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This chapter presents a broad interdisciplinary literature review linking artists' economic precarity and need for but resistance to entrepreneurial skills, alongside colonial histories, structural racism, and hierarchies of taste in arts organizations. These themes are complemented empirically by engaging data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) to demonstrate indicators of attrition and privilege of arts alumni relative to their participation in the arts workforce. Meaningfully different associations across racial/ethnic groups are uncovered, showing structural exclusion of Black arts alumni in particular, in addition to other intersectional dynamics. This chapter underscores the importance of addressing student debt, the potential of creative pedagogies across the curriculum, and the need for imaginative approaches to renewed public funding of art and artists.

Young African American and Latina women aged 15 to 24 are more likely to adopt short-acting forms of contraception over long-acting reversible contraception. Mobile applications and other forms of digital media may be useful for providing adolescents with information about sexual and reproductive health both inside and outside of the health care setting. The miPlan app was designed in accordance with principles of user experience design, and its content was informed by the theory of planned behavior and the transtheoretical model of behavior change. A university-based design team engaged young African American and Latina women to inform app development and provide input on app design, conducting multiple rounds of usability testing. Researchers then evaluated the acceptability of the miPlan app in family planning clinics among African American and Latina women aged 15 to 24. Participants rated the app highly acceptable, finding it both easy to use and highly informative. We demonstrate that mobile applications designed in conjunction with user populations may be effective at providing health information due to users' ability to identify with them and their accessibility.

In response to oxidative damage, base excision repair (BER) enzymes perturb the structural equilibrium of the VEGF promoter between B‐form and G4 DNA conformations, resulting in epigenetic‐like modifications of gene expression. However, the mechanistic details remain enigmatic, including the activity and coordination of BER enzymes on the damaged G4 promoter. To address this, we investigated the ability of each BER factor to conduct its repair activity on VEGF promoter G4 DNA substrates by employing pre‐steady‐state kinetics assays and in vitro coupled BER assays. OGG1 was able to initiate BER on double‐stranded VEGF promoter G4 DNA substrates. Moreover, pre‐steady‐state kinetics revealed that compared to B‐form DNA, APE1 repair activity on the G4 was decreased ~two‐fold and is the result of slower product release as opposed to inefficient strand cleavage. Interestingly, Pol β performs multiple insertions on G4 substrates via strand displacement DNA synthesis in contrast to a single insertion on B‐form DNA. The multiple insertions inhibit ligation of the Pol β products, and hence BER is not completed on the VEGF G4 promoter substrates through canonical short‐patch BER. Instead, repair requires the long‐patch BER flap‐endonuclease activity of FEN1 in response to the multiple insertions by Pol β prior to ligation. Because the BER proteins and their repair activities are a key part of the VEGF transcriptional enhancement in response to oxidative DNA damage of the G4 VEGF promoter, the new insights reported here on BER activity in the context of this promoter are relevant toward understanding the mechanism of transcriptional regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]