Hi Everyone. I hope that this latest update continues to find all of you safe and healthy. While I know that covid-19 restrictions appear to be loosening in much of the US, I hope that all of you are continuing to be proactive, being safe, and taking some precautions as the temperature warms.
As some of you are aware, there has been a surge of cases all over China over the past few weeks. While previously, much of this was confined to Hong Kong, recently, this has been occurring in the mainland as well. Unfortunately, for the first time in almost two years, Shanghai has a real outbreak (still just hundreds of cases, so small by US standards). I’ll go into some more details shortly, but I wanted to first let you all know that I am safe and healthy and currently locked down in my apartment. I can still order groceries for delivery, but basically the only time I can leave my apartment is to go get a delivery (or throw out trash) or have a nucleic acid test.
The outbreak began to trickle out about 2 weeks ago. However, the outbreak became real for me on Wednesday, March 9th, when SJTU sent a message to all faculty and staff telling them not to come to campus unless it was an emergency. I received this message at 7:30 am while I was walking to get the bus to the SJTU Minhang campus. Thankfully, I was not already on campus, since the campus has been locked down since and continues to do so. There have been a number of cases (mostly asymptomatic) among the undergraduate students. Unfortunately, my supervisor Ying Zu along with other faculty, staff, and postdocs has been stuck on campus since. The faculty and staff have even had to help distribute meals to undergraduate students locked down. Overall, the situation remains stressful, particularly on campus. So, I’m super grateful that I have been able to be at home.
The following day (1am on Thursday), SJTU announced that all faculty and staff who had been to the Minhang campus in the prior week (including me) would need to get 5 nucleic acid test (on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 7th, and 14th days) and stay and isolate at home for the first week. I was able to do this at a nearby local hospital. I was done with the first three tests and about to do the 4th test, when my neighborhood announced that it (along with the rest of the Xuhui district, where I live) would be doing a mandatory 48 hour soft lockdown. This lockdown started on Wednesday, March 16th. I had to get 2 additional nucleic acid tests at the local middle school. Thankfully, all 5 of these tests so far have come back negative. However, out of precaution (and possibly because of cases in the subdistrict–not my neighborhood) the lockdown has continued and on March 19th, I had another nucleic acid test. I was supposed to have another test today, March 20th, but that was postponed because of inclement weather (heavy rain — the tests are done outside). For those of you wondering, this same situation is happening for nearly all of my friends (or did already) around Shanghai. So, this is not unique to my neighborhood.
So, at the moment, much of Shanghai remains shut down. The city has not done an official lockdown, but is taking many precautions to prevent the outbreak from spreading. Even though I’m locked down, I’m much happier to be locked down at home than be stuck in the office for the last two weeks. Although the situation has been stressful, I want to emphasize how helpful a lot of people have been. Whether it’s been colleagues helping me find where I could get a nucleic acid test, volunteers helping to make sure I had the proper QR code to get my test results, neighbors making sure I knew where to go, or even the friendly workers answering my questions after taking my mouth swab (one was curious why my hair and beard are different colors), I really appreciate the positive way many people have responded. Going forward, I’ll do my best to keep a positive attitude. I will keep you updated about the situation in Shanghai, but at the moment it’s very fluid (so, it’s unclear how long I’ll be locked down).
Although the covid-19 situation here has been occupying much of my mind, I want to comment about the situation in Ukraine. I, like many of you, have been closely following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. My friend Kate is from Odessa and her family still lives there, so I’ve been in communication with her a lot over the past few weeks, trying to offer support and any help that I can give. I’m horrified by the continued attacks on innocent women and children as well as the false narratives that the Russian government is planting in the media. Though I haven’t discussed this with my colleagues, It’s been interesting (and at times troubling) to see what they’ve posted on WeChat. Some have posted messages in support of Ukraine and the courage their citizens are showing, while others are sharing the same Russian propaganda. From another angle, as a sports fan, it’s been interesting to see how the world has reacted. Regardless of what anyone says, sports and politics are intertwined, so I’m glad that along with the harsh economic sanctions, Russia is also facing the public embarrassment of not being allowed to compete (though I hope these measures don’t become like what the IOC has done in the past) in many events. It’s been heartening to see athletes take a stand against this Russian invasion, particularly in tennis, with Ukrainian players like Elina Svitolina donating her winnings as well as Andy Murray. However, it’s also scary to see athletes like the boxers, the Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko , and tennis players Alexandr Dolgopolov and Sergiy Stakhovsky have to volunteer to fight. Moreover, tennis is one of the few sports where you’ve seen Russian athletes actively stand up against the war, particularly Andrey Rublev. In addition, it was wonderful to see the Ukrainian team have so much success in the Paralympics, but distressing to hear that many have no home to return to. I pray that Russia backs down and ends it’s invasion. However, Ukraine needs our help now. If you have the ability to financially donate to causes supporting the humanitarian effort in Ukraine, please do so. I’ve already donated to help displaced animals in Odessa as well as to Kehilat Shanghai’s fundraiser through the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). I’m going to continue to donate to help this humanitarian crisis and I hope that you will as well.
