Polysaccharides have been shown to have immunomodulatory properties. Modulation of the immune system plays a crucial role in physiological processes as well as in the treatment and/or prevention of autoimmune and infectious diseases. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are derived from cellulose, the most abundant polysaccharide on the earth. CNCs are an emerging class of crystalline nanomaterials with exceptional physico-chemical properties for high-end applications and commercialization prospects. The aim of this study was to design, synthesize, and evaluate the cytotoxicity of a series of biocompatible, wood-based, cationic CNCs as potential immunomodulators. The anionic CNCs were rendered cationic by grafting with cationic polymers having pendant +NMe3 and +NH3 moieties. The success of the synthesis of the cationic CNCs was evidenced by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering, zeta potential, and elemental analysis. No modification in the nanocrystals rod-like shape was observed in transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy analyses. Cytotoxicity studies using three different cell-based assays (MTT, Neutral Red, and LIVE/DEAD®) and three relevant mouse and human immune cells indicated very low cytotoxicity of the cationic CNCs in all tested experimental conditions. Overall, our results showed that cationic CNCs are suitable to be further investigated as immunomodulators and potential vaccine nanoadjuvants.

Calls for internet platforms to perform more proactive moderation of users' speech based on its topical content itself—whether voluntarily or under threat of legal liability—have proliferated in recent years. Using the reputationally-damaging instances of misidentification that occurred during the 2013 search for the Boston Marathon bombers as a case study, this article attempts to construct a more detailed, holistic picture of the mechanisms by which reputationally-problematic speech is negotiated online in the absence of sweeping changes to intermediary liability laws. The article argues that the Boston Marathon case study illustrates a blind spot in the more modest, targeted proposals to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in America that have appeared in recent years, and ultimately recommends placing additional emphasis on further developing norms of responsible speech in online communities, as their participants are perhaps more receptive to such endeavors than popular caricatures of "internet vigilantes" might suggest.

Most of the Southeast Asian region is comprised of developing countries. This region has a short history of inclusive education implementation and differs from developed countries’ more mature inclusive education systems. This review reveals how inclusive schooling has been implemented in Southeast Asian countries and the current practices in the region. We used scoping review methodology to examine peer-reviewed literature published between January 1994 and January 2017 on inclusive schooling in the Southeast Asian countries. The inputs-processes-outcomes (IPO) model was used to group and describe the extant research. Thirty-eight articles were identified that contributed to region of Southeast Asia inclusive education research. The majority (n = 29, 76%) were published after 2010. The articles were organised by IPO stage: Inputs stage (staff professional and teacher education, resources and finances, leadership, curriculum and policy); Processes stage (collaboration and shared responsibility, school practice, classroom practice and climate) and Outcomes stage (participation). The elements of staff professional and teacher education, and collaboration and shared responsibility were most frequently featured in the literature of the inputs and processes stages. Research information about the outcomes stage of inclusive schooling was sparse. The inclusive education literature from the region is still emerging. A greater focus on outcomes is recommended in future research and practice. Having outcome data will enable evaluation of the quality and effectiveness of inclusive education. If evaluation reveals problems, then aspects of the inputs and processes stages may need to be improved to achieve better outcomes.

Introduction: Circa 1992, the dot.com sector created an irrational stock-trading market where the usual “financial” profiles of: Liquidity, Cash Flow from Operations, and Revenue Ggeneration were replaced by Ponzi-esque mayhem. To stabilize the markets, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board [PCOAOB] required a second audit opinion: the COSO Opinion on the adequacy of management’s system of Internal Control over Financial Reporting: [ICoFR]. Study Focus: Three COSO-[ICoFR] designations are now required as public information: (i) A “clean” opinion [Is Effective], (ii) Deficiencies are noted, and (iii) Weaknesses reported. Our research interest is to determine, for a panel of randomly selected firms traded on the S&P500 for a eleventen-year period: 2005 to 2015, the nature of the effect that the COSO deficiency reporting protocol has on (i) Audit Fees and (ii) the Market Cap of traded firms. Method: To this end we collected, using the Audit Analytics [WRDS] database, various categories of reported Audit Fees and also Market Cap information. This random sample was classified into two sets: the first group: Is Effective SEC 302 Designation and No COSO issues & the second group: Is Not 100% Effective for which there were SEC 302 Deficiencies or Weaknesses noted. Results: Inferential testing indicates that failure to attend to the PCAOB-COSO imperatives results in a relational where there are higher Audit Fees and a slippage of the firm’s Market Cap compared to the Is Effective Group. The PCAOB’s protocol to require the Audit of the firm’s ICoFR system and make that evaluation public information seems to be an excellent corrective “Carrot and Stick”.

