Sex, gender, and medicine

Mounting evidence shows that biological sex and gender impacts how our bodies and brains work. As our traditional scientific model, heavily influenced by misguided policies and ingrained cultures, is rooted in the belief that males and females are interchangeable outside of our reproductive zones, it’s time for a scientific reboot. Depending upon the context, our chromosomes, hormones, and life experiences effect our lives in ways which are both inconsequential and critically important. To practice up-to-date medicine and optimize our own resiliency, it’s important to understand and openly discuss these very real differences. This introductory chapter is designed as a “sex and gender boot camp” and will review basic definitions, explore clinical and professional examples of sex and gender differences, provide a template for framing differences, and share the author’s personal experiences in discovering this material and using it to become more resilient

Constructing a Feminist Organization’s Identity in a Competitive Marketplace: The Intersection of Ideology, Image, and Culture

Feminist organizations today must maintain their distinctive organizational identities in a competitive marketplace in which feminism has become one choice amidst many social change causes. Alignment among organizational identity, stakeholder images, and organizational culture can give feminist organizations a competitive advantage. However, feminist theory and practice have surfaced alignment challenges that can undermine organizational success. This article extends understandings of identity, image, and culture alignment by accounting for the role of ideology. In particular, this article explores how an independent media business that publishes a feminist popular culture magazine localizes feminist ideology discursively to enable alignment and satisfy diverse stakeholders. In doing so, this article fills a gap in feminist organization research by looking at how and where ideological lines are drawn by an organization trading in the economies of popular culture, image, and branding. Lessons for organizations faced with similar identity challenges are offered

Comparative power spectral analysis of simultaneous elecroencephalographic and magnetoencephalographic recordings in humans suggests non-resistive extracellular media

The resistive or non-resistive nature of the extracellular space in the brain is still debated, and is an important issue for correctly modeling extracellular potentials. Here, we first show theoretically that if the medium is resistive, the frequency scaling should be the same for electroencephalogram (EEG) and magnetoencephalogram (MEG) signals at low frequencies (<10 Hz). To test this prediction, we analyzed the spectrum of simultaneous EEG and MEG measurements in four human subjects. The frequency scaling of EEG displays coherent variations across the brain, in general between 1/f and 1/f 2, and tends to be smaller in parietal/temporal regions. In a given region, although the variability of the frequency scaling exponent was higher for MEG compared to EEG, both signals consistently scale with a different exponent. In some cases, the scaling was similar, but only when the signal-to-noise ratio of the MEG was low. Several methods of noise correction for environmental and instrumental noise were tested, and they all increased the difference between EEG and MEG scaling. In conclusion, there is a significant difference in frequency scaling between EEG and MEG, which can be explained if the extracellular medium (including other layers such as dura matter and skull) is globally non-resistive