Revisionary models of heroinism in contemporary cultural discourse.

This thesis investigates the representation of femininity within a variety of cultural sources including the earlier novels of Jeanette Winterson and the films of Walt Disney. This juxtaposition parallels images of female development and ego formation bringing to the fore the adolescent heroine's ancient roots in mythology, horror and the fairy story. As a cultural studies project, the thesis deploys the critical techniques of poststructuralism in conjunction with psychoanalysis, feminist theory and film analysis. This is necessary to demonstrate to full potential the heterogeneous quality of the revisioned models of heroinism. My analysis is focused on both popular and literary texts, with Winterson's early fiction in particular selected as a sophisticated and developed example of the ways in which current theory can chart the evolution of a contemporary female literary voice. This thesis carefully scrutinises traditional strategies concerned with literary discourse in order to show how phallocentric structures infiltrate and reflect postcolonial, popular culture. This is achieved through an initial concentration upon mass representation of the female form. This is a necessary analysis as one cannot demonstrate how contemporary women authors revise traditional models of heroinism without first defining what has gone before.Building on the work of Elisabeth Bronfen, this thesis examines how contradictory narratives construct a double opposition, overlapping the dead and the feminine against the living and the masculine, to defend against the knowledge of an incommensurable difference at the origin of life. By representing the narrative of double castration, this is a thorough examination of a movement away from biologically scripted models of castration anxiety, as with Freud, relocating identity at the site of the navel. This enables the subject to move beyond the division of sexuality as presented within patriarchal, heterosexual orthodoxies and to allow for a notion of femininity which is subversive because of its very willingness to explore and inhabit abject/deject states. For the purposes of my investigations, these tradtionally disturbing 'liminalities' will be understood in both psychic and cultural terms, but will focus, in particular on female adolescene.In conclusion, the revisionary heroine marks the dissolution of the certainty once associated with the ancient constructed ideal of femininity. She does not place herself in opposition to the traditional figure, more than that, she surfaces within the broader frame of Western culture as something different, some 'thing' else in the psychoanalytical sense to the 'Other'. My analysis of the figure of the revisionary heroine demonstrates the ways in which both the creation and the interpretation of art and theory can be inflected towards an inversion of the dominant structures of knowledge and power without simply reproducing them

(-)-Epicatechin and its colonic metabolite hippuric acid protect against dexamethasone-induced atrophy in skeletal muscle cells

Cocoa flavanols have been shown to improve muscle function and may offer a novel approach to protect against muscle atrophy. Hippuric acid (HA) is a colonic metabolite of (-)-epicatechin (EPI), the primary bioactive compound of cocoa, and may be responsible for the associations between cocoa supplementation and muscle metabolic alterations. Accordingly, we investigated the effects of EPI and HA upon skeletal muscle morphology and metabolism within an in vitro model of muscle atrophy. Under atrophy-like conditions (24h 100μM dexamethasone (DEX)), C2C12 myotube diameter was significantly greater following co-incubation with either 25μM HA (11.19±0.39μm) or 25μM EPI (11.01±0.21μm) compared to the vehicle control (VC; 7.61±0.16μm, both P < .001). In basal and leucine-stimulated states, there was a significant reduction in myotube protein synthesis (MPS) rates following DEX treatment in VC (P = .024). Interestingly, co-incubation with EPI or HA abrogated the DEX-induced reductions in MPS rates, whereas no significant differences versus control treated myotubes (CTL) were noted. Furthermore, co-incubation with EPI or HA partially attenuated the increase in proteolysis seen in DEX-treated cells, preserving LC3 α/β II:I and caspase-3 protein expression in atrophy-like conditions. The protein content of PGC1α, ACC, and TFAM (regulators of mitochondrial function) were significantly lower in DEX-treated versus. CTL cells (all P < .050). However, co-incubation with EPI or HA was unable to prevent these DEX-induced alterations. For the first time we demonstrate that EPI and HA exert anti-atrophic effects on C2C12 myotubes, providing novel insight into the association between flavanol supplementation and favourable effects on muscle health

Accelerated aging of skeletal muscle and the immune system in patients with chronic liver disease

Patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) often present with significant frailty, sarcopenia, and impaired immune function. However, the mechanisms driving the development of these age-related phenotypes are not fully understood. To determine whether accelerated biological aging may play a role in CLD, epigenetic, transcriptomic, and phenotypic assessments were performed on the skeletal muscle tissue and immune cells of CLD patients and age-matched healthy controls. Accelerated biological aging of the skeletal muscle tissue of CLD patients was detected, as evidenced by an increase in epigenetic age compared with chronological age (mean +2.2 ± 4.8 years compared with healthy controls at −3.0 ± 3.2 years, p = 0.0001). Considering disease etiology, age acceleration was significantly greater in both the alcohol-related (ArLD) (p = 0.01) and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) (p = 0.0026) subgroups than in the healthy control subgroup, with no age acceleration observed in the immune-mediated subgroup or healthy control subgroup (p = 0.3). The skeletal muscle transcriptome was also enriched for genes associated with cellular senescence. Similarly, blood cell epigenetic age was significantly greater than that in control individuals, as calculated using the PhenoAge (p &lt; 0.0001), DunedinPACE (p &lt; 0.0001), or Hannum (p = 0.01) epigenetic clocks, with no difference using the Horvath clock. Analysis of the IMM-Age score indicated a prematurely aged immune phenotype in CLD patients that was 2-fold greater than that observed in age-matched healthy controls (p &lt; 0.0001). These findings suggested that accelerated cellular aging may contribute to a phenotype associated with advanced age in CLD patients. Therefore, therapeutic interventions to reduce biological aging in CLD patients may improve health outcomes.</p

Thermal Structure and Dynamics of Saturn's Northern Springtime Disturbance

This article combined several infrared datasets to study the vertical properties of Saturn's northern springtime storm. Spectroscopic observations of Saturn's northern hemisphere at 0.5 and 2.5 / cm spectral resolution were provided by the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS, 17). These were supplemented with narrow-band filtered imaging from the ESO Very Large Telescope VISIR instrument (16) to provide a global spatial context for the Cassini spectroscopy. Finally, nightside imaging from the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS, 22) provided a glimpse of the undulating cloud activity in the eastern branch of the disturbance. Each of these datasets, and the methods used to reduce and analyse them, will be described in detail below. Spatial maps of atmospheric temperatures, aerosol opacity and gaseous distributions are derived from infrared spectroscopy using a suite of radiative transfer and optimal estimation retrieval tools developed at the University of Oxford, known collectively as Nemesis (23). Synthetic spectra created from a reference atmospheric model for Saturn and appropriate sources of spectroscopic line data (6, 24) are convolved with the instrument function for each dataset. Atmospheric properties are then iteratively adjusted until the measurements are accurately reproduced with physically-realistic temperatures, compositions and cloud opacities

Preclinical comparison of proteasome and ubiquitin E1 enzyme inhibitors in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma:the identification of mechanisms of differential sensitivity

This study was supported by DEBRA International and funded by DEBRA Austria (Saville-Proby 1). I.M.L and M.K.S were supported by an ERC Advanced Investigator Award (250170, Principal Investigator I.M.L.). C.M.P. and I.M.L. were supported by a Cancer Research UK Programme Grant (A13044)

Work-Unit Absenteeism: Effects of Satisfaction, Commitment, Labor Market Conditions, and Time

Prior research is limited in explaining absenteeism at the unit level and over time. We developed and tested a model of unit-level absenteeism using five waves of data collected over six years from 115 work units in a large state agency. Unit-level job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and local unemployment were modeled as time-varying predictors of absenteeism. Shared satisfaction and commitment interacted in predicting absenteeism but were not related to the rate of change in absenteeism over time. Unit-level satisfaction and commitment were more strongly related to absenteeism when units were located in areas with plentiful job alternatives

UNBOUND

Unbound showcases the graduating class from the fashion design school at Fanshawe College. Unbound describes the creative spirit and achievements of our twenty-seven emerging Canadian fashion designers. Unbound 2014 is a professional collaboration between Fanshawe College, Community and Professionals in the Fashion Industry. As you turn the pages, admire their accomplishments - the results of three years of passion, hard work, and dedication.https://first.fanshawec.ca/famd_design_fashiondesign_unbound/1003/thumbnail.jp

Analytic philosophy for biomedical research: the imperative of applying yesterday's timeless messages to today's impasses

The mantra that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it" (attributed to the computer scientist Alan Kay) exemplifies some of the expectations from the technical and innovative sides of biomedical research at present. However, for technical advancements to make real impacts both on patient health and genuine scientific understanding, quite a number of lingering challenges facing the entire spectrum from protein biology all the way to randomized controlled trials should start to be overcome. The proposal in this chapter is that philosophy is essential in this process. By reviewing select examples from the history of science and philosophy, disciplines which were indistinguishable until the mid-nineteenth century, I argue that progress toward the many impasses in biomedicine can be achieved by emphasizing theoretical work (in the true sense of the word 'theory') as a vital foundation for experimental biology. Furthermore, a philosophical biology program that could provide a framework for theoretical investigations is outlined