“Thank you for your encouragement when things are hard, for the love you give me. The purest heart. I love you so much. Queen of queens ♥️ #mumma #lioness #queen#iloveyou.”
“It’s been a long hard road but We did it!! We are coming home!!!!
Thank you for staying by my side these past 6 months Mumma. Thank you for fighting with me to complete the man I am. Thank you for your encouragement when things are hard, for the love you give me. The purest heart. I love you so much. Queen of queens ♥️ #mumma#lioness#queen#iloveyou.”
In July Adu opened up about enduring sex reassignment surgery in an emotional post on social media.
“This process is trying, tiring, painful, emotionally exhausting, physically exhausting, uncomfortable (like I can’t sleep like a normal human being rn lol) I often ask myself “why the fuck do I have to endure this to be who I am” but at the end of the day this is the path that was laid out for me and I’ll walk it to the end. My dad always says “keep your eyes on the horizon” and that’s what I do, because through all this pain is the comfort that it’s not forever and I have the rest of my life ahead of me and I am so, SO DAMN EXCITED, I just have to remind myself to be patient sometimes as I’m sure we all do. Big up to my Mumma, Pappa, family and friends for all the support you give me on the daily, it’ll never be forgotten ☺️ ?? #ftm#trans#transgender#transman#tpoc#tmoc#selfmademan#phalloplasty#thisiswhattranslookslike#yaaaaas,” he posted.
The ‘OK’ hand gesture, made famous by white supremacists, and the ‘Bowlcut’ hairdo worn by “Charlotte Nine” killer Dylan Roof, are just a few of the hate symbols added to an Anti-Defamation League database.
At least 36 new entries tied to white supremacists and other far-right extremist are now included along with hateful symbols like the burning crosses, Ku Klux Klan robes, the swastika and many others, Al.com reports.
The Jewish civil rights group added the symbols to its “Hate on Display” in an effort to assist law enforcement with identifying the emblems that has become hallmarks for hate.
“Even as extremists continue to use symbols that may be years or decades old, they regularly create new symbols, memes and slogans to express their hateful sentiments,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
There are at least 200 entries now in the online database.
The “Dylann Roof Bowlcut,” was added by the ADL because it became synonymous with the killing of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston who were killed in 2015 by Roof who sported the ugly hairdo.
In addition, Jeffrey Clark, a white supremacist, had deep tied to the alt-right and boasted a Facebook username called ‘DC Bowl Gang’. He also bragged that Pittsburgh synagogue shooting victims “deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse,” an FBI agent wrote in a court filing for gun charges against Clark, the outlet reports.
The women in a viral video ranting about killing n*ggers has been named as Heather Lynn Patton, Heavy reports.
On the video the woman can clearly be seen and heard spewing hateful threats: “I would kill a n***er but the law says I can’t kill the n***ers. If the law didn’t say I couldn’t kill the n***ers they’d all be dead.”
The other woman who recorded the nasty rant replied that the belligerent woman was “on drugs or something.” Patton turned around and replied, “No, I just hate n***ers.”
Patton screamed racist obscenities while at an Eagle Rock CVS in California. She reportedly is a costume designer who has worked on various film and TV projects including The Americans and Rescue Me.
The incident reportedly happened on The incident occurred on September 24 and went viral the next day. Patton can be heard saying n*gger a number of times and shouted “f*ck you n*ggers,” when a man passed by her.
Renee Saldana, who witnessed the racist incident, wrote on Twitter, “This happened yesterday afternoon. I was also there and got video of this woman’s racist rant at CVS in Eagle Rock.”
Saldana said there was nothing obvious that happened that provoked the racist outbursts from Patton.
She added, “There were at least a dozen witnesses and there was more yelling going on inside before the video starts. That woman was freaking out everyone in the store shouting about lynching Black people. There were 2 shoppers who saw her drive up & said she was driving erratically when she parked. When the woman took off after the rant, she was speeding west on Colorado driving on the wrong side of the street. Other frightened customers kept saying, ‘She could kill someone!’”
Saldana said she reported the incident to CVS.
“If the law didn’t say I couldn’t kill the nig*ers they’d be all dead”
This racist lady told a Black woman that she would kill all black people if it wasn’t illegal in a CVS in California
The LAPD is also reportedly investigating the incident as a possible hate crime.
And according to IndieWire, there is an online petition being circulated by fellow costumer and Local 705 member Sarah de Sa Rego, calling for other union members to file complaints against Patton and request her immediate expulsion. De Sa Rego recommends that Patton be cited for violating “Article 11 section 2 ‘action unbecoming of a union member’ as well as ‘actions which reflect to discredit this union and its members.’”
By 2025, experts estimate the number of “internet of things” devices — including sensors that gather real-time data about infrastructure and the environment — could rise to 75 billion worldwide. As it stands, however, those sensors require batteries that must be replaced frequently, which can be problematic for long-term monitoring.
MIT researchers have designed photovoltaic-powered sensors that could potentially transmit data for years before they need to be replaced. To do so, they mounted thin-film perovskite cells — known for their potential low cost, flexibility, and relative ease of fabrication — as energy-harvesters on inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags.
The cells could power the sensors in both bright sunlight and dimmer indoor conditions. Moreover, the team found the solar power actually gives the sensors a major power boost that enables greater data-transmission distances and the ability to integrate multiple sensors onto a single RFID tag.
