Relics of bioart: Ethics and messianic aesthetics in performance documentation

Australia-based art collective Tissue Culture and Art Project (TC&A) use the tools of biotechnology as artistic media to create "Semi- Living" sculptures. These sculptures are exhibited, eaten, and killed in various public contexts and, therefore, raise important ethical questions about the existence of life outside of the body. Departing from dominant concerns within the academy about the ethics of producing biological art, the essay instead focuses on the overlooked ethics of its reception. It addresses the ethics of spectatorship in TC&A's work by arguing three main points: first, its documentary images reference, play with, and are haunted by religious iconography; second, examining the messianic resonances in TC&A's work illuminates an ethics of spectatorship that is closely related to the Derridean ethical experience of otherness; and third, focusing on TC&A's documentary images addresses the potential of bioart documentation to generate affect and engage in ethical relations

Haunted by Henrietta: The archive, immortality and the biological arts

This article draws on Rebecca Schneider's thoughts on performance within archival culture (2001) in order to examine the use of HeLa cells in recent artistic practice. HeLa is one of the most commonly used cell lines in scientific research, renowned for its 'immortality' in vitro. The HeLa cell line originated from cervical cancer cells that were taken from an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks in 1951. Lacks died eight months after the biopsy, but her cells - which were removed without her knowledge and consent - live on and multiply in scientific laboratories worldwide. As artists working in the biological arts attempt to reimagine the controversial narratives surrounding HeLa and Henrietta Lacks, this paper argues that employing biological materials such as HeLa cells in artistic practice often gives rise to a flesh-like 'object' that resists the archive that instead privileges documentary and object remains. In this respect, the use of HeLa cells in some artistic work is reminiscent of performance's challenge to traditional archival logic. Despite disappearing in death, documentation and even in the moment of the live encounter, HeLa and its attendant histories nevertheless remain in material and immaterial acts that these artworks and their documentary texts participate in. Such practices importantly prompt a reconceptualisation of our relationship to the body in light of the potential effects of contemporary biotechnological advancements on archival logic. It is this reconceptualisation which I suggest may be best approached, therefore, in dialogue with performance theory on appearance and disappearance within archival culture. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

With the Maternal: Encountering Performance Through Natality

What can birth tell us about performance in the twenty first century? Specifically, what does rethinking performance through the natal alongside the maternal reveal? This article asks what natality - the overlooked other of performance’s well-theorised relationship to mortality – can offer performance from the perspective of a maternal subject. It does so through an autobiographical account of the birth of the author’s second child and three thematic gestures closely tied to natality: care, responsibility and appearance. The article privileges these natal and maternal themes as provocations for performance’s unanticipated future, particularly in a post-Brexit, post-Trump context. It offers no solutions but instead asks: How can we make careful and responsible work, whilst acknowledging the ethical ambiguities inherent in this motivation? Birth is, therefore, more than a metaphor for performance here. Instead, birth is intimately tied to the maternal and the natal subjects who experience it and so it has the potential to encourage us - as makers, theorists and spectators - to recognise and mobilise the generative potential of the embodied, relational, co-created experience of performance. Rather than using natality to regulate who has the capacity to participate in the political realm (Arendt 1958), the article suggests that we acknowledge the unknown that the newborn brings in birth. In situating natality in the physical act of birth, we can look forward to a natal politics of performance that is still consistent with Arendtian ideals of civic responsibility and action, but that welcomes those othered by her version of natality - newborns, children, mothers and those who literally cannot speak

Sexual dimorphism in trait variability and its eco-evolutionary and statistical implications

Biomedical and clinical sciences are experiencing a renewed interest in the fact that males and females differ in many anatomic, physiological, and behavioural traits. Sex differences in trait variability, however, are yet to receive similar recognition. In medical science, mammalian females are assumed to have higher trait variability due to estrous cycles (the ‘estrus-mediated variability hypothesis’); historically in biomedical research, females have been excluded for this reason. Contrastingly, evolutionary theory and associated data support the ‘greater male variability hypothesis’. Here, we test these competing hypotheses in 218 traits measured in >26,900 mice, using meta-analysis methods. Neither hypothesis could universally explain patterns in trait variability. Sex bias in variability was trait-dependent. While greater male variability was found in morphological traits, females were much more variable in immunological traits. Sex-specific variability has eco-evolutionary ramifications, including sex-dependent responses to climate change, as well as statistical implications including power analysis considering sex difference in variance

Impact of Right Ventricular Dysfunction on Mortality in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19 according to Race

