Purpose
This paper encourages teachers and scholars of English Language Arts to engage deliberately with literary ambiguity.
Design/methodology/approach
Through close attention to ambiguous moments in commonly taught texts, the essay argues that explicit attention to ambiguity can support four enduring goals in the field: fostering social justice, developing students’ personal growth, cultivating dispositions and skills for democracy and engendering disciplinary literacy skills.
Findings
The readings suggest the following: first, wrestling with ambiguities in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird may foster critical orientations needed in the fight for social justice; second, ambiguities in Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese may support students’ personal development; third, questions generated by Walter Dean Myers’ Monster invite readers to practice skills needed for democracy; finally, exploring divergent interpretations of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak may develop students’ disciplinary literacy skills.
Originality/value
In an era marked by standardization and accountability, it may be difficult for teachers and scholars to linger with literary ambiguity. By underscoring the instrumental potential of literary ambiguity, the essay illustrates why and how teachers might reject this status quo and embrace the indeterminacy of literary ambiguity.
In the US market, there is a variety of mushroom preparations available, even within the same species of mushroom. Nonetheless, little is known about whether species or the various extraction methods affect biological activity and potency of the immune modulatory activity of mushroom extracts. After discovering that protein-bound polysaccharide-K, a hot water extract from Trametes versicolor, was a potent Toll-like receptor (TLR)-2 agonist that stimulates both innate and adaptive immunity, this study was initiated to evaluate whether other medicinal mushroom products also have TLR2 agonist activity and immune-enhancing potential as measured by the induction of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α in J774.A1 murine macrophage cells. Furthermore, the products were divided by extraction method and species to determine whether these factors affect their immunomodulatory activity. The results showed that the majority (75%) of mushroom products tested had TLR2 agonist activity and that there was a significant correlation between TLR2 agonist activity and TNF-α induction potential in the mushroom products analyzed. In addition, the data demonstrated that hot water mushroom extracts are more potent than ground mushroom products in activating TLR2 and inducing TNF-α. These data provide evidence that extraction methods may affect the biological activity of mushroom products; thus, further studies are warranted to investigate the structural differences between various mushroom products.
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