“In the future, there could be billions of sensors all around us. With that scale, you’ll need a lot of batteries that you’ll have to recharge constantly. But what if you could self-power them using the ambient light? You could deploy them and forget them for months or years at a time,” says Sai Nithin Kantareddy, a PhD student in the MIT Auto-ID Laboratory. “This work is basically building enhanced RFID tags using energy harvesters for a range of applications.”
In a pair of papers published in the journals Advanced Functional Materials and IEEE Sensors, MIT Auto-ID Laboratory and MIT Photovoltaics Research Laboratory researchers describe using the sensors to continuously monitor indoor and outdoor temperatures over several days. The sensors transmitted data continuously at distances five times greater than traditional RFID tags — with no batteries required. Longer data-transmission ranges mean, among other things, that one reader can be used to collect data from multiple sensors simultaneously.
Depending on certain factors in their environment, such as moisture and heat, the sensors can be left inside or outside for months or, potentially, years at a time before they degrade enough to require replacement. That can be valuable for any application requiring long-term sensing, indoors and outdoors, including tracking cargo in supply chains, monitoring soil, and monitoring the energy used by equipment in buildings and homes.
Joining Kantareddy on the papers are: Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE) postdoc Ian Matthews, researcher Shijing Sun, chemical engineering student Mariya Layurova, researcher Janak Thapa, researcher Ian Marius Peters, and Georgia Tech Professor Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, who are all members of the Photovoltaics Research Laboratory; Rahul Bhattacharyya, a researcher in the AutoID Lab; Tonio Buonassisi, a professor in MechE; and Sanjay E. Sarma, the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
Combining two low-cost technologies
In recent attempts to create self-powered sensors, other researchers have used solar cells as energy sources for internet of things (IoT) devices. But those are basically shrunken-down versions of traditional solar cells — not perovskite. The traditional cells can be efficient, long-lasting, and powerful under certain conditions “but are really infeasible for ubiquitous IoT sensors,” Kantareddy says.
Traditional solar cells, for instance, are bulky and expensive to manufacture, plus they are inflexible and cannot be made transparent, which can be useful for temperature-monitoring sensors placed on windows and car windshields. They’re also really only designed to efficiently harvest energy from powerful sunlight, not low indoor light.
Perovskite cells, on the other hand, can be printed using easy roll-to-roll manufacturing techniques for a few cents each; made thin, flexible, and transparent; and tuned to harvest energy from any kind of indoor and outdoor lighting.
The idea, then, was combining a low-cost power source with low-cost RFID tags, which are battery-free stickers used to monitor billions of products worldwide. The stickers are equipped with tiny, ultra-high-frequency antennas that each cost around three to five cents to make.
RFID tags rely on a communication technique called “backscatter,” that transmits data by reflecting modulated wireless signals off the tag and back to a reader. A wireless device called a reader — basically similar to a Wi-Fi router — pings the tag, which powers up and backscatters a unique signal containing information about the product it’s stuck to.
Traditionally, the tags harvest a little of the radio-frequency energy sent by the reader to power up a little chip inside that stores data, and uses the remaining energy to modulate the returning signal. But that amounts to only a few microwatts of power, which limits their communication range to less than a meter.
The researchers’ sensor consists of an RFID tag built on a plastic substrate. Directly connected to an integrated circuit on the tag is an array of perovskite solar cells. As with traditional systems, a reader sweeps the room, and each tag responds. But instead of using energy from the reader, it draws harvested energy from the perovskite cell to power up its circuit and send data by backscattering RF signals.
Efficiency at scale
The key innovations are in the customized cells. They’re fabricated in layers, with perovskite material sandwiched between an electrode, cathode, and special electron-transport layer materials. This achieved about 10 percent efficiency, which is fairly high for still-experimental perovskite cells. This layering structure also enabled the researchers to tune each cell for its optimal “bandgap,” which is an electron-moving property that dictates a cell’s performance in different lighting conditions. They then combined the cells into modules of four cells.
In the Advanced Functional Materials paper, the modules generated 4.3 volts of electricity under one sun illumination, which is a standard measurement for how much voltage solar cells produce under sunlight. That’s enough to power up a circuit — about 1.5 volts — and send data around 5 meters every few seconds. The modules had similar performances in indoor lighting. The IEEE Sensors paper primarily demonstrated wide‐bandgap perovskite cells for indoor applications that achieved between 18.5 percent and 21. 4 percent efficiencies under indoor fluorescent lighting, depending on how much voltage they generate. Essentially, about 45 minutes of any light source will power the sensors indoors and outdoors for about three hours.
The RFID circuit was prototyped to only monitor temperature. Next, the researchers aim to scale up and add more environmental-monitoring sensors to the mix, such as humidity, pressure, vibration, and pollution. Deployed at scale, the sensors could especially aid in long-term data-collection indoors to help build, say, algorithms that help make smart buildings more energy efficient.
“The perovskite materials we use have incredible potential as effective indoor-light harvesters. Our next step is to integrate these same technologies using printed electronics methods, potentially enabling extremely low-cost manufacturing of wireless sensors," Mathews says.
In music, “portamento” is a term that’s been used for hundreds of years, referring to the effect of gliding a note at one pitch into a note of a lower or higher pitch. But only instruments that can continuously vary in pitch — such as the human voice, string instruments, and trombones — can pull off the effect.
Now an MIT student has invented a novel algorithm that produces a portamento effect between any two audio signals in real-time. In experiments, the algorithm seamlessly merged various audio clips, such as a piano note gliding into a human voice, and one song blending into another. His paper describing the algorithm won the “best student paper” award at the recent International Conference on Digital Audio Effects.
