Home Economics Club Sees Big Year Ahead

Mary Louise Morton, vice-president of Home Economics Club, discusses the club\u27s activitie

Letter from Mary Morton Keher

Letter concerning assignments for the Federation of Women\u27s Clubs

With Ground Teeth: a Study of Flannery O\u27CONNOR\u27S Women.

Eighteen of Flannery O\u27Connor\u27s short stories feature women as protagonists or antagonists. Of the remaining thirteen stories in the canon, four are assimilated into her novel Wise Blood. This study, then, encompasses the entire O\u27Connor canon with the exceptions of the novel The Violent Bear It Away and eight short stories, since one of the remaining nine stories is a part of The Violent Bear It Away. The majority, then, of O\u27Connor\u27s short stories feature women in leading roles. Even those in supporting roles seem prominent. With the women in Wise Blood, they dramatize O\u27Connor\u27s special vision of comedy and horror as two sides of the same coin. Their fallacious assumptions concerning reality provide simultaneously ludicrous and terrible developments. Although O\u27Connor is not unique in mixing humor and horror, she is so adept at it that some critics, mired in traditional separations of tragedy and comedy, object to her stories. William F. Lynch\u27s discussion of irony and comedy in relation to faith--O\u27Connor\u27s special concern--is thus particularly valuable in overcoming this critical resistance and in analyzing the place of women in her fictional world. Although certain similarities among O\u27Connor\u27s women have been noted, no systematic study has yet been made of all the women in her works. Drawing on Lynch, this study attempts to show that for the most part the women possess imaginations inclined to reduce all of reality to the simplest common denominator. Everything from God to onions is viewed by the same facile optic. This rigidity is their common characteristic; their imperceptive, unyielding personalities generate both the comedy and the terror of her stories. The women are divided into four basis types: the managerial Martha, her chthonic double, the mother or surrogate-mother, and the seductress. The Martha type is obsessed with the work ethic, cleanliness, and the social order of the South. Her double has a sense of mystery lacking in the optimistic Martha. The double, however, is equally rigid, viewing all in terms of disease and death. The mother figures, though sharing the Marthas\u27 faith in the work ethic and in their own energies, have more varied concerns than the Marthas or their doubles. Some have reversed roles with their parents; one has just discovered her pregnancy. While the mothers are generally preoccupied with their dependents, the seductresses pursue the bodies or souls of men. Three pride themselves on their intellects while the rest have no such pretensions. Women\u27s traditional roles are shattered in O\u27Connor\u27s unsentimentalized fictional world. The women are usually independent and nearly all lose whatever struggle they engage in. The men in her fiction are invariably disruptive and, in the short stories at least, are as ludicrous as the women. In several instances, the male eludes the fixed snare of the female who would lure him into the complacency of her cliched world. The ironies of the comically terrible O\u27Connor women--as Marthas, prophets of disaster, mothers, and seductresses--are nonetheless recognizable as those of their real life counterparts

Subventricular Zone Neural Stem Cells Release Extracellular Vesicles During Early Postnatal Neurogenesis

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanometer sized particles released from all cells. EVs are found in all biological fluids, including cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood. EVs modulate intercellular communication through the transfer of nucleic acids and proteins from donor to recipient cells. During early postnatal neurogenesis, subventricular zone (SVZ) neural stem cells (NSCs) asymmetrically divide to give rise to neuroblasts that migrate along the rostral migratory stream (RMS) and populate the olfactory bulb (OB). Other, non-neuronal cells populate the SVZ, such as microglia and endothelial cells. Microglia have been shown to regulate SVZ NSCs, but it remains unclear if this communication is bidirectional. The purpose of this study was to determine if SVZ NSCs release EVs and what physiological impact this has on postnatal SVZ development. First, we generated a protocol in which SVZ NSCs were placed in culture and EVs were isolated from NSC conditioned media. To study EVs in vivo, EVs were labeled with DiI and transplanted into the SVZ of neonatal mice. Immunocytochemistry, immunohistochemistry, and electron microscopy were used to confirm the isolation and transplantation of NSC EVs. Using this methodology, SVZ NSC EVs were transplanted into the lateral ventricles of neonatal mice. We found a majority of DiI particles coalesced with Iba1-positive microglia in the SVZ. Furthermore, Iba1-positive microglia underwent a morphological shift from a stellate to rounded phenotype. RNA sequencing and analysis of EV treated microglia revealed that immune system processes and inflammatory responses were the most highly enriched and represented terms. Small RNA sequencing of NSC EVs uncovered families of miRNA, such as Let-7, that have been shown to regulate microglia physiology and morphology. The upregulation of inflammatory response transcripts included interleukin 1α (IL-1α), IL-1β, and IL-6. In agreement with RNA sequencing data, Luminex assays revealed cytokines, such as IL-1α, IL-1β, and IL-6, were significantly upregulated in treated microglia. EV-depleted microglia media was transplanted into the lateral ventricles of neonatal mice, and media collected from EV-treated microglia reduced SVZ NSC proliferation. To further investigate if SVZ NSCs release EVs in vivo, we generated a transgenic model system in which EV marker protein tetraspanin CD9 was fused to Turbo-GFP (CD9-GFP), which is derived from the copepod Pontellina plumata. CD9-GFP was inserted downstream of a STOP codon flanked by loxP sites. CD9-GFP was found in Nestin-positive cells in the SVZ of transgenic mice electroporated with Cre-recombinase. Taken together, our data supports the release of EVs from SVZ NSCs both in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, EVs released from SVZ NSCs regulate microglia during early postnatal development

