La "falocedad" de continuos: salud reproductiva entre los adolescentes de Oaxaca de Juárez

El presente trabajo explora la salud sexual adolescente en Oaxaca. Basado en un trabajo de campo etnográfico que se ha venido realizando desde el año 2001 sobre las sexualidades adolescentes, examina los sentidos de la iniciación sexual, las creencias tanto populares como biomédicas asociadas con la distinción entre sexualidades masculinas y femeninas, la naturalización de la sexualidad adolescente varonil en general y las implicaciones para la prevención y tratamiento del sida y otras infecciones transmitidas sexualmente. En particular, en este ensayo se comparan, por un lado, los discursos medicalizados relacionados a las nociones de la modernidad y la sexualidad y, por el otro, las ideas tan difundidas de las particularidades culturales de los varones adolescentes en México y en regiones específicas de Oaxaca. Los y las jóvenes en Oaxaca nacen dentro de sistemas ya establecidos de salud reproductiva, cortejo y sexualidades. Estos adolescentes entienden que sus sexualidades están limitadas por factores materiales y culturales e, incluso, por los discursos modernos sobre la sexualidad y las ideas falsas sobre los continuos viriles que establecen que los deseos y comportamientos sexuales son, naturalmente, diferentes entre los varones y las mujeres

Hombres Carnales: Las Políticas Somáticas de la Salud Reproductiva Masculina

Este artículo presenta los resultados preliminares de un estudio etnográfico sobre salud reproductiva y sexualidad masculina llevado a cabo en Oaxaca de Juárez, México. Se centra en la decisión de usar métodos anticonceptivos como la vasectomía. Demuestra la forma en que las nociones de salud y sexualidad compartidas por los grupos masculinos de Oaxaca están relacionadas con los discursos médicos y de organizaciones gubernamentales y no-gubernamentales. El autor se remite al concepto de “cultura anti-conceptuva femenina” (Viveros, 2002) para explicar la falta de participación masculina en la planificación familiar. Finalmente, el texto muestra la necesidad de problematizar la medicalización de la sexualidad masculina arguyendo una amplia perspectiva que incluye biología, política e inequidad de poder en las relaciones de género.This article presents the preliminary results of an ethnographic study on reproductive health and masculine sexuality carried out in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Specifically, it focuses on the decision-making process in the use of anticonceptive procedures such as vasectomy. The author demonstrates how notions of health and sexuality shared by Oaxacan masculine groups are related to the discourses medical commun ity, governmental and non-governmental organizations use to deal with these issues. The author refers to the concept of “anti-conceptive femenine culture” (Viveros, 2002) to explain the lack of men participation in family planning issues. This text shows the need to problematize the medicalization of masculine sexuality arguing a wider perspective that includes biology, politics and power inequality issues embedded in gender relations

Ser hombre de verdad en la ciudad de México

¿Qué significa ser hombre para los hombres y las mujeres que viven en la colonia popular Santo Domingo en la Ciudad de México?. Con el fin de responder a esa inquietud, se aborda en esta investigación desde un enfoque etnográfico la tarea de comprender la identidad de género en relación con los cambios en las prácticas y creencias culturales que han ocurrido en el México urbano, durante el transcurso de varias décadas de conmoción local y global. Se analiza, también, la manera en que la diferencia y la similitud culturales están constítuidas por actores sociales diversos que, a su vez, limitan y expanden los significados de identidad de género. Otro objetivo del estudio -más allá de la desconstrucción de clichés vacíos de la masculanidad mexicana- es el de contribuir a la reconstrucción teórica y empírica de las categorías de género, razón por la cual examinar la masculanidad en el México contemporáneo constituye tanto un asunto metodológico como cultural

Association of cardiometabolic microRNAs with COVID-19 severity and mortality

AIMS: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can lead to multiorgan damage. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) in blood reflect cell activation and tissue injury. We aimed to determine the association of circulating miRNAs with COVID-19 severity and 28 day intensive care unit (ICU) mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS: We performed RNA-Seq in plasma of healthy controls (n = 11), non-severe (n = 18), and severe (n = 18) COVID-19 patients and selected 14 miRNAs according to cell- and tissue origin for measurement by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT–qPCR) in a separate cohort of mild (n = 6), moderate (n = 39), and severe (n = 16) patients. Candidates were then measured by RT–qPCR in longitudinal samples of ICU COVID-19 patients (n = 240 samples from n = 65 patients). A total of 60 miRNAs, including platelet-, endothelial-, hepatocyte-, and cardiomyocyte-derived miRNAs, were differentially expressed depending on severity, with increased miR-133a and reduced miR-122 also being associated with 28 day mortality. We leveraged mass spectrometry-based proteomics data for corresponding protein trajectories. Myocyte-derived (myomiR) miR-133a was inversely associated with neutrophil counts and positively with proteins related to neutrophil degranulation, such as myeloperoxidase. In contrast, levels of hepatocyte-derived miR-122 correlated to liver parameters and to liver-derived positive (inverse association) and negative acute phase proteins (positive association). Finally, we compared miRNAs to established markers of COVID-19 severity and outcome, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 RNAemia, age, BMI, D-dimer, and troponin. Whilst RNAemia, age and troponin were better predictors of mortality, miR-133a and miR-122 showed superior classification performance for severity. In binary and triplet combinations, miRNAs improved classification performance of established markers for severity and mortality. CONCLUSION: Circulating miRNAs of different tissue origin, including several known cardiometabolic biomarkers, rise with COVID-19 severity. MyomiR miR-133a and liver-derived miR-122 also relate to 28 day mortality. MiR-133a reflects inflammation-induced myocyte damage, whilst miR-122 reflects the hepatic acute phase response

