Kellyanne Conway and Postfeminism: \u27The Desert of the Real\u27

Postfeminism is a slippery, contested, ambivalent, and inherently contradictory term – deployed alternately as an “empowering” identity label and critical theoretical lens. Troubling notions about the past, present, and future of feminism, postfeminism challenges feminist theory. This essay scrutinizes cultural and theoretical themes informing postfeminist discourses. I identify four prevailing themes in extant literature: postfeminist oblivion, self-empowerment, criticality, and feminine pride. I then examine the public discourse and self-asserted postfeminist stance of Kellyanne Conway, former campaign manager and current counselor to President Trump. Conway advocates for an individualistic, depoliticized femininity. I argue that her complacent misogyny bolsters the bizarre imaginary view that feminism has been and remains harmful to women. To demonstrate this postfeminist harm, I employ Baudrillard’s theoretical apparatus of the simulacrum. Baudrillard’s notion highlights the strategies of abstraction, simulation, and accompanying models of control that circumnavigate and ignore “the real” (feminism) in favor of “the hyperreal” (postfeminism) (1981, 1-2)

Collective Protesting as Existential Communication: A Phenomenology of Risk, Responsibility, and Ethical Attendance

This dissertation explores the experience of participating in collective protest. I performed an existential-phenomenological analysis of five participants’ in-depth accounts of their involvements participating in collective protest. I considered my interviewees’ discourse to be reflective of their lived, embodied experiences of being in protest with others. Participants each described distinct protesting experiences. I explored their accounts in relation to six basic aspects of existence: self, other, embodiment, time, space, and choice/freedom. From within these existential realms, participants’ accounts revealed five key existential themes of participating in collective protest: (1) Existential Crises and Activation; (2) Existential Magnification; (3) Existential Horizons; (4) Existential Stakes; and (5) Existential Time-Space. These themes emerged from the ways my participants discussed their experiences in contingent and concrete interrelationships with the six basic states of existence. I considered phenomenological similarities and departures across participants’ descriptions and uncovered 30 distinct modes, or manners in which they experienced their participation in embodied collective protest. My insights suggest that collective protests frequently emerge during periods of heightened cultural disorder. During such anxious times, many participants seek the company of others in collective protest to have their voices heard and to be with people who are similarly concerned. Participants discussed the importance of preserving and exercising their First Amendment rights to publicly communicate dissent in this way. My interviewees also described understandings that protesting is a potentially dangerous activity, but that the risks are assumed collectively. While protesting can be unsafe, this collective action pertains to individuals banding together to make an ethical statement addressing the sense that something bad is on the horizon. While in protest together, people often meet like-minded others, and sometimes these connections bond members in enduring activist communities. At the heart of participating in collective protest are individuals who make a personal choice to adventure out in public to demonstrate in communicative interaction with fellow citizens

High frequency diffraction of an electromagnetic plane wave by an imperfectly conducting rectangular cylinder

Copyright @ 2011 IEEEWe shall consider the the problem of determining the scattered far wave field produced when a plane E-polarized wave is incident on an imperfectly conducting rectangular cylinder. By using the the uniform asymptotic solution for the problem of the diffraction of a plane wave by a right-angled impedance wedge, in conjunction with Keller's method, the a high frequency far field solution to the problem is given

Preventive Counseling without Borders: Using Mobile Devices for Teaching, Training, and Wellness Promotion

Despite documented benefits regarding the utilization of technology in counseling, it has been underutilized by school, mental health, and student affairs counselors. Even less information has been available regarding the professional use of mobile devices by counselors in this area. This interactive presentation examines the utilization of iPads in Preventive Counseling for instruction, training, social marketing, and wellness promotion. This practice-focused workshop reflects the presenters’ yearlong exploration of the iPad and selected apps for use in teaching, training, and wellness promotion. The workshop revisits the evidence-based Indivisible Self Wellness Model (Myers and Sweeney, 2004) and uses it as the conceptual framework from which to discuss and demonstrate creative ways the iPad and selected apps can be used to enhance training, counselor education, and individual and group-based wellness promotion strategies. The limitations and caveats of using iPads and apps in this way will also be discussed

Apps4Counseling: What’s in your Digital Toolbox?

From the article: “The goal of our current multiyear mobile device and app curation project is to explore ways in which iOS and Android mobile devices and related apps can be used to enhance counseling and therapy, counselor education, training and wellness promotion. Initial emphasis was on the iPad. The hope is that the results of the project will significantly streamline the app search process for counselors, human service and other allied health providers, counselor educators, trainers and counselor education students, and increase the ways and frequency in which mobile devices are purposively integrated into our work. We also hope project results might be useful to and accessed by laypeople to increase their overall well-being.