The American church/state quagmire: A major cause and a proposed solution

The primary purpose of this thesis is to clarify possible legitimate interactions between churches and government bodies in America. Finding that the present interpretation of the First Amendment has actually precipitated much of the current controversy, evidence is presented of its lack of validity. Instead an alternative interpretation is offered that clearly shows that the American colonists had come to recognize an entirely new manner in which to organize a society. This new manner of organization gave sovereignty to the individual in two major societal systems: the political and the religious. The consequence of this was the recognition that churches and governments are simply institutions organized by people. Each of which has its own responsibilities within society. There was no need to separate the two into autonomous spheres. They both were recognized as two distinct institutions of the same body of people, who held sovereignty over them. It is after a presentation of these facts that the concluding chapter suggests a new configuration for church/state interaction that would give more clarity to future contacts between the religious and political institutions of American society

Evaluating Peer mobilization Films as a Tool in Altering Self Concept

The thesis examines the Peer Mobilization film series to determine if they are effective tools to positively affect mental health

Investigation of T cell signalling events regulating immunity and tolerance in vivo

Summary The ability of the immune system to discriminate between pathogenic and self or food antigens is essential not only for the generation of a productive immune response against invasive pathogens, but also for a state of antigen-specific tolerance to be elicited against harmless antigens. A breakdown in such tolerance can result in the development of a variety of autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and coeliac disease. Despite a wealth of studies in this field, however, the mechanisms by which the immune system can distinguish harmless and pathogenic antigens remain to be fully elucidated. If these mechanisms were better understood, such information could be exploited to help develop better therapies for autoimmune diseases, improve the rate of successful transplantations and increase the efficacy of vaccines. The primary means of maintaining tolerance to self antigens is to prevent self-reactive T cells from exiting the thymus following their development therein (central tolerance). However, some self-reactive T cells escape thymic deletion and as such, central tolerance is incomplete. Indeed, peripheral tolerance is required for an individual to elicit tolerance to all self-antigens, developmental antigens and some food and environmental antigens which are not present in early life. Peripheral tolerance is defined as a state of antigen-specific hyporesponsiveness, which is induced by exposure of T cells to antigen under sub-optimal activating conditions. For a T cell to become fully activated, and therefore productively primed, it must recognise its cognate antigen in the context of MHC and receive co-stimulation via the interaction of its CD28 receptor with CD80/86 on an antigen-presenting cell (APC). Clonal anergy, one of the proposed mechanisms of peripheral tolerance, describes a state of long lasting unresponsiveness to antigen in the T cell. Such anergy is induced when the TcR is ligated in the absence of co-stimulation and can be evidenced, upon re-stimulation with antigen, by reduced IL-2 production, cell cycle progression and proliferation, relative to that observed in primed cells. It has been widely proposed that both qualitative and quantitative differences in T cell signalling may underlie the differential functional outcomes of priming and tolerance. However, the majority of these studies have relied upon biochemical assessment of signalling in T cell lines or clones, at the population level following polyclonal stimulation in vitro, and thus has led to the generation of conflicting data. Moreover, and most importantly, these data do not necessarily reflect the responses of individual antigen-specific T cells within their environmental niche within primary or secondary lymphoid tissue. In addition, as such data represents the responses of all cell types in the sample population at any one time, they do not provide any information pertaining to the differential kinetics, amplitude or subcellular localisation of signals generated by functionally distinct subgroups within the population. A relatively new technology, laser scanning cytometry (LSC), offers an attractive means of investigating such responses, as it essentially marries the quantitative capabilities of flow cytometric analysis of cells in suspension with the ability to analyse spatially the fluorescence of large numbers of individual cells, either in suspension or in tissue in a slide-based format. Moreover, the adoptive transfer system, in which limited numbers of TcR transgenic (Tg) T cells are distributed evenly throughout the thymus-dependent area of the lymph node, provides an attractive means of studying antigen-specific responses occurring at near physiological frequencies in situ. Such antigen-specific T cells can be readily distinguished from endogenous T cells by LSC, following fluorescent staining of their TcR, as they are sparsely situated amongst the endogenous T cell population within the lymph node. Use of the adoptive transfer system, in combination with LSC analysis, has therefore enabled the development, in this thesis, of a quantitative imaging technology with which