Codes of Commitment to Crime and Resistance: Determining Social and Cultural Factors over the Behaviors of Italian Mafia Women

This article categorizes thirty-three women in four main Italian Mafia groups and explores social and cultural behaviors of these women. This study introduces the feminist theory of belief and action. The theoretical inquiry investigates the sometimes conflicting behaviors of women when they are subject to systematic oppression. I argue that there is a cultural polarization among the categorized sub-groups. Conservative radicals give their support to the Mafia while defectors and rebels resist the Mafia. After testing the theory, I assert that emancipation of women depends on the strength of their beliefs to perform actions against the Mafiosi culture

Mother, Monster, Mrs, I:A critical evaluation of gendered naming strategies in English sentencing remarks of women who kill

In this article, we take a novel approach to analysing English sentencing remarks in cases of women who kill. We apply computational, quantitative, and qualitative methods from corpus linguistics to analyse recurrent patterns in a collection of English Crown Court sentencing remarks from 2012 to 2015, where a female defendant was convicted of a homicide offence. We detail the ways in which women who kill are referred to by judges in the sentencing remarks, providing frequency information on pronominal, nominative, and categorising naming strategies. In discussion of the various patterns of preference both across and within these categories (e.g. pronoun vs. nomination, title + surname vs. forename + surname), we remark upon the identities constructed through the references provided. In so doing, we: (1) quantify the extent to which members of the judiciary invoke patriarchal values and gender stereotypes within their sentencing remarks to construct female defendants, and (2) identify particular identities and narratives that emerge within sentencing remarks for women who kill. We find that judges refer to women who kill in a number of ways that systematically create dichotomous narratives of degraded victims or dehumanised monsters. We also identify marked absences in naming strategies, notably: physical identification normally associated with narrativization of women’s experiences; and the first person pronoun, reflecting omissions of women’s own voices and narratives of their lived experiences in the courtroom

Mechanisms that clear mutations drive field cancerization in mammary tissue

Oncogenic mutations are abundant in the tissues of healthy individuals, but rarely form tumours1–3. Yet, the underlying protection mechanisms are largely unknown. To resolve these mechanisms in mouse mammary tissue, we use lineage tracing to map the fate of wild-type and Brca1−/−;Trp53−/− cells, and find that both follow a similar pattern of loss and spread within ducts. Clonal analysis reveals that ducts consist of small repetitive units of self-renewing cells that give rise to short-lived descendants. This offers a first layer of protection as any descendants, including oncogenic mutant cells, are constantly lost, thereby limiting the spread of mutations to a single stem cell-descendant unit. Local tissue remodelling during consecutive oestrous cycles leads to the cooperative and stochastic loss and replacement of self-renewing cells. This process provides a second layer of protection, leading to the elimination of most mutant clones while enabling the minority that by chance survive to expand beyond the stem cell-descendant unit. This leads to fields of mutant cells spanning large parts of the epithelial network, predisposing it for transformation. Eventually, clone expansion becomes restrained by the geometry of the ducts, providing a third layer of protection. Together, these mechanisms act to eliminate most cells that acquire somatic mutations at the expense of driving the accelerated expansion of a minority of cells, which can colonize large areas, leading to field cancerization

Microcalcification crystallography as a potential marker of DCIS recurrence

Ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS) accounts for 20-25% of all new breast cancer diagnoses. DCIS has an uncertain risk of progression to invasive breast cancer and a lack of predictive biomarkers may result in relatively high levels (~ 75%) of overtreatment. To identify unique prognostic biomarkers of invasive progression, crystallographic and chemical features of DCIS microcalcifications have been explored. Samples from patients with at least 5-years of follow up and no known recurrence (174 calcifications in 67 patients) or ipsilateral invasive breast cancer recurrence (179 microcalcifications in 57 patients) were studied. Significant differences were noted between the two groups including whitlockite relative mass, hydroxyapatite and whitlockite crystal maturity and, elementally, sodium to calcium ion ratio. A preliminary predictive model for DCIS to invasive cancer progression was developed from these parameters with an AUC of 0.797. These results provide insights into the differing DCIS tissue microenvironments, and how these impact microcalcification formation. [Abstract copyright: © 2023. The Author(s).

A new psychology of women : gender, culture and ethnicity

xxi, 490 p. : ill ; 23 c

A longitudinal study of the reporting of emotional and somatic symptoms during and after pregnancy

One hundred and eight pregnant women, most of their husbands and a comparison group of non-expectant parents were recruited for a long-term study which involved responding to a 55-item Symptom Checklist (SCL) and the Beck Depression Inventory three times during pregnancy and once during the first postpartum month. Responses to the SCL were factor analysed, and the four groups were then compared on their factor scores as well as their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) using discriminant analysis and trend analysis. The discriminant analyses were done twice: once using all the data provided by all subjects and once using only subjects with no missing data. At each measurement period, the pregnant women were distinguished from the other groups by a different factor of the SCL: at 3-5 months, it was 'Feeling Sick': at 6-8 months, it was 'Feeling Overweight'; at 9 months, it was 'Feeling Overweight/Physical Stress'; and at postpartum, it was 'Physical Stress'. Also, trend analysis showed a significant tendency for the scores of pregnant women on the SCL 'Negative Emotional State', factor and on the BDI to increase over time, in contrast to those of the other groups.