The fantasy of automation is one of liberation from alienating tasks. Today, domestic artificial intelligence (AI) enacts this dream of frictionlessly offloading monotony. This article deploys theories of Marxist feminism, affective labor to interrogate domestic AI’s unprecedented promise of absorbing forms of labor we hardly acknowledged that we did. While these devices make the reproductive labor of the household legible as labor, we interrogate their quasi-emancipatory promise. We argue that devices such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home elide and reproduce the gendered and racialized dimensions of domestic labor, streamline this labor for capture by capital, and heighten the very affective dynamics they promise to ameliorate. Only critical political theories of work can illuminate the unfulfilled transformations and ongoing dominations of gender, race, and affect that saturate labor with domestic AI – expressed, we contend, by re-articulating the framework of the “social factory” to that of the “social server.”

One of Rosa Luxemburg’s signal contributions to the critique of capitalism is her theorization of primitive accumulation as an ongoing imperial practice that is endemic to capitalism, rather than a historical phase belonging to capital’s pre-history. This dimension of her thought marks a turning point for theorizing capital’s violence. Indeed, a variety of contemporary thinkers have since built upon Luxemburg’s insights to interrogate the continuity of primitive accumulation in the present. Our paper extends Luxemburg’s distinctive intervention beyond its current application by interweaving her work on primitive accumulation with analyses of racial capitalism, the logic of global coloniality, and race-making in medieval Europe. We begin by examining how racial hierarchy and the historical production of whiteness complicate, supplement, and are bound up with Luxemburg’s prescient analysis of primitive accumulation. We then analyze several (re)constitutions of whiteness to conceptualize how they mediate and enable racial capitalism, from the European Middle Ages to our contemporary moment of neoliberal imperialism. Ultimately, we claim that creolizing Luxemburg enables the theorization of the primitive accumulation of whiteness, a concept that elucidates a dynamic by which racial capitalism operates. This concept highlights how processes of racialization, particularly the consolidation of whiteness as a racial-civilizational category, are necessary to ongoing imperial accumulations of capital; situates Luxemburg as a theorist of racial capitalism; and ensures that accounts of early modalities of whiteness in medieval race-making and later in neoliberal modes of imperialism do not understand whiteness or race as phenomena separate from capital.

Chapter begins: In Spring 2019, students at The State University of New York College at Plattsburgh (SUNY Plattsburgh) researched, designed, and built And Still We Rise: Celebrating Plattsburgh’s (Re)Discovery of Iconic Black Visitors (ASWR), an exhibit in the Feinberg Library on prominent Black political and cultural figures who had visited the college since the 1960s. The thirteen students in African-American Political Thought (Political Science 371), taught by Dr. John McMahon, researched in the college’s archives and secondary sources to curate photos, text and multimedia for physical and virtual exhibits....

Digital Humanities (DH) describes the emerging practice of interpreting humanities content through computing methods to enhance data gathering, analysis, and visualization. Due to factors including scale, complexity, and uniqueness, the products of DH research present unique challenges in the area of preservation. This study collected data with a survey and targeted interviews given to New York City metro area DH researchers intended to sketch a picture of the methods and philosophies that govern the preservation efforts of these researchers and their institutions. Due to their familiarity with evolving preservation principles and practices, librarians are poised to offer expertise in supporting the preservation efforts of digital humanists. The data and interviews described in this report help explore some of the current practices in this area of preservation, and suggest inroads for librarians as preservation experts

What are the library and information research requirements in a typical undergraduate nursing program? Do distance-learning library services provide undergraduate nursing students with the research materials they require for their academic work? In order to determine how the broad range of reference, instruction, and access services offered by Feinberg Library at Plattsburgh State University of New York, are used by students, the author reviewed selected nursing course syllabi for research requirements and the resulting student research bibliographies as an outcome assessment. The review included 441 bibliographic citations from 78 student research papers from 1998-1999. Results indicated no significant difference between on and off-campus student bibliography citations with regards to currency, format or number of citations. Results also indicated that the reviewed undergraduate nursing research assignments were indeed designed to promote research integration into nursing practice, and that student access to information was sufficient to allow them to complete their academic assignments.

In this chapter, we describe a lesson plan rooted in feminist pedagogy -- a teaching/learning that actively engages with the material being studied by embracing social media as a viable platform for scholarship. This lesson plan honors that the personal is political and correlates structural and systemic inequity to student experiences of oppression.