Xiaoling Chen

Geography Hosted its First Dumpling Making Party

Anonymous — Fri, 10 May 2024 17:02:55 +0000

Geography Hosted its First Dumpling Making Party Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/10/2024 - 11:02

Xiaoling Chen

On February 9, 2024, the Department of Geography held a Dumpling Making Party to celebrate two cultural events: the Chinese Spring Festival (�� ch��nji��) and Tibetan New Year (Losar). Both cultures follow their own calendars for festivals and holidays. This year, these two holidays coincided with February 10 marking the first day of their respective new years. Geography faculty, staff, and students, along with their families and friends, participated in the party.

We were getting ready to make dumplings.

We were having fun!

And it was the first time that many of us made dumplings��

Many thanks to our fellows and friends for their help with the party, including bringing their steamers, wrapping the red envelopes, chopping vegetables, setting up the table, and cooking and serving the dumplings. Special thanks to Hauqingjia (Palchengyal) from the Department of Religious Studies; Aleksander Berg, Drolma Gadou, Annika Hirmke, Shruthi Jagadeesh, Alaric Akhil Kothapally, Michele Lissoni, Taneesha Mohan, Briana Prado, Nic Tarasewicz, Neda Shaban and Gabriella Subia Smith from the Geography department.

Special thanks also to Karen Weingarten, Gabriela Sales, and Brandon Brown for putting together the lovely, festive d��cor at the Guggenheim Building, and to Sean Dunn for coordinating the food purchase.

After the party, participants were gifted a red envelope (�� h��ngb��o) containing one brand-new Chinese one-dollar bill (Ԫ yu��n, approximately $0.14 USD). This bill is known as ��ѹ��Ǯ y��su��qi��n,�� literally meaning money to suppress a demon named ��Su��.�� During the Chinese Spring Festival, it is a tradition to gift red envelops to friends and family. According to the Chinese legend, Su�� terrorized children while they slept on Spring Festival Eve. The red envelope is believed to dispel this demon, symbolizing good wishes and prosperity for the new year ahead. Karen kindly added a lucky node (ͬ�Ľ� t��ngx��nji��) to each envelope to double up the good luck and prosperity people brought to their homes.

This event was part of a departmental effort, spearheaded by department Chair Jennifer Fluri, to recognize diverse groups and cultures on our ��Ƶ campus, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Losar Tashi Delek to our Tibetan friends, and �� (X��nni��n Ku��il��) to our Chinese communities

Organizer and editor

Xiaoling Chen, Research Assistant and Ph.D. Candidate in Geography

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Xiaoling Chen's essay published on China's healthcare workers

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 23:13:52 +0000

Xiaoling Chen's essay published on China's healthcare workers Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/29/2023 - 16:13

Xiaoling Chen's essay titled "��They Want the Horse to Run but Without Providing Feed��: Labour Exploitation of Healthcare Workers in China" was published in the journal Made In China, as part of the issue "Out of the Fog". Completed in Spring 2023, this essay received generous support from the Gilbert White Doctoral Award granted by the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. This essay primarily draws from ethnographic research conducted at Ling County People's Hospital in Guangdong Province between 2021 and 2022. Xiaoling also extends gratitude to the Society of Woman Geographers, and the Geography Department, the Graduate School, and CARTSS at ��Ƶ Boulder for supporting her research activities.

This essay is a part of Xiaoling's hospital monograph, which explores the healthcare provision and access landscape for older Chinese citizens affected by cerebrovascular diseases, the third leading cause of death in China. This monograph is distinct from Xiaoling's dissertation on China's Covid-19 response, which examines three biopolitical projects��digital surveillance (Chen 2023; Chen and Oakes 2023), vaccination campaigns, and online censorship (Chen 2020). Following the completion of her dissertation, Xiaoling intends to conduct follow-up research for this monograph, aiming to present both during- and post-pandemic perspectives within the public hospital space.

