Toward Power-Shifting Solidarity with Black-Led Change: The State of Philanthropic Investments & Transformative Invitations to Advance Racial Justice in Minnesota & Beyond

Leaders of the Black Collective Foundation MN, the state's first Black community foundation, are working to ensure that Black-led organizations and communities are adequately recognized and resourced. In the spring of 2022, the  Collective and the Center for Evaluation Innovation formed a partnership to consider how to build power-shifting solidarity with Black people and communities across Minnesota.Doing this required better understanding what foundation staff believe is possible, what will motivate courageous action, and how to support those who have made commitments to stay the course.This report, and the research that informs it, considers the question: What will it take for institutional philanthropy in MN and beyond to move at the speed of courage and invest wholly in Black lives

Biology of human hair: Know your hair to control it

Hair can be engineered at different levels—its structure and surface—through modification of its constituent molecules, in particular proteins, but also the hair follicle (HF) can be genetically altered, in particular with the advent of siRNA-based applications. General aspects of hair biology are reviewed, as well as the most recent contributions to understanding hair pigmentation and the regulation of hair development. Focus will also be placed on the techniques developed specifically for delivering compounds of varying chemical nature to the HF, indicating methods for genetic/biochemical modulation of HF components for the treatment of hair diseases. Finally, hair fiber structure and chemical characteristics will be discussed as targets for keratin surface functionalization

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Pushing Methodological Boundaries~Liberating Academic Writing

In this symposium, multiethnic researchers from Georgia Southern University’s Ed. D. in Curriculum Studies program explore creative ways to push methodological and representational boundaries to liberate dissertation writing by diving into life and writing into contradiction in schools, families, and communities in the U. S. South. Through visual/graphic/multimedia presentations, reader’s theater, fictional narrative, freedom songs, poems, spoken word, drama, and play, the presenters will illustrate diverse forms of dissertation research and representations such as cultural studies/multipersectival cultural studies, critical geography/critical dis/ability studies, critical race narrative inquiry, personal~passionate~participatory inquiry, auto/biographical inquiry/currere, critical narrative inquiry, cross-cultural narrative inquiry, narrative multicultural inquiry, critical race photographic narrative inquiry, critical multiracial/mixed racial fictional auto/biographical inquiry, ethnographical inquiry, visual methodologies, visual/digital/sensory ethnography, visual/performative/graphic/picture/fictional narrative, photovoice, soundwalk, mobile podcasting, geotagging, poetic inquiry, womanist currere, critical portraiture, oral history, aesthetic/art-based inquiry, counternarrative, subaltern, indigenous, documentary, critical geography, speculative essay, speculative fiction, speculative memoir, speculative play, speculative poetry, and painting. Innovative writings engendered from the inquiries will be also demonstrated. Potentials, challenges, and future directions of various inquiries and representations are also discussed. Individual Presentations Within the Session: Presentation #1: Push Methodological Boundaries~Performing Dissertation Research~Liberating Academic Writing Ming Fang He & Peggy Shannon-Baker, Georgia Southern University Presentation #2: Teaching with Passion and Compassion in An Era of Fear, Injustice, and Political Uncertainty: A Narrative Inquiry into Elementary Teachers’ Experience in Georgia Erin Scroggs, Georgia Southern University Presentation #3: Black Skin, Darkened Curriculum: The Black Children’s Experience of Mainstream Schooling in Racialized Systems in the U. S. South Chanda Hadiman, Georgia Southern University Presentation #4: A Memoir: Being Mixed, Black And Filipino, and Multiracial in the U. S. South Georgia Middle School Nicole Moss, Georgia Southern University Presentation #5: “Their HighestPotential:” Oral Histories of Willow Hill Elementary--A Historically Black School in Georgia Laquanda Love, Georgia Southern University Presentation #6: Black Mothers, Black Sons: A Memoir Alethea Coleman, Georgia Southern University Presentation #7: Hyphenated Identity and Negotiated Intersectionality: A Memoir of A First-Generation Nigerian-American Male Teacher in An Inner City Title I Elementary School in Georgia Gerald Nwachukwu, Georgia Southern University Presentation #8: Educating Black Males in Black-Lives-Matter Movement Space Kimberly Hollis, Georgia Southern University Presentation #9: Counterstories: Black Male Teachers in Rural Georgia Brittany Jones-Turman, Georgia Southern University Presentation #10: Dissertation-Works-in-Progress Amanda Gonzales, Janet Cooks, Carmen Baker, Andrea Cramsey, Khristian Cooper, Lucia Benzor, Marianna Louise Anderson, and Cynthia Smith, Georgia Southern Universit

Functional properties and toxin pharmacology of a dorsal root ganglion sodium channel viewed through its voltage sensors.

International audienceThe voltage-activated sodium (Nav) channel Nav1.9 is expressed in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons where it is believed to play an important role in nociception. Progress in revealing the functional properties and pharmacological sensitivities of this non-canonical Nav channel has been slow because attempts to express this channel in a heterologous expression system have been unsuccessful. Here, we use a protein engineering approach to dissect the contributions of the four Nav1.9 voltage sensors to channel function and pharmacology. We define individual S3b-S4 paddle motifs within each voltage sensor, and show that they can sense changes in membrane voltage and drive voltage sensor activation when transplanted into voltage-activated potassium channels. We also find that the paddle motifs in Nav1.9 are targeted by animal toxins, and that these toxins alter Nav1.9-mediated currents in DRG neurons. Our results demonstrate that slowly activating and inactivating Nav1.9 channels have functional and pharmacological properties in common with canonical Nav channels, but also show distinctive pharmacological sensitivities that can potentially be exploited for developing novel treatments for pain