Post-Millennial Queer Sensibility: Collaborative Authorship as Disidentification in Queer Intertextual Commodities

This dissertation is examining LGBTQ+ audiences and creatives collaborating in the creation of new media texts like web shows, podcasts, and video games. The study focuses on three main objects or media texts: Carmilla (web series), Welcome to Night Vale (podcast), and Undertale (video game). These texts are transmedia objects or intertextual commodities. I argue that by using queer gestures of collaborative authorship that reaches out to the audience for canonical contribution create an emerging queer production culture that disidentifies with capitalism even as it negotiates capitalistic structures. The post-millennial queer sensibility is a constellation of aesthetics, self-representation, alternative financing, and interactivity that prioritizes community, trust, and authenticity using new technologies for co-creation. Within my study, there are four key tactics or queer gestures being explored: remediation, radical ambiguity and multi-forms as queer aesthetics, audience self-representation, alternative financing like micropatronage & licensed fan-made merchandise, and interactivity as performance. The goal of this project is to better understand the changing conceptions of authorship/ownership, canon/fanon (official text/fan created extensions), and community/capitalism in queer subcultures as an indicator of the potential change in more mainstream cultural attitudes. The project takes into consideration a variety of intersecting identities including gender, race, class, and of course sexual orientation in its analysis. By examining the legal discourse around collaborative authorship, the real-life production practices, and audience-creator interactions and attitudes, this study provides insight into how media creatives work with audiences to co-create self-representative media, the motivations, and rewards for creative, audiences, and owners. This study aims to contribute towards a fuller understanding of queer production cultures and audience reception of these media texts, of which there is relatively little academic information. Specifically, the study mines for insights into the changing attitudes towards authorship, ownership, and collaboration within queer indie media projects, especially as these objects are relying on the self-representation of both audiences and creatives in the formation of the text

Report of optical ground truth measurements for 5 August 1973, test site number 548532, in support of the Skylab multispectral scanner

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

De episcopis Hispaniarum : agents of continuity in the long fifth century

En année 408 après J.-C., l’Espagne, malgré sa position péninsulaire à la fin de l’Europe, était intégrée à une culture pan-Méditerranéenne qui s’étendait du Portugal jusqu’à la Syrie. Trois décennies n’étaient pas encore passées depuis l’instauration du Christianisme comme religion de l’état romain et l’Eglise Catholique était en pleine croissance. L’année suivante, l’Espagne entra sur une voie de transformation irrémédiable alors que les païens, avec leurs langues barbares Germaniques franchirent les Pyrénées portant la guerre et la misère aux Hispano-Romains et fondant leurs royaumes là où auparavant gouvernait l’état romain. Dans le désarroi du Ve siècle, les évêques Catholiques luttèrent pour imposer leur dominance dans les communautés et dans les coeurs des pieux. À la lumière des progrès dans l’archéologie et la qualité des éditions critiques de nos sources littéraires est venu le moment d’identifier les évêques ibériques avec une attention aux conditions régionales. Ce mémoire caractérise les évêques de l’Espagne et du Portugal et démontre les épreuves auxquelles ils firent face comme intermédiaires entre indigènes et envahisseurs, comme évangélistes parmi les païens, persécuteurs des apostates et gardiens de la romanitas à la fin du monde Antique.In Anno Domini 408, Spain, despite its peninsular location at the ends of Europe, was part of a pan-Mediterranean culture which spread from Portugal to Syria. Christianity had been adopted a mere 28 years prior and the Catholic Church was growing across the Roman world. The following year, Spain entered on a course of irreversible transformation as pagan Germanic speaking 'barbarians' crossed the Pyrenees bringing war and strife to the Hispano-Romans and establishing new kingdoms where the Roman state had once governed. In the turmoil of the fifth century, Catholic bishops laboured to assert their dominance over their communities and over the hearts of their flock. In light of advances in archaeology and quality critical editions of the literary sources, the time has come to identify the traits of the Iberian bishops with attention to regional variation. This thesis characterises the bishops of Spain and Portugal and demonstrates the challenges they faced as intermediaries between natives and newcomers, as proselytizers of pagans, persecutors of heretics and retainers of romanitas at the end of the Antique world

Modelling and validating three dimensional human normal cervix and cervical cancer tissues in vitro

Objective: The use of three dimensional in vitro systems in cancer research is a promising path for developing effective anticancer therapies. The aim of this study was to engineer a functional 3-D in vitro model of normal and cancerous cervical tissue. Methods: Normal epithelial and immortalized cervical epithelial carcinoma cell lines were used to construct 3-D artificial normal cervical and cervical cancerous tissues. De-epidermised dermis (DED) was used as a scaffold for both models. Morphological analyses were conducted by using haematoxylin and eosin staining and characteristics of the models were studied by analysing the expression of different structural cytokeratins and differential protein marker Mad1 using immunohistochemical technique. Results: Haematoxylin and eosin staining results showed that normal cervical tissue had multi epithelial layers while cancerous cervical tissue showed dysplastic changes. Immunohistochemistry staining results revealed that for normal cervix model cytokeratin 10 was expressed in the upper stratified layer of epithelium while cytokeratin 5 was expressed mainly in the middle and basal layer. Cytokeratin 19 was weakly expressed in a few basal cells. Cervical cancer model showed cytokeratin 19 expression in different epithelial layers and weak or no expression for cytokeratin 5 and cytokeratin 10. Mad1 expression was detected in some suprabasal cells. Conclusions: The 3-D in vitro models showed stratified epithelial layers and expressed the same types and patterns of differentiation marker proteins as seen in corresponding in vivo tissue in either normal cervical or cervical cancerous tissue. Findings imply that they can serve as functional normal and cervical cancer models

