Digital Commons Network^™

The Interleukin 3 Gene (Il3) Contributes To Human Brain Volume Variation By Regulating Proliferation And Survival Of Neural Progenitors, Xiao-Jian Luo, Ming Li, Liang Huang, Khwangsik Nho, Min Deng, Qiang Chen, Daniel R. Weinberger, Alejandro A. Vasquez, Mark Rijpkema, Venkata S. Mattay, Andrew J. Saykin, Li Shen, Guillen Fernandez, Barbara Franke, Jing-Chun Chen, Xiang-Ning Chen, Jin-Kai Wang, Xiao Xiao, Xue-Bin Qi, Kun Xiang, Ying-Mei Peng, Xiang-Yu Cao, Yi Li, Xiao-Dong Shi, Lin Gan, Bing Su

Psychiatry Publications

One of the most significant evolutionary changes underlying the highly developed cognitive abilities of humans is the greatly enlarged brain volume. In addition to being far greater than in most other species, the volume of the human brain exhibits extensive variation and distinct sexual dimorphism in the general population. However, little is known about the genetic mechanisms underlying normal variation as well as the observed sex difference in human brain volume. Here we show that interleukin-3 (IL3) is strongly associated with brain volume variation in four genetically divergent populations. We identified a sequence polymorphism (rs31480) in the IL3 promoter which …

Preserved Ex Vivo Inflammatory Status In Decidual Cells From Women With Preterm Labor And Subclinical Intrauterine Infection, Violeta Castro-Leyva, Aurora Espejel-Nunez, Gerardo Barroso, Veronica Zaga-Clavellina, Arturo Flores-Pliego, Iyari Morales-Mendez, Silvia Giono-Cerezo, Scott W. Walsh, Guadalupe Estrada-Gutierrez

Obstetrics and Gynecology Publications

Objective

To compare the inflammatory response preserved ex vivo by decidual cells isolated from women who experienced preterm labor with and without subclinical intrauterine infection.

Methods

Fetal membranes were obtained after cesarean section from 35 women who delivered before 37 weeks of gestation following spontaneous preterm labor, with no clinical evidence of intrauterine infection. Decidua was microbiologically tested and cultured. Concentrations of anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-2, IL-4, IL-10), pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-6, IL-8, IL-1β and TNF-α), and matrix metalloproteinases (MMP-1, MMP-2, MMP-3, MMP-7, MMP-8, MMP-9) were measured in the supernatants using Bio-Plex, and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) was measured by enzyme immunoassay.

Results …

Engaging Teachers And Students In Stem Instruction Through Service-Learning, Kelly Lockeman, Suzanne Kirk, Lynn Pelco, Erin-Marie Burke Brown

Division of Community Engagement Resources

GreenSTEM at VCU integrates science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education with a focus on energy and the environment using service-learning techniques for middle school science, mathematics and technology teachers.

Nordp News 2.1, National Organization Of Research Development Professionals, Jeffrey M. Anderson (Ed.)

Research Development Repository

This is an upload of a past issue of the NORDP News Newsletter. The table of contents includes:

• The President’s Corner

• 10 Inexpensive Ways to Stimulate Proposal Development

• NORDP World Map

• Kudos to Holly

• John Carfora’s National Academies Workshop

• Research Development Articles

• Upcoming Research Development Conferences

• Research Development Jobs Sampler

Patient- And Population-Level Health Consequences Of Discontinuing Antiretroviral Therapy In Settings With Inadequate Hiv Treatment Availability, April D. Kimmel, Stephen C. Resch, Xavier Anglaret, Norman Daniels, Sue J. Goldie, Christine Daniel, Angela Y. Wong, Kenneth A. Freedberg, Milton C. Weinstein

Health Policy Publications

Background

In resource-limited settings, HIV budgets are flattening or decreasing. A policy of discontinuing antiretroviral therapy (ART) after HIV treatment failure was modeled to highlight trade-offs among competing policy goals of optimizing individual and population health outcomes.

Methods

In settings with two available ART regimens, we assessed two strategies: (1) continue ART after second-line failure (Status Quo) and (2) discontinue ART after second-line failure (Alternative). A computer model simulated outcomes for a single cohort of newly detected, HIV-infected individuals. Projections were fed into a population-level model allowing multiple cohorts to compete for ART with constraints on treatment capacity. In the …

Amendment (2012)

Amendment, 2004-

Amendment is a VCU student-produced progressive literature and art journal that provides a platform for students to promote equality, tolerance, and social progression through artistic expression.

