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Determining the Roles of Q-SNAREs in Mast Cell Tumor Necrosis Factor Exocytosis
Get PDFAs evidence accumulates on the contributions of mast cell function to the development of allergic disorders, cardiovascular and neurological pathologies, and cancers, there is a growing recognition of the importance of mast cell-derived TNF to mast cell-mediated pathophysiology. However, our understanding of the mechanisms that regulate TNF exocytosis in mast cells remains woefully inadequate, and expanding this knowledge would undoubtedly aid in the development of therapeutics to specifically target mast cell TNF secretion. To explore the roles to SNAREs in TNF release in mast cells, I used Stx2 KO BMMCs as well as Stx3 and Stx11 KD RBL-2H3 cells in secretion assays to determine the consequences of depleting these isoforms on TNF secretion. The resulting data indicates that while Stx2 KO does not impact either TNF secretory pathway, Stx3 KD partially inhibited pre-formed TNF secretion, and Stx11 KD substantially increased pre-formed TNF secretion and TNF production in activated mast cells. I also designed and utilized a strategy to engineer Stx2, -4, -6, and –11 KO RBL-2H3 cells using Cytosine Base Editing, and successfully generated heterozygous KO cell lines of all four genes. The results of these investigations have revealed that Stx2 may be dispensable for mast cell exocytosis in general potentially significant roles for Stx3 and Stx11 in mast cell TNF exocytosis which must be investigated further
Authorial Minstrelsy: Fugitive Slave Narratives and the Reconstruction of Black Identity in Nineteenth-Century Print and Visual Media
No full textMid-nineteenth-century Black authors understood whiteness as a construct of racial superiority upheld by laws created by and for white men. Rather than an inherent property, race is a fraught historical category that, under certain conditions, has been performed and contested to achieve specific privileges in a stratified American society. This dissertation examines this history by focusing on three fugitive slave narratives written between the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law and the beginning of the American Civil War: Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself (1861); William and Ellen Craft’s Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (1860); and Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave; or Solomon Northup, A Citizen of New-York Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana (1854). Drawing on historical archives and contemporary scholarship in African American, disability, ethnicity, and sexuality and gender studies, I argue that the slave narrative genre evolved during the mid-nineteenth century in response to developments in visual culture displaying Black bodies as disabled, deviant, and fugitive.
In the nineteenth-century, fugitive authors were highly invested in countering representations of the enslaved and free Black body created by freak shows, minstrelsy, and other such white-authored images popular in literary and performative culture. The spectacle of Black bodies appearing in performances where physical features were grossly exaggerated continually reinforced connections between disability and Blackness. Surveillance and control in forms such as fugitive slave notices further dehumanized African Americans as disabled property. Jacobs, Northrup, and the Crafts directly contested these influential portrayals in their narratives, supplanting them with authentic representations of Black life. The fugitive slave narrative genre evolved as authors paraphrased statutes and integrated cultural material into their narratives. Fugitive authors did not leave their audiences to judge the material for itself, however. They drew readers’ attention to the legal, cultural, and societal frameworks that enabled white enslavers to enact violence. Analyzing the work of these fugitive authors contributes to our understanding of visual culture, the slave narrative as a genre, and the history of disability, deviance, fugitivity, and sexuality under American slavery
Books as Lifesavers in an Anxious World: Fostering Children\u27s Positive Social-Emotional Wellness with the Right Book at the Right Time
Get PDFThroughout their lives children face numerous challenges. Increasingly, more children are exhibiting feelings of anxiousness and manifestations of stress. Caring librarians know that the right book can serve as a springboard for supporting children’s feelings of anxiety. This presentation provides attendees with recommendations of the best fiction and nonfiction books from 2022–2024 that can be used to foster positive social and emotional wellness in school age children. Conversation starters as well as a handout with related professional resources will be shared
Feel the Feelings: Exploring Social and Emotional Development through Poetry
Get PDFWith an increasing need to address social and emotional development in elementary-age children, this session will highlight poetry as a window to an internal landscape. This session will present ways to incorporate poetry into social-emotional learning and will highlight several books that trigger children’s imaginations to express feelings. Session attendees will take away a list of poetic texts that feature social emotional topics as well as a host of strategies as they initiate their own ventures into poetry in K-6 classrooms and libraries
The Secret Powers of Wordless Books!