Modelling and validating three-dimensional human breast and cancerous human breast tissues in vitro

In this study three dimensional (3-D) in vitro models of normal breast and breast cancer tissues were developed to mimic closely the in vivo tissue microenvironment and therefore providing reliable models for in vitro studies as well as testing of novel cancer therapies. Normal and cancerous human breast cell lines were used to construct 3-D artificial tissues, where de-epidermalised dermis (DED) was used as a scaffold for both models. Morphological analyses were conducted using haematoxylin and eosin staining. Biomarkers including keratin 5 and 19 as well as α smooth muscle actin and mucin 1 were used to confirm and validate the reliability of the proposed models using immunohistochemical techniques. Findings suggest that the 3-D in vitro models described in this work can serve as functional models of both human normal and cancerous breast tissues. Multiple structures similar to ducts and lobules of human breast in vivo were observed in 3-D in vitro models by the use of H&E, some breast cancer colonies seen in the cancerous 3-D model were similar to the ducto-lobular structures observed in normal 3-D model of the breast but the former cells were more loosely connected, irregular and largely disorganized. The established 3-D in vitro model of normal breast showed the development of ducto-lobular structures composed of an inner cell layer which was stained positive with α mucin 1 antibody, a biomarker that is characteristic for luminal cells; and also an outer basal layer of cells that was stained positive for α smooth muscle actin, a biomarker of myoepithelial cells.. Keratin staining in 3-D in vitro models also resembled the pattern observed in vivo where keratin 5 was detected in both luminal and myoepithelial cells of normal breast model (NTERT cells), whereas keratin 19 was present in breast cancer model (C2321 cells). These 3-D models successfully recapitulate both normal and pathological tissue architecture of breast tissue and has the potential for various applications in the evaluation of breast cancer progression and treatment

On the Connection Between Momentum Cutoff and Operator Cutoff Regularizations

Operator cutoff regularization based on the original Schwinger's proper-time formalism is examined. By constructing a regulating smearing function for the proper-time integration, we show how this regularization scheme simulates the usual momentum cutoff prescription yet preserves gauge symmetry even in the presence of the cutoff scales. Similarity between the operator cutoff regularization and the method of higher (covariant) derivatives is also observed. The invariant nature of the operator cutoff regularization makes it a promising tool for exploring the renormalization group flow of gauge theories in the spirit of Wilson-Kadanoff blocking transformation.Comment: 28 pages in plain TeX, no figures. revised and expande

Dimensional structural constants from chiral and conformal bosonization of QCD

We derive the dimensional non-perturbative part of the QCD effective action for scalar and pseudoscalar meson fields by means of chiral and conformal bosonization. The related structural coupling constants L_5 and L_8 of the chiral lagrangian are estimated using general relations which are valid in a variety of chiral bosonization models without explicit reference to model parameters. The asymptotics for large scalar fields in QCD is elaborated, and model-independent constraints on dimensional coupling constants of the effective meson lagrangian are evaluated. We determine also the interaction between scalar quarkonium and the gluon density and obtain the scalar glueball-quarkonium potential.Comment: 21 pages, LaTe

Application of the Worldline Path Integral Method to the Calculation of Inverse Mass Expansions

Higher order coefficients of the inverse mass expansion of one-loop effective actions are obtained from a one-dimensional path integral representation. For the case of a massive scalar loop in the background of both a scalar potential and a (non Abelian) gauge field explicit results to $O(T^5)$ in the proper time parameter are presented.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX. Talk given at 5th International Workshop on Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence for High Energy and Nuclear Physics (AIHENP96), Lausanne (Switzerland), 2-6 September 199

Molecular biogeography and host relations of a parasitoid fly

© 2019 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Successful geographic range expansion by parasites and parasitoids may also require host range expansion. Thus, the evolutionary advantages of host specialization may trade off against the ability to exploit new host species encountered in new geographic regions. Here, we use molecular techniques and confirmed host records to examine biogeography, population divergence, and host flexibility of the parasitoid fly, Ormia ochracea (Bigot). Gravid females of this fly find their cricket hosts acoustically by eavesdropping on male cricket calling songs; these songs vary greatly among the known host species of crickets. Using both nuclear and mitochondrial genetic markers, we (a) describe the geographical distribution and subdivision of genetic variation in O. ochracea from across the continental United States, the Mexican states of Sonora and Oaxaca, and populations introduced to Hawaii; (b) demonstrate that the distribution of genetic variation among fly populations is consistent with a single widespread species with regional host specialization, rather than locally differentiated cryptic species; (c) identify the more-probable source populations for the flies introduced to the Hawaiian islands; (d) examine genetic variation and substructure within Hawaii; (e) show that among-population geographic, genetic, and host song distances are all correlated; and (f) discuss specialization and lability in host-finding behavior in light of the diversity of cricket songs serving as host cues in different geographically separate populations

The Intrinsic Dimensionality of Attractiveness: A Study in Face Profiles

The study of human attractiveness with pattern analysis techniques is an emerging research field. One still largely unresolved problem is which are the facial features relevant to attractiveness, how they combine together, and the number of independent parameters required for describing and identifying harmonious faces. In this paper, we present a first study about this problem, applied to face profiles. First, according to several empirical results, we hypothesize the existence of two well separated manifolds of attractive and unattractive face profiles. Then, we analyze with manifold learning techniques their intrinsic dimensionality. Finally, we show that the profile data can be reduced, with various techniques, to the intrinsic dimensions, largely without loosing their ability to discriminate between attractive and unattractive face