The algorithm relies on “optimal transport,” a geometry-based framework that determines the most efficient ways to move objects — or data points — between multiple origin and destination configurations. Formulated in the 1700s, the framework has been applied to supply chains, fluid dynamics, image alignment, 3-D modeling, computer graphics, and more.
In work that originated in a class project, Trevor Henderson, now a graduate student in computer science, applied optimal transport to interpolating audio signals — or blending one signal into another. The algorithm first breaks the audio signals into brief segments. Then, it finds the optimal way to move the pitches in each segment to pitches in the other signal, to produce the smooth glide of the portamento effect. The algorithm also includes specialized techniques to maintain the fidelity of the audio signal as it transitions.
“Optimal transport is used here to determine how to map pitches in one sound to the pitches in the other,” says Henderson, a classically trained organist who performs electronic music and has been a DJ on WMBR 88.1, MIT’s radio station. “If it’s transforming one chord into a chord with a different harmony, or with more notes, for instance, the notes will split from the first chord and find a position to seamlessly glide to in the other chord.”
According to Henderson, this is one of the first techniques to apply optimal transport to transforming audio signals. He has already used the algorithm to build equipment that seamlessly transitions between songs on his radio show. DJs could also use the equipment to transition between tracks during live performances. Other musicians might use it to blend instruments and voice on stage or in the studio.
Henderson’s co-author on the paper is Justin Solomon, an X-Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Solomon — who also plays cello and piano — leads the Geometric Data Processing Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and is a member of the Center for Computational Engineering.
Henderson took Solomon’s class, 6.838 (Shape Analysis), which tasks students with applying geometric tools like optimal transport to real-world applications. Student projects usually focus on 3-D shapes from virtual reality or computer graphics. So Henderson’s project came as a surprise to Solomon. “Trevor saw an abstract connection between geometry and moving frequencies around in audio signals to create a portamento effect,” Solomon says. “He was in and out of my office all semester with DJ equipment. It wasn’t what I expected to see, but it was pretty entertaining.”
For Henderson, it wasn’t too much of a stretch. “When I see a new idea, I ask, ‘Is this applicable to music?’” he says. “So, when we talked about optimal transport, I wondered what would happen if I connected it to audio spectra.”
A good way to think of optimal transport, Henderson says, is finding “a lazy way to build a sand castle.” In that analogy, the framework is used to calculate the way to move each grain of sand from its position in a shapeless pile into a corresponding position in a sand castle, using as little work as possible. In computer graphics, for instance, optimal transport can be used to transform or morph shapes by finding the optimal movement from each point on one shape into the other.
Applying this theory to audio clips involves some additional ideas from signal processing. Musical instruments produce sound through vibrations of components, depending on the instrument. Violins use strings, brass instruments use air inside hollow bodies, and humans use vocal cords. These vibrations can be captured as audio signals, where the frequency and amplitude (peak height) represent different pitches.
Conventionally, the transition between two audio signals is done with a fade, where one signal is reduced in volume while the other rises. Henderson’s algorithm, on the other hand, smoothly slides frequency segments from one clip into another, with no fading of volume.
To do so, the algorithm splits any two audio clips into windows of about 50 milliseconds. Then, it runs a Fourier transform, which turns each window into its frequency components. The frequency components within a window are lumped together into individual synthesized “notes.” Optimal transport then maps how the notes in one signal’s window will move to the notes in the other.
Then, an “interpolation parameter” takes over. That’s basically a value that determines where each note will be on the path from its starting pitch in one signal to its ending pitch in the other. Manually changing the parameter value will sweep the pitches between the two positions, producing the portamento effect. That single parameter can also be programmed into and controlled by, say, a crossfader, a slider component on a DJ’s mixing board that smoothly fades between songs. As the crossfader slides, the interpolation parameter changes to produce the effect.
Behind the scenes are two innovations that ensure a distortion-free signal. First, Henderson used a novel application of a signal-processing technique, called “frequency reassignment,” that lumps the frequency bins together to form single notes that can easily transition between signals. Second, he invented a way to synthesize new phases for each audio signal while stitching together the 50-millisecond windows, so neighboring windows don’t interfere with each other.
Next, Henderson wants to experiment with feeding the output of the effect back into its input. This, he thinks, could automatically create another classic music effect, “legato,” which is a smooth transition between distinct notes. Unlike a portamento — which plays all notes between a start and end note — a legato seamlessly transitions between two distinct notes, without capturing any notes in between.
Last week, Deserances premiered at the Urbanworld Film Festival in NYC and we can’t wait for you to see this powerful foreign film starring Claws alum, Jimmy Jean-Louis.
Directed by African Director Apolline Traore, who hails from Burkina Faso, the film will be the country’s first-ever Oscars submission.
Desrances tells the story of Francis (Jimmy Jean-Louis) who is expecting a second child, a son. He looks forward to the birth of his heir. For Francis, having a son is crucial since the destruction of his country was devastated by a horrific earthquake in January 2010. His joy of welcoming a son to his happy family is short lived. While Aissey is about to give birth, a civil war breaks out in Abidjan. His newborn son, and his wife have disappeared. Despite his refusal, his 12-year-old daughter Haïla decides to accompany him on his quest. Francis discovers the unsuspected courage of Haïla.
We caught up with Jimmy Jean-Louis and Apolline Traore to find out how they created this stirring piece of art that highlights several social issues in a truly provocative way.
