A Web of Connections: How Early Twentieth-Century American Women Writers and Photographers Situated a New Way of Seeing

While there are several studies of the relationships and influences between American male photographers and writers, this study examines the lesser known and understudied collaborations and connections between early, twentieth-century American women photographers and writers, beginning around the end of the nineteenth century and extending into the 1930s. The web of connections between women writers and photographers, connections created through influence, through mentorship, through friendship, or through collaboration, provided a space in which they could situate a new way of seeing and defining each other as women and as artists, and it manifested in the empathetic manner in which they presented and interacted with their subjects in photographs and on the page. This new way of seeing also involved the generation of a visual ethics and the application of a gendered aesthetic that broadened the notion of what was worth seeing and representing outside of the predominantly white, male-dominated society’s determination of what were acceptable subjects and methods with regard to cultural production. For example, photographer Gertrude Käsebier’s friendship with Native American writer Zitkála-Šá created the space wherein they collaborated on photographic portraits of Zitkála-Šá that refuted the dominant white culture’s stereotypes of Native American women. Willa Cather and photographer Laura Gilpin were connected through a shared passion for the geography and the Native American cultures of the American Southwest and may have inspired each other with their depictions and descriptions of that region, which even prompted Gilpin to suggest a collaboration with Cather to illustrate one of her novels, though the proposed project never materialized. Katherine Anne Porter and photographer Tina Modotti were connected through their involvement in the cultural renaissance in post-revolutionary Mexico in the 1920s and through their depictions of indigenous Mexicans. Finally, photographer Dorothy Ulmann and Julia Peterkin were connected not only through their personal friendship, but also through their commitment to preserve marginalized cultures, specifically rural, Southern African Americans like the Gullah who lived and worked on Peterkin’s plantation in the Jim Crow South. They worked together to produce Roll, Jordan, Roll, the first collaboration between a woman photographer and a woman writer. These webs of connection are important because they contributed to the way the work of these artists differed from their male contemporaries. Their webs of connection provided them with opportunities to work together to push against the boundaries of accepted gender norms in the early twentieth century and to create their own identities and histories as artists while resisting the marginalization of their work. They also pushed against the limitations, as defined by the dominant culture, which determined what subjects were considered worth seeing. They accomplished this by featuring nontraditional subjects in photographs or by creating textual portraits of them in fiction and nonfiction using photographic language and photographic references. They did this so that others could see these subjects in new, non-stereotypical ways, subjects who were often members of marginalized cultural groups such as Native Americans, indigenous Mexicans, and rural, southern African Americans like the Gullah. This interdisciplinary study fills a gap in research with regard to the connections, collaborations and influences between early twentieth-century American women artists and writers and acknowledges their contributions to art and literature. The web of connections between these artists, photographers Gertrude Käsebier, Laura Gilpin Tina Modotti, and Dorothy Ulmann and writers Zitkála-Šá, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Julia Peterkin, allowed them to support and to help generate each others’ work. That web of connections now spans generations, extending into the present day as their work continues to inform and to inspire the work of contemporary women photographers and writers

Evaluating Genetic Analysis and Neuroimaging Tools in Pain Research

This thesis employed volumetric and perfusion-based magnetic resonance imaging techniques in combination with gene expression data and genotyping of a candidate gene from peripheral whole blood samples in acute and chronic pain phenotypes

Nucleotide Sequence Variation within the PI3K p85 Alpha Gene Associates with Alcohol Risk Drinking Behaviour in Adolescents