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Xiaoling Chen Awarded the Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 19:22:32 +0000

Xiaoling Chen Awarded the Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/17/2023 - 13:22

Mobile Vaccination Bus (photo taken by Xiaoling Chen in 2021)

Xiaoling Chen, PhD candidate in Geography, was awarded a Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the academic year 2023-2024. This fellowship is intended to provide outstanding PhD candidates with financial support to assist in the process of completing their doctoral dissertations. Xiaoling��s dissertation, tentatively entitled ��For the People��s Health��: Governing Public Health, Contesting Spaces, and Recasting Expertise During the Covid-19 Containment, examines health politics, digital surveillance, and civic engagement in China. With the support of the Geography Gilbert White Fellowship in Spring 2023, Xiaoling published two papers on digital surveillance for contact tracing, the Time-Space Companions and the Venue Code, in response to Covid-19 outbreaks. These two papers will comprise parts of her dissertation.

Xiaoling is also active in organizing academic exchange. In Spring 2023, Xiaoling organized two panels with the support of four travel grants: Mabel Duncan Award and Janes A and Jeanne B DeSana Graduate Travel Award from the Department of Geography, the Eaton Graduate Student Research Award from the Center for Humanities & the Arts, and the travel grant from the Graduate and Professional Student Government. She organized and chaired a roundtable panel entitled ��Civic Engagement: Public Health Responses, Material and Digital Spaces, and Politics During the Covid-19 Pandemic in China�� for the 2023 Annual Conference of Association for Asian Studies (AAS), with the participation of both senior and emerging China scholars. She also organized a presentation panel titled ��Conceiving Social Media as Spaces�� for the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG). Geographers conducting research in China, Ghana, Iran, and the United States presented their papers. These two panels provided insights to improve Xiaoling��s manuscript about civic engagement on Chinese social media platforms (currently under peer review).

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Xiaoling Chen Wins the China Geography Specialty Group��s Annual Student Paper Award

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 23:20:42 +0000

Xiaoling Chen Wins the China Geography Specialty Group��s Annual Student Paper Award Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2023 - 17:20

Xiaoling Chen won the China Geography Specialty Group��s Annual Student Paper Award ($250) at this year��s AAG conference. It is a chapter of a book that will be published by June 2023:

Chen, Xiaoling. 2023. The Venue Code: Digital Surveillance, Spatial (Re)organization, and Infrastructural Power during the Covid Pandemic in China. Book chapter, in volume: Intelligence for Future Cities: Planning through Big Data and Urban Analytics, edited by Robert Goodspeed, Raja Sengupta, Kytt? Marketta, and Chris Pettit.

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AAG Preview Talks 2023

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 16:20:47 +0000

AAG Preview Talks 2023 Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/17/2023 - 10:20

Xiaoling Chen
PhD Candidate
"Creating, Competing for, and Transforming Digital Spaces: Free Expression, Alternative Truths, and Civic Engagement Regarding Covid-19 Response in 2022"

Gabby Subia-Smith
PhD Candidate
"How the Western Slope Won: The Production of Colorado's 3rd Congressional District"

Huck Rees
MA Student of Geography
"Beaver dams as sites of carbon accretion and sediment storage and implications for river restoration"

In Person:
GUGG 205
Mar 17, 2023, 3:35 PM - 5:00 PM

Or Join Zoom Meeting:
Zoom login required (free account available at zoom.us)

Xiaoling Chen Abstract 1

Creating, Competing for, and Transforming Digital Spaces: Free Expression, Alternative Truths, and Civic Engagement Regarding Covid-19 Response in 2022