“I thought it was quite powerful. The read was excellent. It was very easy to read and that’s the first indication that you have something good in your hands. We talked about how she was going to approach the movie and to be shooting the movie in a place like Ivory Coast, I was in,” he said of the film.
“Once again, I was playing a Haitian character but this time with a twist because we were in Africa.”
Yes, there are subtitles, but you’ll hardly mind having to read given the incredible pacing, evocative imagery, and passionate performances from its stars. Jemina Nemlin, who plays Haïla, is particularly impressive in her first-ever film role.
“When we first met, we sort of looked alike,” Jean-Louis says of his young costar. “I do have daughters that are around her age so I understand the relationship between little girls and dads.”
The choices that director, Apolline Traore made with this film are what make the viewing experience truly astounding.
“My goal for the film was to make the audience feel what the characters were feeling and to bring them inside the main character’s head,” she explained. “Because this character is so troubled and so misunderstood, I wanted the audience to feel that.”
Without giving away any major plot points, we can attest that she was successful in her mission and the result is a riveting ride that is sure to make your heart race.
The ladies of the Real Housewives of Atlanta are back and judging by the looks of the first official season 12 trailer, there will be no shortage of serious drama.
Kenya Moore will return to the series this year and she and fellow new mom Porsha Williams seem to be on good terms. That’s about where the lovefest ends because a few seconds into the clip, we see a fist fight break out between several of the ladies.
“I told you that lady was crazy,” say a very pregnant Eva Marcille before we hear Porsha’s vice telling someone to “get out of this room.”
Later, we hear Nene Leakes screaming “No, no, no, no, no,” and all hell has clearly broken loose in the A.
It looks like viewers will get too see the moment that Cynthia Bailey gets her proposal from Mike Hill and we’ll watch Dennis McKinley having second thoughts about walking away from his engagement to Porsha.
Nene Leakes and her husband are back together, but in one scene, she seems pretty curious about the idea of an open marriage.
Expect to see sparks fly between Nene and Cynthia when a leaked recording surfaces.
“Cynthia has a side to her that you guys do not know about,” Leakes tells Marlo Hampton in one part of the clip. We’ll also get to see the trouble brewing between Kenya and her estranged husband, Marc Daly.
“We’re in a really low place right now,” Kenya tells Cynthia about her marriage before a scene flashes with Marc Daly yelling at Kenya.
“You can take everything, I’ll build it again!” he shouts.
A conversation between Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sparked a detailed complaint from an intelligence community whistleblower. Here it is.
Tekashi 6ix9ine still has champagne wishes and caviar dreams to be a superstar so he’s reportedly opting out of witness protection so he can continue his music career once he’s a free man.
That’s a very tall order for a man’s who’s dropped all the dimes and testified against Nine Trey Gang members, and everybody else he could give up the goods on in his federal case, in order to reduce his time in jail.
Tekashi 6ix9ine spilled it all, and because it’s such a dire situation for the rapper, he was supposed to enter witness protection, but TMZ is reporting he wants to go back into the rap game.
Tekashi reportedly plans to hire his own bodyguards to protect him around the clock so he can continue his rap career.
Good luck with that!
On the flipside, while Tekashi plans to protect his life with bodyguards, he’s also got family in fear of their lives who feel unprotected.
Tekashi’s deal with the feds earned him the ability to be released from jail by next year in exchange for giving them info that reduced his possible 47-year sentence for cooperating with prosecutors.
Celebrities and fans took to social media this week to discuss Tekashi 6ix9ine “snitching” on many of his friends and former gang the Nine Trey Bloods while on trial.
6ix9ine is said to have implicated Trippie Redd, Cardi B, Jim Jones, and Casanova in his testimony in court.
A Georgia Sheriff’s office employee has been fired after he was caught on camera flaunting his racism in a nasty rant against a Latina college student in Savannah.
On Wednesday, Sheriff John T. Wilcher confirmed that the man who has not been named has been terminated after Cristina Riofrio, 19, posted a video of the man screaming “shut the f*** up!” while she was trying to get food at a McDonalds, NBC News reports.
Riofrio is from California, and attends Savannah College of Arts and Design. Her parents, she says are from Educador. The ranting racist told the student she came “over in a f***ing boat” and chastised her for speaking Spanish in front of the white customers.
“In America, I can speak f—— Spanish if I want to,” Riofrio said.
When Riofrio hit back at the man calling him a racist, he gladly accepted the title saying, “I know I am.”
“Yeah, sure am. That’s me. I built this f***ing country,” the racist man admitted.
Others started to jump in and help Riofrio and ordered the man to leave.
The man also mentioned Trump’s name several times and blamed Riofrio for making America “a horrible place.”
“At first I was really surprised and shocked but then I realized these people, there’s a lot of people in this country and sadly us people that are foreigners that speak other languages, not only Latinas, others, have to sadly face this,” Riofrio told reporters.
“A lot of people say, “Are you okay, are you afraid?” But I am not, actually,’”Riofrio said. “I am never going to stop speaking Spanish in front of white people, like I feel proud of where I am come from.”
A McDonald’s employee told the man to leave. The video circulated widely on social media and resulted in the man’s firing from the Sheriff’s office.
Black women have a reputation for putting in work when it comes to their careers. Whether it’s being one of the most educated groups in the country, or making up the majority of the Black labor force in the U.S., we’re continuing a legacy of leading organizations and companies with our talents. However, while we sometimes make it look easy, that doesn’t mean it actually is.
A staggering pay gap, intersectional racism and sexism, and for some the demands of being working moms, all play a role in giving us hurdles to clear.