While the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)-dependent signaling pathway is typically known to regulate cell growth and survival, emerging evidence suggest a role for this pathway in regulating the behavioural responses to addictive drugs.To investigate whether PI3K contributes to patterns of risky alcohol drinking in human, we investigated genetic variations in PIK3R1, encoding the 85 kD regulatory subunit of PIK, in 145 family trios consisting of 15-16 year old adolescents and their parents. Screening for mutations in exons, exon-intron boundaries and regulatory sequences, we identified 14 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the PIK3R1 gene region from exon 1 to the beginning of the 3' untranslated region (UTR). These SNPs defined haplotypes for the respective PIK3R1 region. Four haplotype tagging (ht)SNPs (rs706713, rs2302975, rs171649 and rs1043526), discriminating all haplotypes with a frequency >or=4.5% were identified. These htSNPs were used to genotype adolescents from the "Mannheim Study of Risk Children" (MARC). Transmission disequilibrium tests in these adolescents and their parents demonstrated sex-specific association of two SNPs, rs2302975 and rs1043526, with patterns of risky alcohol consumption in male adolescents, including lifetime prevalence of drunkenness (p = 0.0019 and 0.0379, respectively) and elevated maximum amount of drinking (p = 0.0020 and 0.0494, respectively), as a measure for binge drinking pattern.Our findings highlight a previously unknown relevance of PIK3R1 genotypes for alcohol use disorders and might help discriminate individuals at risk for alcoholism

Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation in epilepsy patients enhances cooperative behavior in the prisoner's dilemma task

The vagus nerve constitutes a key link between the autonomic and the central nervous system. Previous studies provide evidence for the impact of vagal activity on distinct cognitive processes including functions related to social cognition. Recent studies in animals and humans show that vagus nerve stimulation is associated with enhanced reward-seeking and dopamine-release in the brain. Social interaction recruits similar brain circuits to reward processing. We hypothesize that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) boosts rewarding aspects of social behavior and compare the impact of transcutaneous VNS (tVNS) and sham stimulation on social interaction in 19 epilepsy patients in a double-blind pseudo-randomized study with cross-over design. Using a well-established paradigm, i.e., the prisoner's dilemma, we investigate effects of stimulation on cooperative behavior, as well as interactions of stimulation effects with patient characteristics. A repeated-measures ANOVA and a linear mixed-effects model provide converging evidence that tVNS boosts cooperation. Post-hoc correlations reveal that this effect varies as a function of neuroticism, a personality trait linked to the dopaminergic system. Behavioral modeling indicates that tVNS induces a behavioral starting bias towards cooperation, which is independent of the decision process. This study provides evidence for the causal influence of vagus nerve activity on social interaction

Risk and protective factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in trauma-exposed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic – findings from a pan-European study

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is a health emergency resulting in multiple stressors that may be related to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Objective: This study examined relationships between risk and protective factors, pandemic-related stressors, and PTSD during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Data from the European Society of Traumatic Stress Studies (ESTSS) ADJUST Study were used. N = 4,607 trauma-exposed participants aged 18 years and above were recruited from the general populations of eleven countries (Austria, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and Sweden) from June to November 2020. We assessed sociodemographic (e.g. gender), pandemic-related (e.g. news consumption), and health-related (e.g. general health condition) risk and protective factors, pandemic-related stressors (e.g. fear of infection), and probable PTSD (PC-PTSD-5). The relationships between these variables were examined using logistic regression on multiple imputed data sets. Results: The prevalence of probable PTSD was 17.7%. Factors associated with an increased risk for PTSD were younger age, female gender, more than 3 h of daily pandemic-related news consumption (vs. no consumption), a satisfactory, poor, or very poor health condition (vs. a very good condition), a current or previous diagnosis of a mental disorder, and trauma exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Factors associated with a reduced risk for PTSD included a medium and high income (vs. very low income), face-to-face contact less than once a week or 3–7 times a week (vs. no contact), and digital social contact less than once a week or 1–7 days a week (vs. no contact). Pandemic-related stressors associated with an increased risk for PTSD included governmental crisis management and communication, restricted resources, restricted social contact, and difficult housing conditions. Conclusion: We identified risk and protective factors as well as stressors that may help identify trauma-exposed individuals at risk for PTSD, enabling more efficient and rapid access to care