to study T cell signalling in individual antigen-specific T cells in vitro and in situ. In T cells, the maintenance phase of anergy has been reported to reflect defective activation of transcription factors, such as c-Jun/c-Fos, that are involved in formation of the AP-1 complex, which is required for inducing transcription of the IL-2 gene and optimal activation and effector function of T cells. In turn, this appears to be determined by the lack of recruitment of the ERK, JNK and p38 MAPK signalling cascades. The small GTPase, Rap1, has long been implicated in such desensitisation of ERK, and the consequent reduced IL-2 production, observed in tolerised T cells. However, as noted above, the majority of these findings were obtained from in vitro studies of T cell lines or clones and as such are not necessarily representative of physiological responses of primary antigen-specific T cells in situ. This study therefore describes, for the first time, an inverse relationship between ERK activation (pERK) and Rap1 expression in individual primary antigen-specific T cells during the maintenance phases of tolerance and priming, both in vitro and in vivo. Analysis at the single cell level further revealed that the proportion of antigen-stimulated cells expressing pERK was lower in the anergic relative to primed groups in vitro and in vivo, and the few anergised T cells expressing pERK did so at a lower level than the primed cells in vitro. By contrast, Rap1 was found to be expressed in a greater proportion of anergic antigen-specific T cells, and at considerably higher levels, compared with primed T cells following re-stimulation with antigen both in vitro and in vivo. An additional inverse relationship was observed between pERK and Rap1, concerning their subcellular localisation, with pERK appearing to co-localise with lipid raft structures in primed but not anergic cells and Rap1 appearing to be targeted to lipid rafts in anergic but not primed cells. These data suggests that Rap1 may be up-regulated and recruited to the immunological synapse upon re-stimulation with Ag in anergic T cells and that such Rap1 localisation and expression may contribute to the downregulation of ERK recruitment and activation in these cells. It is important to note that this inverse relationship between the accumulation of Rap1 and antagonism of ERK activation was only observed during the maintenance, and not induction, phases of both systemic and oral tolerance in vivo. Furthermore, assessment of the activation status of downstream cell cycle modulators in priming and tolerance, revealed that downregulation of ERK activation and upregulation of p27kip1 might not be sufficient for maintenance of the anergic state, as indicated by G1 arrest, and hence, one or more additional negative signals may be required. Indeed, this study suggests that perhaps such a negative signal could be provided by the downregulation of p-Rb and/or increased expression of inactive cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs). In summary, defective ERK signalling correlates with the up-regulation of Rap1 expression in tolerised relative to primed antigen-specific CD4+ T cells during the maintenance phases of tolerance in vitro and in vivo. As this association occurs after the induction of both systemic and oral routes of tolerance, these data suggest that Rap1 antagonism of pERK signalling may play an important and general role in the maintenance of antigen-specific CD4+ T cell tolerance. Moreover, as oral tolerance induction has been proposed as a potential therapy for autoimmune disorders and, oral administration of compounds offers a more attractive route for drug delivery in humans, these findings may have potential clinical applications. By advancing our knowledge of these key signals in regulating tolerance and priming at the single cell level in vitro and in vivo, we will therefore increase our understanding of an important physiological process at the molecular level, ultimately leading to identification of potential targets for enhancing or inhibiting immunity and tolerance

A Lesson Before Prying: Invitation to Inquiry within a Collaborative Community of Literacy Educators

A university-school collaborative, responding to the many challenges of urban educators, including high-stakes testing, invited the authors to improve literacy instruction. The authors chronicle their initials steps of this action research. Their lesson before prying into the teaching and learning lives of the stakeholders of the learning community indicated that the teachers a) used professional vocabulary that often conflicted with classroom practices, b) expressed interest in improving instruction, and c) highly value their students

Action zone theory and the hearing-impaired student in the mainstreamed classroom

This study examines the effect of the action zone phenomenon on the classroom participation of mainstreamed, hearing-impaired students. They are constrained by their need for visual input to sitting on the sides of the classroom out of the action zone. Six mainstreamed classes were observed and coded for location of student-teacher interactions. Action zone patterns were found in two classes. It was concluded that hearing-impaired students who must sit on the periphery of the classroom have similar opportunities to hearing students for participation when no action zone exists. When one does exist however they are at a great disadvantage

Food Deserts

A food desert is a geographical area in which there is not easy access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food.https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/public_health_posters/1013/thumbnail.jp