Finding their voice: Jewish women artists in the 19th and 20th centuries.

While Jewish women artists became active in the visual arts beginning in the mid-19th century, to date they have not been addressed as a group. This project presents a theoretical and historical overview of the work of six Jewish women artists---Rebecca Solomon, Charlotte Salomon, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Delaunay, Louise Nevelson, and Eva Hesse---examining their art in the context of their cultural heritage, Euro-American nationalities, social environments, life experiences, and contemporary art movements. Providing both representational and nonrepresentational artists---an important factor in Jewish aesthetics---this group includes both well-recognized artists and those whose work has only recently become known. For Delaunay, Frankenthaler, Nevelson, and Hesse, this analysis provides an understanding of their artwork in light of their Jewish heritage, as opposed to the Western cultural context in which they are most often viewed.To properly examine the lives and artwork of these artists requires a multi-faceted theoretical framework. Given the history of Jewish exile, which dispersed artists among Euro-American societies, cross-cultural perspectives and analyses provide a context in which to situate their artwork. Contemporary aesthetic theories and women's art scholarship reframe the visual arts, particularly in reference to Jewish women artists. Finally, new textual methods of interpretation contribute to a broader understanding than traditional art historical practice.Since Euro-American art scholars most usually confine themselves within Western culture and aesthetics, the introduction of Jewish aesthetic history and theory provides a more appropriate structure within which to examine the work of Jewish women artists.While this sample group is small, it represents a broad historical and geographical range and examines the various ways of creating visual art within that range. This study weaves together traditional art historical models with newer theories from textual art scholarship, as well as cross-cultural and Jewish cultural studies. This use of a multi-faceted theoretical framework seeks to provide a more complete understanding of the lives and artwork of Jewish women artists, and their place within art history.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2003.School code: 0119

Low-Dose rIL-15 Protects from Nephrotoxic Serum Nephritis via CD8+ T Cells

Rapid progressive glomerulonephritis (GN) often leads to end-stage kidney disease, driving the need for renal replacement therapy and posing a global health burden. Low-dose cytokine-based immunotherapies provide a new strategy to treat GN. IL-15 is a strong candidate for the therapy of immune-mediated kidney disease since it has proven to be tubular-protective before. Therefore, we set out to test the potential of low-dose rIL-15 treatment in a mouse model of nephrotoxic serum nephritis (NTS), mimicking immune complex-driven GN in humans. A single low-dose treatment with rIL-15 ameliorated NTS, reflected by reduced albuminuria, less tissue scarring, fewer myeloid cells in the kidney, and improved tubular epithelial cell survival. In addition, CD8+ T cells, a primary target of IL-15, showed altered gene expression and function corresponding with less cytotoxicity mediated by rIL-15. With the use of transgenic knock-out mice, antibody depletion, and adoptive cell transfer studies, we here show that the beneficial effects of rIL-15 treatment in NTS depended on CD8+ T cells, suggesting a pivotal role for them in the underlying mechanism. Our findings add to existing evidence of the association of IL-15 with kidney health and imply a potential for low-dose rIL-15 immunotherapies in GN

Alterations in the Kynurenine–Tryptophan Pathway and Lipid Dysregulation Are Preserved Features of COVID-19 in Hemodialysis

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-induced metabolic alterations have been proposed as a source for prognostic biomarkers and may harbor potential for therapeutic exploitation. However, the metabolic impact of COVID-19 in hemodialysis (HD), a setting of profound a priori alterations, remains unstudied. To evaluate potential COVID-19 biomarkers in end-stage kidney disease (CKD G5), we analyzed the plasma metabolites in different COVID-19 stages in patients with or without HD. We recruited 18 and 9 asymptomatic and mild, 11 and 11 moderate, 2 and 13 severely affected, and 10 and 6 uninfected HD and non-HD patients, respectively. Plasma samples were taken at the time of diagnosis and/or upon admission to the hospital and analyzed by targeted metabolomics and cytokine/chemokine profiling. Targeted metabolomics confirmed stage-dependent alterations of the metabolome in non-HD patients with COVID-19, which were less pronounced in HD patients. Elevated kynurenine levels and lipid dysregulation, shown by an increase in circulating free fatty acids and a decrease in lysophospholipids, could distinguish patients with moderate COVID-19 from non-infected individuals in both groups. Kynurenine and lipid alterations were also associated with ICAM-1 and IL-15 levels in HD and non-HD patients. Our findings support the kynurenine pathway and plasma lipids as universal biomarkers of moderate and severe COVID-19 independent of kidney function