Tissue-Specific Effects of Loss of Estrogen during Menopause and Aging

The roles of estrogens have been best studied in the breast, breast cancers, and in the female reproductive tract. However, estrogens have important functions in almost every tissue in the body. Recent clinical trials such as the Women’s Health Initiative have highlighted both the importance of estrogens and how little we know about the molecular mechanism of estrogens in these other tissues. In this review, we illustrate the diverse functions of estrogens in the bone, adipose tissue, skin, hair, brain, skeletal muscle and cardiovascular system, and how the loss of estrogens during aging affects these tissues. Early transcriptional targets of estrogen are reviewed in each tissue. We also describe the tissue-specific effects of selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs) used for the treatment of breast cancers and postmenopausal symptoms

New Reading

Review of three publications including Ill Fares the Land by Dan P. Van Gorder, 1966

The Effects of Limb Dominance on Cross-Education in a Four Week Resistance Training Program

Cross-education is known as the phenomenon of strength transfer from the trained side of the body to the untrained side of the body by unilateral resistance training. Research has shown that limb dominance has an effect on the amount of strength that is gained on the untrained side. Studies have found that there is a greater cross over effect in strength from the dominant side of the body to the non-dominant side of the body than vice versa. The present study examined this effect by taking 12 college females and splitting them into three groups: dominant training, non-dominant training, and control group. The hypothesis was that the dominant training group would have a greater increase in peak grip strength in the untrained, non-dominant arm than the arm of the untrained, dominant group of the non-dominant training group. The dominant training group only trained their dominant arm with a hand dynamometer, while the non-dominant training group only trained their non-dominant arm with the same hand dynamometer. Both groups went through a 4-week, 13 sessions of grip strength training on the handy dynamometer. They performed 3 sets of 6 maximal squeezes with a 2-minute rest in between sets. Pre-and post-tests were taken of maximum grip strength squeeze. There was no significance difference in peak grip strength between the untrained arms of both groups. Also, there was no significance difference in peak grip strength between the trained arms of both groups however there was a trend in data in the untrained arm of the dominant training group showing a slight increase in strength from baseline measurements. These findings do not directly support the hypothesis however, if the number of subjects\u27 value was greater, the trend in data in the dominant training group might have found significant effect from limb dominance

After Jacqueline Rose, What Is Left? The Play of Identity and Representation in Russell Hoban’s Turtle Diary

The paper addresses a problem many readers have with Jacqueline Rose's The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children's Fiction: that, while Rose does not mean writing for children should stop, she leaves little indication as to how it and the work around it might actually proceed. Russell Hoban's adult novel Turtle Diary is read as a response to Rose. Through its children's author protagonist, Hoban demonstrates that, while impossibility is intrinsic to relations with the Other, its privileging as a critical concern impairs a capacity to respond to the Other as a subject of empathy and ethics.   DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2012.000