Transmitters and Pathways Mediating Inhibition of Spinal Itch-Signaling Neurons by Scratching and Other Counterstimuli

Scratching relieves itch, but the underlying neural mechanisms are poorly understood. We presently investigated a role for the inhibitory neurotransmitters GABA and glycine in scratch-evoked inhibition of spinal itch-signaling neurons in a mouse model of chronic dry skin itch. Superficial dorsal horn neurons ipsilateral to hindpaw dry skin treatment exhibited a high level of spontaneous firing that was significantly attenuated by cutaneous scratching, pinch and noxious heat. Scratch-evoked inhibition was nearly abolished by spinal delivery of the glycine antagonist, strychnine, and was markedly attenuated by respective GABAA and GABAB antagonists bicuculline and saclofen. Scratch-evoked inhibition was also significantly attenuated (but not abolished) by interruption of the upper cervical spinal cord, indicating the involvement of both segmental and suprasegmental circuits that engage glycine- and GABA-mediated inhibition of spinal itch-signaling neurons by noxious counterstimuli

A contextualist research paradigm for rhetoric and composition

The unresolved nineteenth-century debate--"is rhetoric an art or a science?"--hashindered our attempt to establish an inclusive research paradigm for rhetoric and composition. The newly dominant paradigm is quickly narrowing to prefer the qualitative designs that suit our literary ideals, relieve our math and statistics anxiety, and fulfill political ideologies. Such qualitative work has given us great insight into the mind of the researcher, a stronger voice to the individual, and a powerful tool for groups traditionally oppressed by our field.At the same time, however, our field needs quantitative research that examines the scope of certain issues or that tests the effectiveness of solutions to problems, and we should remain prepared to understand such research from other fields. But the quantitative/qualitative division in composition cannot be healed through "methodological pluralism" or by examining the epistemologies governing those methodological choices.A Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification (Annis, 1978) provides a new lens through which we may recontextualize the competing epistemologies our field has outlined, providing a new decision-making framework through which we may appreciate the intersection of research issues (issue/question, purpose, method, and publication) and rhetorical issues (writer, audience, and subject) that form the varied contexts for our work: contexts highlighted in a matrix of questions representing a Contextualist Research Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition.To illustrate such a paradigm, Eileen Oliver's (1995) "The Writing Quality of Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Graders, and College Freshmen: Does Rhetorical Specification in Writing Prompts Make a Difference?" is reprinted with an interview with Oliver, in which she detailed the context for her study. To further demonstrate a Contextualist Paradigm at work, my own study--"Red Ink / Blue Ink: Does it Really Make a Difference?"--responds to the largely untested anecdotal evidence that discourages writing teachers' use of red pens.A Contextualist Research Paradigm is necessary for composition to heal the artificial divisions between qualitative and quantitative research, to direct our attention fully to context rather than politics, form, and numbers, and to conduct not only the research we like, but also the research we and our students need.Thesis (Ph. D.)Department of Englis

Document collections, mobilized regulations, and the making of customary law at the end of the Middle Ages

Using late medieval examples from Switzerland, this paper argues that the emergence of formally organized archives around 1500 was part of an important shift in how documents could be deployed. However, this shift was not away from an oral and toward a literate culture, as argued in some earlier studies, but rather away from seeing documents as testimony that reminded a community about past authoritative actors, and toward relating the texts of documents to other texts, that is, to contexts. This shift took place largely through the appropriation of methods for using and organizing written material that had been developed in the realms of scholastic theology and liturgy, and applying them to secular lordship and administration. These methods provided new models for organizing collections of parchments and papers into connected archives and gave rise to new forms of text collection such as reorganized versions of law books (Spiegel, Coutumiers) containing new search tools such as tables of contents (capitulationes) and indices (abecedaria). Individual charters and scattered legal norms were also organized into textus–glossae structures in larger and smaller administrative units. In the Swiss case, the contextualization of legal texts was accompanied by an increased attribution of authority to ‘custom’ in general, because the community-oriented attribution of meaning found in earlier use was lost. Ultimately, recasting individual documents as part of larger textual contexts increased the power of rulers and ushered in an age of lawyers and of archives