The combination of covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine made this a very heavy month. Despite that, there were some fun highlights as well. So, below I share some of those with all of you.
Astronomy in Shanghai
Now to Astronomy! I just received word that the editing process of my accepted paper on the evolution of the Stellar Mass – Halo Mass relation has finally been finished. So, it will be published in the next ApJ publication! Once I get the published pdf (and link), I’ll share it with you all (hopefully by my next post).
In terms of actual research, I’ve spent a lot of time working on Project Outskirts, my study of the Intracluster Light (ICL). This project has come together quite quickly. I have a nearly finished draft of the analysis! I’m just finalizing some of the science figures at the moment. This is another paper that I’ve done as part of the Dark Energy Survey (working with my friend and collaborator Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang). So, we’re hoping to start the internal DES review process for this paper in April!
Despite the lockdown, I’ve also continued to make headway on a lot of my other projects based at SJTU. For Project Population, my study of the Luminosity Function, I’ve been able to successfully measure how the magnitude gap impacts the luminosity function for the Yang group catalogs (these are a low redshift sample). Overall, we’ve found some evidence for low mass groups that the magnitude gap does impact the LF in a manner that we’d expect. Since the Luminosity Function essentially measures how many galaxies there are of a given brightness and the magnitude gap is a proxy for mergers between the Central galaxy and the satellite galaxy population, we would expect that for clusters with high magnitude gaps, you would see a lower luminosity function (or at least a dip). However, in this sample we don’t have quite enough clusters to determine a trend in the high mass regime. To further address this, we’re starting to look at our higher redshift redMaPPer sample and an updated higher redshift Yang Group catalog.
In terms of Project Proxy, I’ve been working to add additional parameters into my Bayesian analysis, so that I can model the impact of miscentering of the BCGs on the halo mass as well. While I’m running into some bugs at the moment, I’m excited to see how the different halo mass proxies impact these new parameters and find some interesting results!
Lastly, my DESI research. I’ve finally been able to get started on my DESI project studying the outskirts. I’ve finally been able to run the code and will continue to define our sample and work through a test scenario as well. Also, I was asked to co-lead the new Galaxy Clusters working sub group, within the c3 (clusters, cross-correlations, and covariance) working group! So, I’ll be doing a bit more service for DESI (along with observing). I was honored to be asked and am excited to get more involved with DESI!
Overall, this was another productive month. My goal is to be able to start writing up Project Proxy and Project Population in the next few months, so hopefully I can make more strides in finalizing that research!
Life in Shanghai
As I’ve shown in many of my recent posts, I love cats. Over the past few months, I’ve been having my friend Anton’s cat Solo stay with me when Anton was out of town. Unfortunately, Anton and Solo moved to Shenzhen (Southern China across from Hong Kong). So, I won’t get to have Solo stay with me. While I’ll miss Solo, I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with him and that he showed me that I can easily have a cat stay in my apartment. Thankfully, I did get to see Solo and Anton one last time before they moved.
After I found out that Solo was moving, my friend Sydney, asked if I would be interested in fostering two kittens. Sydney had found this litter of kittens at the start of the school year near the school that she works at and had been looking for a new foster for two of them. After seeing their adorable photo, I knew that I wanted to meet them.
So, on Saturday, February 29th, I had two new kittens, Charlie and Scottie (he was previously named Spot) come to live with me. They’re 7 month old brothers. We bonded immediately. Though they were a little skittish at first, by the end of the first day, they were sitting on my lap and two days later sleeping on top of me! I realized after about 1 week that I was too attached to them to just foster them. So, I adopted them! So, without further ado, here are the newest members of my Shanghai Family, Charlie (the little brown one) and Scottie (the bigger black and white one)! I hope that many of you eventually get to meet them!
They’ve brought me so much joy and happiness these past few weeks! I’m so glad they they get along well and love each other. They love sitting on my lap and cuddling with me. They also love playing with crinkle balls and chasing each other around my small apartment. On a funnier note, they both love popping their heads into the shower and playing with the water! Though at times I wish they’ld make it a bit easier for me to do work (or write this blog), it’s made being stuck at home for the past two weeks much more fun and enjoyable!
In addition to Charlie and Scottie, I still had a lot of other fun things, including two birthday parties! The first was a surprise party for my friend John! His husband, Alex, organized an 80s/90s prom-themed party! As you can see, I did my best to channel the 80s, with a bow-tie and cummerbund (made out of a ribbon) as well as my hair worn in the style of Fabio.
Even though I didn’t recognize most of the music, it was a lot of fun celebrating John with many of our friends!
