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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (20 results)

  • Article
American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 33, Issue 2 (2009)
    Cover page: The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations. By Kevin Bruyneel.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
    • Article
    American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 33, Issue 4 (2009)
      Cover page: American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty. By George E. “Tink” Tinker.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 35, Issue 4 (2011)
      Indigenous artists have been striving to expand the discursive categorization of their work beyond the inherent limitations of “Indian Art” for decades. Ever since the Red Power movement reawakened indigenous peoples culturally and politically, inspiring them to be heard in their own voices—as opposed to the stereotypes perpetrated by pop culture—artists from all tribes and walks of life have created an impressive body work, capturing the too often overlooked lives and realities of the contemporary indigenous world. Jim Denomie (b. 1955), Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe, adds his unique Nanabozho-inspired images, charged with an irrepressible sense of humor and bold insights, to the visual discourse on indigenous culture and history, which he developed growing up in the Philips Neighborhood of Minneapolis, leading the life of a modern, not to mention educated (he has a BFA from the University of Minnesota), urban Indian.
        Cover page: Rabbits and Flying Warriors: The Postindian Imagery of Jim DenomieCreative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
        • Article
        American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 28, Issue 3 (2004)
          Cover page: Enduring Legacies: Native American Treaties and Contemporary Controversies. Edited by Bruce E. Johansen.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
          • Article
          American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 30, Issue 1 (2006)
            Cover page: Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom. By Taiaiake Alfred.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 32, Issue 4 (2008)
            When From the Deep Woods to Civilization appeared in 1916, the Dakota writer and activist Charles Alexander Eastman (also known by his Dakota name, Ohiyesa) told of a rather unusual journey across northern Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. The purpose of the venture, which took place during the summer of 1910, was to “purchase rare curios and ethnological specimens for one of the most important collections in the country.” In typical Eastman fashion, he is elusive with respect to naming the collection, let alone his benefactor. What was really going on here? It may at first appear to be inconsequential to ask for whom Eastman worked or the whereabouts of the items procured; however, viewed from an Ojibwe perspective, the answers become immediately more important. What Eastman “purchased,” as he put it, were pieces of Ojibwe culture and history, which, even in an age of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, may be forever lost to them. Only by recounting this story and filling in the details that Eastman omitted will there be an adequate accounting of what was subsumed into the American museum system, not to mention what stands to be regained if the items are ever returned. Just as important, we must consider what the story of the 1910 expedition does to Eastman’s legacy as a prominent American Indian intellectual. By 1910, Eastman had already become a renowned author, having published three books: Indian Boyhood (1902), Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904), and Wigwam Evenings (1909). Contemporary critics, however, have long criticized Eastman in particular for promoting assimilation as an option for Indian people fed up with the reservation system and for being enamored with the 1887 Dawes Act (albeit, as it was written, not as it was implemented). At the same time, he was a strong advocate for preserving the ethical and spiritual values of American Indians, as exemplified by The Soul of the Indian (1911), in which he gave a systematic and eloquent demonstration of “the Indian’s” way of thinking on a variety of philosophical topics, from the ultimate nature of reality to the practical ethics formed through kinship relations, as well as a vision of community founded on an indigenous concept of making peace.
              Cover page: Out of the Woods and into the Museum: Charles A. Eastman's 1910 Collecting Expedition across Ojibwe CountryCreative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
              • Thesis
              • Peer Reviewed
              UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2019)

              Epidemiological studies have shown that inhalation of particulate matter (PM) is associated with increased cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, asthma and cancer. However, the underlying biological mechanisms and PM components responsible for adverse health outcomes are poorly understood. Induction of oxidative stress mediated by an overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is one hypothesis for PM induced health effects. The PM components responsible for ROS generation and under conditions relevant to the lung are not well known. Inhalation of PM containing of water-soluble like substances (HULIS) are thought to disrupt cellular iron homeostasis, contributing to the development of pulmonary inflammation and disease. Cigarette smoke and wood smoke contain significant amounts of HULIS, but there is scant literature characterizing HULIS in these particles. Malondialdehyde (MDA) is a toxic aldehyde traditionally measured in biological systems as a marker for oxidative stress. Interestingly, a handful of literature suggests that MDA may be present in ambient PM, potentially adding to the toxicity of inhaled PM. However, no study has quantified MDA in ambient PM.

              In this work we apply the terephthalate probe, thermodynamic modeling and chemical kinetics modeling to elucidate mechanisms of OH generation from HULIS-Fe interactions in simulated lung fluids (SLF) and human bronchoalveolar lavage fluids (BALF). We employ fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy to characterize HULIS isolated from the water-soluble fraction of cigarette smoke condensate and wood smoke particles. We apply the 2-thiobarbituric acid method on biomass burning and urban PM2.5 to quantify ambient particle phase MDA for the first time.

