"Yes, I was a house slave: I slept under the stairway in the closet." : slave housing and landscapes of Tennessee 1780-1860 : an architectural synthesis /

Adviser: C. Van West.This dissertation synthesizes the architectural, documentary, and archeological information known about the living conditions of African-American slaves in Tennessee. The author conducted an architectural survey from 1999-2002 and recorded 62 sites with 75 buildings, 27 rooms within mansions, and 7 wings with 18 rooms, totaling 171 rooms for slave living and work. Many are small single-pen log houses, some are brick, a few frame, and one stone building can be found in appendix 1 of the dissertation. The fact that most Tennessee slave owners held 10 or fewer bondsmen made Tennessee's living conditions different from the cotton plantation districts of the Deep South. To be sure, Tennessee had its plantations, the most well-known Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, serves as an example of how a large group of enslaved people lived in the state. But many slaves actually lived within their white masters' homes, or in wings attached to the mansion. The survey recorded a total of 45 rooms in mansions or wings, which is more than half the number of separate standing structures recorded.Tennessee's landscapes also suggest closeness with 37 of 75 houses sitting within 100' of the "big house." The architectural evidence begs the question of what constituted a "community" among the enslaved. Archeological evidence demonstrates black and white lived together during the frontier period. And later because so many people did not reside on large plantations with family and friends living in the same quarter, the few people living on house lots or small farms had to broaden their area of familiarity to create a network and community support system. An example is the Joseph Brown house in Greeneville where 7 apparently unrelated, mostly teenagers, lived in one house in 1860. This sobering example should give historians pause to think about how we define community among enslaved groups. This information from Tennessee can be extended to other parts of the upland South where slave holdings were small. Scholars investigating the lives of enslaved people in that context should consider the wider connotations of what it meant to create "community" away from the property a person knew as "home.".Ph.D

Multimodal Analysis of Stories Told by Mental Health Influencers on TikTok

Background: Social media influencers are powerful storytellers who function as conduits of public health communication and may contribute significantly to young people's mental health literacy. Influencers who discuss mental health include health professionals, wellness practitioners and experts by lived experience. As yet, there has been no multimodal analysis of how these three influencer types narrate mental health issues. This study critically evaluates 398 TikTok videos to show how three distinct types of influencers construct multimodal narratives around mental health. Methods: Data was collected using the TikTok Research API and annotated for narrative patterns and visual formatting using an inductively created multimodal framework. Results: The analysis shows important differences between the storytelling practices of health professionals, who inform others through talking head explainers, enactments and stitches, and lived experience influencers who invited shared perspectives on their stories of illness, treatment and recovery through compilations and ‘watch as I do this’ formats. Wellness practitioners occupy an interdiscursive mid‐space, blending the verbal aspects of ‘informing’ (explainers) with the visual narration of ‘shared experience’ to promote solutions through recommendation and advertising. The data also highlights similarities between the health professionals and wellness influencers in their use of marketing calls to action, indicating the commercialisation of mental health solutions offered in TikTok videos. Conclusions: It is concerning that the gap between information and support provided on TikTok may lead to partial and imbalanced development of mental health literacy by adolescent users and that content provided by certain influencer types mimics authoritative and authentic communication but promotes non‐medical solutions to mental health, unsupported by evidence. Patient or Public Involvement: Twelve young people with lived experience of mental health challenges, aged between 16 and 25, were recruited through The McPin Foundation to form the young people's advisory group (YPAG) for the project. This age range incorporates adolescents and ‘emerging adults’ who are likely to experience a range of life transitions and encounter challenges in mental health. The group met remotely four times during the study, helping to define the categories of influencers, refining the narrative categories and visual formats for the code book and discussing data examples openly to guide the analysis. Two members of the YPAG were trained and participated as coders in the inter‐rater reliability process

Nitric oxide inhibits the accumulation of CD4+CD44hiTbet+CD69lo T cells in mycobacterial infection