This was the subject of a recent panel at the Congressional Black Caucus’ Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., called “African American Women in the C-Suite: How Did You Get There? Was It Worth It?” hosted by U.S. Representative Brenda Lawrence.
TheGrio was in the building to hear some of the top Black women executives in the country open up about the challenges they faced on the job, as well as offering a few gems of knowledge for other Black women who are rising the corporate ladder of success.
If you’ve been out of work for some time…
Fotolia
“Don’t look at it as a liability that you’ve been out,” says Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley.
“And by the way, if you’ve been out taking care of your kids for 15 years, or taking care of sick parent, there’s probably a lot of things that you have done where you had to pull people together or had to manage them.”
Harris says that the game has changed when it comes a 1-2 year gap on a resume. Being entrepreneurial in non-traditional ways can still serve you well.
“Think about the things you do in your community which says you are in fact a leader. Because you’ve got people to do things and they weren’t reporting to you and you were fair. Think about how you tell your story as a leader and someone can get something done.”
If you’re ready for a change in your role…
(Photo/Fotolia, @Focus Pocus LTD)
“For a change, we think we have to go behind our boss, and sneak around and we look at the job bank and we try to apply, we go to our colleagues,” says Susan Reid, Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion for Morgan Stanley.
“If you’ve invested the time at a company, growing a career, build the right relationship with your manager,” says Reid.
“If your manager is seriously invested in your success, they should be the first person who you turn to when you’re ready for more, and when you’re ready for something different. But you have to invest in the time before cultivating that kind of relationship with your manager.”
If you’re trying to decide whether you fit into a company’s corporate culture…
(Courtesy of Fotolia)
When it comes to things like hair, fashion and style, Black women have encountered restrictions and in some cases, straight-forward discrimination on the job. While some spaces like tech, have a more casual approach to a dress code, there are still traditional spaces in which Black women may encounter resistance to even simple things like natural hair.
“Think about who you are, and that lane you’re going through in your career,” advises Harris. “Is it authentic for you to go into a specific area if you’re not willing to wear the uniform? It’s inauthentic to say, for example, ‘I’m gonna go to a Wall Street firm, and I’m gonna wear shorts and a pulled out shirt because I’m that good?'”
“‘They’re going to have to take me like I am.’ It’s inauthentic to make that call because if that is inconsistent with the uniform, you’re not going to be successful there.”
On the flip side, some Black women may choose to be pioneers and push company culture, particularly when it comes to hair. Increasingly, there are anti-discrimination laws being instituted to protect people of color who want to express themselves authentically.
“There is a part of the journey that is about us and self acceptance, and I think a lot of us are still on that journey,” says Reid.
As the Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Morgan Stanley, she often leads campaigns and discussions on difficult topics, from race to policing. She also is a sister who wears her hair natural.
“I would encourage [you to] just keep exploring that journey. And if you see a black woman who is going through the journey of going from relaxed to being natural, support her. Support her. Our hair comes in all different styles.”
If you’re feeling stuck, feeling frustrated and ready to quit…
You may have reached the point where you’re mentally checked out on the job, but that shouldn’t come across in your work or interactions.
“The key is that you don’t burn bridges,” says Tonya Hallett, Executive Director, Global Manufacturing Human Resources at General Motors (GM).
Hallett has smoothly navigated working at different companies, leaving GM at one point, then returning again and being welcomed with open arms.
“The other personal mantra I have is that every role that I go into, regardless of where I go after, whether it’s a lateral job, or I get promoted out of it, or I choose to leave the company: leave that work and organization better than I found it. Just make sure that’s a part of the track record.”
Tonya Hallett says self-determination and awareness are key for Black women’s career success. (General Motors)
As the first in her family to go to college, Hallett knows wells that self- determination and agency at work are essential traits for Black women to succeed. It’s a lesson she also models as a mom of three boys.
“When you’re stuck, you’re right on the edge of a slippery slope that can fall into victimhood, right? You can become a victim of all of what they’re not doing,” says Hallett.
“Which is why that self-inventory of ‘OK, why do I feel this way right now? Why am I not getting what I think I want to get? And why I’m not growing the way I think when I grow?’ It starts with ‘What am I not doing?'”
If you’re considering changing industries altogether…
(Courtesy of Fotolia)
You’ve looked at your resume and even though you’ve built a track record in one lane, maybe you’re feeling like it’s time to switch. These days, switching companies and industries isn’t taboo. In fact, you may get further by starting over.
“I think it’s always key to keep an external view of what other people are doing in other industries, not just within your company,” says Hallett.
“I do feel like sometimes we put ourselves in a box and, and only allow ourselves to look for opportunities immediately in the industry. We started in that right after school… and we don’t allow ourselves to look across and see how we can broaden our experiences and skill sets.“
Hallet’s advice to other Black women is to stay in tune with whatever they determined to be an early personal passion.
“Oftentimes I find that people marry a company, marry a brand, and they forget why they went to college,” she says. “As a professional, [if] you’re an engineer, if you’re in an H.R. person, if you’re a finance person: Test your skills so that you can do it across industries with different products and services.”
“It does a lot to broaden your understanding and maybe even also validate and reconfirm your core knowledge as well.”
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It was day three, yesterday, in the murder trial against former Dallas police officer, Amber Guyger who shot and killed 26-year old accountant,Botham Jean, in his apartment last September.