Background: Epidemiological studies suggest that black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) patients may be at risk of worse outcomes from Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) but the pathophysiological drivers for this association are unknown. This study sought to investigate the relationship between findings on echocardiography, mortality and race in COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods: This was a multicenter, retrospective, observational study including 164 adults (61±13years; 78% male; 36% BAME) hospitalized with COVID-19 undergoing echocardiography between March 16 and May 9, 2020 at 3 days (IQR 2 - 5) from admission. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality. Results: After a median follow up of 31 days (IQR 14 - 42 days), 58 (35%) patients had died. The right ventricle (RV) was dilated in 62 (38%) patients, and 58 (35%) patients had RV systolic dysfunction. Only 2 (1%) patients had left ventricular (LV) dilatation and 133 (81%) had normal or hyperdynamic LV systolic function. Reduced tricuspid annulus planar systolic excursion was associated with elevated D-dimer (ρ = -0.18, p = 0.025) and high-sensitivity cardiac Troponin (ρ = -0.30, p < 0.0001). Reduced RV systolic function (HR, 1.80; 95% CI, 1.05 - 3.09; p = 0.032) was an independent predictor of all-cause mortality after adjustment for demographic and clinical risk factors. Comparing white and BAME individuals, there were no differences in echocardiography findings, biomarkers or mortality. Conclusions: In patients hospitalized with COVID-19 pneumonia, reduced RV systolic function is prevalent and associated with all-cause mortality. There is however, no racial variation in the early findings on echocardiography, biomarkers or mortality

Is health coaching effective in changing the health status and behaviour of prisoners?-a systematic review protocol

Abstract Background This is a protocol for a systematic review of the impact of health coaching on changing the health behaviour of offenders. Prisoners are more likely to suffer from health-related issues when compared to the general population. Health coaching has been shown to influence health outcomes of patients with chronic conditions. This review, therefore, aims to assess the effectiveness of health coaching interventions on the health of adolescent and adult offenders in custodial institutions. Methods We plan to conduct a systematic review of the current literature on health coaching interventions delivered in the prison setting. We will include randomised controlled trials and observational studies that compare health coaching to the usual care or other alternative interventions. The ideal interventions will be delivered either by health professionals or peer coaches, and the outcomes extracted in the data collection will be disease-specific, clients’ life and self-management skills, behavioural and psychosocial outcomes. If appropriate, a meta-analysis of the data collected will be carried out on the last stage of the review. Discussion This systematic review will identify and gather evidence on the impact of health coaching interventions delivered in the prison setting and can function as a supporting material for health professionals, prison staff, the healthcare system, and public health departments when considering delivering health coaching. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42016053237

Sexual Segregation and Flexible Mating Patterns in Temperate Bats

Social structure evolves from a trade-off between the costs and benefits of group-living, which are in turn dependent upon the distribution of key resources such as food and shelter. Males and females, or juveniles and adults, may have different priorities when selecting habitat due to differences in physiological or behavioural imperatives, leading to complex patterns in group composition. We studied social structure and mating behaviour in the insectivorous bat Myotis daubentonii along an altitudinal gradient, combining field studies with molecular genetics. With increasing altitude the proportion of males in summer roosts increased and only males were present in the highest roosts. With increasing altitude environmental temperature decreased, nightly variation in temperature increased, and bat foraging activity decreased, supporting the hypothesis that the harsher, high elevation sites cannot support breeding females. We found that offspring in female-dominated lowland roosts had a very high probability of being fathered by bats caught during autumn swarming at hibernation sites, in contrast to those in intermediate roosts, which had a high probability of being fathered by males sharing the nursery roost with the females. Whilst females normally appear to exclude males from nursery colonies, for those in marginal habitats, one explanation for the presence of males is that the thermoregulatory benefits to the females may outweigh disadvantages, such as competition for food, and give some males an opportunity to increase their breeding success. We suggest that the environment, and its effects on resource distribution, thus determine social structure, which in turn determines the mating pattern that has evolved

Sexual dimorphism in trait variability and its eco-evolutionary and statistical implications

Biomedical and clinical sciences are experiencing a renewed interest in the fact that males and females differ in many anatomic, physiological, and behavioral traits. Sex differences in trait variability, however, are yet to receive similar recognition. In medical science, mammalian females are assumed to have higher trait variability due to estrous cycles (the 'estrus-mediated variability hypothesis'); historically in biomedical research, females have been excluded for this reason. Contrastingly, evolutionary theory and associated data support the 'greater male variability hypothesis'. Here, we test these competing hypotheses in 218 traits measured in >26,900 mice, using meta-analysis methods. Neither hypothesis could universally explain patterns in trait variability. Sex-bias in variability was trait-dependent. While greater male variability was found in morphological traits, females were much more variable in immunological traits. Sex-specific variability has eco-evolutionary ramifications including sex-dependent responses to climate change, as well as statistical implications including power analysis considering sex difference in variance