Reflections on a crisis: political disenchantment, moral desolation, and political integrity

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: (i) we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and (ii) it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity

Violent masculinities: Gendered dynamics of policing in Rio de Janeiro

Historically, policing in Rio de Janeiro has been shaped by the equation of racialized violence and masculinity. Attempts to reform the police have paradoxically drawn on forms of male violence that are centered on the rational and professional use of force and on “softer” practices, such as dialogue and collaboration, symbolically coded as feminine. The failure of police reform reflects the cultural salience of understandings of masculinity centered around violence within the police, historical patterns of policing in Rio, and political actors’ strategic cultivation of male violence. Through Rio de Janeiro's failed attempt at police reform, we theorize the relation between racialized state violence, authoritarian political projects, and transgressive forms of male violence, arguing that an important appeal of authoritarianism lies in its promise to carve out a space for performing what we call wild masculinity. [masculinity, race, police, violence, gender, politics, favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil]publishedVersio

Comprehensive and Integrated Genomic Characterization of Adult Soft Tissue Sarcomas

Sarcomas are a broad family of mesenchymal malignancies exhibiting remarkable histologic diversity. We describe the multi-platform molecular landscape of 206 adult soft tissue sarcomas representing 6 major types. Along with novel insights into the biology of individual sarcoma types, we report three overarching findings: (1) unlike most epithelial malignancies, these sarcomas (excepting synovial sarcoma) are characterized predominantly by copy-number changes, with low mutational loads and only a few genes (, , ) highly recurrently mutated across sarcoma types; (2) within sarcoma types, genomic and regulomic diversity of driver pathways defines molecular subtypes associated with patient outcome; and (3) the immune microenvironment, inferred from DNA methylation and mRNA profiles, associates with outcome and may inform clinical trials of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Overall, this large-scale analysis reveals previously unappreciated sarcoma-type-specific changes in copy number, methylation, RNA, and protein, providing insights into refining sarcoma therapy and relationships to other cancer types

Aficionados, academics, and Danzón expertise: exploring hierarchies in popular music knowledge production

Amateur scholars, such as aficionados, fans, intellectuals, are rarely valued in the twenty-first-century academy, despite their often-encyclopedic knowledge. In this paper, I focus on Mexican aficionados of the popular Cuban music danzón to explore how these mostly older men manage social contexts where they are often marginalized. Drawing on Bourdieu, I examine how danzón aficionados negotiate their field of expertise by employing overlapping strategies: accumulating myriad "facts" and "truths", creating the possibility of ignorance in others, and competing for hegemonic masculine capital. I analyze danzón aficionados' relationships with musicians and dancers, consider power dynamics between these aficionados and academics, and draw on Léon and Romero to discuss relationships between regional and hegemonic scholarship more broadly. I argue that beyond reflexivity and criticism, collective activism is required to reconfigure value systems and symbolic economies, and to fight institutional pressures to reproduce existing power structure

Molecular Profiling Reveals Biologically Discrete Subsets and Pathways of Progression in Diffuse Glioma

Therapy development for adult diffuse glioma is hindered by incomplete knowledge of somatic glioma driving alterations and suboptimal disease classification. We defined the complete set of genes associated with 1,122 diffuse grade II-III-IV gliomas from The Cancer Genome Atlas and used molecular profiles to improve disease classification, identify molecular correlations, and provide insights into the progression from low- to high-grade disease. Whole-genome sequencing data analysis determined that ATRX but not TERT promoter mutations are associated with increased telomere length. Recent advances in glioma classification based on IDH mutation and 1p/19q co-deletion status were recapitulated through analysis of DNA methylation profiles, which identified clinically relevant molecular subsets. A subtype of IDH mutant glioma was associated with DNA demethylation and poor outcome; a group of IDH-wild-type diffuse glioma showed molecular similarity to pilocytic astrocytoma and relatively favorable survival. Understanding of cohesive disease groups may aid improved clinical outcomes

The Somatic Genomic Landscape of Glioblastoma

We describe the landscape of somatic genomic alterations based on multi-dimensional and comprehensive characterization of more than 500 glioblastoma tumors (GBMs). We identify several novel mutated genes as well as complex rearrangements of signature receptors including EGFR and PDGFRA. TERT promoter mutations are shown to correlate with elevated mRNA expression, supporting a role in telomerase reactivation. Correlative analyses confirm that the survival advantage of the proneural subtype is conferred by the G-CIMP phenotype, and MGMT DNA methylation may be a predictive biomarker for treatment response only in classical subtype GBM. Integrative analysis of genomic and proteomic profiles challenges the notion of therapeutic inhibition of a pathway as an alternative to inhibition of the target itself. These data will facilitate the discovery of therapeutic and diagnostic target candidates, the validation of research and clinical observations and the generation of unanticipated hypotheses that can advance our molecular understanding of this lethal cancer