China��s zero-Covid policy has lasted for almost three years until December 2022. While most countries have adopted strategies to live with the virus, the central government of China insisted on a ��Zero Covid�� policy. The policy entailed a large apparatus of containment regimes, including but not limited to pervasive daily surveillance, travel restrictions, instantaneous lockdowns, and expansive mass testing. This apparatus has resulted in myriad disturbance on Chinese people every-day life and livelihood, immeasurable economic and social loss, physiological and mental health issues, and many other profound impacts in every aspect of the Chinese society. What are Chinese people��s responses to such a prolonged, restrictive containment? This paper highlights efforts and tactics Chinese people have deployed to create, compete for, and transform social media spaces for civic engagement. In doing so, the author makes visible both the advantages and constraints of the Chinese social media platforms in terms of civic engagement, as well as the efforts Chinese citizens have made to carve out spaces for diverse voices and explore approaches towards Covid-19 variants and their containment. In China, Governmental narratives have dominated public spaces while squeezing spaces for alternative voices, and institutional violence hampers civic engagement. By recognizing the efforts Chinese citizens make and the constraints they face, this paper attempts to shed light on state-citizen relationships in post-socialist China.

Xiaoling Chen Abstract 2

This is a lightening talk for the Alumni and Friends Celebration next week.

The Chinese government is facing three acute, intertwined challenges: an underdeveloped public healthcare network, Covid-19 outbreaks, and an aging society. The central government has addressed them by implementing public hospital reform (i.e. lowering drug price and wage restructuring) and a zero-Covid policy (i.e. lockdowns, mass testing, surveillance technologies, and self-developed Covid vaccines). This dissertation is based on ethnographic research in spaces of health governance coupled with social media observation. This study views sites of healthcare as spaces of government where hierarchical power relationships and geographical, sociocultural factors such as guanxi interact to mediate the policies�� implementation, effects, and consequences. I argue that China��s biopolitical management has shifted away from population control to health governance where a high degree of control remains. Covid outbreaks allow the government to expand the sites for health governance from traditional medical establishments like public hospitals to spaces like gated communities, social media, and private spaces. Such an expansion threatens the integrity of public healthcare, administrative and legal structures, and Chinese people��s private spaces and human rights.

Huck Rees Abstract

Beaver dams as sites of carbon accretion and sediment storage and implications for river restoration

In recent years, land managers, restoration practitioners, and government agencies increasingly have been employing beaver-based restoration techniques in rivers and streams, including reintroduction of beaver populations and construction of beaver dam analogues (BDAs). Beaver-based restoration has the potential beneficial effects of increasing geomorphic heterogeneity, increasing riparian vegetation biomass, storing water on the landscape, creating habitat for biota, and storing fine sediment and associated pollutants, nutrients, and organic carbon (OC). However, the rates sediment and OC accrual within beaver ponds are not adequately quantified. We conducted sediment surveys and radiometric dating of sediment cores within beaver ponds in the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado at Manitou Experimental Forest and Coal Creek near Crested Butte. Sediment samples and cores were analyzed for OC content (%) and converted to total OC stock per area. Using a time-series of historical aerial imagery coupled with 7Be:210Pb radionuclide dating, we calculated sedimentation and carbon accretion rates. One of our study locations, Trout Creek, is an incised stream impacts by flow regulation and cattle grazing. We compare rates of sediment accumulation in beaver ponds to the amount of sedimentation that would be required to reconnect the channel to the abandoned floodplain in this system. Our study aims to provide insight into the rates at which beaver-based restoration can address human-caused stream incision. Understanding these processes on a variety of timescales, including both short-term (1-10 year) and multidecade (10-100 year), will aid river management decisions.