Animals lacking the inducible nitric oxide synthase gene (nos2-/-) are less susceptible to Mycobacterium avium strain 25291 and lack nitric oxide-mediated immunomodulation of CD4+ T cells. Here we show that the absence of nos2 results in increased accumulation of neutrophils and both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells within the M. avium containing granuloma. Examination of the T-cell phenotype in M. avium infected mice demonstrated that CD4+CD44hi effector T cells expressing the Th1 transcriptional regulator T-bet (T-bet+) were specifically reduced by the presence of nitric oxide. Importantly, the T-bet+ effector population could be separated into CD69hi and CD69lo populations, with the CD69lo population only able to accumulate during chronic infection within infected nos2-/- mice. Transcriptomic comparison between CD4+CD44hiCD69hi and CD4+CD44hiCD69lo populations revealed that CD4+CD44hiCD69lo cells had higher expression of the integrin itgb1/itga4 (VLA-4, CD49d/CD29). Inhibition of Nos2 activity allowed increased accumulation of the CD4+CD44hiT-bet+CD69lo population in WT mice as well as increased expression of VLA-4. These data support the hypothesis that effector T cells in mycobacterial granulomata are not a uniform effector population but exist in distinct subsets with differential susceptibility to the regulatory effects of nitric oxide

Actin and microtubules drive differential aspects of planar cell polarity in multiciliated cells

Actin dynamics are required for proper cilia spacing, global coordination of cilia polarity, and coordination of metachronic cilia beating, whereas cytoplasmic microtubule dynamics are required for local coordination of polarity between neighboring cilia

Murine Dishevelled 3 Functions in Redundant Pathways with Dishevelled 1 and 2 in Normal Cardiac Outflow Tract, Cochlea, and Neural Tube Development

Dishevelled (Dvl) proteins are important signaling components of both the canonical β-catenin/Wnt pathway, which controls cell proliferation and patterning, and the planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway, which coordinates cell polarity within a sheet of cells and also directs convergent extension cell (CE) movements that produce narrowing and elongation of the tissue. Three mammalian Dvl genes have been identified and the developmental roles of Dvl1 and Dvl2 were previously determined. Here, we identify the functions of Dvl3 in development and provide evidence of functional redundancy among the three murine Dvls. Dvl3−/− mice died perinatally with cardiac outflow tract abnormalities, including double outlet right ventricle and persistent truncus arteriosis. These mutants also displayed a misorientated stereocilia in the organ of Corti, a phenotype that was enhanced with the additional loss of a single allele of the PCP component Vangl2/Ltap (LtapLp/+). Although neurulation appeared normal in both Dvl3−/− and LtapLp/+ mutants, Dvl3+/−;LtapLp/+ combined mutants displayed incomplete neural tube closure. Importantly, we show that many of the roles of Dvl3 are also shared by Dvl1 and Dvl2. More severe phenotypes were observed in Dvl3 mutants with the deficiency of another Dvl, and increasing Dvl dosage genetically with Dvl transgenes demonstrated the ability of Dvls to compensate for each other to enable normal development. Interestingly, global canonical Wnt signaling appeared largely unaffected in the double Dvl mutants, suggesting that low Dvl levels are sufficient for functional canonical Wnt signals. In summary, we demonstrate that Dvl3 is required for cardiac outflow tract development and describe its importance in the PCP pathway during neurulation and cochlea development. Finally, we establish several developmental processes in which the three Dvls are functionally redundant

Effects of elevated CO2 concentrations on the vegetation and microbial populations at a terrestrial CO2 vent at Laacher See, Germany

CO2 capture and geological storage offers an option for reducing man-made greenhouse gas emissions. But one major concern related to geological CO2 storage is the possibility of leakage from the reservoir and subsequent effects on the environment, which cannot completely be excluded. This study aims at investigating the environmental impact of CO2 release from reservoirs into near surface terrestrial environments. To understand the effect of CO2 leakage on such an ecosystem, detailed knowledge on the abundance and diversity of plants and microorganisms is essential. Therefore, an ecosystem study has been conducted within the Network of Excellence “CO2GeoNet” on a natural CO2 vent at the Laacher See, Germany. Near surface CO2 conditions and CO2 fluxes of the venting area were described by means of conventional soil gas measurement equipment, and brought up the difference between the CO2 anomalies and their surroundings. A comparison of the soil columns between control sites and the centre of the venting area showed a small but significant change in the soil pH below 10 cm. The botanical survey revealed vegetation changes which, like the investigation of important soil microbial communities, showed significant differences between the CO2-rich sites (up to 90% and more of soil gas), medium CO2 sites (∼20%), and control locations with background CO2 concentrations. The ecosystem appears to be adapted to the different conditions through species substitution or adaptation, showing a shift towards anaerobic and acidotolerant to acidophilic species under elevated CO2 concentrations. It is hoped that the final outcome of this ongoing study will be the identification of possible botanical and microbial indicators, whose presence or absence provides easily detectable evidence for leakage of CO2 from deep reservoirs into near surface terrestrial ecosystems