The second party was my friend Clem’s 40th birthday brunch at the W Hotel! It was great to get to live on the extravagant side and enjoy the fancy brunch (the deserts were the real culinary highlight) and celebrate Clem! Also, so glad I got to do one last fun outing before Shanghai was locked down.
In addition to some fun birthday party’s, I also saw a lot of cool things out and about that I wanted to share with all of you! I love that when I’m walking around Shanghai, there are always so many interesting things to see, from store exhibits, to things on the street!
Along with my own adorable animals, I wanted to share some cute photos of some of my friend’s dogs. First you have some photos of my friend Kim’s dog, Otis. Kim and Otis moved back to the US, so these are from her farewell party. Second, you have some photos of my favorite dog, Pina (who belongs to Kate and Ilan)!
Jewish Life in Shanghai
Prior to the covid-19 shutdowns in Shanghai (all Kehilat Shanghai events have since been cancelled/postponed), there were a lot of fun events within the Jewish community that I wanted to share.
Towards the end of February, Kehilat Shanghai organized another tour of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. While I’ve gone to this museum many times, this time was particularly special because on of our community members, Yael, led a guided tour of the museum. Yael has done a lot of research into the history of the Jewish community in Shanghai, including interviewing surviving Jews who fled to Shanghai to escape the Nazis. Hearing Yael’s detailed and fascinating accounts about what it was like in Shanghai at that time, especially for the children, really helped shape the narrative of the museum and made the experience far more enriching than any of the other times I’ve been to the museum!
Additionally, my friend Hannah Maia organized an early Purim activity of cookie decorating! Below, you can see the cookies I decorated in the shapes of a mask, crown, groger, hamantaschen, wine glass, and mishloach manos.
Even though it was a few weeks early, I’m glad that I was able to do something fun with some of my friends to celebrate Purim! Plus, the cookies tasted great!
In addition to those two fun events, we also had a lovely family Shabbat gathering towards the end of February. While unfortunately we haven’t been able to gather since (because of covid-19), I look forward to upcoming Shabbat gatherings once things return to normal.
Lastly, we had a fascinating adult education discussion, the first in a series centered around the LUNAR: The Jewish Asian Film Project. Since many of the members of the Kehilat Shanghai community come from mixed Jewish and Chinese families, this was a really insightful discussion (led by LUNAR participants as well as some community members who are my age) about their experience growing up as part of both communities and how they relate to both identities, whether through food or past experiences. I found the experience very informative and I’ll continue to learn and work to make the Jewish communities that I’m a part of more accessible and open to everyone. If you’re interested in the series, here’s the link to the YouTube channel.
What I’m Reading and Watching
I’d love to have started off this section by writing about The Batman! As many of you know, Emmet and I are huge comic book fans and Batman is one of our favorites. I’m incredibly excited to see The Batman, which opened in China on March 18th. Sadly, the current covid-19 situation has me locked down and many, if not all, of the theaters in Shanghai closed. I hope that I’ll be able to see it in a week or two. That said, there is excitement to see it in China. If you’ve been able to see it, I hope you enjoyed it! Please, no spoilers though. I can’t wait to go with some of my friends to see it as soon as we can!
Since I’ve been in a soft lockdown for the last few weeks, it’s given me a lot of time to catch up on some streaming and reading. Here are some of the highlights. I, like I’m sure many of you, watched the 4th season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. While I don’t want to spoil anything, I will say that while I loved the end of the season. However, I was left somewhat disappointed that we spent 8 episodes without much really happening or any changing in terms of Midge’s career and the show’s status quo. That said, I’m hopeful that the next season will address this. In terms of reading, I’m almost done with the first book in The Witcher series, The Last Wish. I’ve enjoyed the 1st season of the Netflix show and many of the comics that I read, so am excited to keep reading more of The Witcher series. I also finished the last volume of The Unwritten, a DC Vertigo comic series (that finished ~ 10 years ago). The Unwritten is somewhat of a spin on Harry Potter, but unique because it is based around the idea that the protagonist,Tom Taylor, is both a real person, the son of the author of the Tommy Taylor novels (a series of Harry Potteresque books about a heroic boy magician at a wizarding school), as well as a fictional character (in the Tommy Taylor novels) and how the collective subconscious of the world blends the two together. Overall, I really enjoyed the series and highly recommend it if you enjoy fantasy comics!
If you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading everything. While the first half of this post was not particularly fun, I hope that all of you have found this update informative and enjoyable! For those of you who have not seen pictures of Charlie and Scottie already, I hope that you find them adorable! I look forward to sharing more photos of them in the coming entries. Hopefully, by the time I write to you all next, Shanghai will have fully recovered and reopened. In the meantime, I hope that all of you have a safe, happy, healthy, and productive month.
In peace,
Jesse