Gabby Subia-Smith Abstract

How the Western Slope Won: The Production of Colorado's 3rd Congressional District

U.S. congressional [JB1] district lines are a peculiar example of borders that, while rarely experienced in the day-to-day, have lasting impacts on political, economic, and social life across a district, state, and the country as a whole. The jurisdictional power of district lines is virtually unknown by many residents of a district until they cast their ballots. District lines only indirectly interfere in how people live their lives, as a result of law and policy put forth by elected officials. Furthermore, the drawing of district lines is often confusing and shrouded in mystery. In recent years, Colorado, along with many other states, has taken great steps to make redistricting more transparent and inclusive, adopting an independent redistricting commission and encouraging public participation in the process. In the 2021 redistricting cycle, Coloradans submitted nearly 2500 online comments, generated 140 of their own district maps, and participated in 250 hours of public hearings. Across the state, the most feedback came from residents of Colorado��s Third Congressional District, the state��s largest and most sparsely populated congressional district by area. This paper seeks to ground the production of the district, using discourse analysis of Coloradans�� feedback to better understand how and why district lines were drawn the way they were. While composed of a mostly rural population, District 3 is also home to most of Colorado��s tribal lands and a significant portion of the state��s Hispano population in the Southwest corner of the state. The drawing of District 3��s lines to include both Indigenous and Hispanic Coloradans among the much whiter and wealthier communities of Northwest Colorado and other white but socio-economically challenged communities stretching out into the Eastern Plains stands to disenfranchise already minoritized communities living across the district. The deceptive flattening of space is a fundamental flaw of not only geographically drawn districts, but also cartography and borders more broadly. Looking at the evolution of congressional districts can help us to better understand both the possibilities for equitable political representation and the limits of borders for fixing politics in place.

Download Printable Poster

Watch Presentation

[video:https://vimeo.com/816284642]

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Xiaoling Chen: Ethnographic research of hospital space in China

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 21:26:42 +0000

Xiaoling Chen: Ethnographic research of hospital space in China Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2022 - 15:26

Xiaoling Chen

Xiaoling Chen, PhD Candidate, Geography Department, University of Colorado Boulder

��For the People��s Health��: Transforming Hospital Spaces, Recasting Medical Expertise

Ling is a coastal, hilly county in Southern China with a humid and semi-tropical climate. Although having a population of over one million, it is at times considered rural, with pockets of farmland and individual houses within its urban areas and sprawling farm villages drastically giving way to urban concrete high-rises. I came to study the healthcare landscape of China as shaped by the post-2009 governmental health care reforms, focusing on the everyday experiences of healthcare workers and patients. Although invisible among the physical structures, the healthcare landscape was just as solid in the lives of people. Since 2020 though, it has become increasingly noticeable due to Covid-19 as blockades and checkpoints appear in public spaces, communities, business areas, and local markets. Throat swabs, health apps, and masks have become necessities for healthcare workers and ordinary people on a daily basis.

I began fieldwork from July 2021 and started participant-observation and interviewing at Ling��s People��s Hospital as a visiting scholar. Occasionally, I visited the Hospital��s collaborative institutions in townships, as well as COVID-19 vaccination and saliva sampling sites. In China, county and city seats are considered urban areas, and townships and villages rural places. The Neurology Department and its affiliated Stroke Center for Comprehensive Prevention and Treatment which hosted me, treat elderly with cerebrovascular diseases �C China��s number 3 killer. The Stroke Center also provided me a unique opportunity to observe how a system under transformation responds to the nationwide impacts of an aging society.

After 50 years of reform and opening up, the images people have of China include gleaming cities and fast trains crisscrossing the country. Just as dramatic, yet unnoticed, have been the changes to the institutions and ways of providing healthcare. The evolution from a socialist top-down approach of providing public services, the influence of modern healthcare ideas from outside, and changing norms of what healthcare is, have intersected to transform hospital spaces and created new ways for ��doing�� healthcare, under the auspice of a political system with changing values, processes, and means.

Political turmoil between 1950s and 1970s witnessed the difficult birth of an expansive, socialist public health network that provided cheap, basic care to all its citizens in an egalitarian manner. This network was composed of many small rural clinics and relatively few urban hospitals. To some, this period might be considered the era of public health as the changes helped improve the general health of China��s population through preventative measures. However, healthcare in curative terms remained minimal.