Acid Sphingomyelinase Gene Knockout Ameliorates Hyperhomocysteinemic Glomerular Injury In Mice Lacking Cystathionine-Β-Synthase, Krishna M. Boini, Min Xia, Justine M. Abais, Ming Xu, Cai-Xia Li, Pin-Lan Li

Pharmacology and Toxicology Publications

Acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) has been implicated in the development of hyperhomocysteinemia (hHcys)-induced glomerular oxidative stress and injury. However, it remains unknown whether genetically engineering of ASM gene produces beneficial or detrimental action on hHcys-induced glomerular injury. The present study generated and characterized the mice lacking cystathionine β-synthase (Cbs) and Asm mouse gene by cross breeding Cbs+/− and Asm+/− mice. Given that the homozygotes of Cbs−/−/Asm−/− mice could not survive for 3 weeks. Cbs+/−/Asm+/+, Cbs+/−/Asm+/− and Cbs+/−/Asm−/− as well as their Cbs wild type littermates were used to study the role of Asm−/− under a background of Cbs+/− with hHcys. HPLC …

Virginia Dental Journal (Vol. 89, No. 4, 2012)

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.

Black Political Attitudes And Political Rap Music, Lakeyta M. Bonnette

Ethnic Studies Review

Many argue that political or message rap no longer exists. Scholars and critics point to rap music as a genre that is completely negative and only diminishes the progress of the Black community by offering and supporting stereotypes of African Americans (Johnson, Jackson and Gatto 1995; Carpentier, Knobloch and Zillman 2003). On the contrary, I argue that all rap music is not the same and that in fact, there is a subgenre in rap music, political rap, that discusses political issues and candidates exclusively. In this article, I proffer a criterion for identifying political rap music to demonstrate a distinction …

Scarlet-Letter Politics: The Rhetoric Of Shame In The Campaign To Unseat President Barack Hussein Obama, Myra Mendible

Ethnic Studies Review

This essay considers the politics of racial shaming as deployed against Barack Obama, arguing that it targeted "black" and "foreign" bodies as threats to the "American" body politic.

Latinos, African Americans And The Coalitional Case For A Federal Jobs Program, Alan A. Aja, William Darity Jr., Darrick Hamilton

Ethnic Studies Review

In the late 1970s, amidst growing unemployment in black and Latino communities, the newly-formed Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) supported the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in its call for full employment in the run up to the passage of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act of 1 978. Never fully implemented, the act has been de facto an unfunded mandate for close to 40 years. Only recently has it been resurrected by a handful of lawmakers, while both discussion and support for a national jobs program has begun to gain steam in the media and the general public. With support from labor market research …

From Modern Rock To Postmodern Hard Rock: Cambodian Alternative Music Voices, Linda Saphan

Ethnic Studies Review

Cambodian modernity was driven by the political agenda of the Sihanouk government beginning in the 1950s, and Cambodian rock and roll emerged in the 1960s in step with Sihanouk's ambitious national modernization project. Urban rockers were primarily upper-class male youths. In. the postcolonial era rock and roll was appropriated from abroad and given a unique Cambodian sound, while today's emerging hard rock music borrows foreign sociocultural references along with the music. Postmodern Cambodia and its diaspora have seen the evolution of a more diverse music subculture of alternative voices of hard rock bands and hip-hop artists, as well as post-bourgeois …

“Silencing” The Powerful And “Giving” Voice To The Disempowered: Ethical Considerations Of A Dialogic Pedagogy, Adetty Pérez Miles

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

As an educator who is committed to social justice, I bring certain values and political commitments to the classroom. The counter-hegemonic voices that I bring into the classroom in the form of constructs, readings, assignments, discussions, and visual culture challenge more often than confirm students’ world-views and assumptions. The question that arises for me is whether I am silencing students’ voices through my teaching practices. Does my support of dialogic articulations and interests constitute privileging one “truth” or discourse over another? If so, am I using dialogue as a rhetorical device to persuade or to indoctrinate my students according to …

Mekk1-Mkk4-Jnk-Ap1 Pathway Negatively Regulates Rgs4 Expression In Colonic Smooth Muscle Cells, Yonggang Zhang, Fang Li, Shu Liu, Hong Wang, Sunila Mahavadi, Karnam S. Murthy, Kamel Khalili, Wenhui Hu

