An introduction to Elinor Glyn : her life and legacy

This special issue of Women: A Cultural Review re-evaluates an author who was once a household name, beloved by readers of romance, and whose films were distributed widely in Europe and the Americas. Elinor Glyn (1864–1943) was a British author of romantic fiction who went to Hollywood and became famous for her movies. She was a celebrity figure of the 1920s, and wrote constantly in Hearst's press. She wrote racy stories which were turned into films—most famously, Three Weeks (1924) and It (1927). These were viewed by the judiciary as scandalous, but by others—Hollywood and the Spanish Catholic Church—as acceptably conservative. Glyn has become a peripheral figure in histories of this period, marginalized in accounts of the youth-centred ‘flapper era’. Decades on, the idea of the ‘It Girl’ continues to have great pertinence in the post-feminist discourses of the twenty-first century. The 1910s and 1920s saw the development of intermodal networks between print, sound and screen cultures. This introduction to Glyn's life and legacy reviews the cross-disciplinary debate sparked by renewed interest in Glyn by film scholars and literary and feminist historians, and offers a range of views of Glyn's cultural and historical significance and areas for future research

Cost-Effectiveness of Pre-exposure HIV Prophylaxis During Pregnancy and Breastfeeding in Sub-Saharan Africa

Antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for the prevention of HIV acquisition is cost-effective when delivered to those at substantial risk. Despite a high incidence of HIV infection among pregnant and breastfeeding women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a theoretical increased risk of preterm birth on PrEP could outweigh the HIV prevention benefit

The Impossibility of a Perfectly Competitive Labor Market

Using the institutional theory of transaction cost, I demonstrate that the assumptions of the competitive labor market model are internally contradictory and lead to the conclusion that on purely theoretical grounds a perfectly competitive labor market is a logical impossibility. By extension, the familiar diagram of wage determination by supply and demand is also a logical impossibility and the neoclassical labor demand curve is not a well-defined construct. The reason is that the perfectly competitive market model presumes zero transaction cost and with zero transaction cost all labor is hired as independent contractors, implying multi-person firms, the employment relationship, and labor market disappear. With positive transaction cost, on the other hand, employment contracts are incomplete and the labor supply curve to the firm is upward sloping, again causing the labor demand curve to be ill-defined. As a result, theory suggests that wage rates are always and everywhere an amalgam of an administered and bargained price. Working Paper 06-0

On the maximal superalgebras of supersymmetric backgrounds

In this note we give a precise definition of the notion of a maximal superalgebra of certain types of supersymmetric supergravity backgrounds, including the Freund-Rubin backgrounds, and propose a geometric construction extending the well-known construction of its Killing superalgebra. We determine the structure of maximal Lie superalgebras and show that there is a finite number of isomorphism classes, all related via contractions from an orthosymplectic Lie superalgebra. We use the structure theory to show that maximally supersymmetric waves do not possess such a maximal superalgebra, but that the maximally supersymmetric Freund-Rubin backgrounds do. We perform the explicit geometric construction of the maximal superalgebra of AdS_4 x S^7 and find that is isomorphic to osp(1|32). We propose an algebraic construction of the maximal superalgebra of any background asymptotic to AdS_4 x S^7 and we test this proposal by computing the maximal superalgebra of the M2-brane in its two maximally supersymmetric limits, finding agreement.Comment: 17 page

Cytochrome P450-derived epoxyeicosatrienoic acids and coronary artery disease in humans: a targeted metabolomics study

Cytochrome P450 (CYP)-derived epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) exhibit potent cardiovascular protective effects in preclinical models, and promoting the effects of EETs has emerged as a potential therapeutic strategy for coronary artery disease (CAD). The relationship between circulating EET levels and CAD extent in humans, however, remains unknown. A panel of free (unesterified) plasma eicosanoid metabolites was quantified in 162 patients referred for coronary angiography, and associations with extent of CAD [no apparent CAD (N = 39), nonobstructive CAD (N = 51), and obstructive CAD (N = 72)] were evaluated. A significant relationship between free EET levels and CAD extent was observed (P = 0.003) such that the presence of obstructive CAD was associated with lower circulating EET levels. This relationship was confirmed in multiple regression analysis where CAD extent was inversely and significantly associated with EET levels (P = 0.013), and with a biomarker of EET biosynthesis (P < 0.001), independent of clinical and demographic factors. Furthermore, quantitative enrichment analysis revealed that these associations were the most pronounced compared with other eicosanoid metabolism pathways. Collectively, these findings suggest that the presence of obstructive CAD is associated with lower EET metabolite levels secondary to suppressed EET biosynthesis. Novel strategies that promote the effects of EETs may have therapeutic promise for patients with obstructive CAD

Social disadvantage during pregnancy: Effects on gestational age and birthweight

OBJECTIVE: Whether psychosocial adversity during pregnancy impacts fetal health outcomes at birth remains underexplored. This is a critical issue given significant social disadvantage and psychosocial stress faced by pregnant women worldwide. STUDY DESIGN: Measures of social disadvantage and psychological factors, and medical/reproductive and nutritional health status in pregnant women were obtained at each trimester. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), we investigated the relationship of forms of adversity to each other and to infant gestational age, and birthweight. RESULTS: Among 399 singletons, Social Disadvantage significantly predicted gestational age (p = 0.003), and residual birthweight (p = 0.006). There was a 0.4 week decrease in gestational age and a 3% decrease in birthweight for each standard deviation increase in Social Disadvantage. CONCLUSION: Significant negative effects of social adversity on the developing fetus were found. Notably, these effects emerged despite good prenatal care and after accounting for maternal age and medical reproductive risk factors

Framework for Leadership and Training of Biosafety Level 4 Laboratory Workers

One-sentence summary for table of contents: Training should include theoretical consideration of biocontainment principles, practical hands-on training, and mentored on-the-job experience

Risk of pneumonia in patients with COPD initiating fixed dose inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) / long-acting bronchodilator (LABD) formulations containing extrafine beclometasone dipropionate versus patients initiating LABD without ICS

Professor Dave Singh is supported by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). Jaco Voorham is acknowledged for his contribution to protocol development. We would also like to acknowledge Ms. Shilpa Suresh (MSc) of the Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute (OPRI), Singapore, for editorial and formatting assistance which supported the development of this publication. This study was conducted by the Observational and Pragmatic Research Institute (OPRI) Pte Ltd and was funded by Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

When who and how matter: explaining the success of referendums in Europe

This article aims to identify the institutional factors that make a referendum successful. This comparative analysis seeks to explain the success of top-down referendums organized in Europe between 2001 and 2013. It argues and tests for the main effect of three institutional factors (popularity of the initiator, size of parliamentary majority, and political cues during referendum campaigns) and controls for the type of referendum and voter turnout. The analysis uses data collected from referendums and electoral databases, public opinion surveys, and newspaper articles. Results show that referendums proposed by a large parliamentary majority or with clear messages from political parties during campaign are likely to be successful