You Eat What You Are: Identity Via Cannibalistic Food Ethics In Ying Chen's Le Mangeur

Shanghai-born Québécoise Ying Chen focuses her super-natural 2006 novel, Le Mangeur, on the ethics of eating. Chens characters, half human and half fish hybrids, negotiate a personal but transgressive ethics of eating as a way of understanding who they are and what they value. Through unconventional but detailed descriptions of the act of eating and reactions to this processChen calls to mind debates about modern food politics and situates them on the knife-edge of binaries of self and other, living and dead, human and animal, edible and inedible implicit in questions of food in general, cannibalism in particular, and of the cultural questions of identity inherent to both. Taking the view that food ethics, like any ethics in the Foucauldian tradition, stem from ones particular and embodied situation, Chen proposes new meaning for food in (migrant) literature. In contrast to traditional scripts that use food to represent cultures, places and temporalities left behind, Chen insists on the physicality of eating, on the ontological difference between the diner and their dinner, to strip back the familiar tropes about food and identity and to question the basis for our understanding of food a locus for a larger identity

Individualistic Philanthropy: The Paradox of Embodied Participation for Health-Related Fundraising Campaigns

Movember and Julyna have emerged as examples of health-related fundraising and awareness campaigns that require embodied participation in the form of temporary body modification. Reaching a younger demographic not traditionally motivated by appeals to altruism, these campaigns have capitalized on the signifying power of the body to reflect and construct identities and self-perceptions to motivate participation. Taking a cultural studies approach and employing visual, textual and discursive analyses of the campaigns websites, a primary vector for information dissemination and recruitment, this study highlights how philanthropic activity has been successfully coded as making participants more physically, sexually, and socially desirable. In promoting such individualistic motives for philanthropy, however, these campaigns further a mentality that philanthropy is foremost about personal gain. The challenge these initiatives pose is how to convert participants from individualistic to altruistic models of philanthropy

Reinventing Regional Identity in Twenty-First Century Québécois and French Cinema

Although rural and regional subjects and settings are well established conventions in both French and French Canadian literature and cinema, recent trends have seen filmmakers return to the rural and regional subject matter that had largely been abandoned in the closing years of the twentieth century. Drawing on, but also distinguishing themselves from their literary and cinematic antecedents, these modern films sought to connect with audiences by reinventing the rural. Using case studies of three filmsÉric Rohmers Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon which sought to recreate Honoré DUrfés seventeenth-century pastoral novel LAstrée, Dany Boons Bienvenue Chez les Chtis and Jean-François Pouliots La grande séductionthis paper argues that contemporary Francophone audiences demand a rural cinema that blends traditions of idealism and idylls with contemporary realities of life in regional France and Quebec

Genetic variation of traits measured in several environments. II. Inference on between-environment homogeneity of intra-class correlations

This paper describes a further contribution to the problem of testing homogeneity of intra-class correlations among environments in the case of univariate linear models, without making any assumption about the genetic correlation between environments. An iterative generalized expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, as described in Foulley and Quaas (1994), is presented for computing restricted maximum likelihood (REML) estimates of the residual and between-family components of variance and covariance. Three different parameterizations (cartesian, polar and spherical coordinates) are proposed to compute EM-REML estimators under the reduced (constant intra-class correlation between environments) model. This procedure is illustrated with the analysis of simulated data.Cet article décrit une approche permettant d’estimer les composantes de variance-covariance entre milieux dans le cas de corrélation intra-classe homogènes entre milieux, sans faire d’hypothèse sur les corrélations génétiques entre milieux pris 2 à 2. Un algorithme itératif d’espérance-maximisation (EM), comparable à celui décrit par Foulley et Quaas (1994), est proposé pour calculer les estimations du maximum de vraisemblance restreinte (REML) des composantes résiduelles et familiales de variance covariance. Trois paramétrisations différentes (coordonnées cartésiennes, polaires et sphériques) sont proposées pour calculer les estimateurs EM-REML sous le modèle réduit (les corrélations intra-classe sont supposées toutes égales à une même constante). Cette procédure est illustrée par l’analyse de données simulées

