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Recent research has shown that a distinct variety of American Sign Language, known as Black ASL, developed in the segregated schools for deaf African Americans in the US South during the pre-civil rights era. Research has also shown that in some respects Black ASL is closer than most white varieties to the standard taught in ASL classes and found in ASL dictionaries. This article explores the circumstances that resulted in the creation of a distinct ASL variety, with attention to the role of language in education policy in both the white and Black Southern schools for the deaf. Archival research shows that while white deaf students were long subjected to oral instruction and forbidden to sign in class, Black students, although their severely underfunded schools provided only basic vocational education, continued to receive their education in ASL, with classes often taught by deaf teachers. The differences in language education policy explain the difficulties Black students experienced in understanding their teachers and white classmates after integration occurred, despite great resistance, in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the fact that Black signers from the South, particularly older Black signers, are more likely than their white counterparts to use traditional features.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a widespread syndrome with limited therapeutic options and poorly understood immune pathophysiology. Using a 2-hit preclinical model of cardiometabolic HFpEF that induces obesity and hypertension, we found that cardiac T cell infiltration and lymphoid expansion occurred concomitantly with cardiac pathology and that diastolic dysfunction, cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, and cardiac phospholamban phosphorylation were T cell dependent. Heart-infiltrating T cells were not restricted to cardiac antigens and were uniquely characterized by impaired activation of the inositol-requiring enzyme 1[alpha]/X-box-binding protein 1 (IRE1[alpha]/XBP1) arm of the unfolded protein response. Notably, selective ablation of XBP1 in T cells enhanced their persistence in the heart and lymphoid organs of mice with preclinical HFpEF. Furthermore, T cell IRE1[alpha]/XBP1 activation was restored after withdrawal of the 2 comorbidities inducing HFpEF, resulting in partial improvement of cardiac pathology. Our results demonstrated that diastolic dysfunction and cardiomyocyte hypertrophy in preclinical HFpEF were T cell dependent and that reversible dysregulation of the T cell IRE1[alpha]/ XBP1 axis was a T cell signature of HFpEF., Introduction Widely regarded as the greatest unmet need in cardiovascular medicine, heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is a complex and heterogeneous syndrome accounting for roughly 50% of HF [...]

"Sign Language Studies" is introducing a new section titled "Reports on Ongoing Research." These short research briefs are intended to provide a format for researchers to report on projects for which research is ongoing but for which a timely research brief would be of interest to the "Sign Language Studies" (SLS) community. Research reports include relevant background information, including the impetus for the work, methodologies, past progress, state of ongoing work, dissemination efforts, and future plans. This report provides an overview of the progress made on three ongoing sociolinguistic documentation projects focused on American Sign Language (ASL). These projects are being carried out by three separate research teams based at the University of Pennsylvania, Gallaudet University, and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)--National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). The structure of the report will describe each project in turn, concluding with a description of future directions for a new sociolinguistic documentation project involving an exciting collaboration of the three research teams.