Postfeminist 'Islamophobia': the Middle East is so 1980s in Sex and the city: the movie 2

This article considers how 'Sex and the City: The Movie 2' sets up a binary between style which is coded as ”vintage” and, therefore, desirable and items / fashion which are represented as “dated” and identified as bad taste. Although this has been a dominant motif in both the SATC series and first film, where SATC2 ventures into very offensive territories is that it maps this distinction onto a West / Middle East binary. While everything Western (or, more precisely, everything NYC) is represented as stylish, everything in the Middle East (and here it is Abu Dhabi which stands in for the Middle East) is depicted as dated and, the film suggests, trapped in the decade of the 1980s. In doing so, SATC2 develops many of the prejudices found in contemporary Western representations of the Middle East but articulates these through a focus on fashion, consumerism and female sexuality. SATC2’s brand of postfeminism depends upon an alignment between female sexual desire, desirability and knowing (often ironic) consumption of fashion. This is contrasted with Abu Dhabi’s lack of sophistication in sexual identification, sexual self-expression and awareness of fashion and style

Work intensification and professionalism : A study of teachers\u27 perceptions in the state school system in Western Australia

The past two decades have witnessed the introduction throughout much of the Western world of what has become known as economic rationalism, and for some commentators, as economic liberalism. Grounded in neoclassical economic theory, and with close kinship to the Taylorist and Fordist principles of the early decades of the twentieth century, the vision of economic rationalism has led to measures which have tended to favour the business sector in Australia. Throughout the 1990s, the focus has been on the notions of competitiveness, competition, productivity, efficiency, and profit, while the notions of the individual, and of social justice and equity, have often appeared to become correspondingly less important. As a result, there has emerged an increasing differentiation between the interests of capital and labour or, more broadly, between commercial and social interests. The differentiation is becoming increasingly stark, and one aspect which has attracted attention is that of work intensification. The thesis revolves around three research questions, related to the issue of work intensification, and with a focus on teachers. For the sake of the study, teachers arc deemed to include principals and deputy principals who, especially in smaller schools, have both teaching and administrative duties. The study examines the extent of teacher work intensification. Consequently, the first question is: To what extent does work intensification exist amongst teachers in Western Australian State Schools

Thermal and optical characterization of micro-LED probes for in vivo optogenetic neural stimulation

Within optogenetics there is a need for compact light sources that are capable of delivering light with excellent spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution to deep brain structures. Here, we demonstrate a custom GaN-based LED probe for such applications and the electrical, optical, and thermal properties are analyzed. The output power density and emission spectrum were found to be suitable for stimulating channelrhodopsin-2, one of the most common light-sensitive proteins currently used in optogenetics. The LED device produced high light intensities, far in excess of those required to stimulate the light-sensitive proteins within the neurons. Thermal performance was also investigated, illustrating that a broad range of operating regimes in pulsed mode are accessible while keeping a minimum increase in temperature for the brain (0.5°C). This type of custom device represents a significant step forward for the optogenetics community, allowing multiple bright excitation sites along the length of a minimally invasive neural probe

The science threshold learning outcomes: a ‘student-friendly’ version

BACKGROUND The Science Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) are a nationally agreed set of learning outcomes for graduates of bachelor level degrees in science that are increasingly being used in curriculum review, design and bench-marking at Australian universities. The Science TLOs were published in the Science Standards Statement (Jones, Yates & Kelder 2011) together with notes on their interpretation and application: this is necessarily a formal document, aimed primarily at teaching academics and those with relevant quality assurance responsibilities. Talking with students during the development of the Science TLOs indicated that students were unlikely to engage with the TLOs as thus expressed. Therefore, if the Science TLOs are to be an effective means of informing students about the learning achieved through studying science at university, a modified version was required. AIM This project aimed to develop a ‘student-friendly’ version of the Science TLOs directed at potential and current students, their parents, future employers, teachers and career advisors. APPROACH The development was carried out in collaboration with The Bookend Trust (http://www.bookendtrust.com/), a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to inspiring students to undertake positive careers in environmental science. In particular, Bookend links media and journalism students with professional scientists or science students, thus fostering effective communication about contemporary science. STAGE 1 As a scoping exercise, a Bookend scholarship student investigated students’ attitudes to the formally expressed Science TLOs. She presented four college (Year 11/12) science classes with a short survey that explored their conceptions of studying science at university and potential career paths in science. She also sought their opinions on a DL card- sized flier of the Science TLOs, and asked how the same information could be presented in a way that students would find relevant and attractive. The survey showed that a ‘student-friendly’ flier would need pictures, catchy words, bright colours, and common-use language. The students were enthusiastic about adding a QR scan code linking to a website, saying that would increase the likelihood of their picking up such a flier. The survey results informed Stage 2 of this project, particularly the design approach. STAGE 2 To embed the Science TLOs into a concrete context, Bookend summer scholarship students interviewed employers using standard questions designed to elicit responses illustrating how the Science TLOs are directly relevant to working in science. The interviews were professionally recorded on video, and the footage was edited to create short clips that were loaded onto a website. THE FINAL PRODUCT We have produced a two-sided coloured flier that provides a ‘student-friendly’ version of the Science TLOs (re-phrased as questions) and a QR code linking to a website where the employer interviews can be viewed. The ‘Student-Friendly TLOs flier’ is now freely available as a downloadable pdf from the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) Resource Library (http://www.olt.gov.au/resource-library) and other relevant sites. We thank the OLT for funding this project

‘Whether you are gay or straight, I don’t like to see effeminate dancing’: effeminophobia in performance-level ballroom dance

