THE TREND TOWARDS IMPLEMENTING THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IN US REGULATION OF NANOMATERIALS

The precautionary principle provides a framework for regulating emerging technologies in general and nanomaterials in particular. It counsels action in the presence of uncertainties about risk instead of assuming that nanomaterials are safe unless proven hazardous. Nanomaterials are regulated under different statutory programs depending on whether they are drugs, pesticides or other commercial chemicals. Recent developments in the regulation of nanomaterials that are not drugs or pesticides have demonstrated a trend towards application of the precautionary principle. This is a paradigm shift away from the requirement built into past interpretations of the Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”) that manufacturing, processing and use of chemical substances cannot be restricted unless the regulatory authority proves an unreasonable risk. This same paradigm shift is incorporated into recent legislative proposals to amend TSCA

A Professional Body: Remembering, Repeating and Working Out Masculinities in Fin-de-Siècle Physical Culture

Physical fitness demands repetition. Achieving a bodily ideal compels the subject to return day after day to the same designated place and repeat the same set of movements. For this reason, the practice of fitness, especially in regards to the participation of male-identifying subjects, has often been read as a form of discipline, surveillance, and ideological interpellation. In this article, I offer an alternative understanding of this repetition by reading fitness as a deeply performative practice. My focus is physical culture, a movement that emerged at a crucial transitional moment of Western modernity and which systematized men's fitness as we know it today through a popular media apparatus of magazines, postcards, books, film, and theatre where the male body could be viewed, examined, and. Exposing the entwined histories of fitness and theatre in the ‘body of work’ of the Edwardian strongman, wrestler, and physical culturist George Hackenschmidt, I argue that the performative repetitions of physical culture actually reveal the incomplete inscription of ideology upon the site of the body by demonstrating how a certain masculine norm must be continually re-cited. The performance of the built up and stripped down male body is thus an anxious performance of masculinity during a period of great industrial transformation. Hackenschmidt's body of work, both as a performer of built masculinity on the vaudeville stage and the wrestling ring, and as an author of numerous books, suggests that when men today re-enact the moves and lifts of physical culture in their fitness practices, they are (to adapt Freud's phrase) remembering, repeating, and working out, though perhaps not working through, the contradictions of modernity

Vascular bed heterogeneity in age-related endothelial dysfunction with respect to NO and eicosanoids

1. Endothelial dysfunction has been described with ageing but the mechanisms responsible have not been clearly elucidated and might be different from one vessel to the other. This study assesses the relative contribution of endothelial nitric oxide (NO) and cyclo-oxygenase (COX) metabolites in relaxation to acetylcholine with ageing in the aorta and the small mesenteric artery of the rat. 2. In the aorta and branch II or III of superior mesenteric artery (SMA), endothelium-dependent relaxation to acetylcholine was not different between 12–14 (adult) and 32-week-old rats whereas it was reduced at 70–100 (old) weeks of age. 3. Despite an increased endothelial NO-synthase protein expression, the NO-synthase inhibitor, N(G)-nitro-L-arginine-sensitive component of relaxation decreased with ageing. 4. In old rats, exposure to the COX inhibitor, indomethacin, but not the selective COX-2 inhibitor, NS-398, potentiated response to acetylcholine. The thromboxane A(2)/prostaglandin H(2) receptor antagonist, GR 32191B enhanced relaxation to acetylcholine in aorta but it had no effect in SMA. Furthermore, acetylcholine increased thromboxane B(2) production (enzymeimmunoassay) in aorta but not in SMA. Finally, Western blot analysis showed enhanced expression of COX-1 and 2 in the two arteries with ageing. 5. These results suggest that the decrease in acetylcholine-induced relaxation with ageing involves reduced NO-mediated dilatation and increased generation of vasoconstrictor prostanoids most likely from COX-1. They also point out vascular bed heterogeneity related to the nature of prostanoids involved between the aorta (i.e., thromboxane A(2)) and the SMA (unidentified) arteries even though increased expression of COX occurs in both vessels