All Things Sacred: Love, Resilience, and Sovereignty in Linda Infante Lyons’s Alaska Native Icon Series

This article will explore how the contemporary Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) artist Linda Infante Lyons’s Alaska Native icon portrait series embody the Indigenous ideas of love and resilience. In our times of global climatic and environmental change and the pandemic that disproportionally affect and displace historically underrepresented and underserved communities, it is vitally important to seek out the core of Indigenous social health, wellbeing, and sovereignty through diverse origins of resilience. To accomplish this mission, this paper will shed light on Lyons’s quest of colonial past and the contemporary revival of Alaska Native expressive tradition through the cross-cultural and multispecies entanglement—love— between humans and nonhuman kin as it has been steeped in creative expressions

Linking Indigenous Knowledge and Observed Climate Change Studies

We present indigenous knowledge narratives and explore their connections to documented temperature and other climate changes and observed climate change impact studies. We then propose a framework for enhancing integration of these indigenous narratives of observed climate change with global assessments. Our aim is to contribute to the thoughtful and respectful integration of indigenous knowledge with scientific data and analysis, so that this rich body of knowledge can inform science, and so that indigenous and traditional peoples can use the tools and methods of science for the benefit of their communities if they choose to do so. Enhancing ways of understanding such connections are critical as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment process gets underway

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target

Cetaceousness and global warming among the Inupiat of Arctic Alaska.

Based on my 2004-2007 ethnographic fieldwork in Barrow and Point Hope, Alaska, this dissertation reveals how collective uncertainty about the environmental future is expressed and managed in Inupiaq practices, and by extension, how deeply global warming penetrates the cultural core of their society. To do so, I illustrate different aspects of Inupiaq-bowhead whale relationships, or the ways people make whales a central feature of their lives. I examine specific ways in which global warming in the Arctic influences Inupiaq society, particularly those cultural institutions and practices that link people spiritually and materially with bowhead whales. I argue that by influencing the bowhead harvest and the Inupiat homeland, climate change increases environmental uncertainties that both threaten and intensify human emotions tied to identity. This emotional intensity is revealed in the prevalence of traditional and newly invented whale-related events and performances, the number of people involved, the frequency of their involvement, and the verve or feelings with which they participate. This study is not about the fragility of Inupiaq society or identity. What I found is that the Inupiaq people retain and strengthen their cultural identity to survive unexpected difficulties with an unpredictable environment. They do so consciously and unconsciously by reinforcing their relationship with the whales. By presenting people's voices and using humanistic methods, this study shows how a whale-centric worldview has been influenced by unpredictable environmental change and how people work toward retaining their identity throughout their physical and spiritual associations with the whales

Cetaceousness and global warming among the Iñupiat of Arctic Alaska

Based on my 2004-2007 ethnographic fieldwork in Barrow and Point Hope, Alaska, this dissertation reveals how collective uncertainty about the environmental future is expressed and managed in Iñupiaq practices, and by extension, how deeply global warming penetrates the cultural core of their society. To do so, I illustrate different aspects of Iñupiaq-bowhead whale relationships, or the ways people make whales a central feature of their lives. I examine specific ways in which global warming in the Arctic influences Iñupiaq society, particularly those cultural institutions and practices that link people spiritually and materially with bowhead whales. I argue that by influencing the bowhead harvest and the Iñupiat homeland, climate change increases environmental uncertainties that both threaten and intensify human emotions tied to identity. This emotional intensity is revealed in the prevalence of traditional and newly invented whale-related events and performances, the number of people involved, the frequency of their involvement, and the verve or feelings with which they participate. This study is not about the fragility of Iñupiaq society or identity. What I found is that the Iñupiaq people retain and strengthen their cultural identity to survive unexpected difficulties with an unpredictable environment. They do so consciously and unconsciously by reinforcing their relationship with the whales. By presenting people's voices and using humanistic methods, this study shows how a whale-centric worldview has been influenced by unpredictable environmental change and how people work toward retaining their identity throughout their physical and spiritual associations with the whales