The Feminine Awkward: Graceless Bodies and the Performance of Femininity in Fashion Photographs

Recent fashion photography has been preoccupied with awkward and uncomfortable poses. In fact, awkwardness – a negative affect comprising emotional and bodily discomfort – is part of the history of fashion photography. The ‘feminine awkward’ is proposed here as a formal and critical idiom for unpacking the relations that exist between the model, the photographic frame, and the camera, and for considering the way that the image is experienced by the viewer. The meaning of awkward fashion photographs is not only communicated directly, through various signifying practices; it also arises out of deeper emotional and bodily responses that accompany signification. The feminine awkward emerges most openly into fashion images during periods when gender norms are most forcefully contested, interfering with the trajectories of desire to which fashion images typically give rise. Culturally, it is aligned with paradigm shifts in social attitudes: with changing expectations of how a feminine subject should look and she should act. Looking at fashion photographs through the optic of the feminine awkward opens up new ways of thinking about the way that fashion photography simultaneously participates in, and unsettles, the production of gendered bodies

The city inhabits me: space, topology, and Gabriele Basilico’s Milan: Ritratti di Fabbriche

The 1975 New Topographics exhibition has been inscribed into photographic history as a starting point to which nearly all visually cognate practices can be traced back. This has held back more subtle and nuanced readings of much English and European work of the same era, particularly in the English-language press. Set in a more extended historical and geographical context, the work in the exhibition can be understood as part of a wider process of photographic exploration that took place alongside shifting patterns of production and consumption that transformed the global landscape in the decades following World War II. The exhibition also set out a specific position regarding the nature of topographic photography itself. Although New Topographics did not take an explicitly critical stance vis-a-vis landscape, one of its most enduring legacies has been the emergence of a ‘new topographics’ aesthetic that is understood as critically engaged simply by virtue of its distanced, deadpan style. To argue that particular photographers work in the topographic mode is thus to overlook the socio-political and geographical specificities of the places they represent, in favour of formal similarities. This paper examines Gabriele Basilico’s first project – Milan: Ritratti di Fabbriche (1978-80) – the photographs themselves, the context out of which they emerged, their presentation in book form, and Basilico’s own approach to the environments in which he photographed. As I argue, Milan: Ritratti di Fabbriche shares less than we might assume with the New Topographics work. Rather, it embodies a way of understanding and representing space as topological: heterogeneous and fluid, composed of multiple and often contradictory objects, processes and agents

Determination of phototropism by UV-B radiation

UV-B phototropism in etiolated Arabidopsis seedlings has only been shown recently and needs further exploration. Here we elaborate on how to generate a customized setup with a unilateral UV-B light source, the required plant materials, different growth substrates, and a framework for data analysis

Empathy at Play:Embodying Posthuman Subjectivities in Gaming

In this article, we address the need for a posthuman account of the relationship between the avatar and player. We draw on a particular line of posthumanist theory associated closely with the work of Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti and N. Katherine Hayles that suggests a constantly permeable, fluid and extended subjectivity, displacing the boundaries between human and other. In doing so, we propose a posthuman concept of empathy in gameplay, and we apply this concept to data from the first author’s 18-month ethnographic field notes of gameplay in the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Exploring these data through our analysis of posthuman empathy, we demonstrate the entanglement of avatar–player, machine–human relationship. We show how empathy allows us to understand this relationship as constantly negotiated and in process, producing visceral reactions in the intra-connected avatar–player subject as well as moments of co-produced in-game action that require ‘affective matching’ between subjective and embodied experiences. We argue that this account of the avatar–player relationship extends research in game culture, providing a horizontal, non-hierarchical discussion of its most necessary interaction

Epigenetic regulation during cancer transitions across 11 tumour types

Chromatin accessibility is essential in regulating gene expression and cellular identity, and alterations in accessibility have been implicated in driving cancer initiation, progression and metastasi

Combining the Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Cabozantinib and the mTORC1/2 Inhibitor Sapanisertib Blocks ERK Pathway Activity and Suppresses Tumor Growth in Renal Cell Carcinoma.

