Through Trials and Triumph

The Kenyon journey is a collaborative, open-ended and ever-renewing tale of growth, and as a graduating senior, I wrote this letter to the incoming class of 2024, encouraging them to I to take ownership in writing their own Kenyon story while seeking comfort in uncomfortable situations. My senior year has been cut short, but I firmly believe that the Kenyon experience is both the time spent on campus and beyond, as the Kenyon experience is one that is everlasting. This was originally written for the Kenyon Blog, Quintessential Kenyon.https://digital.kenyon.edu/covid19words/1062/thumbnail.jp

Perception and Prejudice: Sino-Ghanaian Relations within the Service Sector and the Wavering Perception of China on the Global Stage

Opinions on the impacts of China in Africa differ from one observer to the next, be it in media, academic, or elsewhere. While most general discourses have been nuanced and coherent, there is nevertheless a prevailing sentiment of unbridled fear and Sinophobia, or anti-Chinese populism. Based on a two-sided study in Ghana, this research uses Chinese-Ghanaian employment relations as a way of entry to analyze and explore cross-cultural understandings, or lack thereof, that leads to conflict. From there, this paper examines the style of politicized media in broadcasting Sino-Ghanaian (Chinese-Ghanaian) engagements and its role in creating the anti-Chinese populism on the continent. Central to the culturally-grounded conflict is the lack of mutual understanding in socio-cultural interactions experienced by both parties in each of their distinct ways: punctuality, language, foreignness, vulnerability, and risk. This research fulfills previous research gap and sheds light particularly on Chinese employers\u27 existence in a foreign environment and their financial and social risks, as well as vulnerability powered by the rising anti-Chinese sentiment. As past studies on Sino-African engagement have often been limited to large-scale aid, infrastructure, or manufacturing projects involving state-owned enterprises, this research complements the ongoing academic conversation by investigating Chinese migrants working as employers in the service and catering sector of Ghana and their interactions with Ghanaian employees and the general public as it is the most common and prominent way of social interactions between people of both cultures

The Clinical Characteristics and Incidence of Pulmonary Tuberculosis of 7632 HIV Patients in Yunnan Province from 2005 to 2017

Objective: To analyze the age and gender distribution characteristics of 7,632 HIV/AIDS patients at the onset of HIV infection-related high-risk intravenous drug abuse and sexual contact in Yunnan province. Methods: Data were collected from the database of Chinese Medicine Treatment of AIDS Pilot Project in Yunnan province. Gender, age and demographics of HIV/AIDS patients were analyzed. Results: The patients were almost in relatively high educational background. The number of male intravenous drug users (12.90%) was more than female, and the earliest average age was 10-14 years. The percentages of men in 10-19 years and 35-59 years were more than that of women. No obvious difference was found in heterosexual sexual contact in both men (48.11%) and women (51.89%), and the earliest ages was 15-19 years in males and 10-14 years in females. The percentage of males at 10-34 years old was less than that of females, just opposite to the age of 35-85 years. Homosexual contact was more in males (92.73%) than that in females (7.27%). The earliest homosexual sexual contact associated with HIV infection was 15-19 years in males and 25-29 years in females. Among 128 AIDS patients with pulmonary tuberculosis infection, intravenous drug abuse accounted for the highest proportion (76.56%) of the three high-risk behaviors related to HIV infection. Conclusions: Reducing risk behaviors and preventing intravenous drug abuse could be effective in preventing AIDS. Compared with other high-risk behaviors, patients with intravenous drug use and AIDS are at greater risk of contracting tuberculosis

Bcl11a is essential for lymphoid development and negatively regulates p53

Transcription factors play important roles in lymphopoiesis. We have previously demonstrated that Bcl11a is essential for normal lymphocyte development in the mouse embryo. We report here that, in the adult mouse, Bcl11a is expressed in most hematopoietic cells and is highly enriched in B cells, early T cell progenitors, common lymphoid progenitors (CLPs), and hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). In the adult mouse, Bcl11a deletion causes apoptosis in early B cells and CLPs and completely abolishes the lymphoid development potential of HSCs to B, T, and NK cells. Myeloid development, in contrast, is not obviously affected by the loss of Bcl11a. Bcl11a regulates expression of Bcl2, Bcl2-xL, and Mdm2, which inhibits p53 activities. Overexpression of Bcl2 and Mdm2, or p53 deficiency, rescues both lethality and proliferative defects in Bcl11a-deficient early B cells and enables the mutant CLPs to differentiate to lymphocytes. Bcl11a is therefore essential for lymphopoiesis and negatively regulates p53 activities. Deletion of Bcl11a may represent a new approach for generating a mouse model that completely lacks an adaptive immune system. © 2012 Yu et al.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Polygenic in vivo validation of cancer mutations using transposons

