Somsen Hall Mural Context: The Founding of Winona and the Somsen Hall WPA Mural

Winona State University is situated on Mni Sota Makoce, the ancestral lands of the Dakota Oyate. We acknowledge and honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all Indigenous peoples, and we strive to give that acknowledgement meaning by working with Indigenous people and nations whenever possible. In 2017, two analyses of the Somsen Hall mural were commissioned. The two documents were written by Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair, Associate Professor, Saint Cloud State University and Jill Ahlberg-Yohe, Associate Curator of Native American Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, respectively. The Somsen Hall mural, painted in 1938 by John Martin Socha, was covered with cloth coverings in 2020. The mural is currently not viewable by the public in Somsen Hall. The mural imagery is historically inaccurate and deeply hurtful to Indigenous peoples. Conversations led by Dr. Cindy Killion, Faculty Emerita, visiting scholars with relevant expertise, student groups, faculty and staff committees, and the Oceti Ŝakowiŋ led to the decision to cover the mural. The mural will be preserved, yet hidden from public view. Images are available for continued discussion and learning opportunities surrounding equity and bias. The WSU community and partnering communities will determine further steps to address the mural’s content.https://openriver.winona.edu/universityartcollectiondocuments/1000/thumbnail.jp

Remembering Wenonah: Colonialism and the Power of Representation

This panel will explore how the lover’s leap narrative and its representation of Native American figures has been used to forge distinctive visions of public memory both in and beyond Winona, Minnesota. For most, details of the lover’s leap are reduced to Wenonah’s fatal action, specifically how she protested her family’s rigid customs of arranged marriage by jumping to her death from a bluff atop the Mississippi River. The goal of this panel is to offer a fuller account of the purposes this story has served in popular memory and the implications of its persistence for different audiences, past and present. By sharing insights on the emergence of the lover’s leap narrative, its varied forms of expression, and its reverberations in different communities, panelists hope to invite a healthy discussion of how to represent and remember the history and ongoing influence of colonialism, and how the power of art can be best used in formation of public identity. Panelists include: Monica De Grazia, Adam Gaffey, Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair, and Jill Yohe. Monica De Grazia is an Independent Scholar of the regional Wenonah stories and the statue in Windom Park. DeGrazia will explore how expressions of the stories relate to different public attitudes. Adam Gaffey is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Winona State University. Gaffey will explore how the lover’s leap has been maintained in public memory through visual and material form, including print illustrations and public statues. Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair is an Associate Professor at St. Cloud State University where she teaches Native Studies and is the director for the Institute for Native Education Studies. St. Clair will reflect on the larger messages of the lover’s leap narrative and how it impacts Native people. Jill Yohe is the Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Minneapolis Art Institute. Dr. Yohe will explore how Native Americans have been portrayed in public art, and alternative directions available for communities seeking to portray their past

Large-scale genome sampling reveals unique immunity and metabolic adaptations in bats

SCV was supported by a Max Planck Research Group awarded by the Max Planck Gesellschaft, a Human Frontiers Science Program Grant (RGP0058/2016) and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/T021985/1).Comprising more than 1,400 species, bats possess adaptations unique among mammals including powered flight, unexpected longevity, and extraordinary immunity. Some of the molecular mechanisms underlying these unique adaptations includes DNA repair, metabolism and immunity. However, analyses have been limited to a few divergent lineages, reducing the scope of inferences on gene family evolution across the Order Chiroptera. We conducted an exhaustive comparative genomic study of 37 bat species, one generated in this study, encompassing a large number of lineages, with a particular emphasis on multi-gene family evolution across immune and metabolic genes. In agreement with previous analyses, we found lineage-specific expansions of the APOBEC3 and MHC-I gene families, and loss of the proinflammatory PYHIN gene family. We inferred more than 1,000 gene losses unique to bats, including genes involved in the regulation of inflammasome pathways such as epithelial defence receptors, the natural killer gene complex and the interferon-gamma induced pathway. Gene set enrichment analyses revealed genes lost in bats are involved in defence response against pathogen-associated molecular patterns and damage-associated molecular patterns. Gene family evolution and selection analyses indicate bats have evolved fundamental functional differences compared to other mammals in both innate and adaptive immune system, with the potential to enhance antiviral immune response while dampening inflammatory signalling. In addition, metabolic genes have experienced repeated expansions related to convergent shifts to plant-based diets. Our analyses support the hypothesis that, in tandem with flight, ancestral bats had evolved a unique set of immune adaptations whose functional implications remain to be explored.PostprintPeer reviewe

