Disability

People with disabilities (PWD) are the fastest growing minority social group in the world. Moreover, this group is one in which many, if not all individuals, will eventually join due to accidents, injuries, illnesses, wear and tear on aging bodies, and genetic factors. Disabilities can be physical, cognitive, social, and/or emotional. The disability community overlaps with people of all races, ethnicities, age groups, genders, sexual orientations/ expressions, and socioeconomic statuses, although PWD are overrepresented among people who are economically disadvantaged and under-served in health care, environmental safety, nutrition, and other basic needs. While the proportion of people with disabilities increases with age, the majority of people with disabilities remains under the age of 65

Voice and resistance: coalminers' struggles to represent their health and safety interests in Australia and New Zealand 1871–1925

The activism of coalmining unions in Australia, the UK, the USA and elsewhere securing improvements in safety including better legislation in the 19th and 20th centuries, has been widely researched and acknowledged. However, a relatively neglected aspect of this history was a campaign to secure worker inspectors (check-inspectors). These began in coalmining a century before similar measures were introduced for workers more generally as part of overhauling occupational health and safety laws in the 1970s/1980s. We document this struggle for mine safety in Australia and New Zealand, and the activities of check-inspectors in the period to 1925. Notwithstanding strong opposition from coal-owners and conservative governments, check-inspectors played an important role in safeguarding coalminers and improving the regulatory oversight of coalmines. Check-inspectors not only gave coalminers a ‘voice’ in OHS, but they also provided an exemplar of the value and legitimacy of worker’s ‘knowledge activism’. This system remains. Furthermore, the struggle is relevant to understanding contemporary debates about collective worker involvement in occupational health and safety

Teaching Values: Ethical and Emotional Attunement through an Educational Humanities Approach

This short paper explores challenges of teaching values in an educational/faculty development setting. Drawing on the medical humanities, the paper proposes an educational humanities approach. This approach is illustrated through a poem, along with discussion prompts that educational developers can use to explore values in teaching

Contained Messes

Contained Messes is an installation consisting of a range of sculptures or bundles that communicate my urgency for self-preservation. I put up massive boundaries when other people try to tell me about myself. When I think of setting boundaries, I think of building walls and I’ve built a lot of walls at Bard. The threat level determines the height and durability of the walls I build. When I started this project, I took a step back to look around and realized that I built myself a big house, an oyster shell if you will, suitable only for myself. Here, I have free reign to be my authentic self, I can be as messy, loud, sad, and profane as I want to without worrying about other people\u27s space or happiness. Everything within the walls belongs to me, I decide who is allowed to enter, and nothing festers or rots without me knowing about it. I don’t have this control when I am outside of my oyster shell. There have been times at Bard when I slipped and sliced open my belly, spilling out my guts in front of everyone I had come to know. Each time something bad happens outside, I return to my oyster shell to recollect myself and I garnish my wall with the remains. I have used elements from personal collections, obsessions, and vices to spew my own entrails that contain secrets, past lives, and residue of the one I am living now, elevating the lows and celebrating them; eating them, and puking them back out. The sculptures in Contained Messes largely consist of materials I have sourced from inside my oyster shell. Living with my three closest friends provided me with a unique accumulation of materials that convey the raw femininity we have cultivated. Candy and junk food wrappers, antidepressants, stimulants, and dead vapes can all be found in Contained Messes. I preferred the stories told by the plastic bags, balloons, lost trinkets, and beer caps that littered our floor the day after parties over the stories of my roommates recounting their night; they didn’t remind me how alienated I had become. The hairy lint roller sheets from our living room rug, our broken nails, and the pile of dirt speak to mortality, accumulation, and the passage of time. I use highly saturated colors to draw my audience in and the waste from my home to drive them away as if to say, “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH OR FEED THE ANIMALS”. I believe the things we shed and discard can tell more about a person than the things we cherish and keep. I contained my sculptures in metal grids, nets, and nylons so that the contents would warp and protrude outward as if there was no room to breathe. These types of containers also appeal to my desire to be inaccessible but not invisible, like animals at the zoo. Exterminating or uprooting animals that live among us is analogous to how I was discarded merely for getting in someone else’s way. We assume that we are entitled to take up as much space as we want without considering how it affects life around us. Contained Messes condemns the notion that “the world is your oyster”, for it consists of 7 billion other people who also think the exact same thing. Instead, make the oyster your world, and it will grow with you

Spire stimulates nucleation by Cappuccino and binds both ends of actin filaments.

