From blokey banter to female fantasy: how men and women really see each other

First paragraph: I saw two very different shows at the Edinburgh Fringe last week, two shows that dealt with the subject of how men and women talk about each other, in very different formats and with very different levels of success. But notably, each play made a similar stylistic choice of switching roles – women performed male voices and men performed female voices, casting an interesting spin on the proceedings

Not just a joke : rape culture in Internet memes about #MeToo

This thesis provides a critical account of the discursive construction of sexual violence in humorous Internet memes about #MeToo. Applying an interdisciplinary lens, the thesis combines feminist scholarship on discourse, affect, humour, rape culture and online misogyny in order to provide a contribution to the field of feminist digital media studies.;I employ a case study approach to my data set of 866 Internet memes collected from three social media platforms, 9gag, Reddit and Imgur, between October and December 2017 using the four search terms: #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K.;Applying discourse analysis to Internet memes generated by these specific search terms enables me to investigate how sexual violence is portrayed in different ways depending on who the perpetrators and the victims are. The three social media platforms have been chosen as they encourage users to upload humorous content enabling me to investigate how humorous content constructs sexual violence in specific ways. The thesis demonstrates how certain notions about gender and sexuality are discursively reproduced in online spaces that privilege heterosexual men and exclude women and homosexual men.;The thesis aims to contribute to existing research in feminist media studies by investigating the backlash against #MeToo on specifically humorous discursive spaces thus gaining insight into how sexual violence is discursively constructed in spaces that otherwise might often be overlooked and disregarded as meaningless and harmless. By taking humour seriously the thesis contends this 'just-a-joke' discourse.This thesis provides a critical account of the discursive construction of sexual violence in humorous Internet memes about #MeToo. Applying an interdisciplinary lens, the thesis combines feminist scholarship on discourse, affect, humour, rape culture and online misogyny in order to provide a contribution to the field of feminist digital media studies.;I employ a case study approach to my data set of 866 Internet memes collected from three social media platforms, 9gag, Reddit and Imgur, between October and December 2017 using the four search terms: #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K.;Applying discourse analysis to Internet memes generated by these specific search terms enables me to investigate how sexual violence is portrayed in different ways depending on who the perpetrators and the victims are. The three social media platforms have been chosen as they encourage users to upload humorous content enabling me to investigate how humorous content constructs sexual violence in specific ways. The thesis demonstrates how certain notions about gender and sexuality are discursively reproduced in online spaces that privilege heterosexual men and exclude women and homosexual men.;The thesis aims to contribute to existing research in feminist media studies by investigating the backlash against #MeToo on specifically humorous discursive spaces thus gaining insight into how sexual violence is discursively constructed in spaces that otherwise might often be overlooked and disregarded as meaningless and harmless. By taking humour seriously the thesis contends this 'just-a-joke' discourse

The one-loop renormalization of the gauge sector in the noncommutative standard model

In this paper we construct a version of the standard model gauge sector on noncommutative space-time which is one-loop renormalizable to first order in the expansion in the noncommutativity parameter $\theta$. The one-loop renormalizability is obtained by the Seiberg-Witten redefinition of the noncommutative gauge potential for the model containing the usual six representations of matter fields of the first generation.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figure

Transcriptome-based network analysis reveals renal cell type-specific dysregulation of hypoxia-associated transcripts

Accumulating evidence suggests that dysregulation of hypoxia-regulated transcriptional mechanisms is involved in development of chronic kidney diseases (CKD). However, it remains unclear how hypoxia-induced transcription factors (HIFs) and subsequent biological processes contribute to CKD development and progression. In our study, genome-wide expression profiles of more than 200 renal biopsies from patients with different CKD stages revealed significant correlation of HIF-target genes with eGFR in glomeruli and tubulointerstitium. These correlations were positive and negative and in part compartment-specific. Microarrays of proximal tubular cells and podocytes with stable HIF1α and/or HIF2α suppression displayed cell type-specific HIF1/HIF2-dependencies as well as dysregulation of several pathways. WGCNA analysis identified gene sets that were highly coregulated within modules. Characterization of the modules revealed common as well as cell group- and condition-specific pathways, GO-Terms and transcription factors. Gene expression analysis of the hypoxia-interconnected pathways in patients with different CKD stages revealed an increased dysregulation with loss of renal function. In conclusion, our data clearly point to a compartment- and cell type-specific dysregulation of hypoxia-associated gene transcripts and might help to improve the understanding of hypoxia, HIF dysregulation, and transcriptional program response in CKD

Can agricultural cultivation methods influence the healthfulness of crops for foods

The aim of the current study was to investigate if there are any health effects of long-term consumption of organically grown crops using a rat model. Crops were retrieved over two years from along-term field trial at three different locations in Denmark, using three different cultivation systems(OA, organic based on livestock manure; OB, organic based on green manure; and C, conventional with mineral fertilizers and pesticides)with two field replicates. The cultivation system had an impact on the nutritional quality, affecting γ-tocopherol, some amino acids, and fatty acid composition. Additionally, the nutritional quality was affected by harvest year and location. However, harvest year and location rather than cultivation system affected the measured health biomarkers. In conclusion, the differences in dietary treatments composed of ingredients from different cultivation systems did not lead to significant differences in the measured health biomarkers, except for a significant difference in plasma IgGl evels

Variation in Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of COPD Patients Managed in U.S. Primary Care : Data from a Real-Life COPD Registry

Peer reviewedPostprin

Characterization of COPD in U.S. Primary Care : Data from a Real-Life COPD Registry

Peer reviewedPostprin

A population of gamma-ray emitting globular clusters seen with the Fermi Large Area Telescope

Globular clusters with their large populations of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are believed to be potential emitters of high-energy gamma-ray emission. Our goal is to constrain the millisecond pulsar populations in globular clusters from analysis of gamma-ray observations. We use 546 days of continuous sky-survey observations obtained with the Large Area Telescope aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to study the gamma-ray emission towards 13 globular clusters. Steady point-like high-energy gamma-ray emission has been significantly detected towards 8 globular clusters. Five of them (47 Tucanae, Omega Cen, NGC 6388, Terzan 5, and M 28) show hard spectral power indices $(0.7 < \Gamma <1.4)$ and clear evidence for an exponential cut-off in the range 1.0-2.6 GeV, which is the characteristic signature of magnetospheric emission from MSPs. Three of them (M 62, NGC 6440 and NGC 6652) also show hard spectral indices $(1.0 < \Gamma < 1.7)$, however the presence of an exponential cut-off can not be unambiguously established. Three of them (Omega Cen, NGC 6388, NGC 6652) have no known radio or X-ray MSPs yet still exhibit MSP spectral properties. From the observed gamma-ray luminosities, we estimate the total number of MSPs that is expected to be present in these globular clusters. We show that our estimates of the MSP population correlate with the stellar encounter rate and we estimate 2600-4700 MSPs in Galactic globular clusters, commensurate with previous estimates. The observation of high-energy gamma-ray emission from a globular cluster thus provides a reliable independent method to assess their millisecond pulsar populations that can be used to make constraints on the original neutron star X-ray binary population, essential for understanding the importance of binary systems in slowing the inevitable core collapse of globular clusters.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A. Corresponding authors: J. Kn\"odlseder, N. Webb, B. Pancraz

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye