Toxic Masculinity and Super Bowl Advertising

The purpose of this study was to understand how commercials in the modern era are slowly becoming parts of social movements and are being used as mediums for advocacy. The main topic of the study, toxic masculinity, is important to get involved in because it is an issue that extends beyond just Super Bowl viewership. Toxic masculinity occurs in multiple aspects of society, including the workplace, school, and the household. Discourse, power, and the gaze are several prevalent concepts from this study and show how commercials really can be used to create awareness for any sort of social movement

Who applies and who gets admitted to UK graduate entry medicine? - an analysis of UK admission statistics

Background Graduate-entry medicine is a recent development in the UK, intended to expand and broaden access to medical training. After eight years, it is time to evaluate its success in recruitment. Objectives This study aimed to compare the applications and admissions profiles of graduate-entry programmes in the UK to traditional 5 and 6-year courses. Methods Aggregate data on applications and admissions were obtained from the Universities and Colleges Admission Service covering 2003 to 2009. Data were extracted, grouped as appropriate and analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results Graduate-entry attracts 10,000 applications a year. Women form the majority of applicants and admissions to graduate-entry and traditional medicine programmes. Graduate-entry age profile is older, typically 20's or 30's compared to 18 or 19 years in traditional programmes. Graduate-entry applications and admissions were higher from white and black UK ethnic communities than traditional programmes, and lower from southern and Chinese Asian groups. Graduate-entry has few applications or admissions from Scotland or Northern Ireland. Secondary educational achievement is poorer amongst graduate-entry applicants and admissions than traditional programmes. Conclusions Graduate-entry has succeeded in recruiting substantial additional numbers of older applicants to medicine, in which white and black groups are better represented and Asian groups more poorly represented than in traditional undergraduate programmes

Effect of age and sex on echocardiographic left ventricular diastolic function parameters in patients with preserved ejection fraction and normal valvular function

Background: We conducted a retrospective study to specify the effect of age and gender on echocardiographic left ventricular diastolic function parameters.Methods: We included echocardiograms done in our institution between 1995 and 2007, for which data on diastolic function were available. In order to target a population as close aspossible to healthy subjects, echocardiograms reporting abnormal contraction, valvulopathy or extreme data were excluded.Results: A total of 14,298 patients (mean age 58.53 years; men 49.1%) were included in the study. Sex did not influence E/A ratio (p = 0.298) but age decreased it significantly (p < 0.001). E/e ratio increased significantly with age (p < 0.001) and was higher in women than in men (p < 0.001). After the age of 40, more than 10% of the patients had an E/e ratio superior than 8.Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the most imposing study — in terms of number of patients from first to tenth decade of life that were included — addressing the effect of age and gender on diastolic function. Our results stress the need for future prospective trials to establishnormal diastolic function parameters according to age and gender, notably for the E/e ratio for which a significant proportion of our population had a ratio superior of what is actually considered normal

Marasmius oreades agglutinin enhances resistance of Arabidopsis against plant-parasitic nematodes and a herbivorous insect

Background Plant-parasitic nematodes and herbivorous insects have a significant negative impact on global crop production. A successful approach to protect crops from these pests is the in planta expression of nematotoxic or entomotoxic proteins such as crystal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) or plant lectins. However, the efficacy of this approach is threatened by emergence of resistance in nematode and insect populations to these proteins. To solve this problem, novel nematotoxic and entomotoxic proteins are needed. During the last two decades, several cytoplasmic lectins from mushrooms with nematicidal and insecticidal activity have been characterized. In this study, we tested the potential of Marasmius oreades agglutinin (MOA) to furnish Arabidopsis plants with resistance towards three economically important crop pests: the two plant-parasitic nematodes Heterodera schachtii and Meloidogyne incognita and the herbivorous diamondback moth Plutella xylostella. Results The expression of MOA does not affect plant growth under axenic conditions which is an essential parameter in the engineering of genetically modified crops. The transgenic Arabidopsis lines showed nearly complete resistance to H. schachtii, in that the number of female and male nematodes per cm root was reduced by 86-91 % and 43-93 % compared to WT, respectively. M. incognita proved to be less susceptible to the MOA protein in that 18-25 % and 26-35 % less galls and nematode egg masses, respectively, were observed in the transgenic lines. Larvae of the herbivorous P. xylostella foraging on MOA-expression lines showed a lower relative mass gain (22-38 %) and survival rate (15-24 %) than those feeding on WT plants. Conclusions The results of our in planta experiments reveal a robust nematicidal and insecticidal activity of the fungal lectin MOA against important agricultural pests which may be exploited for crop protection

Inclusion and release of ant alarm pheromones from metal–organic frameworks

Zinc(II) and zirconium(IV) metal–organic frameworks show uptake and slow release of the ant alarm pheromones 3-octanone and 4-methyl-3-heptanone. Inclusion of N-propyl groups on the MOFs allows for enhanced uptake and release over several months. In preliminary field trials, leaf cutting ants show normal behavioural responses to the released pheromones

Diagnostic Potential of Imaging Flow Cytometry

Imaging flow cytometry (IFC) captures multichannel images of hundreds of thousands of single cells within minutes. IFC is seeing a paradigm shift from low- to high-information-content analysis, driven partly by deep learning algorithms. We predict a wealth of applications with potential translation into clinical practice