Watching “Insidious” – On the Social Construction of Fear

As mass media are an integral part of our everyday lives, their role in constituting emotions and feeling rules receives heightened attention. However, content analyses and psychoanalytical/reaction analyses focus on a film-viewer-relation that does not consider the group character of media consumption. This article deals with the question of how fear is socially constructed and interactively negotiated by taking an ethnomethodological look at videos that teenagers have taken of themselves while watching the horror movie Insidious. It puts forward two inter-related forms of ambiguity: the ambiguity of what emotions are appropriate, that is, the ways in which feeling rules are treated as topics and as features of the viewing settings, and, secondly, the ambiguity of belonging that concerns the question of how several viewers can draw themselves out of a terrifying situation while simultaneously ensuring that the group is held together. Fear is regarded as a separating emotion insofar as actors withdraw, actively locate their bodies as barriers against the movie’s sensual impressions and thus simultaneously constrain interaction by blocking central channels of communication. Special attention is given to the ways in which this affects interaction. The article contributes to the understanding of visual spectatorship and the undertaking of bringing affect into media studies by bringing together audience research and emotion sociology

Chromosome Segregation Is Biased by Kinetochore Size

Chromosome missegregation during mitosis or meiosis is a hallmark of cancer and the main cause of prenatal death in humans. The gain or loss of specific chromosomes is thought to be random, with cell viability being essentially determined by selection. Several established pathways including centrosome amplification, sister-chromatid cohesion defects, or a compromised spindle assembly checkpoint can lead to chromosome missegregation. However, how specific intrinsic features of the kinetochore—the critical chromosomal interface with spindle microtubules—impact chromosome segregation remains poorly understood. Here we used the unique cytological attributes of female Indian muntjac, the mammal with the lowest known chromosome number (2n = 6), to characterize and track individual chromosomes with distinct kinetochore size throughout mitosis. We show that centromere and kinetochore functional layers scale proportionally with centromere size. Measurement of intra-kinetochore distances, serial-section electron microscopy, and RNAi against key kinetochore proteins confirmed a standard structural and functional organization of the Indian muntjac kinetochores and revealed that microtubule binding capacity scales with kinetochore size. Surprisingly, we found that chromosome segregation in this species is not random. Chromosomes with larger kinetochores bi-oriented more efficiently and showed a 2-fold bias to congress to the equator in a motor-independent manner. Despite robust correction mechanisms during unperturbed mitosis, chromosomes with larger kinetochores were also strongly biased to establish erroneous merotelic attachments and missegregate during anaphase. This bias was impervious to the experimental attenuation of polar ejection forces on chromosome arms by RNAi against the chromokinesin Kif4a. Thus, kinetochore size is an important determinant of chromosome segregation fidelity

Seven exercises planned to stimulate the flow of ideas in creative composition

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Nonsense-mediated decay mechanism is a possible modifying factor of clinical outcome in nonsense cd39 beta thalassemia genotype

Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) is a surveillance system to prevent the synthesis of non-functional proteins. In β-thalassemia, NMD may have a role in clinical outcome. An example of premature translation stop codons appearing for the first time is the β-globin cd39 mutation; when homozygous, this results in a severe phenotype. The aim of this study was to determine whether the homozygous nonsense cd39 may have a milder phenotype in comparison with IVS1,nt110/cd39 genotype. Genotypes have been identified from a cohort of 568 patients affected by β-thalassemia. These genotypes were compared with those found in 577 affected fetuses detected among 2292 prenatal diagnoses. The nine most common genotypes, each with an incidence rate of 1.5% or over, and together accounting for 80% of genotype frequencies, underwent statistical analysis. Genotype prevalence was calculated within the overall group. Results are expressed as proportions with 95% confidence intervals; P≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. A binomial distribution was assumed for each group; z-tests were used to compare genotype frequencies observed in the patient group with frequencies in the affected fetus group. In the absence of selecting factors, prevalence of these two genotypes was compared between a cohort of 568 β-thalassemia patients (PTS) and 577 affected fetuses (FOET) detected during the same period. IVS1,nt110/cd39 was significantly more prevalent in FOET than PTS (P<0.0001), while there was no significant difference in prevalence of cd39/cd39 in FOET compared with PTS (P=0.524). These results suggest a cd39 genotype NMD mechanism may be associated with improved clinical outcomes in thalassemia major