After being questioned by the defense outside of the presence of the juror, lead investigator, Texas Department of Public Safety’s David Armstrong, provided testimony saying that he did not think that Guyger committed a crime because it was reasonable to believe that there was an intruder in her apartment and that she reacted because she perceived Jean as a deadly threat.
Jean family attorney and civil rights activist, Benjamin Crump, adamantly disagrees. In an exclusive interview with theGrio, Crump said that not only should Guyger be found guilty of murder, but the family demands that both she and her partner turned lover, Martin Rivera, be charged with tampering with evidence, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting.
The Jean family and friends along with their legal representatives will be in court every day until justice is served. (Photo courtesy of the Law Office of attorney Benjamin Crump.)
“This is a case of double standards and double talk,” said Crump who has been in the courtroom since the beginning of the trial.
“What is heartbreaking is to see how the police are doing everything in their power to protect this killer from being bought to justice. There is damning evidence that Amber Guyger and her partner/lover were sexting and then it comes out that she deleted all of her text messages and Rivera also deleted his texts and sexually explicit images that they shared with one another. Why are they not being charged with tampering of evidence or a conspiracy or Rivera with aiding and abetting? He destroyed evidence that was pertinent to what happened here.”
Critics have said that Guyger had the upper-hand from the very beginning. She clearly enjoyed the perks of being an officer with the Dallas Police Department when they allowed her to turn herself in at another county to avoid the press and when the police union paid her bond. But, like many things in life, you can’t have it both ways.
Why are they not being charged with tampering of evidence or a conspiracy or Rivera with aiding and abetting? He destroyed evidence that was pertinent to what happened here.
According to Crump, the Dallas Police Department treated the situation as if it was a police involved shooting with an on duty officer, but when it’s beneficial, the defense changes the narrative to her being an off duty officer.
In a closed hearing today, it was also revealed that the sergeant who put Guyger in the squad car, told her not to say a word because the dash cam video was running. Once the police union rep gets on the scene, he tells the sergeant to turn off the vehicle recorder, so that nothing they say will be recorded. Neither of these luxuries is typically afforded to most accused killers, especially if they are Black.
Fired Dallas police Officer Amber Guyger visits with her attorneys before proceedings. Guyger is facing a murder charge in the 204th District Court at the Frank Crowley Courts Building in Dallas, Wednesday, September 25, 2019. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/Pool)
“This is a clear violation because you know they would not do this for another citizen who had just killed an unarmed person in his own apartment,” says Crump.
“If she is not held accountable for killing this young, Black man, then is there any where Black people are safe from being executed by police in America?”
Further details of that night indicate that Guyger was removed from the police vehicle after the shooting and allowed council from other officers, which seemingly gave her time to construct the story she wanted to tell. Unlike what was said on the 911 tape, Guyger suddenly pushed this notion of self-defense, which Crump believes was a result of her having the time to be coached.
“She never once said anything about feeling threatened or in fear of her life,” says Crump. “That was the conspiracy to get a justification for her killing this man. In her words, she said, ‘I f**ked up.'” Botham went to his grave not understanding why this police officer broke into his house and shot him.”
Listening to the 911 audio, it also seems that Guyger didn’t draw on her training as an officer once she realized what she had done. Instead of trying to administer first aid, she stayed on the phone with the dispatcher and even texted Rivera.
“She’s sending text messages to her lover while Botham is laying there dead. What about trying to give him medical attention while he’s struggling for life? She’s thinking about herself. She never thought about the unarmed Black man who she just shot.”
The Jean family has had to relive this tragedy over and over again. Today they heard from Christin Noble who works with the Dallas D.A.s office and is is a digital multimedia analyst as well as four of Jean’s former neighbors (Taydra Jones, Whitney Hughes, and Alyssa Kinsey, Shanel Bly), Trace Evidence Examiner, Waleska Castro, Medical Examiner, Dr. Chester Gwin, followed by Crime Scene Analyst, Robyn Carr, who took photos of the evidence inside and outside of Jean’s apartment and of Guyger that night.
Outside the presence of the jury, Botham Jean’s father, Bertrum Jean (center), leans his head away and covers his ears as the police body camera footage is shown inside the courtroom on Wednesday, September 25, 2019. (Tom Fox/The Dallas Morning News/AP Pool)
The realization that Jean was already dead before EMS arrived on the scene and seeing officers administering CPS onto his unresponsive body was more than they could handle. Actually, this entire experience has left a defining impression in their minds.
“Remember, Botham is from St. Lucia. His family is looking at America and saying it seems to be open season when it comes to killing Black people in America by police. Is America a place where there is equal justice under the law or are those just words?'”
Wendy L. Wilson is the managing editor of theGrio.com. You can find her rants, raves, and reviews on Twitter @WendyLWilson_
The lovebirds who hooked up less than a year ago are on a whirlwind and expecting a baby girl soon.
They took their relationship to the next level by sealing the deal with saying their “I don’s” in an intimate ceremony in Malibu, California, E! News reports.
While neither Cassie or Fine have confirmed the marriage on social media, they did give a nod to their pastor Peter Berg by commenting on a picture of him officiating their ceremony.
The very pregnant soon-to-be mom wore a flowing white gown and simple laced veil. Fine looked dapper in a classic black and white tux.
Seems like Cassie is living the “happily ever after” mantra after she split from her 10-year relations with Diddy and started dated Fine last year. Fine was formerly Diddy’s personal trainer.
Cassie took to her social media to make the announcement earlier this year that she was with child. In a professional photo shoot uploaded to Instagram, Cassie and the celebrity trainer are seen seated in a car making the gender reveal in her caption:
“Can’t wait to meet our baby girl,” the expectant mother starts off, before closing with, “Love You Always & Forever.”
In another post, Fine posted an open letter to his future daughter.
“I will be the first man in your life and will show you the greatest love and affection now and forever. I never thought my heart could grow bigger after meeting your mother… then I found out we were having you and I instantly felt a love that is so indescribable,” Alex stated.
We’re happy to see Cassie get the life she dreamed of with the man of her dreams.
Our brains contain millions of synapses — the connections that transmit messages from neuron to neuron. Within these synapses are hundreds of different proteins, and dysfunction of these proteins can lead to conditions such as schizophrenia and autism.
Researchers at MIT and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT have now devised a new way to rapidly image these synaptic proteins at high resolution. Using fluorescent nucleic acid probes, they can label and image an unlimited number of different proteins. They demonstrated the technique in a new study in which they imaged 12 proteins in cellular samples containing thousands of synapses.
“Multiplexed imaging is important because there’s so much variability between synapses and cells, even within the same brain,” says Mark Bathe, an MIT associate professor of biological engineering. “You really need to look simultaneously at proteins in the sample to understand what subpopulations of different synapses look like, discover new types of synapses, and understand how genetic variations impact them.”
The researchers plan to use this technique next to study what happens to synapses when they block the expression of genes associated with specific diseases, in hopes of developing new treatments that could reverse those effects.
Bathe and Jeff Cottrell, director of translational research at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, are the senior authors of the study, which appears today in Nature Communications. The lead authors of the paper are former postdocs Syuan-Ming Guo and Remi Veneziano, former graduate student Simon Gordonov, and former research scientist Li Li.
Imaging with DNA
Synaptic proteins have a variety of functions. Many of them help to form synaptic scaffolds, which are involved in secreting neurotransmitters and processing incoming signals. While synapses contain hundreds of these proteins, conventional fluorescence microscopy is limited to imaging at most four proteins at a time.
To boost that number, the MIT team developed a new technique based on an existing method called DNA PAINT. Using this method, originally devised by Ralf Jungmann of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, researchers label proteins or other molecules of interest with a DNA-antibody probe. Then, they image each protein by delivering a fluorescent DNA “oligo” that binds to the DNA-antibody probes.
The DNA strands have an inherently low affinity for each other, so they bind and unbind periodically, creating a blinking fluorescence can be imaged using super-resolution microscopy. However, imaging each protein takes about half an hour, making it impractical for imaging many proteins in a large sample.
Bathe and his colleagues set out to create a faster method that would allow them to analyze a huge number of samples in a short period of time. To achieve that, they altered the DNA-dye imaging probe so that it would bind more tightly to the DNA-antibody, using what are called locked nucleic acids. This gives a much brighter signal, so the imaging can be done more quickly, but at slightly lower resolution.
“When we do 12 or 15 colors on a single well of neurons, the whole experiment takes an hour, compared with overnight for the super-resolution equivalent,” Bathe says.
The researchers used this technique to label 12 different proteins found in the synapse, including scaffolding proteins, proteins associated with the cytoskeleton, and proteins that are known to mark excitatory or inhibitory synapses. One of the proteins they looked at is shank3, a scaffold protein that has been linked to both autism and schizophrenia.
By analyzing protein levels in thousands of neurons, the researchers were able to determine groups of proteins that tend to associate with each other more often than others, and to learn how different synapses vary in the proteins they contain. That kind of information could be used to help classify synapses into subtypes that might help to reveal their functions.
“Inhibitory and excitatory are the canonical synapse types, but it is speculated that there are numerous different subtypes of synapses, without any real consensus around what those are,” Bathe says.
Understanding disease
The researchers also showed that they could measure changes in synaptic protein levels that occur after neurons are treated with a compound called tetrodotoxin (TTX), which strengthens synaptic connections.
“Using conventional immunofluorescence, you can typically extract information from three or four targets within the same sample, but with our technique, we were able to expand that number to 12 different targets within the same sample. We applied this method to examine synaptic remodeling that occurs following treatment with TTX, and our finding corroborated previous work that revealed a coordinated upregulation of synaptic proteins following TTX treatment,” says Eric Danielson, an MIT senior postdoc who is an author of the study.
The researchers are now using this technique, called PRISM, to study how the structure and composition of synapses are affected by knocking down a set of genes reported previously to confer genetic risk for development of psychiatric disorders. Sequencing the genomes of people with disorders such as autism and schizophrenia has revealed hundreds of disease-linked gene variants, and for most of those variants, scientists have no idea how they contribute to disease.
“With this approach, we expect to provide a more detailed overview of the changes in synaptic organization and shared disease effects associated with these genes,” says Karen Perez de Arce, a Broad Institute research scientist and an author of the study.
“Understanding how genetic variation impacts neurons’ development in the brain, and their synaptic structure and function, is a huge challenge in neuroscience and in understanding how these diseases arise,” Bathe adds.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, including the NIH BRAIN Initiative, the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Simons Faculty Scholars Program, the Open Philanthropy Project, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Award, and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research.
Other authors of the paper include MIT research scientist Demian Park, former MIT graduate student Anthony Kulesa, and MIT postdoc Eike-Christian Wamhoff. Paul Blainey, an associate professor of biological engineering and a member of the Broad Institute, and Edward Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology and an associate professor of biological engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences, are also authors of the study.
Rooftop solar panels are a great way for people to invest in renewable energy while saving money on electricity. Unfortunately, the rooftop solar industry only serves a fraction of society.
