From Barbie to the oligarchs wife: Reading fantasy femininity and globalisation in post-Soviet Russian womens magazines

This article shows how an analysis of fantasy femininity sheds light on how norms of gender, class and national identity reflect global and local cross-cultural currents in post-Soviet Russia. Drawing on a discourse analysis of women’s magazines and in-depth interviews with readers, it shows how, in the globalized post-Soviet cultural landscape, fantasy femininity represents both change and continuity. Feminine archetypes in women’s magazines, from fairytale princesses to Barbie dolls, reflect a wider post-Soviet cultural hybridisation, and show how Western women’s magazines have adapted to the Russian context. Furthermore, the article highlights readers’ ambiguous attitudes towards post-Soviet cultural trends linked to perceived Westernisation or globalisation, such as individualism, conspicuous consumption, and glamour

Efficiency of Peptide Nucleic Acid-Directed PCR Clamping and Its Application in the Investigation of Natural Diets of the Japanese Eel Leptocephali

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-clamping using blocking primer and DNA-analogs, such as peptide nucleotide acid (PNA), may be used to selectively amplify target DNA for molecular diet analysis. We investigated PCR-clamping efficiency by studying PNA position and mismatch with complementary DNA by designing PNAs at five different positions on the nuclear rDNA internal transcribed spacer 1 of the Japanese eel Anguilla japonica in association with intra-specific nucleotide substitutions. All five PNAs were observed to efficiently inhibit amplification of a fully complementary DNA template. One mismatch between PNA and template DNA inhibited amplification of the template DNA, while two or more mismatches did not. DNA samples extracted from dorsal muscle and intestine of eight wild-caught leptochephalus larvae were subjected to this analysis, followed by cloning, nucleotide sequence analysis, and database homology search. Among 12 sequence types obtained from the intestine sample, six were identified as fungi. No sequence similarities were found in the database for the remaining six types, which were not related to one another. These results, in conjunction with our laboratory observations on larval feeding, suggest that eel leptocephali may not be dependent upon living plankton for their food source

At the intersection of globalization and "civilizational originality' : cultural production in Putin's Russia

This special issue originates from a transnational collaboration of scholars in philology, comparative literature, social theory, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, and media studies. The collection strives to advance a research agenda built on the nexus of three intellectual and academic domains: post-Soviet Russian cultural studies', the research paradigm put forward by Cultural Studies, as well as empirical methods developed in sociology. The collection illustrates the importance of expanding the experience of Cultural Studies beyond its established spheres of national investigation, while it also speaks to the necessity to re-evaluate the hegemony of the English-language academic and cultural production on the global scale. The collection offers insights into the gamut of cultural practices and institutional environments in which Russian cultural production happens today. It shows how cultural industries and institutions in Russia are integrated into the global marketplace and transnational communities, while they also draw on and contribute to local lives and experiences by trying to create an autonomous space for symbolic production at personal and collective levels. Through diverse topics, the issue sheds light on the agency, i.e. practitioners and participants, creators and consumers, of Russian cultural production and the neoliberal practices implemented on creative work and cultural administration in Russia today. The Introduction outlines the development of academic studies on Russian cultural practices since 1991; describes main political developments shaping the cultural field in Putin's Russia; and, finally, identifies the Cultural Studies debates the editors of the collection find most productive for investigations of Russia, i.e. the instrumentalization of culture and culture as resource. Relocated in an analysis of a post-socialist society, these conceptualisations seem increasingly problematic in a situation where local and federal policies governing cultural and creative work focus simultaneously on marketization and on nationalism as the main tools of legitimizing the federal government.Peer reviewe

Detection of Ki-ras mutations in tissue and plasma samples of patients with pancreatic cancer using PNA-mediated PCR clamping and hybridisation probes

In the present study, we combined the PCR-clamping approach with melting curve analysis using mutant specific hybridisation probes and wild-type specific peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) to determine the genotypes of the most frequent point mutation in codon 12 of the proto-oncogene Ki-ras in tissue and plasma samples of patients with pancreatic cancer. The sensitivity of our assay was 1–5 × 10−5. The melting curve analysis of tissue samples of four patients revealed two valine mutations, one none-valine mutation and one wild-type sequence. Ki-ras alterations were found in 28% of DNAs (18 out of 64) of nonrelated plasma samples of 10 patients with ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. The valine mutation was the predominantly detected gene alteration (83%). Out of ten patients investigated, four patients (40%) became positive during clinical observation with respect to Ki-ras mutation. All four patients exhibited progressive disease and high levels of tumour marker CA 19-9. In conclusion, the one-step procedure discribed may be a useful clinical tool for analysing Ki-ras point mutations in tissue and plasmas samples. In addition, this method can be adapted for simultanous detection of multiple mutations and quantitation

Ionic effects on the stability and conformation of peptide nucleic acid complexes

Peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is a DNA analogue in which the negatively charged sugar phosphate backbone has been substituted by uncharged N-(2-aminoethyl)glycine units. The study of a PNA-DNA duplex and the corresponding DNA-DNA duplex gives a unique opportunity to compare two polyelectrolytes with virtually identical geometry but greatly different linear charge density. The results provide a basis for a study of the applicability of the Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) and counterion condensation (CC) theories. UV and circular dichroism spectroscopy as well as isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) have been used to study the effect of different ions on the stability and conformation of PNA-DNA, PNA-PNA, and DNA-DNA duplexes having the same base sequences. Cations in general destabilize both antiparallel (N/3') and parallel (N/5') PNA-DNA duplexes whereas they stabilize the DNA-DNA duplex. Studies on the effect of monovalent salt such as NaCl on T-m were carried out over a wide range of salt concentrations (0.01 to 5 M). The decrease in the T-m of the N/3' PNA-DNA duplex with increasing ionic strength in the range of concentrations of 0.01 to 0.5 M, where electrostatic effects predominate, is explained in terms of counterion release upon duplex formation in contrast to the counterion association accompanying the formation of a DNA duplex. The uncharged PNA-PNA duplex shows no significant destabilization in this concentration range. The higher stability of the N/3' PNA-DNA compared to the DNA-DNA duplex (Delta Delta G similar to-7 kcal/mol) is ascribed to more favorable entropic contributions consistent with the counterion release that accompanies the PNA-DNA duplex formation. At high salt concentration (>1 M), where electrostatic contributions saturate, similar trends in the decrease in T-m, were observed for the three types of duplexes irrespective of their backbone charges. The destabilizing effects of a series of Na salts with various monovalent anions on N/3' PNA-DNA and PNA-PNA duplexes were found to follow the Hofmeister series, emphasizing the importance of the hydrophobic interaction between nucleobases for the stability of the PNA complexes in high salt concentration

(2S*,5R*)-2,5-Dimethyl-1,4-bis(pyridin-2-ylmethyl)piperazine

The title compound, C18H24N4, resides on a crystallographic inversion centre, so that the asymmetric unit comprises one half-molecule. The piperazine ring adopts a chair conformation, with the mean planes of the two equatorial pyridine rings parallel to each other and separated by 2.54 (3) Å. No classical hydrogen bonds are observed