515 research outputs found
The interaction of class and gender in illness narratives
This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2008 BSA Publications Ltd.Perspectives on gender and identity that emphasize variability of performance, local context and individual agency have displaced earlier paradigms.These are now perceived to have supported gender stereotypes and language ideologies by emphasizing gender difference and homogeneity within genders. In a secondary analysis of health and illness narratives we explore the interaction of class and gender in individuals' constructions of gendered identity. High social class men perform gender in particularly varied ways and we speculate that this variable repertoire, including the use of what was once termed `women's language', is linked to a capacity to maintain social distinction and authority. Men's performance of conventional masculinity is often threatened by both the experience of illness and being interviewed about personal experience. Lower social class women in particular demonstrate an intensification of a pre-existing informal family and support group culture, marking successful members by awarding them the accolade of being `lovely'.ESR
Induction of NF-ÎșB by the Akt/PKB kinase
AbstractThe serine/threonine kinase Akt (also known as protein kinase B, PKB) is activated by numerous growth-factor and immune receptors through lipid products of phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3-kinase. Akt can couple to pathways that regulate glucose metabolism or cell survival [1]. Akt can also regulate several transcription factors, including E2F, CREB, and the Forkhead family member Daf-16 [2â4]. Here, we show that Akt can regulate signaling pathways that lead to induction of the NF-ÎșB family of transcription factors in the Jurkat T-cell line. This induction occurs, at least in part, at the level of degradation of the NF-ÎșB inhibitor IÎșB, and is specific for NF-ÎșB, as other inducible transcription factors are not affected by Akt overexpression. Furthermore, the effect requires the kinase activity and pleckstrin homology (PH) domain of Akt. Also, Akt does not act alone to induce cytokine promoters and NF-ÎșB reporters, because signals from other pathways are required to observe the effect. These studies uncover a previously unappreciated connection between Akt and NF-ÎșB induction that could have implications for the control of T-cell growth and survival
Low-Energy Dynamics of Supersymmetric Solitons
In bosonic field theories the low-energy scattering of solitons that saturate
Bogomol'nyi-type bounds can be approximated as geodesic motion on the moduli
space of static solutions. In this paper we consider the analogous issue within
the context of supersymmetric field theories. We focus our study on a class of
non-linear sigma models in based on an arbitrary K\"ahler target
manifold and their associated soliton or ``lump" solutions. Using a collective
co-ordinate expansion, we construct an effective action which, upon
quantisation, describes the low-energy dynamics of the lumps. The effective
action is an supersymmetric quantum mechanics action with the target
manifold being the moduli space of static charge lump solutions of the
sigma model. The Hilbert space of states of the effective theory consists of
anti-holomorphic forms on the moduli space. The normalisable elements of the
dolbeault cohomology classes of the moduli space correspond to zero
energy bound states and we argue that such states correpond to bound states in
the full quantum field theory of the sigma model.Comment: 25 page
The Death Detectives
The death detectives is a series of blogs about death, photography and seeing the crime written in partnership with The Photographers' Gallery and Surviving Work
The geodesic approximation for lump dynamics and coercivity of the Hessian for harmonic maps
The most fruitful approach to studying low energy soliton dynamics in field
theories of Bogomol'nyi type is the geodesic approximation of Manton. In the
case of vortices and monopoles, Stuart has obtained rigorous estimates of the
errors in this approximation, and hence proved that it is valid in the low
speed regime. His method employs energy estimates which rely on a key
coercivity property of the Hessian of the energy functional of the theory under
consideration. In this paper we prove an analogous coercivity property for the
Hessian of the energy functional of a general sigma model with compact K\"ahler
domain and target. We go on to prove a continuity property for our result, and
show that, for the CP^1 model on S^2, the Hessian fails to be globally coercive
in the degree 1 sector. We present numerical evidence which suggests that the
Hessian is globally coercive in a certain equivariance class of the degree n
sector for n>1. We also prove that, within the geodesic approximation, a single
CP^1 lump moving on S^2 does not generically travel on a great circle.Comment: 29 pages, 1 figure; typos corrected, references added, expanded
discussion of the main function spac
