Memetic moments : the speed of twitter memes

This paper examines how speed shapes internet culture. To do so, it analyses ‘memetic moments’ on Twitter, short-lived and rapidly circulated memes that quickly reach saturation. The paper examines two ‘memetic moments’ on Twitter in 2018 and 2019 to assess how they develop over time. Each case study comprises a week’s worth of relevant tweets that were analysed for temporal patterns. We analyse these ‘memetic moments’ through Lefebvre’s (2004) work on rhythmanalysis, arguing that the temporal patterns of memes on Twitter can be understood through his concepts of repetition, presence and dialogue. While seemingly trivial, memetic moments underscore the didactic relationship between social media and news media while also providing a way to approach complex social issues

Reddit, The Manosphere and The Male Complaint

This thesis examines the connective tissue that binds individuals together in the 'manosphere' - a collective of online platforms and forums devoted to men's interests, life philosophies and anti-feminist ideology. Members of the manosphere have been involved in misogynistic and violent harassment campaigns and attacks, including several terrorist incidents. Motivated by concerns over this violence, alongside interest in growing debate about masculinity in modern society and politics, this thesis seeks to understand how the manosphere arose, why men participate, and what it provides for individuals. Using a combination of large-scale data analysis alongside in-depth qualitative readings of content, I study three manosphere communities on the social news and networking site Reddit. Inspired by Lauren Berlant's ground-breaking book The Female Complaint, I identify the manosphere as a mass-cultural intimate public - a space characterised by a belief that individuals already share a worldview, emotional knowledge and common historical experience. This intimate public is situated within and influenced by the network society, a post-Fordist economic structure in which social functions and processes are organised primarily around networks. The manosphere enacts a belief that men's lives are not just their own, but an experience shared by other men. Individuals bind over an attachment to white heteronormative ideals of love and a complaint about the failures of said love, alongside men's broader position in society - The Male Complaint. While not necessarily rational or well founded, this complaint provides an affective pull for men, binding them together through a collective identity as injured subjects. Drawing on Wendy Brown's analysis of ressentiment and nihilism, alongside Berlant's notion of Cruel Optimism, the thesis then examines the consequences of this complaint for participants and society more broadly. Specifically, I conduct the first usage of social network analysis (SNA) on the manosphere on Reddit to explore the structure of community within and whether it achieves the promises made by the network society. Through charting the manosphere as an affective space of attachment and identification, this thesis provides a unique entry point into the space. The thesis chronicles it not as a new aberration, but instead part of an ongoing historical current. This provides a strong basis through which to understand the connective tissue that attaches men to the manosphere, the social and economic structures that have led to its rise, and the nature of the misogyny within

Pathway Signature and Cellular Differentiation in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common kidney cancer. The purpose of this study is to define a biological pathway signature and a cellular differentiation program in ccRCC. METHODOLOGY: We performed gene expression profiling of early-stage ccRCC and patient-matched normal renal tissue using Affymetrix HG-U133a and HG-U133b GeneChips combined with a comprehensive bioinformatic analyses, including pathway analysis. The results were validated by real time PCR and IHC on two independent sample sets. Cellular differentiation experiments were performed on ccRCC cell lines and their matched normal renal epithelial cells, in differentiation media, to determine their mesenchymal differentiation potential. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We identified a unique pathway signature with three major biological alterations-loss of normal renal function, down-regulated metabolism, and immune activation-which revealed an adipogenic gene expression signature linked to the hallmark lipid-laden clear cell morphology of ccRCC. Culturing normal renal and ccRCC cells in differentiation media showed that only ccRCC cells were induced to undergo adipogenic and, surprisingly, osteogenic differentiation. A gene expression signature consistent with epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) was identified for ccRCC. We revealed significant down-regulation of four developmental transcription factors (GATA3, TFCP2L1, TFAP2B, DMRT2) that are important for normal renal development. CONCLUSIONS: ccRCC is characterized by a lack of epithelial differentiation, mesenchymal/adipogenic transdifferentiation, and pluripotent mesenchymal stem cell-like differentiation capacity in vitro. We suggest that down-regulation of developmental transcription factors may mediate the aberrant differentiation in ccRCC. We propose a model in which normal renal epithelial cells undergo dedifferentiation, EMT, and adipogenic transdifferentiation, resulting in ccRCC. Because ccRCC cells grown in adipogenic media regain the characteristic ccRCC phenotype, we have identified a new in vitro ccRCC cell model more resembling ccRCC tumor morphology

