Plastic bodies

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Advocating for evidence in birth: Proving cause, effecting outcomes, and making the case for ‘curers’

The notion of ‘evidence’ circulates in two realms of current maternity care: biomedical ‘evidence-based’ obstetrics and efforts to reform conventional obstetric practices. I observed that in California’s childbearing culture, ‘evidence’ is a boundary object that allows diverse actors to engage in related conversations despite fundamentally different assumptions about what evidence is or does. Sometimes these actors form productive hybrids and other times they talk past one another. This article uses recent work from the history and philosophy of science to distinguish the biomedical use of evidence, which is based on controlled experiments to prove cause and effect, from reformists’ use of evidence, which foregrounds patient outcomes. Using Stengers’s classification of doctors, charlatans, and curers, I discuss the role of rationality and experience in producing authoritative knowledge. Reformists’ use of evidence, in effect, challenges medical power dynamics on what they perceive to be the terms of medical authority itself; in doing so, it has the potential to fundamentally alter who is the primary beneficiary of medical protocols. The challenge is continuing to use evidence in a way that doesn’t simply ossify a new set of norms, but becomes increasingly capacious, flexible, specific, and patient centered

Discovery of Microsecond Soft Lags in the X-Ray Emission of the Atoll Source 4U1636-536

Exploiting the presence of kilohertz quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the timing power spectrum, we find that the soft x-ray emission of the neutron-star X-ray binary and atoll source 4U1636-536 modulated at the QPO frequency lags behind that of the hard x-ray emission. Emission in the 3.8-6.4 keV band is delayed by 25.0 +/- 3.3 microseconds relative to the 9.3-69 keV band. The delay increases in magnitude with increasing energy. Our results are consistent with those of Vaughan et al. (1997), when the sign is corrected (Vaughan et al. 1998), for the atoll source 4U1608-52. The soft lag could be produced by Comptonization of hard photons injected into a cooler electron cloud or by intrinsic spectral softening of the emission during each oscillation cycle.Comment: Accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters, 4 page

Host-pathogen reorganisation during host cell entry by Chlamydia trachomatis

Chlamydia trachomatis is obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen that remains a significant public health burden worldwide. A critical early event during infection is chlamydial entry into non-phagocytic host epithelial cells. Like other Gram-negative bacteria, C. trachomatis uses a type III secretion system (T3SS) to deliver virulence effector proteins into host cells. These effectors trigger bacterial uptake and promote bacterial survival and replication within the host cell. In this review, we highlight recent cryo-electron tomography that has provided striking insights into the initial interactions between Chlamydia and its host. We describe the polarised structure of extracellular C. trachomatis elementary bodies (EBs), and the supramolecular organisation of T3SS complexes on the EB surface, in addition to the changes in host and pathogen architecture that accompany bacterial internalisation and EB encapsulation into early intracellular vacuoles. Finally, we consider the implications for further understanding the mechanism of C. trachomatis entry and how this might relate to those of other bacteria and viruses

Hormonal Health:Period Tracking Apps, Wellness, and Self-Management within Surveillance Capitalism

Period tracking is an increasingly widespread practice, and its emphasis is changing from monitoring fertility to encompassing a more broad-based picture of users’ health. Delving into the data of one’s menstrual cycle, and the hormones that are presumed to be intimately linked with it, is a practice that is reshaping ideas about health and wellness, while also shaping subjects and subjectivities that succeed under conditions of surveillance capitalism. Through close examination of six extended interviews, this article elaborates a version of period tracking that sidesteps fertility and, in doing so, participates in the “queering” of menstrual technologies. Apps can facilitate the integration of institutional medical expertise and quotidian embodied experience within a broader approach to the self as a management project. We introduce the concept of “hormonal health” to describe a way of caring for, and knowing about, bodies, one that weaves together mental and physical health, correlates subjective and objective information, and calls into question the boundary between illness and wellness. For those we spoke with, menstrual cycles are understood to affect selfhood across any simplistic body-mind division or reproductive imperative, engendering complex techniques of self-management, including monitoring, hypothesizing, intervening in medical appointments, adjusting schedules, and interpreting social interactions. Such techniques empower their proponents, but not within conditions of their choosing. In addition to problems with data privacy and profit, these techniques perpetuate individualized solutions and the internalization of pressures in a gender-stratified, neoliberal context, facilitating success within flawed structures