The Reform and Opening Up era (1980s-2000s) saw the emergence of a fragmented ��neoliberal�� health system. The system lacked public funding and profited from selling drugs (with up to a 15% markup) and curative care. During this period, thanks to many historical and contemporary factors such as administrative endorsement, expertise, and reputation, public hospitals in cities and counties outgrew primary health care institutions as well as private entities. Primary health care institutions were those small-scale facilities located in townships, urban communities, and rural villages.

The socialist public health network was dismantled, and healthcare demand increased. It was estimated at that time that large-scale urban public hospitals would attract up to 90% of patients, creating a nationwide problem of low healthcare accessibility and affordability. During this period, public healthcare facilities were only public in name and operated with a profit motive. Social discontent arose and medical disputes pervaded hospital spaces, while healthcare professionals suffered, or even died from assaults by patients and their family. These issues have lingered until the present.

In 2009, the central government, through a new round of health care reform, attempted to strengthen administrative control over all public healthcare facilities. It hoped to (re-)establish a hierarchical health care system (Figure 1) which upholds its socialist, public nature to provide affordable healthcare and to meet the population��s increased yet unsatisfied health demands.

Figure 1. China��s Hierarchical Health Care System

While history and the government goals seem straight-forward, reality is messy and unpredictable. A public hospital is more than a physical space that passively absorb any reform impacts. Social actors �C hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, patients and their caregivers - create and recreate the place��s structures, operational mechanisms, and relationships, on which parts of their aspirations and identities reside. This workspace is infused with sociocultural norms and local interpersonal relationships (i.e. renqing and guanxi). Boundaries between work and home, and between healthcare as a common resource and a private good, get blurred. Reform policies seep through the everydayness of such a space, negotiating with and reconfiguring these structures, relationships, and mechanisms.

The logics of spatial inequalities in public funding, healthcare expertise, and income levels along the line of administrative division run deep in the health care system. Primary health care institutions are now entirely publicly funded and expected to serve a large proportion of patients as their expertise improves; many have expensive, state-of-the-art medical devices they could not afford prior to 2009.

Despite these orchestrated efforts, many primary institutions lack proper manpower due to low wages and dire career prospects, leading to poor health-care provision capacity. What��s worse, paid on flat monthly rates of less than 1,000 USD, as determined by local economies, doctors in primary institutions are unmotivated to admit patients. Instead, they are inclined to refer patients to urban public hospitals, avoiding work and possible medical disputes altogether; some also run private clinics during work hours to earn an extra paycheck. Idle machines and employees, and empty beds, patient wards, and waiting areas are not uncommon.

Public hospitals, contrary to the primary institutions, remain underfunded and incentivized to make profits. Meanwhile, they are subject to increasingly stringent policies from a growing list of regulators including the National Healthcare Security Administration and the National Health Commission through their local agents. In particular, public county hospitals, sandwiched between city hospitals and primary institutions, are still over-crowded with patients, some with ailments as minor as a cold.

Many doctors think their hard-earned expertise is not being adequately used, and their hard-work (as well as overwork and holiday-stripped shifts) insufficiently rewarded and respected. Thus, it has become increasingly difficult for doctors and nurses, physically and emotionally depleted, to empathize with their patients, creating a breeding ground for mistrust and disputes. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the large group of medical professionals in public county hospitals form a buffer zone for public discontent over the flawed health care system.

China has reportedly achieved its goals of universal healthcare from the perspectives of patients. Such successes include sustained health insurance coverage rates of over 95% since 2011, and affordable healthcare to a large population in need �C with merely 30% out-of-pocket health expenditure. However, how the process changes hospital spaces remains poorly studied. My research provides a unique account of everyday experience in hospital spaces, by working closely with actors like doctors, nurses, patients, and caregivers to form a comprehensive picture of healthcare provision in the new reform era.