UNLABELLED: Current treatment approaches for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) face challenges in achieving durable tumor responses due to tumor heterogeneity and drug resistance. Combination therapies that leverage tumor molecular profiles could offer an avenue for enhancing treatment efficacy and addressing the limitations of current therapies. To identify effective strategies for treating RCC, we selected ten drugs guided by tumor biology to test in six RCC patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models. The multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) cabozantinib and mTORC1/2 inhibitor sapanisertib emerged as the most effective drugs, particularly when combined. The combination demonstrated favorable tolerability and inhibited tumor growth or induced tumor regression in all models, including two from patients who experienced treatment failure with FDA-approved TKI and immunotherapy combinations. In cabozantinib-treated samples, imaging analysis revealed a significant reduction in vascular density, and single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq) analysis indicated a decreased proportion of endothelial cells in the tumors. SnRNA-seq data further identified a tumor subpopulation enriched with cell-cycle activity that exhibited heightened sensitivity to the cabozantinib and sapanisertib combination. Conversely, activation of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition pathway, detected at the protein level, was associated with drug resistance in residual tumors following combination treatment. The combination effectively restrained ERK phosphorylation and reduced expression of ERK downstream transcription factors and their target genes implicated in cell-cycle control and apoptosis. This study highlights the potential of the cabozantinib plus sapanisertib combination as a promising treatment approach for patients with RCC, particularly those whose tumors progressed on immune checkpoint inhibitors and other TKIs. SIGNIFICANCE: The molecular-guided therapeutic strategy of combining cabozantinib and sapanisertib restrains ERK activity to effectively suppress growth of renal cell carcinomas, including those unresponsive to immune checkpoint inhibitors

Tumour evolution and microenvironment interactions in 2D and 3D space

To study the spatial interactions among cancer and non-cancer cell

Differential chromatin accessibility and transcriptional dynamics define breast cancer subtypes and their lineages

Breast cancer (BC) is defined by distinct molecular subtypes with different cells of origin. The transcriptional networks that characterize the subtype-specific tumor-normal lineages are not established. In this work, we applied bulk, single-cell and single-nucleus multi-omic techniques as well as spatial transcriptomics and multiplex imaging on 61 samples from 37 patients with BC to show characteristic links in gene expression and chromatin accessibility between BC subtypes and their putative cells of origin. Regulatory network analysis of transcription factors underscored the importance of BHLHE40 in luminal BC and luminal mature cells and KLF5 in basal-like tumors and luminal progenitor cells. Furthermore, we identify key genes defining the basal-like (SOX6 and KCNQ3) and luminal A/B (FAM155A and LRP1B) lineages. Exhausted CTLA4-expressing CD

Multi-scale signaling and tumor evolution in high-grade gliomas

Although genomic anomalies in glioblastoma (GBM) have been well studied for over a decade, its 5-year survival rate remains lower than 5%. We seek to expand the molecular landscape of high-grade glioma, composed of IDH-wildtype GBM and IDH-mutant grade 4 astrocytoma, by integrating proteomic, metabolomic, lipidomic, and post-translational modifications (PTMs) with genomic and transcriptomic measurements to uncover multi-scale regulatory interactions governing tumor development and evolution. Applying 14 proteogenomic and metabolomic platforms to 228 tumors (212 GBM and 16 grade 4 IDH-mutant astrocytoma), including 28 at recurrence, plus 18 normal brain samples and 14 brain metastases as comparators, reveals heterogeneous upstream alterations converging on common downstream events at the proteomic and metabolomic levels and changes in protein-protein interactions and glycosylation site occupancy at recurrence. Recurrent genetic alterations and phosphorylation events on PTPN11 map to important regulatory domains in three dimensions, suggesting a central role for PTPN11 signaling across high-grade gliomas