Mother of the house of no shame: The queer economy of Rupaul’s Drag Race

In this dissertation, I consider the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race and the vast web of digital and broadcast media productions it has spawned, as a means to explore the changing cultural, technological, and economic conditions that have allowed for the emergence of a widespread queer media economy in which it is currently positioned as a central touchstone and engine of production and productivity. I seek to understand the history and evolution of the changing economics and production practices of the reality television genre that led to the emergence of (and have been deployed, tweaked, and recirculated by) the semi-satirical Drag Race; to better understand its position, as a “broadcast” cable television show, in a wider network of “new” and “spreadable” social media enterprises flowing into and out of it; to analyze the artistic, aesthetic, ethical and ascetic technologies of the self practiced by the contestants on the show, alongside a genealogical account of their origins in queer spaces and subcultures; and to explore the show’s position in a wider television landscape, asking how it is related to other programs of the current conjuncture, its technologization and commodification of a queer mode of belonging, and its relationships to virtual and material queer spaces as a globalized cultural technology. In this project, I hope to explicate a governmentality by which we learn to govern ourselves as sexual and gendered subjects, and which circuitously feeds into and off of the culture industries and post-industrial “creative” economic production more generally. By thinking through and theorizing a political economy of drag through its interconnections with the popular media that circulates particular variations of it, I am seeking to explore the ways that the technologies of the self - the means by which we learn to fashion and govern ourselves - are an essential part of a genealogy of a mode of production that defines the cultural, political, economic, and personal practices that define our current conjuncture

Identification of Markers that Distinguish Monocyte-Derived Fibrocytes from Monocytes, Macrophages, and Fibroblasts

The processes that drive fibrotic diseases are complex and include an influx of peripheral blood monocytes that can differentiate into fibroblast-like cells called fibrocytes. Monocytes can also differentiate into other cell types, such as tissue macrophages. The ability to discriminate between monocytes, macrophages, fibrocytes, and fibroblasts in fibrotic lesions could be beneficial in identifying therapies that target either stromal fibroblasts or fibrocytes. and in sections from human lung. We found that markers such as CD34, CD68, and collagen do not effectively discriminate between the four cell types. In addition, IL-4, IL-12, IL-13, IFN-γ, and SAP differentially regulate the expression of CD32, CD163, CD172a, and CD206 on both macrophages and fibrocytes. Finally, CD49c (α3 integrin) expression identifies a subset of fibrocytes, and this subset increases with time in culture.These results suggest that discrimination of monocytes, macrophages, fibrocytes, and fibroblasts in fibrotic lesions is possible, and this may allow for an assessment of fibrocytes in fibrotic diseases

Expanding the medicinal chemistry synthetic toolbox

The key objectives of medicinal chemistry are to efficiently design and synthesize bioactive compounds that have the potential to become safe and efficacious drugs. Most medicinal chemistry programmes rely on screening compound collections populated by a range of molecules derived from a set of known and robust chemistry reactions. Analysis of the role of synthetic organic chemistry in subsequent hit and lead optimization efforts suggests that only a few reactions dominate. Thus, the uptake of new synthetic methodologies in drug discovery is limited. Starting from the known limitations of reaction parameters, synthesis design tools, synthetic strategies and innovative chemistries, here we highlight opportunities for the expansion of the medicinal chemists’ synthetic toolbox. More intense crosstalk between synthetic and medicinal chemists in industry and academia should enable enhanced impact of new methodologies in future drug discovery. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved