Smoke gets in your eyes:what is sociological about cigarettes?

Contemporary public health approaches increasingly draw attention to the unequal social distribution of cigarette smoking. In contrast, critical accounts emphasize the importance of smokers’ situated agency, the relevance of embodiment and how public health measures against smoking potentially play upon and exacerbate social divisions and inequality. Nevertheless, if the social context of cigarettes is worthy of such attention, and sociology lays a distinct claim to understanding the social, we need to articulate a distinct, positive and systematic claim for smoking as an object of sociological enquiry. This article attempts to address this by situating smoking across three main dimensions of sociological thinking: history and social change; individual agency and experience; and social structures and power. It locates the emergence and development of cigarettes in everyday life within the project of modernity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It goes on to assess the habituated, temporal and experiential aspects of individual smoking practices in everyday lifeworlds. Finally, it argues that smoking, while distributed in important ways by social class, also works relationally to render and inscribe it

89Zr-Radiolabeled Trastuzumab Imaging in Orthotopic and Metastatic Breast Tumors

The human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/neu) is overexpressed in 20-30% of breast cancers and is associated with tumor growth, angiogenesis, and development of distant metastases. Trastuzumab, an anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody, is used for the treatment of HER2 positive breast cancer and clinical efficacy of this agent is dependent on HER2 expression. Targeted PET imaging of HER2 with radiolabeled trastuzumab may be used to determine HER2 expression levels and guide therapy selection. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate a facile 89Zr-trastuzumab preparation method that can be efficiently applied for clinical grade production. Also, relative HER2 expression levels in orthotopic and metastatic breast cancer models were assessed by PET imaging using the 89Zr-trastuzumab produced by this simpler method

Apprehending public relations as a promotional industry

This special issue examines the growing social and political importance of promotional activities and public relations. For decades, promotional tools have been deployed to foster the aims of various societal agencies, be they corporations, political actors, public institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or citizen movements. In today’s turbulent political and media environments, promotional practices have become more inventive, coordinated and ubiquitous, crossing transnational borders and circulating across business, politics and social institutions. Public relations is an essential tool in the promotional mix and is increasingly a stand-alone strategy for organisations of all kinds to manage their visibility, legitimacy and relationships with stakeholders. However, its influence and power in the context of an increasingly promotional culture are under-researched. In this introduction, we set out the landscape of promotional culture in which public relations activity takes place and consider how existing research on promotional work may illuminate our knowledge of contemporary public relations work

Looking westwards and worshipping: The New York 'Creative Revolution' and British advertising, 1956-1980

This article explores the ways in which developments associated with the ?creative revolution? in New York advertising in the 1950s and 1960s were imported into the United Kingdom, helping to reshape advertising practices in London. In locating the development of UK advertising within this history of commercial exchange, this article explores the modes of transmission and the material conduits through which innovations in advertising practice crossed the Atlantic. It also focuses on the role played by a distinctive 1960s formation of practitioners who used an organisation called the Design and Art Directors Association to champion the new idioms of US advertising. Their rise to influence helped to legitimate a new set of criteria for evaluating advertising which placed ?creativity? above ?research? and the ?science of selling? as the principal measure of good advertising. In exploring the exporting of the ?new advertising? to the United Kingdom, this article develops a particular understanding of how Anglo-American advertising relations worked to shape UK advertising practices. This foregrounds the way the US ?creative revolution?, like other forms of US advertising, was adapted, hybridised and indigenised in its importing to Britain. This article shows how the ?new advertising? pioneered in New York was reworked and combined with more local cultural influences. Out of this emerged distinctive styles of British advertising in the 1960s and 1970s

Playing Nostalgic Language Games in Sport Research: Conceptual Considerations and Methodological Musings

As researchers interested in social aspects of sport, we enmesh ourselves in the work of memory, (re)membering and forms of ‘capturing’ sport and sport experiences. While nostalgia is at play in these social constructions of sport, for researchers we contend that the concept of nostalgia can prove devious. In this paper, we illustrate the social significance afforded to nostalgic experiences or events, and consider their representation in social sciences sport research. We develop and apply arguments concerning the senses, nostalgia, and language in line with the ‘abilities’ view of concepts. The consequences of nostalgia can, we contend, be underplayed, taken for granted and/or ignored by sport researchers in ways that curtail more critical readings of sport phenomena. Our purpose is to interrogate the construction and a/effects of nostalgia as hidden/implicit/latent and heuristic. We advocate methodological critique that addresses the elusive, apparent, ‘capturable’ and confusing nature of nostalgia within sport research

Radiolabelled peptides for oncological diagnosis

Radiolabelled receptor-binding peptides targeting receptors (over)expressed on tumour cells are widely under investigation for tumour diagnosis and therapy. The concept of using radiolabelled receptor-binding peptides to target receptor-expressing tissues in vivo has stimulated a large body of research in nuclear medicine. The 111In-labelled somatostatin analogue octreotide (OctreoScan™) is the most successful radiopeptide for tumour imaging, and was the first to be approved for diagnostic use. Based on the success of these studies, other receptor-targeting peptides such as cholecystokinin/gastrin analogues, glucagon-like peptide-1, bombesin (BN), chemokine receptor CXCR4 targeting peptides, and RGD peptides are currently under development or undergoing clinical trials. In this review, we discuss some of these peptides and their analogues, with regard to their potential for radionuclide imaging of tumours