Tyrosine kinase inhibitor independent gene expression signature in CML offers new targets for LSPC eradication therapy

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) have revolutionised the treatment of CML. However, TKI do not eliminate the leukaemia stem cells (LSC), which can re-initiate the disease. Thus, finding new therapeutic targets in CML LSC is key to finding a curative treatment. Using microarray datasets, we defined a list of 227 genes that were differentially expressed in CML LSC compared to the healthy controls but were not affected by TKI in vitro. Two of them, CD33 and PPIF, are targeted by gemtuzumab–ozogamicin and cyclosporin A, respectively. We treated CML and the control CD34+ cells with either drug with or without imatinib to investigate the therapeutic potential of the TKI-independent gene expression programme. Cyclosporine A, in combination with imatinib, reduced the number of CML CFC compared with non-CML controls, but only at supra-therapeutic concentrations. Gemtuzumab–ozogamicin showed an EC50 of 146 ng/mL, below the plasma peak concentration of 630 ng/mL observed in the AML patients and below the EC50 of 3247 ng/mL observed in the non-CML cells. Interestingly, gemtuzumab–ozogamicin seems to promote cell cycle progression in CML CD34+ cells and demonstrated activation of the RUNX1 pathway in an RNAseq experiment. This suggests that targeting the TKI-independent genes in CML LSC could be exploited for the development of new therapies in CML

Re-programming immunosurveillance in persistent non-infectious ocular inflammation

Ocular function depends on a high level of anatomical integrity. This is threatened by inflammation, which alters the local tissue over short and long time-scales. Uveitis due to autoimmune disease, especially when it involves the retina, leads to persistent changes in how the eye interacts with the immune system. The normal pattern of immune surveillance, which for immune privileged tissues is limited, is re-programmed. Many cell types, that are not usually present in the eye, become detectable. There are changes in the tissue homeostasis and integrity. In both human disease and mouse models, in the most extreme cases, immunopathological findings consistent with development of ectopic lymphoid-like structures and disrupted angiogenesis accompany severely impaired eye function. Understanding how the ocular environment is shaped by persistent inflammation is crucial to developing novel approaches to treatment

Re-programming immunosurveillance in persistent non-infectious ocular inflammation

Ocular function depends on a high level of anatomical integrity. This is threatened by inflammation, which alters the local tissue over short and long time-scales. Uveitis due to autoimmune disease, especially when it involves the retina, leads to persistent changes in how the eye interacts with the immune system. The normal pattern of immune surveillance, which for immune privileged tissues is limited, is re-programmed. Many cell types, that are not usually present in the eye, become detectable. There are changes in the tissue homeostasis and integrity. In both human disease and mouse models, in the most extreme cases, immunopathological findings consistent with development of ectopic lymphoid-like structures and disrupted angiogenesis accompany severely impaired eye function. Understanding how the ocular environment is shaped by persistent inflammation is crucial to developing novel approaches to treatment

Longitudinal dynamics of clonal hematopoiesis identifies gene-specific fitness effects

Clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) increases rapidly in prevalence beyond age 60 and has been associated with increased risk for malignancy, heart disease and ischemic stroke. CHIP is driven by somatic mutations in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). Because mutations in HSPCs often drive leukemia, we hypothesized that HSPC fitness substantially contributes to transformation from CHIP to leukemia. HSPC fitness is defined as the proliferative advantage over cells carrying no or only neutral mutations. If mutations in different genes lead to distinct fitness advantages, this could enable patient stratification. We quantified the fitness effects of mutations over 12 years in older age using longitudinal sequencing and developed a filtering method that considers individual mutational context alongside mutation co-occurrence to quantify the growth potential of variants within individuals. We found that gene-specific fitness differences can outweigh inter-individual variation and, therefore, could form the basis for personalized clinical management

The accelerated scaling attractor solution of the interacting agegraphic dark energy in Brans-Dicke theory

We investigate the interacting agegraphic dark energy in Brans-Dicke theory and introduce a new series general forms of dark sector coupling. As examples, we select three cases involving a linear interaction form (Model I) and two nonlinear interaction form (Model II and Model III). Our conclusions show that the accelerated scaling attractor solutions do exist in these models. We also find that these interacting agegraphic dark energy modes are consistent with the observational data. The difference in these models is that nonlinear interaction forms give more approached evolution to the standard $\Lambda$CDM model than the linear one. Our work implies that the nonlinear interaction forms should be payed more attention.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, accepted in Eur. Phys. J.