Many Americans are unable to invest in rooftop solar; they may be renters or lack the upfront money required for installations or live in locations that don’t get enough sun. Some states have tried to address these limitations with community solar programs, which allow residents to invest in portions of large, remote solar projects and enjoy savings on their electricity bills each month.
But as community solar projects have exploded in popularity in the last few years, higher-income households have been the main beneficiaries. That’s because most developers of community solar arrays require residents to have high credit scores and sign long-term contracts.
Now the community solar startup Solstice is changing the system. The company recruits and manages customers for community solar projects while pushing developers for simpler, more inclusive contract terms. Solstice has also developed the EnergyScore, a proprietary customer qualification metric that approves a wider pool of residents for participation in community solar projects, compared to the credit scores typically used by developers.
“We’re always pushing our developer partners to be more inclusive and customer-friendly,” says Solstice co-founder Sandhya Murali MBA ’15, who co-founded the company with Stephanie Speirs MBA ’17. “We want them to design contracts that will be appealing to the customer and kind of a no-brainer.”
To date, Solstice has helped about 6,400 households sign up for community solar projects. The founders say involving a more diverse pool of residents will be essential to continue the industry’s breakneck growth.
“We think it’s imperative that we figure out how to make this model of residential solar, which can save people money and has the power to impact millions of people across the country, scale quickly,” Murali says.
A more inclusive system
In 2014, Speirs had been working on improving access to solar energy in Pakistan and India as part of a fellowship with the global investment firm Acumen. But she realized developing countries weren’t the only areas that dealt with energy inequalities.
“There are problems with solar in America,” Speirs says. “Eighty percent of people are locked out of the solar market because they can’t put solar on their rooftop. People who need solar savings the most in this country, low- to moderate-income Americans, are the least likely to get it.”
Speirs was planning to come to MIT’s Sloan School of Management to pursue her MBA the following year, so she used a Sloan email list to see if anyone was interested in joining the early-stage venture. Murali agreed to volunteer, and although she graduated in 2015 as Speirs entered Sloan, Murali spent a lot of time on campus helping Speirs get the company off the ground.
“Steph’s time at Sloan was focused on Solstice, so we kind of became an MIT startup,” Murali says. “I would say MIT sort of adopted Solstice, and we’ve grown since then with support from the school.”
Community solar is an effective way to include residents in solar projects who might not have the resources to invest in traditional rooftop solar panels. Speirs says there are no upfront costs associated with community solar projects, and residents can participate by investing in a portion of the planned solar array whether they own a home or not.
When a developer has enough resident commitments for a project, they build a solar array in another location and the electricity it generates is sent to the grid. Residents receive a credit on their monthly electric bills for the solar power produced by their portion of the project.
Still, there are aspects of the community solar industry that discourage many lower-income residents from participating. Solar array developers have traditionally required qualified customers to sign long contracts, sometimes lasting 30 years, and to agree to cancellation fees if they leave the contract prematurely.
Solstice, which began as a nonprofit to improve access to solar energy for low-income Americans, advocates for customers, working with developers to reduce contract lengths, lower credit requirements, and eliminate cancellation fees.
As they engaged with developers, Solstice’s founders realized the challenges associated with recruiting and managing customers for community solar projects were holding the industry back, so they decided to start a for-profit arm of the company to work with customers of all backgrounds and income levels.
“Solstice’s obsession is how do we make it so easy and affordable to sign up for community solar such that everyone does it,” Speirs says.
In 2016, Solstice was accepted into The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s delta v accelerator, where the founders began helping developers find customers for large solar projects. The founders also began developing a web-based customer portal to make participation in projects as seamless as possible.
But they realized those solutions didn’t directly address the biggest factor preventing lower-income Americans from investing in solar power.
“To get solar in this country, you either have to be able to afford to put solar on your rooftop, which costs $10,000 to $30,000, or you have to have the right FICO score for community solar,” Speirs says, referring to a credit score used by community solar developers to qualify customers. “Your FICO score is your destiny in this country, yet FICO doesn’t measure whether you pay your utility bills on time, or your cell phone bills, or rental bills.”
With this in mind, the founders teamed up with data scientists from MIT and Stanford University, including Christopher Knittle, the George P. Shultz Professor at MIT Sloan, to create a new qualification metric, the EnergyScore. The EnergyScore uses a machine learning system trained on data from nearly 875,000 consumer records, including things like utility payments, to predict payment behavior in community solar contracts. Solstice says it predicts future payment behavior more accurately than FICO credit scores, and it qualifies a larger portion of low-to-moderate income customers for projects.
Driving change
Last year, Solstice began handling the entire customer experience, from the initial education and sales to ongoing support during the life of contracts. To date, the company has helped find customers for solar projects that have a combined output of 100 megawatts of electricity in New York and Massachusetts.
And later this year, Solstice will begin qualifying customers with its EnergyScore, enabling a whole new class of Americans to participate in community solar projects. One of the projects using the EnergyScore will put solar arrays on the rooftops of public housing buildings in New York City in partnership with the NYC Housing Authority.
Ultimately, the founders believe including a broader swath of American households in community solar projects isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s also an essential part of the fight against climate change.
“[Community solar] is a huge, untapped market, and we’re unnecessarily restricting ourselves by creating some of these contract barriers that make community solar remain in the hands of the wealthy,” Murali says. “We’re never going to scale community solar and make the impact on climate change we need to make if we don’t figure out how to make this form of solar work for everyone.”