Molecular analysis of Lepidopleurus cajetanus (Poli, 1791) (Polyplacophora, Leptochitonidae) from the Mediterranean and near Atlantic

In the present paper we used a molecular data set (including mitochondrial partial 16S rRNA and COI gene sequences) to examine the genetic structure of Lepidopleurus cajetanus (Poli, 1791) (Polyplacophora, Leptochitonidae) - a distinctive shallow water chiton and member of the basal branching Lepidopleurida, which is widespread in and adjacent to the Mediterranean. The analyses of the two mt-standard marker fragments resolved two main discrete clusters reported as L. cajetanus s.s. and L. aff. cajetanus, respectively. Lepidopleurus cajetanus s.s. is widespread throughout the area under study, while the second distinct lineage apparently co-occurs on the eastern Spanish mainland coast of the Balearic Sea. This result is discussed comparing our data with those reported, in 2014, by Fernández and colleagues who described L. cajetanus as exhibiting “a ‘chaotic patchiness’ pattern defined by a high genetic variability with locality-exclusive haplotypes, high genetic divergence, and a lack of geographic structure”. Although genetic data alone are not sufficient to draw any definitive conclusions, nevertheless we believe that present results shed new light on L. cajetanus which apparently shows more geographically patterned genetic structure than supposed so far

A kinematically selected, metal-poor stellar halo in the outskirts of M31

We present evidence for a metal-poor, [Fe/H]$\sim-1.4$ $\sigma$=0.2 dex, stellar halo component detectable at radii from 10 kpc to 70 kpc, in our nearest giant spiral neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy. This metal-poor sample underlies the recently-discovered extended rotating component, and has no detected metallicity gradient. This discovery uses a large sample of 9861 radial velocities of Red Giant Branch (RGB) stars obtained with the Keck-II telescope and DEIMOS spectrograph, with 827 stars with robust radial velocity measurements isolated kinematically to lie in the halo component primarily by windowing out the extended rotating component which dominates the photometric profile of Andromeda out to $<$50 kpc (de-projected). The stars lie in 54 spectroscopic fields spread over an 8 square degree region, and are expected to fairly sample the halo to a radius of $\sim$70 kpc. The halo sample shows no significant evidence for rotation. Fitting a simple model in which the velocity dispersion of the component decreases with radius, we find a central velocity dispersion of 152\kms decreasing by -0.90\kms/\kpc. By fitting a cosmologically-motivated NFW halo model to the halo stars we constrain the virial mass of M31 to be greater than 9.0 \times 10^{11} \msun with 99% confidence. The properties of this halo component are very similar to that found in our Milky Way, revealing that these roughly equal mass galaxies may have led similar accretion and evolutionary paths in the early Universe.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, accepted in ApJ. substantially revised versio

Effects of endurance, resistance and neuro-muscular electrical stimulation trainings to the anthropometric and functional mobility domains in elderly

Background and aims There\u2019s the need to increase physical activity engagement to promote healthy ageing. Different training protocols elicit different morpho-functional effects: the comprehension of the related assessment tests is a key to improve the specific proposals and to monitor adequately the adaptations. We aimed to identify the functional adaptation processes basing on different training protocols. Methods 40 healthy elderly (28 males and 12 females, 70.7 \ub1 4.39 y) were randomly divided into 4 groups: endurance, resistance, Neuro-Muscular Electrical Stimulation and control, trained for 12 weeks andex-post evaluated on anthropometric and functional domains. Results We found: significant effect for gender, time and time 7 protocols for Five Times Sit-to-Stand Test and Timed Up-and-Go test. Post-hoc analyses revealed effect for resistance and Neuro-Muscular Electrical Stimulation on Five Times Sit-to-Stand Test, and for endurance and Neuro-Muscular Electrical Stimulation on Timed Up-and-Go test. Correlations and factorial analysis linked Five Times Sit-to-Stand Test and Timed Up-and-Go test on the functional domain. Conclusions Medium-term physical interventions significantly modified functional characteristics of elderly. We found no ex-post effect on anthropometric parameters. The two functional tests are based on different underlying domains, our data therefore suggest to use both of them to specifically evaluate the training-induced functional adaptations in elderly. Our results promote the usefulness of evidence-based trainin