              We use Suwannee River Fulvic Acid (SRFA) as a surrogate for HULIS and investigate its impact on OH generation from Fe(II) in SLF and BALF. Model and experimental results are used to find best-fit rate coefficients for key reactions. In SLF, modeling results indicate SRFA strongly chelates Fe species and enhances Fe-mediated reduction of O2 to O2- to 5.1 � 1.5 M-1 s-1 and destruction of H2O2 to (4.3 � 1.4) � 103 M-1 s-1. In BALF, the dominant Fe binding protein is albumin but the impact of albumin-Fe complexes on ROS generation has never been defined. Using a rate limiting approximation and experiments measuring OH generation, we estimate that the rate constant for albumin-Fe mediated O2 to O2- reduction is (1.8 � 0.1) M-1 s-1. We also estimate the rate constant for SRFA-Fe(II) mediated O2 to O2- reduction to be 2.7 � 0.3 M-1 s-1.

              Fluorescence and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is used on HULIS isolated from cigarette smoke condensate and wood smoke particles. Fluorescence spectra indicate that HULIS in both cigarette smoke condensate and wood smoke contains fluorophores that closely resemble those of SRFA. FTIR spectroscopy further indicates that isolated HULIS contain similar organic functional groups as SRFA, but with higher aliphatic, ether, primary alcohol, organonitrogen character. Using the 2-thiobarbiutric acid assay, we estimate ambient malondialdehyde concentrations to be 40.7 ng/m3 – 75.3 ng/m3 in biomass burning and urban PM2.5 extracts, making up an average of (1.37 � 0.12) �10-2 % of total PM2.5 mass. These concentrations are comparable to previous field measurements of particle phase methylglyoxal and malonic acid, two similar atmospheric carbonyls.

                Cover page: Investigating the Source of Particulate Matter Toxicity: Kinetics of Reactive Oxygen Species from Biomass Burning Components in Lung Lining Fluids and Characterization of Toxic Components
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 42 (2020)
                Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) has been used to address the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression (Rush et al., 2000) and is proposed to also alleviate anxiety effects (George et al., 2008). Transcutaneous VNS (tVNS) offers a less invasive treatment mechanism for clinical populations; however, little is known about tVNS effects on mood and anxiety in a non- clinical adult population. Using auricular tVNS, the present study showed that 10 minutes of tVNS immediately preceding second-language learning across three consecutive days reduced state negative affect, somatic anxiety, and cognitive anxiety, dependent on task performance and/or trait mood/anxiety.
                  Cover page: Auricular Transcutaneous Vagus Nerve Stimulation (tVNS) Affects Mood and Anxiety during Second Language LearningCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC San Francisco Previously Published Works (2023)
                  The signed value and unsigned salience of reward prediction errors (RPEs) are critical to understanding reinforcement learning (RL) and cognitive control. Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) and insula (INS) are key regions for integrating reward and surprise information, but conflicting evidence for both signed and unsigned activity has led to multiple proposals for the nature of RPE representations in these brain areas. Recently developed RL models allow neurons to respond differently to positive and negative RPEs. Here, we use intracranially recorded high frequency activity (HFA) to test whether this flexible asymmetric coding strategy captures RPE coding diversity in human INS and dMPFC. At the region level, we found a bias towards positive RPEs in both areas which paralleled behavioral adaptation. At the local level, we found spatially interleaved neural populations responding to unsigned RPE salience and valence-specific positive and negative RPEs. Furthermore, directional connectivity estimates revealed a leading role of INS in communicating positive and unsigned RPEs to dMPFC. These findings support asymmetric coding across distinct but intermingled neural populations as a core principle of RPE processing and inform theories of the role of dMPFC and INS in RL and cognitive control.
                    Cover page: Asymmetric coding of reward prediction errors in human insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Volume 41 (2019)
                    The acquisition of the grammar of a second language requires a variety of cognitive mechanisms, including inductive reasoning. In the current study, we examine the cognitive underpinnings of grammar learning with an explicit-inductive (rule search) learning task, designed to capture more of the complexity associated with grammar learning than purely deductive tasks. Research in language aptitude has shown that working memory capacity (WMC) is a key predictor of grammar learning outcomes. Inductive reasoning and grammatical sensitivity are other established aptitude factors. The goal of the present study was to determine the degree to which relevant variables predict learning on an explicit- inductive grammar learning task. Our results indicate that both WMC and inductive reasoning ability predict learning over three days of grammar training.
                      Cover page: The Cognitive Underpinnings of Inductive Grammar Learning
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