Bench-to-bedside review: The gut as an endocrine organ in the critically ill

In health, hormones secreted from the gastrointestinal tract have an important role in regulating gastrointestinal motility, glucose metabolism and immune function. Recent studies in the critically ill have established that the secretion of a number of these hormones is abnormal, which probably contributes to disordered gastrointestinal and metabolic function. Furthermore, manipulation of endogenous secretion, physiological replacement and supra-physiological treatment (pharmacological dosing) of these hormones are likely to be novel therapeutic targets in this group. Fasting ghrelin concentrations are reduced in the early phase of critical illness, and exogenous ghrelin is a potential therapy that could be used to accelerate gastric emptying and/or stimulate appetite. Motilin agonists, such as erythromycin, are effective gastrokinetic drugs in the critically ill. Cholecystokinin and peptide YY concentrations are elevated in both the fasting and postprandial states, and are likely to contribute to slow gastric emptying. Accordingly, there is a rationale for the therapeutic use of their antagonists. So-called incretin therapies (glucagon-like peptide-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide) warrant evaluation in the management of hyperglycaemia in the critically ill. Exogenous glucagon-like peptide-2 (or its analogues) may be a potential therapy because of its intestinotropic properties

Comparative study of energy management systems for a hybrid fuel cell electric vehicle - A novel mutative fuzzy logic controller to prolong fuel cell lifetime

Hybrid fuel cell battery electric vehicles require complex energy management systems (EMS) in order to operate effectively. Poor EMS can result in a hybrid system that has low efficiency and a high rate of degradation of the fuel cell and battery pack. Many different types of EMS have been reported in the literature, such as equivalent consumption minimisation strategy and fuzzy logic controllers, which typically focus on a single objective optimisations, such as minimisation of H2 usage. Different vehicle and system specifications make the comparison of EMSs difficult and can often lead to misleading claims about system performance. This paper aims to compare different EMSs, against a range of performance metrics such as charge sustaining ability and fuel cell degradation, using a common modelling framework developed in MATLAB/Simulink - the Electric Vehicle Simulation tool-Kit (EV-SimKit). A novel fuzzy logic controller is also presented which mutates the output membership function depending on fuel cell degradation to prolong fuel cell lifetime – the Mutative Fuzzy Logic Controller (MFLC). It was found that while certain EMSs may perform well at reducing H2 consumption, this may have a significant impact on fuel cell degradation, dramatically reducing the fuel cell lifetime. How the behaviour of common EMS results in fuel cell degradation is also explored. Finally, by mutating the fuzzy logic membership functions, the MFLC was predicted to extend fuel cell lifetime by up to 32.8%

Antitumor activity of the ERK inhibitor SCH772984 [corrected] against BRAF mutant, NRAS mutant and wild-type melanoma.

BackgroundIn melanoma, dysregulation of the MAPK pathway, usually via BRAF(V600) or NRAS(Q61) somatic mutations, leads to constitutive ERK signaling. While BRAF inhibitors are initially effective for BRAF-mutant melanoma, no FDA-approved targeted therapies exist for BRAF-inhibitor-resistant BRAF(V600), NRAS mutant, or wild-type melanoma.MethodsThe 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of SCH772984, a novel inhibitor of ERK1/2, was determined in a panel of 50 melanoma cell lines. Effects on MAPK and AKT signaling by western blotting and cell cycle by flow cytometry were determined.ResultsSensitivity fell into three groups: sensitive, 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) < 1 μM; intermediately sensitive, IC50 1-2 μM; and resistant, >2 μM. Fifteen of 21 (71%) BRAF mutants, including 4 with innate vemurafenib resistance, were sensitive to SCH772984. All three (100%) BRAF/NRAS double mutants, 11 of 14 (78%) NRAS mutants and 5 of 7 (71%) wild-type melanomas were sensitive. Among BRAF(V600) mutants with in vitro acquired resistance to vemurafenib, those with MAPK pathway reactivation as the mechanism of resistance were sensitive to SCH772984. SCH772984 caused G1 arrest and induced apoptosis.ConclusionsCombining vemurafenib and SCH722984 in BRAF mutant melanoma was synergistic in a majority of cell lines and significantly delayed the onset of acquired resistance in long term in vitro assays. Therefore, SCH772984 may be clinically applicable as a treatment for non-BRAF mutant melanoma or in BRAF-mutant melanoma with innate or acquired resistance, alone or in combination with BRAF inhibitors