The in vivo validation of cancer mutations and genes identified in cancer genomics is resource-intensive because of the low throughput of animal experiments. We describe a mouse model that allows multiple cancer mutations to be validated in each animal line. Animal lines are generated with multiple candidate cancer mutations using transposons. The candidate cancer genes are tagged and randomly expressed in somatic cells, allowing easy identification of the cancer genes involved in the generated tumours. This system presents a useful, generalised and efficient means for animal validation of cancer genes.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

BCL11A is a triple-negative breast cancer gene with critical functions in stem and progenitor cells.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has poor prognostic outcome compared with other types of breast cancer. The molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying TNBC pathology are not fully understood. Here, we report that the transcription factor BCL11A is overexpressed in TNBC including basal-like breast cancer (BLBC) and that its genomic locus is amplified in up to 38% of BLBC tumours. Exogenous BCL11A overexpression promotes tumour formation, whereas its knockdown in TNBC cell lines suppresses their tumourigenic potential in xenograft models. In the DMBA-induced tumour model, Bcl11a deletion substantially decreases tumour formation, even in p53-null cells and inactivation of Bcl11a in established tumours causes their regression. At the cellular level, Bcl11a deletion causes a reduction in the number of mammary epithelial stem and progenitor cells. Thus, BCL11A has an important role in TNBC and normal mammary epithelial cells. This study highlights the importance of further investigation of BCL11A in TNBC-targeted therapies

Bcl11a is essential for lymphoid development and negatively regulates p53

Transcription factors play important roles in lymphopoiesis. We have previously demonstrated that Bcl11a is essential for normal lymphocyte development in the mouse embryo. We report here that, in the adult mouse, Bcl11a is expressed in most hematopoietic cells and is highly enriched in B cells, early T cell progenitors, common lymphoid progenitors (CLPs), and hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). In the adult mouse, Bcl11a deletion causes apoptosis in early B cells and CLPs and completely abolishes the lymphoid development potential of HSCs to B, T, and NK cells. Myeloid development, in contrast, is not obviously affected by the loss of Bcl11a. Bcl11a regulates expression of Bcl2, Bcl2-xL, and Mdm2, which inhibits p53 activities. Overexpression of Bcl2 and Mdm2, or p53 deficiency, rescues both lethality and proliferative defects in Bcl11a-deficient early B cells and enables the mutant CLPs to differentiate to lymphocytes. Bcl11a is therefore essential for lymphopoiesis and negatively regulates p53 activities. Deletion of Bcl11a may represent a new approach for generating a mouse model that completely lacks an adaptive immune system

Investment in Learning Chinese by International Students Studying Chinese as a Second Language (CSL)

This study, drawing on the theoretical model of investment, explores what motivates and encourages international students studying Chinese as a second language (CSL) to invest in their Chinese learning using Q sorting and interview data collected from 15 international undergraduate students studying in mainland China. The results reveal that: (1) CSL students’ incentives for investment are intra-personally and inter-personally diverse and can be divided into three categories (multilingual posture and cultural capital-oriented, economic capital-oriented, and cultural capital and experience-oriented); (2) CSL students’ Chinese learning investment is dynamic, as they aim to enrich their learning and life experiences after studying Chinese for a period of time; (3) CSL students’ investment is apparently driven by multiple perceived benefits, in that utilitarian objectives (e.g., scholarships, employment opportunities, and educational qualifications) are characteristic of CSL students’ investment, but are also interwoven with some non-utilitarian objectives (e.g., enriching one’s experience and making friends). The findings have some implications for CSL education and future studies

Expanded potential stem cell media as a tool to study human developmental hematopoiesis in vitro.

Pluripotent stem cell (PSC) differentiation in vitro represents a powerful and tractable model to study mammalian development and an unlimited source of cells for regenerative medicine. Within hematology, in vitro PSC hematopoiesis affords novel insights into blood formation and represents an exciting potential approach to generate hematopoietic and immune cell types for transplantation and transfusion. Most studies to date have focused on in vitro hematopoiesis from mouse PSCs and human PSCs. However, differences in mouse and human PSC culture protocols have complicated the translation of discoveries between these systems. We recently developed a novel chemical media formulation, expanded potential stem cell medium (EPSCM), that maintains mouse PSCs in a unique cellular state and extraembryonic differentiation capacity. Herein, we describe how EPSCM can be directly used to stably maintain human PSCs. We further demonstrate that human PSCs maintained in EPSCM can spontaneously form embryoid bodies and undergo in vitro hematopoiesis using a simple differentiation protocol, similar to mouse PSC differentiation. EPSCM-maintained human PSCs generated at least two hematopoietic cell populations, which displayed distinct transcriptional profiles by RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis. EPSCM also supports gene targeting using homologous recombination, affording generation of an SPI1 (PU.1) reporter PSC line to study and track in vitro hematopoiesis. EPSCM therefore provides a useful tool not only to study pluripotency but also hematopoietic cell specification and developmental-lineage commitment.Wellcome Trust, Bloodwise, CRUK, MRC, National Institutes of Healt