Effect of various weight loss interventions on serum NT-proBNP concentration in severe obese subjects without clinical manifest heart failure

Obesity is associated with a "natriuretic handicap" indicated by reduced N-terminal fragment of proBNP (NT-proBNP) concentration. While gastric bypass surgery improves the natriuretic handicap, it is presently unclear if sleeve gastrectomy exhibits similar effects. We examined NT-proBNP serum concentration in n = 72 obese participants without heart failure before and 6 months after sleeve gastrectomy (n = 28), gastric bypass surgery (n = 19), and 3-month 800 kcal/day very-low calorie diet (n = 25). A significant weight loss was observed in all intervention groups. Within 6 months, NT-proBNP concentration tended to increase by a median of 44.3 pg/mL in the sleeve gastrectomy group (p = 0.07), while it remained unchanged in the other groups (all p ≥ 0.50). To gain insights into potential effectors, we additionally analyzed NT-proBNP serum concentration in n = 387 individuals with different metabolic phenotypes. Here, higher NT-proBNP levels were associated with lower nutritional fat and protein but not with carbohydrate intake. Of interest, NT-proBNP serum concentrations were inversely correlated with fasting glucose concentration in euglycemic individuals but not in individuals with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. In conclusion, sleeve gastrectomy tended to increase NT-proBNP levels in obese individuals and might improve the obesity-associated "natriuretic handicap". Thereby, nutritional fat and protein intake and the individual glucose homeostasis might be metabolic determinants of NT-proBNP serum concentration

Kelp forest distribution in the Nordic region

Kelp forests are productive coastal ecosystems that provide a range of ecosystem services. Mapping the distribution and area occupied by kelp forests is a critical step to identify their ecosystem functions and services, including their role in the carbon cycle, and to detect changes in their distribution. We compiled quantitative data of the dominant genera Laminaria and Saccharina across the Nordic region, allowing us to separate kelp forests (areas with dense or moderately dense kelp coverage) from occurrences of single or few individuals. By fitting boosted regression trees to the compiled data, we modelled and predicted the distribution of kelp forests across the Nordic region. Despite the large scale of the analyses, the models captured well the kelps’ environmental affinities and predicted the presence of kelp forests with high accuracy. Dense kelp forests are found along the rocky shores of all the Nordic countries, except in the brackish Baltic Sea, with largest areas in Norway, Greenland and Iceland. The results of this study set the scene for future studies on the importance of kelp forests in the Nordic region, including their contribution to the marine carbon budget.Kelp forest distribution in the Nordic regionpublishedVersio

GeneChip analyses point to novel pathogenetic mechanisms in mantle cell lymphoma

The translocation t(11;14)(q13;q32) is the genetic hallmark of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) but is not sufficient for inducing lymphomagenesis. Here we performed genome-wide 100K GeneChip Mapping in 26 t(11;14)-positive MCL and six MCL cell lines. Partial uniparental disomy (pUPD) was shown to be a recurrent chromosomal event not only in MCL cell lines but also in primary MCL. Remarkably, pUPD affected recurrent targets of deletion like 11q, 13q and 17p. Moreover, we identified 12 novel regions of recurrent gain and loss as well as 12 high-level amplifications and eight homozygously deleted regions hitherto undescribed in MCL. Interestingly, GeneChip analyses identified different genes, encoding proteins involved in microtubule dynamics, such as MAP2, MAP6 and TP53, as targets for chromosomal aberration in MCL. Further investigation, including mutation analyses, fluorescence in situ hybridisation as well as epigenetic and expression studies, revealed additional aberrations frequently affecting these genes. In total, 19 of 20 MCL cases, which were subjected to genetic and epigenetic analyses, and five of six MCL cell lines harboured at least one aberration in MAP2, MAP6 or TP53. These findings provide evidence that alterations of microtubule dynamics might be one of the critical events in MCL lymphomagenesis contributing to chromosomal instability