Temporal and spatial variations in maximum river discharge from a new Russian data set

Floods cause more damage in Russia than any other natural disaster, and future climate model projections suggest that the frequency and magnitude of extreme hydrological events will increase in Russia with climate change. Here we analyze daily discharge records from a new data set of 139 Russian gauges in the Eurasian Arctic drainage basin with watershed areas from 16.1 to 50,000 km2 for signs of change in maximum river discharge. Several hypotheses about changes in maximum daily discharge and their linking with trends in precipitation over the cold season were tested. For the magnitude of maximum daily discharge we found relatively equal numbers of significant positive and negative trends across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, which draws into question the hypothesis of an increasing risk of extreme floods. We observed a significant shift to earlier spring discharge, which is consistent with documented changes in snowmelt and freeze‐thaw dates. Spatial analysis of changes in maximum discharge and cold season precipitation revealed consistency across most of the domain, the exception being the Lena basin. Trends in maximum discharge of the small‐ to medium‐sized rivers were generally consistent with aggregated signals found for the downstream gauges of the six largest Russian rivers. Although we observe regional changes in maximum discharge across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, no evidence of widespread trends in extreme discharge can be assumed from our analysis

Performance characteristics of four automated natriuretic peptide assays

Journal ArticleMeasurement of circulating B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) and N-terminal proBNP (NT-proBNP) can identify patients with heart failure and guide therapy. The limit of detection, linearity, imprecision, method comparison, analytic concordance, and reference intervals of the Access 2 BNP (Biosite, San Diego, CA), ADVIA Centaur BNP (Bayer Diagnostics, Tarrytown, NY), AxSYM BNP (Abbott Diagnostics, Abbott Park, IL), and E170 NT-proBNP (RocheDiagnostics, Indianapolis, IN) methods were evaluated. The Triage meter BNP assay (Biosite) was the comparison method. Imprecision testing showed total coefficients of variation of 4.1%, 4.4%, 5.5%, and 0.8% for the Access 2, ADVIA Centaur, AxSYM, and E170, respectively. Relative to the Triage meter, method comparison revealed a slope of 0.96 and r = 0.95, a slope of 0.77 and r = 0.92, a slope of 1.13 and r = 0.94, and a slope of 8.8 and r = 0.80 for the Access 2, ADVIA Centaur, AxSYM, and E170, respectively. Overall analytic concordance values with the Triage meter were 95.9%, 92.9%, 92.4%, and 84.3% for the Access 2, ADVIA Centaur, AxSYM, and E170, respectively. All automated natriuretic peptide methods showed acceptable analytic performance

Serum creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase activities in patients with thyroid disorders

Background and Objectives: There is the recognition of a pattern of elevations of serum enzymes in hyperthyroid and hypothyroid patients. The aims of this study were to determine the activities of serum creatine kinase (CK) and lactate deydrogenase (LDH) in thyroid disorders, and to evaluate the relationship between CK, LDH and FT4, and TSH levels.Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, thyroid function tests, serum CK and LDH activities were obtained from the medical records of newly diagnosed hyperthyroid and hypothyroid patients attending the Endocrinology Clinic at the University Hospital of the West Indies from 2005- 2009.Results: Elevation of CK activity was found in 5 patients (28%, 5/18) with overt hypothyroidism and in 12 patients (24.0%, 12/50) with subclinical hypothyroidism. The mean CK activity in subclinical hypothyroid patients was 179.80 ± 125.68 U/L compared with 389.901 ± 381.20 U/L in overt hypothyroid patients. The elevation of LDH activity was found in 6 patients (33.3%, 6/18) with overt hypothyroidism and in 37 patients (74.0%, 37/50) with subclinical hypothyroidism. In the hypothyroid patients, a positive correlation was found between CK activity and TSH (r = 0.292, P = 0.015), and a negative correlation between CK activity and FT4 (r = - 0.325, P = 0.007); and between FT4 and TSH (r = - 0.371, P = 0.002).Conclusion: The significant elevation in serum CK and LDH activities indicates that these can be used as parameters for screening hypothyroid patients but not hyperthyroid patients

Open questions in human lung organoid research

Organoids have become a prominent model system in pulmonary research. The ability to establish organoid cultures directly from patient tissue has expanded the repertoire of physiologically relevant preclinical model systems. In addition to their derivation from adult lung stem/progenitor cells, lung organoids can be derived from fetal tissue or induced pluripotent stem cells to fill a critical gap in modelling pulmonary development in vitro. Recent years have seen important progress in the characterisation and refinement of organoid culture systems. Here, we address several open questions in the field, including how closely organoids recapitulate the tissue of origin, how well organoids recapitulate patient cohorts, and how well organoids capture diversity within a patient. We advocate deeper characterisation of models using single cell technologies, generation of more diverse organoid biobanks and further standardisation of culture media

An FGFR1-SPRY2 Signaling Axis Limits Basal Cell Proliferation in the Steady-State Airway Epithelium.

The steady-state airway epithelium has a low rate of stem cell turnover but can nevertheless mount a rapid proliferative response following injury. This suggests a mechanism to restrain proliferation at steady state. One such mechanism has been identified in skeletal muscle in which pro-proliferative FGFR1 signaling is antagonized by SPRY1 to maintain satellite cell quiescence. Surprisingly, we found that deletion of Fgfr1 or Spry2 in basal cells of the adult mouse trachea caused an increase in steady-state proliferation. We show that in airway basal cells, SPRY2 is post-translationally modified in response to FGFR1 signaling. This allows SPRY2 to inhibit intracellular signaling downstream of other receptor tyrosine kinases and restrain basal cell proliferation. An FGFR1-SPRY2 signaling axis has previously been characterized in cell lines in vitro. We now demonstrate an in vivo biological function of this interaction and thus identify an active signaling mechanism that maintains quiescence in the airway epithelium.This study was supported by the Medical Research Council (G0900424 to ER); Wellcome Trust clinical PhD fellowship (JJ). Core grants: Gurdon Institute: Wellcome Trust (092096), Cancer Research UK (C6946/A14492); Stem Cell Initiative: Wellcome Trust/MRC.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2016.03.00