Drawing on branded tweets that linguistically appropriate slang, African American Language, and hip hop lyrics, this article examines how corporations rework black culture to create “corporate cool” as part of their advertising strategy on social media. We examine three processes that corporations engage in to associate themselves with “coolness” while managing levels of racial contact and proximity for their audience: 1) racially ambiguous voicing, 2) “bleaching” black bodies out of images, and 3) the forging of “racially tinged” intertextual connections. While previous scholarship has analyzed how acts of cultural and linguistic appropriation reap profit for white people and continue to stigmatize already racially marginalized groups, we describe how these seemingly innocent cultural and linguistic references harness a corporately constructed black cool to produce a sense of white comfort. We argue that white comfort is generated not only through the avoidance of overt references to racial conflict, as the term “white fragility” suggests, but also through well-worn, familiar, and comfortable reminders of racial difference and domination that are offered at a safe distance from actual black people and contexts of racial violence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted communities that are medically underserved across the United States, including the 6,700 Hispanic and Pascua Yaqui residents of Guadalupe, Arizona. In May 2020, Guadalupe experienced new COVID-19 cases at a rate 13.9 times as high as its surrounding county, urging town leadership to establish the Guadalupe Community Response Team (GCRT), a multisectoral network of community, academic, and public health partners. The objectives of the GCRT were to: (a) increase access to health and support services; (b) develop novel and intensive outreach efforts; and (c) build partnerships to strengthen public health capacity. From June 2020 to December 2021, the GCRT provided door-to-door case investigation and resource provision, coordinated testing and vaccination events, created public health communications, and developed COVID-19 guidance for cultural gatherings. These interventions were implemented in an effort to reduce community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and increase equitable access to testing, vaccination, and social support resources. Cultural leaders, such as promotores de salud and Yaqui Cultural Specialists, were integral in building trust among community members. The GCRT provides valuable lessons learned on the importance of implementing a culturally grounded approach to COVID-19 mitigation to increase equitable access to health services during a public health emergency.

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patients with CTS. These findings create several avenues for future research. Specifically, the effect of osteopathic manipulative treatment on patients with CTS should be studied and compared with the effects of surgical procedures and multimodal manual therapy.

The development of specific catalytic inhibitors for the serine protease urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) has been hindered due to difficulties in producing sufficient amounts of active recombinant uPA that is catalytically equivalent to native uPA. The purpose of this study was to develop an efficient system for the expression of recombinant human uPA that exhibits comparable proteolytic activity to that of the native protein. Since post-translational modifications (e.g. glycosylations) of uPA are necessary for efficient proteolytic activity, we have used a mammalian cell line [Chinese hamster ovary (CHO)-S] to express recombinant human uPA. CHO-S cells were selected to stably express full-length recombinant human uPA containing a hexahistidine tag at its C-terminus to permit purification by nickel-based affinity chromatography. Secretion of recombinant uPA into the culture media was confirmed by immunoblotting and the presence of an N-linked glycosylation was confirmed by PNGase sensitivity. Enzymatic activity of purified recombinant uPA was demonstrated using zymography and quantitatively compared to native uPA by kinetic analysis using an uPA-specific substrate. Native uPA and the recombinant uPA demonstrated comparable K m values (55.7 and 39 lM, respectively). Furthermore, inhibition studies using benzamidine resulted in a K i of 195 lM for native uPA, while recombinant uPA had a K i of 112 lM. These data indicate that recombinant human uPA expressed by CHO-S cells is functionally comparable to native uPA.Abbreviations: CHO-S -Chinese hamster ovary