Get PDFStorytelling is most often associated with words. But what happens when you take the words away and are left with just the pictures? No longer is there a hierarchy of reader vs. listener. Suddenly, you have opened a world of possibilities based on the “readers” experiences, perceptions, and ideas. People of all ages, reading abilities, languages, and experiences can enjoy the benefits of “reading” a wordless book! Join us as we present tips on “reading” a wordless book, the sciences behind the benefits, hands-on projects to enhance the experience, and ways to incorporate all ages into the story. Pictures alone really can change the world
Biography to Blobfish
No full textFrom Biography to Blobfish explores the ways children’s non-fiction materials ignite interests that can be fostered by tools found within the library. Over the course of forty-five minutes, presenters will lead participants into a whirlwind exploration of the learning opportunities presented by biographies. The workshop includes sample lesson plans and ideas for classrooms, public libraries, and afterschool programming
Evading the Censors: Gay Children\u27s Literature from the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century
No full textIn 1908, early gay rights advocate Edward Prime-Stevenson catalogued a collection of books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that he described as homosexual juvenile fiction--what might be the first such attempt to compile a list of gay children\u27s literature in English. Most of the books he referenced received positive reviews at the time of their publication and evaded censors despite their often overt descriptions of same-sex love and companionship. This presentation will discuss some of the works from Stevenson\u27s list and will consider how they might continue to find relevance and appeal to today\u27s young people amidst recent efforts to challenge and ban contemporary gay children\u27s books in school and public libraries
The IR: Creating New Connections and Enriching Established Ones
Get PDFHere, I will explore how the library\u27s collaboration with the Director of Undergraduate Research, specifically leveraging our IR, contributed to the creation of a new, daylong event celebrating undergraduate research. In 2022, we restructured the entire process of collecting and showcasing student work created for the annual Belmont Undergraduate Research Symposium (BURS) within the IR. This restructuring made our collection more exhaustive and thus accelerated its visibility. We also implemented changes within the IR which allowed faculty to be more involved in students\u27 submission process, which strengthened connections between faculty members, the library, and the Office of Undergraduate Research. Belmont administration was so pleased with BURS that they accepted a proposal to lengthen and diversify the event. I will discuss the library\u27s partnership with Undergraduate Research and how we changed our IR workflows and processes to enhance our BURS collection and achieve greater recognition for Belmont students
Curation-Migration Cycle: A Preservation-Centered Framework for Institutional Repository Migration
Get PDFDigital preservation involves an elaborate cycle of remediatory actions including data and format migration between infrastructures. In the Digital Curation Centre\u27s (DCC) Curation Lifecycle Model (Digital Curation Centre, n.d.; Higgins 2007/2008), migration appears as a preservation action leading to data transformation and immunity from obsolescence. Institutional repositories (IRs) are essentially digital archives representing the structure, relationships, investments, and heritage of organizations trusting the technology to preserve records in digital form. The organization of IRs (e.g., collections, sub-collections, and communities) represent interrelated structures: those of the records (as organized into groups, series, and sub-series by processing archivists) and the hierarchies of record creators (as seen in finding aids). It is vital for curators to maintain this connection at times of migration between infrastructures, data models, and metadata schema (see Littman et al., 2023). IR migrations (especially with large data sets) therefore require extensive planning and thoughtful implementation.
The DCC model is a widely recognized cyclical framework requiring a socio-technological approach involving the ANT, and the relationship between human (participants, organizations) and nonhuman actors (technologies, policies, standards). A preservation action initiates migration (after re-appraisal if necessary) leading to data transformation using new metadata and/or format standards, infrastructure, or organizational context. The Levels of Representation framework can inform professional actions (such as migrations) on bitstream/physical entities to aggregations/data sets. Increased ontological commitments are necessary in migrating large collections due to multiple levels of relationships among contents and record-creating organizations. These considerations must guide preservation actions and migrations between different infrastructures, metadata schema, and content standards.
This presentation focuses on the curation-migration cycle—a preservation-centered framework for planning IR migrations. It will address theoretical frameworks like Levels of Representation (Lee, 2011) and Actor-Network Theory (LaTour, 1996; Herman, 2023) necessary for a socio-technological approach, and report on a decade of experience and lessons learned from four IR migrations at the University of Toledo
Creating Sustainable Solutions with Hosted Institutional Repositories: How Future-Proof Is Your Infrastructure?
Get PDFThis presentation will discuss the core purpose of institutional repositories and why universities are investing in them as well as the benefits of fully hosted infrastructure that supports this core purpose. To help the community evaluate the current readiness of existing institutional repositories so they can evolve with funding mandates, we\u27re going to provide a checklist to assess your current state of play.
Institutional repositories help Universities promote their researchers\u27 work, provide tangible mechanisms and infrastructure for growing funder policy compliance requirements, and strengthen the Library\u27s role in supporting the communication of research. This is in addition to fostering a culture of proficient research management and championing core open research principles and best practices amongst faculty and researchers.
When we begin to think about what essential functionalities or capabilities an institutional repository needs to have to be able to support the core motivating factors for having one in the first place; a simple starting point is that it needs to be technologically sound and, wherever possible, be available at the point of need. If the repository infrastructure is down at the point a researcher needs to submit a dataset, reserve a DOI, or make a journal article openly available, this may not only deter that single deposit or action but put them off coming back to the service again.
The institutional repository also needs to be meaningful to all faculties and research areas. Research data management and the sharing of all outputs associated with the research process in a FAIR way has already become best practice and the \u27norm\u27 in certain subject areas, e.g. some STEM disciplines - however, there is still some way to go for other disciplines that do not traditionally see themselves as creating or having research \u27data\u27 that they need to share. To further this journey towards all research outputs being as \u27open as possible\u27, an institutional repository needs to be able to support a large variety of outputs in different file formats, have flexible metadata, and provide meaningful metrics if Universities are going to be able to support OSTP and NIH mandates in the coming years.
Across the pond, a recent paper explored software updates as a core part of running repositories and stated: 42% of repositories upgraded their repository platforms in 2022, and 74% of repositories stated that they were planning to upgrade in 2023. 21% of repositories that upgraded in 2022 plan to do it again in 2023. In total, about 60% of respondents have either updated their repository in 2022 or are planning to update to a more recent version in 2023. This presentation will propose a checklist for repository administrators and engineers to support repository upgrade and planning activities, and look at which existing hosted solutions might pose a more sustainable way to evolve institutional repositories in a rapidly changing landscape