Hsp27 regulates podocyte cytoskeletal changes in an in vitro model of podocyte process retraction
Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is characterized by structural changes in the actinârich foot processes of glomerular podocytes. We previously identified high concentrations of the small heat shock protein hsp27 within podocytes as well as increased glomerular accumulation and phosphorylation of hsp27 in puromycin aminonucleoside (PAN) âinduced experimental NS. Here we analyzed murine podocytes stably transfected with hsp27 sense, antisense, and vector control constructs using a newly developed in vitro PAN model system. Cell morphology and the microfilament structure of untreated sense and antisense transfectants were altered compared with controls. Vector cell survival, polymerized actin content, cell area, and hsp27 content increased after 1.25 ÎŒg/ml PAN treatment and decreased after 5.0 ÎŒg/ml treatment. In contrast, sense cells were unaffected by 1.25 ÎŒg/ml PAN treatment whereas antisense cells showed decreases or no changes in all parameters. Treatment of sense cells with 5.0 ÎŒ g/ml PAN resulted in increased cell survival and cell area whereas antisense cells underwent significant decreases in all parameters. Hsp27 provided dramatic protection against PANâinduced microfilament disruption in sense > vector > antisense cells. We conclude that hsp27 is able to regulate both the morphological and actin cytoskeletal response of podocytes in an in vitro model of podocyte injury.âSmoyer, W. E., Ransom, R. F. Hsp27 regulates podocyte cytoskeletal changes in an in vitro model of podocyte process retraction. FASEB J. 16, 315â326 (2002)Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154256/1/fsb2fj010681com.pd
Investigating the transparency of reporting in two-sample summary data Mendelian randomization studies using the MR-Base platform.
BACKGROUND
Two-sample Mendelian randomization (2SMR) is an increasingly popular epidemiological method that uses genetic variants as instruments for making causal inferences. Clear reporting of methods employed in such studies is important for evaluating their underlying quality. However, the quality of methodological reporting of 2SMR studies is currently unclear. We aimed to assess the reporting quality of studies that used MR-Base, one of the most popular platforms for implementing 2SMR analysis.
METHODS
We created a bespoke reporting checklist to evaluate reporting quality of 2SMR studies. We then searched Web of Science Core Collection, PsycInfo, MEDLINE, EMBASE and Google Scholar citations of the MR-Base descriptor paper to identify published MR studies that used MR-Base for any component of the MR analysis. Study screening and data extraction were performed by at least two independent reviewers.
RESULTS
In the primary analysis, 87 studies were included. Reporting quality was generally poor across studies, with a mean of 53% (SD = 14%) of items reported in each study. Many items required for evaluating the validity of key assumptions made in MR were poorly reported: only 44% of studies provided sufficient details for assessing if the genetic variant associates with the exposure ('relevance' assumption), 31% for assessing if there are any variant-outcome confounders ('independence' assumption), 89% for the assessing if the variant causes the outcome independently of the exposure ('exclusion restriction' assumption) and 32% for assumptions of falsification tests. We did not find evidence of a change in reporting quality over time or a difference in reporting quality between studies that used MR-Base and a random sample of MR studies that did not use this platform.
CONCLUSIONS
The quality of reporting of two-sample Mendelian randomization studies in our sample was generally poor. Journals and researchers should consider using the STROBE-MR guidelines to improve reporting quality
The acquisition of Sign Language: The impact of phonetic complexity on phonology
Research into the effect of phonetic complexity on phonological acquisition has a long history in spoken languages. This paper considers the effect of phonetics on phonological development in a signed language. We report on an experiment in which nonword-repetition methodology was adapted so as to examine in a systematic way how phonetic complexity in two phonological parameters of signed languages â handshape and movement â affects the perception and articulation of signs. Ninety-one Deaf children aged 3â11 acquiring British Sign Language (BSL) and 46 hearing nonsigners aged 6â11 repeated a set of 40 nonsense signs. For Deaf children, repetition accuracy improved with age, correlated with wider BSL abilities, and was lowest for signs that were phonetically complex. Repetition accuracy was correlated with fine motor skills for the youngest children. Despite their lower repetition accuracy, the hearing group were similarly affected by phonetic complexity, suggesting that common visual and motoric factors are at play when processing linguistic information in the visuo-gestural modality
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