This article discusses recent responses to performances of same-sex male ballroom dancing in order to consider the subtle difference which can exist between homophobia and effeminophobia. Given that the world of performance-level ballroom dancing is a gay-friendly environment, in which many participants are openly gay identified, this article will argue that a discourse of effeminophobia, rather than homophobia, underpins the world of performance-level ballroom dance. Performance-level ballroom dance is often read as camp not only because it represents exaggerated gender roles but because its official technique requires that the male dancer synthesise codes of masculinity and femininity in his dancing. What protects the gender-dissident male ballroom dancer from being read as effeminate is that he is paired with a female body performing excessive femininity. Without the foil of the hyper-feminine female partner, the same-sex couple draws attention to the fact that the male ballroom dancer is not dancing as a man but in accordance with ballroom’s queer construction of masculinity. Given that performance-level dance has struggled for so many years to be viewed as masculine sport, practitioners may, quite understandably, be anxious about any representation which suggests that ballroom dance may be an effeminate activity

A Score of the Ability of a Three-Dimensional Protein Model to Retrieve Its Own Sequence as a Quantitative Measure of Its Quality and Appropriateness

BACKGROUND: Despite the remarkable progress of bioinformatics, how the primary structure of a protein leads to a three-dimensional fold, and in turn determines its function remains an elusive question. Alignments of sequences with known function can be used to identify proteins with the same or similar function with high success. However, identification of function-related and structure-related amino acid positions is only possible after a detailed study of every protein. Folding pattern diversity seems to be much narrower than sequence diversity, and the amino acid sequences of natural proteins have evolved under a selective pressure comprising structural and functional requirements acting in parallel. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The approach described in this work begins by generating a large number of amino acid sequences using ROSETTA [Dantas G et al. (2003) J Mol Biol 332:449-460], a program with notable robustness in the assignment of amino acids to a known three-dimensional structure. The resulting sequence-sets showed no conservation of amino acids at active sites, or protein-protein interfaces. Hidden Markov models built from the resulting sequence sets were used to search sequence databases. Surprisingly, the models retrieved from the database sequences belonged to proteins with the same or a very similar function. Given an appropriate cutoff, the rate of false positives was zero. According to our results, this protocol, here referred to as Rd.HMM, detects fine structural details on the folding patterns, that seem to be tightly linked to the fitness of a structural framework for a specific biological function. CONCLUSION: Because the sequence of the native protein used to create the Rd.HMM model was always amongst the top hits, the procedure is a reliable tool to score, very accurately, the quality and appropriateness of computer-modeled 3D-structures, without the need for spectroscopy data. However, Rd.HMM is very sensitive to the conformational features of the models' backbone

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Hyperdimensional Analysis of Amino Acid Pair Distributions in Proteins

Our manuscript presents a novel approach to protein structure analyses. We have organized an 8-dimensional data cube with protein 3D-structural information from 8706 high-resolution non-redundant protein-chains with the aim of identifying packing rules at the amino acid pair level. The cube contains information about amino acid type, solvent accessibility, spatial and sequence distance, secondary structure and sequence length. We are able to pose structural queries to the data cube using program ProPack. The response is a 1, 2 or 3D graph. Whereas the response is of a statistical nature, the user can obtain an instant list of all PDB-structures where such pair is found. The user may select a particular structure, which is displayed highlighting the pair in question. The user may pose millions of different queries and for each one he will receive the answer in a few seconds. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of the data cube as well as the programs, we have selected well known structural features, disulphide bridges and salt bridges, where we illustrate how the queries are posed, and how answers are given. Motifs involving cysteines such as disulphide bridges, zinc-fingers and iron-sulfur clusters are clearly identified and differentiated. ProPack also reveals that whereas pairs of Lys residues virtually never appear in close spatial proximity, pairs of Arg are abundant and appear at close spatial distance, contrasting the belief that electrostatic repulsion would prevent this juxtaposition and that Arg-Lys is perceived as a conservative mutation. The presented programs can find and visualize novel packing preferences in proteins structures allowing the user to unravel correlations between pairs of amino acids. The new tools allow the user to view statistical information and visualize instantly the structures that underpin the statistical information, which is far from trivial with most other SW tools for protein structure analysis

Incidence, healthcare-seeking behaviours, antibiotic use and natural history of common infection syndromes in England:results from the Bug Watch community cohort study

Background: Better information on the typical course and management of acute common infections in the community could inform antibiotic stewardship campaigns. We aimed to investigate the incidence, management, and natural history of a range of infection syndromes (respiratory, gastrointestinal, mouth/dental, skin/soft tissue, urinary tract, and eye). Methods: Bug Watch was an online prospective community cohort study of the general population in England (2018–2019) with weekly symptom reporting for 6 months. We combined symptom reports into infection syndromes, calculated incidence rates, described the proportion leading to healthcare-seeking behaviours and antibiotic use, and estimated duration and severity. Results: The cohort comprised 873 individuals with 23,111 person-weeks follow-up. The mean age was 54 years and 528 (60%) were female. We identified 1422 infection syndromes, comprising 40,590 symptom reports. The incidence of respiratory tract infection syndromes was two per person year; for all other categories it was less than one. 194/1422 (14%) syndromes led to GP (or dentist) consultation and 136/1422 (10%) to antibiotic use. Symptoms usually resolved within a week and the third day was the most severe. Conclusions: Most people reported managing their symptoms without medical consultation. Interventions encouraging safe self-management across a range of acute infection syndromes could decrease pressure on primary healthcare services and support targets for reducing antibiotic prescribing