Effects of Male Hypogonadism on Regional Adipose Tissue Fatty Acid Storage and Lipogenic Proteins

Testosterone has long been known to affect body fat distribution, although the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. We investigated the effects of chronic hypogonadism in men on adipose tissue fatty acid (FA) storage and FA storage factors. Twelve men with chronic hypogonadism and 13 control men matched for age and body composition: 1) underwent measures of body composition with dual energy x-ray absorptiometry and an abdominal CT scan; 2) consumed an experimental meal containing [3H]triolein to determine the fate of meal FA (biopsy-measured adipose storage vs. oxidation); 3) received infusions of [U-13C]palmitate and [1-14C]palmitate to measure rates of direct free (F)FA storage (adipose biopsies). Adipose tissue lipoprotein lipase, acyl-CoA synthetase (ACS), and diacylglycerol acetyl-transferase (DGAT) activities, as well as, CD36 content were measured to understand the mechanism by which alterations in fat storage occur in response to testosterone deficiency. Results of the study showed that hypogonadal men stored a greater proportion of both dietary FA and FFA in lower body subcutaneous fat than did eugonadal men (both p<0.05). Femoral adipose tissue ACS activity was significantly greater in hypogonadal than eugonadal men, whereas CD36 and DGAT were not different between the two groups. The relationships between these proteins and FA storage varied somewhat between the two groups. We conclude that chronic effects of testosterone deficiency has effects on leg adipose tissue ACS activity which may relate to greater lower body FA storage. These results provide further insight into the role of androgens in body fat distribution and adipose tissue metabolism in humans

'I'm not going to tell you cos you need to think about this': A conversation analysis study of managing advice resistance and supporting autonomy in undergraduate supervision

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Postdigital Science and Education, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00194-5 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.This article firstly, critically analyses a face-to-face supervision meeting between an undergraduate and a supervisor, exploring how the supervisor handles the twin strategies of fostering autonomy while managing resistance to advice. Conversation Analysis is used as both a theory and a method, with a focus on the use of accounts to support or resist advice. The main contribution is the demonstration of how both the supervisor and student are jointly responsible for the negotiation of advice, which is recycled and calibrated in response to the student’s resistance. The supervisor defuses complaints by normalising them, and moving his student on to practical solutions, often with humour. He lists his student’s achievements as the foundation on which she can assert agency and build the actions he recommends. Supervisor-student relationships are investigated through the lens of the affective dimensions of learning, to explore how caring or empathy may serve to reduce resistance and make advice more palatable. By juxtaposing physically present supervision with digitally-mediated encounters, while acknowledging their mutual entanglement, the postdigital debate is furthered. In the context of Covid-19, and rapid decisions by universities to bring in digital platforms to capture student-teacher interactions, the analysis presented is in itself an act of resistance against the technical control systems of the academy and algorithmic capitalism

Translanguaging as Playful Subversion of a Monolingual Norm in the Classroom

A large part of the literature on translanguaging as a pedagogical theory has explored how an inclusive multilingual pedagogy can support students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds to actively participate in the classroom. While much of this literature approaches classroom translanguaging as an instructional strategy designed to promote multilingual interactional practices, we analyse how multilingual practices can also take place as subversive language play in an educational context that is driven by a monolingual norm. Our data are video-recorded lessons from secondary-level Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) classrooms in Finland in which students whose L1 is Finnish are taught History through English. In bilingual educational programmes such as CLIL and immersion, it is not uncommon that teachers normatively assign L2 as the medium of interaction in whole-class talk and that students who share an L1 use it in peer interaction. We investigate how one student’s translanguaging takes place as a reaction to the teacher’s enforcement of the L2-only norm and is treated as ‘language mixing’ by other classroom participants. Drawing on conversation analytic methods, we describe the sequential unfolding and the normative context of the focal student’s translanguaging, as well as the practices of categorisation with which other students respond to his talk. We suggest that situations of normative conflict provide empirical materials to tease apart some differences between translanguaging and code-switching as social phenomena. Further, we argue that the meaning of translanguaging to participants cannot be established without considering its relation to locally upheld norms around language choice, which function as resources for the construction of language play, subversive identities and displays of (non-)investment in education in the present data.peerReviewe