Point of Departure

1.1. The Setting This chapter describes the information basis for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of IPCC Working Group II (WGII) and the rationale for its structure. As the starting point of WGII AR5, the chapter begins with an analysis of how the literature for the assessment has developed through time and proceeds with an overview of how the framing and content of the WGII reports have changed since the first IPCC report was published in 1990. The future climate scenarios used in AR5 are a marked change from those used in the Third (TAR, 2001) and Fourth (AR4, 2007) Assessment Reports; this shift is described here, along with the new AR5 guidance for communicating scientific uncertainty. The chapter provides a summary of the most relevant key findings from the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (IPCC, 2011), the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (IPCC, 2012), and the AR5 Working Group I (The Physical Science Basis) and AR5 Working Group III (Mitigation of Climate Change). Collectively these recent reports, new scenarios, and other advancements in climate change science set the stage for an assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability that could potentially overcome many of the limitations identified in the IPCC WGII AR4, particularly with respect to the human dimensions of climate change. The critical review and synthesis of the scientific literature published since October 2006 (effective cutoff date for AR4) has required an expanded multidisciplinary approach that, in general, has focused more heavily on societal impacts and responses. This includes an assessment of impacts associated with coupled socio-ecological systems and the rapid emergence of research on adaptation and vulnerability. WGII AR5 differs from the prior assessments primarily in the expanded outline and diversity of content that stems directly from the growth of the scientific basis for the assessment

Toll-like receptor 4 signaling in liver injury and hepatic fibrogenesis

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a family of transmembrane pattern recognition receptors (PRR) that play a key role in innate and adaptive immunity by recognizing structural components unique to bacteria, fungi and viruses. TLR4 is the most studied of the TLRs, and its primary exogenous ligand is lipopolysaccharide, a component of Gram-negative bacterial walls. In the absence of exogenous microbes, endogenous ligands including damage-associated molecular pattern molecules from damaged matrix and injured cells can also activate TLR4 signaling. In humans, single nucleotide polymorphisms of the TLR4 gene have an effect on its signal transduction and on associated risks of specific diseases, including cirrhosis. In liver, TLR4 is expressed by all parenchymal and non-parenchymal cell types, and contributes to tissue damage caused by a variety of etiologies. Intact TLR4 signaling was identified in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs), the major fibrogenic cell type in injured liver, and mediates key responses including an inflammatory phenotype, fibrogenesis and anti-apoptotic properties. Further clarification of the function and endogenous ligands of TLR4 signaling in HSCs and other liver cells could uncover novel mechanisms of fibrogenesis and facilitate the development of therapeutic strategies

Descriptive Analyses of Two Late Prehistoric Burials From Southwestern Idaho

Data relating to prehistoric human skeletal material from the northern cultural Great Basin are scant, especially for the period dating within the last 2,000 years. Recent discoveries of two separate prehistoric inhumations in southwestern Idaho resulted in professional data recovery efforts by the Idaho State Historical Society. The radiometric assessments of the remains place the date of the interments at approximately 900 and 1,300 years ago. Descriptions of each burial and associated artifacts serve as a baseline for future studies in human paleobiology in this region

How Is Physician Work Valued?

Strategies to value physician work continue to evolve. The Society of Thoracic Surgeons and The Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Database have an increasingly important role in this evolution. An understanding of the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) system (American Medical Association [AMA], Chicago, IL) and the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) is necessary to comprehend how physician work is valued. In 1965, with the dawn of increasingly complex medical care, immense innovation, and the rollout of Medicare, the need for a common language describing medical services and procedures was recognized as being of critical importance. In 1966, the AMA, in cooperation with multiple major medical specialty societies, developed the CPT system, which is a coding system for the description of medical procedures and medical services. The RUC was created by the AMA in response to the passage of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, legislation of the United States of America Federal government that mandated that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services adopt a relative value methodology for Medicare physician payment. The role of the RUC is to develop relative value recommendations for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. These recommendations include relative value recommendations for new procedures or services and also updates to relative value recommendations for previously valued procedures or services. These recommendations pertain to all physician work delivered to Medicare beneficiaries and propose relative values for all physician services, including updates to those based on the original resource-based relative value scale developed by Hsaio and colleagues. In so doing, widely differing work and services provided can be reviewed and comparisons of their relative value (to each other) can be established. The resource-based relative value scale assigns value to physician services using relative value units (RVUs), which consist of three components: work RVU, practice expense RVU, and malpractice RVU, also known as professional liability insurance RVU. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services retains the final decision-making authority on the RVUs associated with each procedure or service. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role that the CPT codes and the RUC play in the valuation of physician work and to provide an example of how the methodology for valuation of physician work continues to evolve