Physiology and Biophysics Publications and Presentations

Background

Regulator of G-protein Signaling 4 (RGS4) plays an important role in regulating smooth muscle contraction, cardiac development, neural plasticity and psychiatric disorder. However, the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain elusive. Our recent studies have shown that upregulation of Rgs4 by interleukin (IL)-1β is mediated by the activation of NFκB signaling and modulated by extracellular signal-regulated kinases, p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase, and phosphoinositide-3 kinase. Here we investigate the effect of the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) pathway on Rgs4 expression in rabbit colonic smooth muscle cells.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Cultured cells at first passage were treated with or without IL-1β …

[Review Of] H. Samy Alim And Geneva Smitherman. Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, And Race In The U.S., Lisa Doris Alexander

Ethnic Studies Review

In his introduction to Articulate While Black Michael Eric Dyson frames Barack Obama as the Orator-in-Chief and the authors would certainly agree with that assessment. Alim and Smitherman argue that in order to have an open and honest discussion about race in the United States, we must look at its linguistic dimensions; we need to language race, to view the racial politics of the United States through the lens of language (xviii). This book seeks to untangle how we talk about race and what assumptions are being made based on a speaker's use of language.

Staphylococcus Aureus And Escherichia Coli Have Disparate Dependences On Ksga For Growth And Ribosome Biogenesis, Heather Colleen O'Farrell, Jason P. Rife

Physiology and Biophysics Publications and Presentations

Background The KsgA methyltransferase has been conserved throughout evolution, methylating two adenosines in the small subunit rRNA in all three domains of life as well as in eukaryotic organelles that contain ribosomes. Understanding of KsgA’s important role in ribosome biogenesis has been recently expanded in Escherichia coli; these studies help explain why KsgA is so highly conserved and also suggest KsgA’s potential as an antimicrobial drug target.

Results We have analyzed KsgA’s contribution to ribosome biogenesis and cell growth in Staphylococcus aureus. We found that deletion of ksgA in S. aureus led to a cold-sensitive growth phenotype, although KsgA was …

Fenced In/Out In West Texas: Notes On Defending My Queer Body, Ed Check

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article, I utilize autoethnography to describe and reflect upon my experiences as a queer artist, associate professor, and activist living in West Texas (1996-2012). To date, I believe there exist too few testimonies in art education that document how queer educators/artists manage myriad social, political, and everyday issues in their lives and workplaces. Such stories are necessary if I am going to equip present and future art teachers with anti-homophobia classroom strategies. I believe such stories are also necessary to counter cultural homophobia and violence and let queer students and teachers know they do not stand alone. Stories …

A Collaged Reflection On My Art Teaching: A Visual Autoethnography, Laurie Eldridge

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In this article I begin to unravel some of the complexities of being a visual art educator who teaches in a public elementary school: while dealing with an increasing high-stakes testing environment, I write in defense of teaching that is based on social justice and visual culture theory. I take the theme of this issue, de(fence), literally as a need to defend. To do this I use visual autoethnography, where I create a collaged work of art, then use that collage as a prompt for my reflection on my curriculum and teaching practice. My reflection is woven into the wider …

(De)Fending Art Education Through The Pedagogical Turn, Nadine M. Kalin

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This article reviews the current state of higher education in light of the pedagogical turn in contemporary art. It starts with an overview of higher education and its current struggles, followed by an outline of some of the features of the pedagogical turn in art, which is both critical of institutionalism and symptomatic of the current state of higher education. These ideas are discussed within the context of an art education graduate seminar. Finally, the argument is made for possible critical practices that take place inside the institution and that are inspired by priorities inherent in education as art projects …

Reasserting Humanity Through The Liberatory Gaze, Melissa Crum

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The act of critically looking can be a method used to consider alternative ways of conceptualizing marginalized cultures and ethnicities. By engaging in a series of inquiries about the subject of an image, the spectator can form a more comprehensive representation of the subject, thus preparing post-secondary students to discuss and interpret visual culture. From the perspective of an African-American female artist and educator’s travels to Brazil, this work proposes that a self-reflective educator’s personal narratives and insight can assist in creating an arts-based critically-thinking learning atmosphere. Such an atmosphere encourages students to move beyond the realms of their cultural …

(De)Fencing The Cultural Commons Through A (De)Constructive Media Art Curriculum, Steven Ciampaglia

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Rampant consolidation in the media industry has led to an ever-increasing push to extend the breadth and scope of copyright law. A deliberate and systematic effort to restrict access to cultural texts that were previously accessible has led to a creative climate that is increasingly intimidating to young artists. The personal computer provides students the ability to re-open these texts and reclaim their right to fairly use the cultural artifacts of their surroundings as building blocks of expression. The personal computer can deconstruct closed media texts into malleable parts of visual language that students can reconstruct into new texts. These …

The Journal Of Social Theory In Art Education

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

No abstract provided.

