Embodied Experiences of Trans Pregnancy

Drawing on interview data from the international project Trans Pregnancy: An International Exploration of Transmasculine Practices of Reproduction this article explores embodied experiences of male, trans/masculine and non-binary pregnancy. Moving beyond the spectacle of the ‘pregnant’ man, our analysis builds on existing literature on trans health and embodiment in order to develop a deeper understanding of the lived, bodily complexities of trans pregnancy. We consider the strategies men, trans/masculine and non-binary folks engage in to manage gender presentation during pregnancy and the degree to which pregnancy disrupts the ability to control the presentation of gender. Our analysis contributes to the deconstruction of normative readings of the relationship between gender and the body and highlights the need for improvements in trans and non-binary reproductive healthcare

An experimental and analogue study of iron release from red sandstones

The Jurassic Entrada sandstone at Salt Wash Graben, Utah, USA, a red sandstone contains significant rock bleaching. The cause of the bleaching has been thought to be associated with the modern day CO2-rich fluids in the area which present on the surface by utalising the local fractures, some of which are filled with calcite and iron rich minerals (e.g. Jarosite). An experimental study was conducted to determine the cause of the bleaching. CO2 was found not to cause sandstone bleaching. However, the CO2 was found to mobilize significant amounts of iron from the fracture minerals suggesting that this is a possible source of the iron in the modern pore fluids

Transnormativity in the psy disciplines: Constructing pathology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and Standards of Care

The psy disciplines (i.e., psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy) have played a significant role in shaping understandings of transgender people’s lives in ways that are transnormative (i.e., by emphasizing one particular account of what it means to be transgender). This paper documents 1) how the rise of the psy disciplines created opportunities for transgender people to access treatment (but that such access often required tacit acceptance of transnormativity), and 2) how transgender people have resisted transnormative accounts within the psy disciplines. More specifically, this paper explores how both the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and what is now the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care, have often enshrined highly regulatory accounts of transgender people’s lives, while also changing over time, in part due to the contributions of transgender people. The paper concludes by considering recent contributions by transgender people in terms of the use of informed consent models of care and clinical research, and highlights the ongoing marginalization of transgender people in terms of access to ethical, trans-competent care

Correlation inequalities for classical and quantum XY models

We review correlation inequalities of truncated functions for the classical and quantum XY models. A consequence is that the critical temperature of the XY model is necessarily smaller than that of the Ising model, in both the classical and quantum cases. We also discuss an explicit lower bound on the critical temperature of the quantum XY model.Comment: 13 pages. Submitted to the volume "Advances in Quantum Mechanics: contemporary trends and open problems" of the INdAM-Springer series, proceedings of the INdAM meeting "Contemporary Trends in the Mathematics of Quantum Mechanics" (4-8 July 2016) organised by G. Dell'Antonio and A. Michelangel

Ghost poles in the nucleon propagator in the linear-sigma model approach and its role in pion-nucleon low-energy theorems

Complex mass poles, or ghost poles, are present in the Hartree-Fock solution of the Schwinger-Dyson equation for the nucleon propagator in renormalizable models with Yukawa-type meson-nucleon couplings, as shown many years ago by Brown, Puff, and Wilets (BPW). These ghosts violate basic theorems of quantum field theory and their origin is related to the ultraviolet behavior of the model interactions. Recently, Krein et.al, proved that the ghosts disappear when vertex corrections are included in a self-consistent way, softening the interaction sufficiently in the ultraviolet region. In previous studies of pion-nucleon scattering using "dressed" nucleon propagator and bare vertices, did by Nutt and Wilets in the 70's (NW), it was found that if these poles are explicitly included, the value of the isospin-even amplitude A+ is satisfied within 20% at threshold. The absence of a theoretical explanation for the ghosts and the lack of chiral symmetry in these previous studies led us to re-investigate the subject using the approach of the linear-sigma model and study the interplay of low-energy theorems for pion-nucleon scattering and ghost poles. For bare interaction vertices we find that ghosts are present in this model as well and that the A+ value is badly described. As a first approach to remove these complex poles, we dress the vertices with phenomenological form factors and a reasonable agreement with experiment is achieved. In order to fix the two cutoff parameters, we use the A+ value for the chiral limit (m_pion -> 0) and the experimental value of the isoscalar scattering length. Finally, we test our model by calculating the phase shifts for the S waves and we find a good agreement at threshold.Comment: 13 pages, 5 embedded figures, Latex 2.09, Revtex.sty, epsf.sty. To be published in Nucl. Phys.

Functional diversity of chemokines and chemokine receptors in response to viral infection of the central nervous system.

Encounters with neurotropic viruses result in varied outcomes ranging from encephalitis, paralytic poliomyelitis or other serious consequences to relatively benign infection. One of the principal factors that control the outcome of infection is the localized tissue response and subsequent immune response directed against the invading toxic agent. It is the role of the immune system to contain and control the spread of virus infection in the central nervous system (CNS), and paradoxically, this response may also be pathologic. Chemokines are potent proinflammatory molecules whose expression within virally infected tissues is often associated with protection and/or pathology which correlates with migration and accumulation of immune cells. Indeed, studies with a neurotropic murine coronavirus, mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), have provided important insight into the functional roles of chemokines and chemokine receptors in participating in various aspects of host defense as well as disease development within the CNS. This chapter will highlight recent discoveries that have provided insight into the diverse biologic roles of chemokines and their receptors in coordinating immune responses following viral infection of the CNS

Characterization of covalent inhibitors that disrupt the interaction between the tandem SH2 domains of SYK and FCER1G phospho-ITAM

RNA sequencing and genetic data support spleen tyrosine kinase (SYK) and high affinity immunoglobulin epsilon receptor subunit gamma (FCER1G) as putative targets to be modulated for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. FCER1G is a component of Fc receptor complexes that contain an immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM). SYK interacts with the Fc receptor by binding to doubly phosphorylated ITAM (p-ITAM) via its two tandem SH2 domains (SYK-tSH2). Interaction of the FCER1G p-ITAM with SYK-tSH2 enables SYK activation via phosphorylation. Since SYK activation is reported to exacerbate AD pathology, we hypothesized that disruption of this interaction would be beneficial for AD patients. Herein, we developed biochemical and biophysical assays to enable the discovery of small molecules that perturb the interaction between the FCER1G p-ITAM and SYKtSH2. We identified two distinct chemotypes using a high-throughput screen (HTS) and orthogonally assessed their binding. Both chemotypes covalently modify SYK-tSH2 and inhibit its interaction with FCER1G p-ITAM, however, these compounds lack selectivity and this limits their utility as chemical tools