This field trip is made possible by the generous support from the Geography Department through the Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award and the Solstice Graduate Research Award, from the University of Colorado Boulder through the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant award and the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS), and from the Society of Woman Geographers through the Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research. I will return onto campus by fall 2022 and begin my dissertation writing process.

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Xiaoling Chen Received SWG Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 23:03:49 +0000

Xiaoling Chen Received SWG Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/27/2021 - 17:03

Xiaoling Chen was awarded a Society of Woman Geographers Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research for 2021-2022. This grant will support her dissertation fieldwork during the 2021-2022 academic year. She will conduct an ethnographic study in China on the impacts of health care reform and examine the transformation of medical practices and identities among public healthcare professionals.

Xiaoling is a PhD student in Geography. She is advised by Dr. Tim Oakes. She also received generous support for her field trip from the Geography Department through the Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award and the Solstice Graduate Research Award, and from ��Ƶ Boulder through the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant award and the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS).

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2020 Spring Newsletter Published

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 22:38:38 +0000

2020 Spring Newsletter Published Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 06/21/2020 - 16:38

The 2020 Spring Newsletter has been published and is available for viewing. The newsletter is filled with department news, alumni updates, and articles by faculty and students.

Contents:

Message from the Department Chair, pg 2
?Mara Goldman: Reaction to Coronavirus, pg 3
Page Hartwell: An Undergraduate's Perspective on COVID-19, pg 4
Satellite-based snowpack information to inform water resource management during the COVID-19 pandemic, pgs 5-7
Professors Seeking COVID-19 Funding, pg 8
Human Geography Dimensions of COVID-19 in China, pg 8
New Faculty: Introducing A. Marie Ranjbar, pg 9
Narrating Nature: book by Mara Goldman, pg 10
Emily Yeh: Sabbatical Report: Pastoralists of the Upper Yangtze, pgs 11-12
Alumnus Update: Brooke E. Marston, pg 13
Department News, pg 14
Donor Support, pgs 15-16

All previous newsletters are on our Newsletters page.

For a more enjoyable reading experience, open the newsletter file and adjust your browser window to the same size as the newsletter page. The Table of Contents and other links are active within the document.

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Xiaoling Chen's Article Published

Anonymous — Sat, 23 May 2020 19:03:28 +0000

Xiaoling Chen's Article Published Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 05/23/2020 - 13:03

Spaces of care and resistance in China: public engagement during the COVID-19 outbreak

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, the approach of the Chinese government remains under the spotlight, obscuring the complex landscape of responses to the outbreak within the country. Drawing upon the author��s social media experiences as well as textual analysis of a wide range of sources, this paper explores how the Chinese public responded to the outbreak in complex and nuanced ways through social media. The findings challenge conventional views of Chinese social media as simply sites of self-censorship and surveillance. On the contrary, during the COVID-19 outbreak, social media became spaces of active public engagement, in which Chinese citizens expressed care and solidarity, engaged in claim-making and resistance, and negotiated with authorities. This paper situates this public engagement within a broader context of China��s health-care reforms, calling attention to persistent structural and political issues, as well as the precarious positionalities of health-care workers within the health system.

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2019 Fall Newsletter Published

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Dec 2019 23:30:51 +0000

2019 Fall Newsletter Published Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/11/2019 - 16:30

The 2019 Fall Newsletter has been published and is available for viewing. The newsletter is packed with department news, alumni updates, and articles by faculty and students.

Contents:

Message from the Department Chair, pg 2
Editors' Comments, pg 3
Mark Serreze Named Distinguished Professor, pgs 4-5
The Boulder Affordable Housing Research Initiative, pgs 6-7
Introducing Morteza Karimzadeh, Assistant Professor, pgs 8-9
Introducing Heide Bruckner, Instructor, pgs 9-10
Emily Yeh Sabbatical Notes: Post-disaster trajectories in mountainous Chinese village, pgs 11-12
Alumni Updates, pg 13
Department News, pg 14
Donor Support, pgs 15-16

All previous newsletters are on our Newsletters page.

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