De(Fencing) With Youth: Moving From The Margins To The Center, Ann E. Tobey, Kate Jellinghaus

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Practices that combine the positive power of human relationships with art making can serve to De(fence): “create, innovate, reshape spaces, opportunities, or works that engage people or (and) bring us and them from the margins to the center” (JSTAE, call for papers, volume 32). In this paper, we explore ideas, techniques, and strategies used to implement four collaborative art projects with teenage youth. These projects aim to create a safe and generative context within which collaborative art-making practice can put youth and their ideas at the center of the process. Projects include an exploration of school climate utilizing sculpture in …

The Gaze Across The Aisle: Architecture, Merchandising, And Social Roles At Marshall Field And Company, 1892 To 1914, Clayton Funk

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Marshall Field and Company was a cultural and commercial anchor in Chicago's downtown area known as 'The Loop.' By 1914, it had expanded into the largest department store in the world at that time. This article illustrates Field's as a cultural and retail institution of artistry and popular education through a trope I term “the drama of shopping.” Using merchandising strategies adapted from the aesthetic movement, Field's produced the drama of shopping with social and cultural implications about class, gender, and race in three ways: First, the architecture of the store served as a carefully designed theatrical space for seeing …

The Terror Of Creativity: Art Education After Postmodernism, Jan Jagodzinski

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This essay addresses two problematics. The first concerns the question of creativity, which has become a key signifier for art and its education in the 21st century. I try to situate this interest in creativity within the broader context of neoliberalism and capitalist designer capitalism. The second problematic addresses the term ‘after postmodernism,’ which has left us in a state of relativity by rejecting universality. My interest is to show how these two problematics are at play in the well-known documentary film, Waiting for Superman, directed by Davis Guggenheim. An attempt is made to expose the structure of this film …

Editorial: De(Fence), Kryssi Staikidis

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

The idea of a moving and critical voice is a metaphor for the Caucus on Social Theory and Art Education (CSTAE) and the role that it has played for the members of the National Art Education Association (NAEA). The inception and founding of the Caucus by a small group of art educators sprang from the felt need to bring a critical social theory perspective to art and art education (cyberhouse.arted.psu.edu/ cstae/25th-anniversary/ CSTAE25history.htm). Over the course of my participation in NAEA for the past eight years, the annual conference meetings of the CSTAE have functioned as a site for contribution, dialogue, …

Abstracts

Ethnic Studies Review

Abstracts for Ethnic Studies Review, Vol. 35, No. 1&2, 2012.

[Review Of] Louis G. Mendoza. Conversations Across Our America: Talking About Immigration And The Latinoization Of The United States, Brianne Dávila

Ethnic Studies Review

Louis G. Mendoza's book, Conversations Across Our America: Talking about Immigration and the Latinoization of the United States, incorporates thirty-three conversations with forty-two Latinas/os of various nationalities in order to better understand the Latino influence in the United States. To collect this data, Mendoza rode a bicycle approximately 8,500 miles through thirty states from July to December 2007. He draws upon Ethnic Studies tradition as he was driven to conduct research that is relevant to his community. Mendoza draws upon the oral histories and lived experience of his participants to demonstrate the diverse nature of Latinas/os throughout the country. He …

Ethnic Studies Review

Ethnic Studies Review

No abstract provided.

Artemis And Metnase Mediated Processing Of 3΄-Blocked Dna Lesions: Role In Radio/Chemoresistance And Dna Repair, Susovan Mohapatra

Theses and Dissertations

DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) with chemically modified end-termini are the most significant lesions resulting from radio/chemotherapeutic intervention of cancer and non homologous end-joining (NHEJ) factor Artemis nuclease has been implicated in the repair of such breaks. To examine whether the resolution of terminally blocked DNA DSBs is the biologically relevant function of Artemis, Artemis deficient fibroblasts were stably complemented with wild type or an endonuclease deficient D165N mutant Artemis. Physiological levels of wild type (WT) Artemis completely restored DSB repair proficiency and resistance to γ-radiation, bleomycin, and neocarzinostatin. Cells expressing the D165N mutants remained as chemo/radiosensitive and as repair deficient …