Diva Voce : reimagining the diva in contemporary feminist performance

This practice-led contemporary performance study investigates and invigorates the diva icon’s usefulness to feminist theatre praxis. It traces the research journey from an unexamined belief in the diva as an icon of empowered, independent and expressive womanhood, to a more nuanced conception of the diva as boundless feminist performer and philosophical subject. Two major questions emerge from and drive the process. The primary research question asks: How can the diva icon (in all her fury and glory and wretchedness and perversity and mastery and mortality) usefully inform a feminist theatre praxis? Early investigations give rise to a subsequent social query: How do (some) women collude in their own oppression; participate in their voice and voicelessness? Critically engaging with these challenges leads me to conclude the diva icon is most useful to feminist performance praxis when understood as an icon for the richest possible expression of one’s multifaceted, contradictory, poetic and polyphonous self in dialogue with other internal selves, and with one’s community and world. The study is framed by poststructural feminism in an (at times, uneasy) alliance with psychoanalysis, Jungian psychology, structuralism, positive humanism, and eastern philosophies such as yoga and Buddhism. The process of knowledge-making is experienced as embodied and non-linear, with key insights resonating in the spaces between the questions, the methodology, the literature and the praxis. It has been composed of: the creation of a solo performance; a daily astanga yoga practice; interviews with three senior Australian women practitioners who have referenced the diva icon in their own work; and a contextual review mapping the cultural and aesthetic territory of divas and contemporary female solo performance (literature reviews, performance reviews, popular culture reviews). It also critically engages the provocations of feminist philosophers Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous (among others), and with those of philosopher, poet and performer Margaret Cameron. Throughout this study the diva is in dialogue: with western myth (romantic love, the handless maiden), with theory (voice, desire, the feminine divine), and with practice (the dramaturgy of breath). This critical dialogue reveals the diva’s capacity for agency, poetry, divinity and mastery that enable her to resist, embrace and receive in ways that offer new possibilities of Being/Isness. From this, I suggest the transcendent voice of reason is, for the female philosophical subject, the diva voce: simultaneously divine and corporeal, located [heard] in the infinite moment between an out-breath and the returning in-breath, inhalation, inspiration. In the final analysis, the feminist performer can be empowered by transforming the the diva’s traditional cry “Lascietemi morir,” (let me die) to “Lascietemi aprire”, (let me open)

NF-κB is Required for Survival of Immature Auditory Hair Cells In Vitro

Damage to auditory hair cells in the inner ear as a consequence of aging, disease, acoustic trauma, or exposure to ototoxins underlies most cases of hearing impairment. Because the mammalian ear cannot replace damaged hair cells, loss of hearing is irreversible and progressive throughout life. One of the current goals of inner ear biology is to develop therapeutic strategies to prevent hair cell degeneration. Although important progress has been made in discovering factors that mediate hair cell death, very little is known about the molecular pathway(s) that signal survival. Here we considered the role of NF-κB, a ubiquitous transcription factor that plays a major role in the regulation of many apoptosis- and stress-related genes, in mediating hair cell survival. NF-κB was detected in a constitutively active form in the organ of Corti of 5-day-old rats. Selective inhibition of NF-κB through use of a cell-permeable inhibitory peptide in vitro caused massive degeneration of hair cells within 24h of inhibitor application. Hair cell death occurred through an apoptotic pathway through activation of caspase-3 and may involve transcriptional down-regulation of the gadd45β gene, an anti-apoptotic NF-κB target. In view of our results, it seems likely that NF-κB may participate in normal hair cell functio

Ach du dicke Trespe!

Die dicke Trespe gehört zu den bedrohten Pflanzenarten Baden-Württembergs, für die das Land in besonderer Verantwortung steht. Ziel des Faltblattes ist, Landwirte und Öffentlichkeit gleichermaßen über Gefährdungsursachen und Maßnahmen zum Schutz dieser in ganz Mitteleuropa äußerst selten gewordenen Süßgrasart zu informieren

A molecular analysis of biclonal follicular lymphoma: further evidence for bone marrow origin and clonal selection

We report a follicular lymphoma (FL) case presenting the coexistence of two tumor cell subpopulations in lymph node (LN) and bone marrow (BM), which exhibited an inverse pattern of immunoglobulin light (IgL) chain gene rearrangement and expression: Igκ−λ+ in LN and Igκ+λ− in BM. These tumor clones shared an identical BCL2-IgH recombination, accompanying t(14;18)(q32;q21) translocation, and an identical variable, diversity and joining segments joining with clone-specific VH somatic hypermutations on the untranslocated IgH allele. Our study provides further evidence that FL clones, originating from common progenitor cells, can be developed independently at different sites and with different IgL expression after immune selection

Down regulation of E-Cadherin (ECAD) - a predictor for occult metastatic disease in sentinel node biopsy of early squamous cell carcinomas of the oral cavity and oropharynx

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Prognostic factors in predicting occult lymph node metastasis in patients with head and neck squamous-cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are necessary to improve the results of the sentinel lymph node procedure in this tumour type. The E-Cadherin glycoprotein is an intercellular adhesion molecule in epithelial cells, which plays an important role in establishing and maintaining intercellular connections.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>To determine the value of the molecular marker E-Cadherin in predicting regional metastatic disease.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>E-Cadherin expression in tumour tissue of 120 patients with HNSCC of the oral cavity and oropharynx were evaluated using the tissue microarray technique. 110 tumours were located in the oral cavity (91.7%; mostly tongue), 10 tumours in the oropharynx (8.3%). Intensity of E-Cadherin expression was quantified by the Intensity Reactivity Score (IRS). These results were correlated with the lymph node status of biopsied sentinel lymph nodes. Univariate and multivariate analysis was used to determine statistical significance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>pT-stage, gender, tumour side and location did not correlate with lymph node metastasis. Differentiation grade (<it>p </it>= 0.018) and down regulation of E-Cadherin expression significantly correlate with positive lymph node status (<it>p </it>= 0.005) in univariate and multivariate analysis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data suggest that loss of E-cadherin expression is associated with increased lymhogeneous metastasis of HNSCC. E-cadherin immunohistochemistry may be used as a predictor for lymph node metastasis in squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity and oropharynx.</p> <p><b>Level of evidence: 2b</b></p

Comparison of germinal center markers CD10, BCL6 and human germinal center-associated lymphoma (HGAL) in follicular lymphomas

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recently, human germinal center-associated lymphoma (HGAL) gene protein has been proposed as an adjunctive follicular marker to CD10 and BCL6.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Our aim was to evaluate immunoreactivity for HGAL in 82 cases of follicular lymphomas (FLs) - 67 nodal, 5 cutaneous and 10 transformed - which were all analysed histologically, by immunohistochemistry and PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Immunostaining for HGAL was more frequently positive (97.6%) than that for BCL6 (92.7%) and CD10 (90.2%) in FLs; the cases negative for bcl6 and/or for CD10 were all positive for HGAL, whereas the two cases negative for HGAL were positive with BCL6; no difference in HGAL immunostaining was found among different malignant subtypes or grades.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Therefore, HGAL can be used in the immunostaining of FLs as the most sensitive germinal center (GC)-marker; when applied alone, it would half the immunostaining costs, reserving the use of the other two markers only to HGAL-negative cases.</p