The actin nucleators Spire and Cappuccino synergize to promote actin assembly, but the mechanism of their synergy is controversial. Together these proteins promote the formation of actin meshes, which are conserved structures that regulate the establishment of oocyte polarity. Direct interaction between Spire and Cappuccino is required for oogenesis and for in vitro synergistic actin assembly. This synergy is proposed to be driven by elongation and the formation of a ternary complex at filament barbed ends, or by nucleation and interaction at filament pointed ends. To mimic the geometry of Spire and Cappuccino in vivo, we immobilized Spire on beads and added Cappuccino and actin. Barbed ends, protected by Cappuccino, grow away from the beads while pointed ends are retained, as expected for nucleation-driven synergy. We found that Spire is sufficient to bind barbed ends and retain pointed ends of actin filaments near beads and we identified Spire's barbed-end binding domain. Loss of barbed-end binding increases nucleation by Spire and synergy with Cappuccino in bulk pyrene assays and on beads. Importantly, genetic rescue by the loss-of-function mutant indicates that barbed-end binding is not necessary for oogenesis. Thus, increased nucleation is a critical element of synergy both in vitro and in vivo

Mechanical Activation of Valvular Interstitial Cell Phenotype: A Dissertation

During heart valve remodeling, and in many disease states, valvular interstitial cells (VICs) shift to an activated myofibroblast phenotype which is characterized by enhanced synthetic and contractile activity. Pronounced alpha smooth muscle actin (αSMA)-containing stress fibers, the hallmark of activated myofibroblasts, are also observed when VICs are placed under tension due to altered mechanical loading in vivo or during in vitro culture on stiff substrates or under high mechanical loads and in the presence of transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-β1). The work presented herein describes three distinct model systems for application of controlled mechanical environment to VICs cultured in vitro. The first system uses polyacrylamide (PA) gels of defined stiffness to evaluate the response of VICs over a large range of stiffness levels and TGF-β1 concentration. The second system controls the boundary stiffness of cell-populated gels using springs of defined stiffness. The third system cyclically stretches soft or stiff two-dimensional (2D) gels while cells are cultured on the gel surface as it is deformed. Through the use of these model systems, we have found that the level of 2D stiffness required to maintain the quiescent VIC phenotype is potentially too low for a material to both act as matrix to support cell growth in the non-activated state and also to withstand the mechanical loading that occurs during the cardiac cycle. Further, we found that increasing the boundary stiffness on a three-dimensional (3D) cell populated collagen gel resulted in increased cellular contractile forces, αSMA expression, and collagen gel (material) stiffness. Finally, VIC morphology is significantly altered in response to stiffness and stretch. On soft 2D substrates, VICs cultured statically exhibit a small rounded morphology, significantly smaller than on stiff substrates. Following equibiaxial cyclic stretch, VICs spread to the extent of cells cultured on stiff substrates, but did not reorient in response to uniaxial stretch to the extent of cells stretched on stiff substrates. These studies provide critical information for characterizing how VICs respond to mechanical stimuli. Characterization of these responses is important for the development of tissue engineered heart valves and contributes to the understanding of the role of mechanical cues on valve pathology and disease onset and progression. While this work is focused on valvular interstitial cells, the culture conditions and methods for applying mechanical stimulation could be applied to numerous other adherent cell types providing information on the response to mechanical stimuli relevant for optimizing cell culture, engineered tissues or fundamental research of disease states