School of Economics, Univ. of Mexico

Exterio

The Loss of TGF-β Signaling Promotes Prostate Cancer Metastasis

In breast and colon cancers, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β signaling initially has an antineoplastic effect, inhibiting tumor growth, but eventually exerts a proneoplastic effect, increasing motility and cancer spread. In prostate cancer, studies using human samples have correlated the loss of the TGF-β type II receptor (TβRII) with higher tumor grade. To determine the effect of an inhibited TGF-β pathway on prostate cancer, we bred transgenic mice expressing the tumorigenic SV40 large T antigen in the prostate with transgenic mice expressing a dominant negative TβRII mutant (DNIIR) in the prostate. Transgene( s) and TGF-β1 expression were identified in the prostate and decreased protein levels of plasminogen activator inhibitor type I, as a marker for TGF-β signaling, correlated with expression of the DNIIR. Although the sizes of the neoplastic prostates were not enlarged, increased amounts of metastasis were observed in mice expressing both transgenes compared to age-matched control mice expressing only the large T antigen transgene. Our study demonstrates for the first time that a disruption of TGF-β signaling in prostate cancer plays a causal role in promoting tumor metastasis

(Russian) Writer-Bloggers: Digital Perfection and the Aesthetics of Imperfection

This article explores readings of (micro)blogging services as outlets for playful, "imperfect" language. Adopting a transcultural approach, it examines a blog category that has attracted scarce academic attention to date: the creative worker's blog. Through a qualitative analysis of metalinguistic statements by 14 Russian writer-bloggers, the author tests 2 interdependent hypotheses: (H1) through metalinguistic statements and pragmatic strategies, writers present language play and "imperfect" language as prototypical for new media; and (H2) If H1 is correct, the writer-blogger's preference for "imperfect" language caters into a broader cultural-philosophical anxiety - one of foregrounding imperfection as an aesthetic counterresponse to digital perfection

“Applied Orientalism” in British India and Tsarist Turkestan

‘We cannot promise to those who may choose Oriental scholarship, that they shall find themselves abreast, in all the various high-roads of life which lead to profit and distinction, with the men who shall have devoted themselves to acquiring the knowledge which in these days is power, the intellectual treasures which make fifty years of Europe better than a cycle in Cathay, which are the sinews of peaceful empire as surely as money is the sinew of war.