Effects of Vasopressin on Sweat Rate and Composition in Patients with Diabetes Insipidus and Normal Controls

Baseline sweat rate and concentrations of sodium, chloride, and potassium, and the effect of exogenous vasopressin on these parameters were determined in 13 patients with acquired diabetes insipidus (ADI), four patients with nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI), three subjects with cystic fibrosis, and age- and sex-matched controls. The four patients with NDI did not differ from the controls with respect to baseline sweat rate, but baseline sodium, chloride, and potassium concentrations were significantly elevated. In addition, parenteral vasopressin caused a significant decrease in sweat rate (p < .01) while the electrolyte concentrations remained unchanged. This indicates that vasopressin may also have an effect on electrolyte reabsorption in NDI patients. Alternatively, the amount of sweat precursor fluid may have been reduced. The patients with ADI did not differ from the controls with respect to baseline data, and parenteral vasopressin had no effect on their sweat rate and composition. Likewise, vasopressin had no effect in controls or patients with cystic fibrosis. We conclude that, except in patients with NDI, vasopressin does not play a significant role in the regulation of human eccrine sweating. Sweat gland physiology appears to be different in patients with NDI and in them vasopressin may have a significant effect on sweat

Review Essay: Biopolitics 2.0 – Reclaiming the Power of Life in the Anthropocene

Biopolitics was once the preserve of critical Foucauldian-influenced theorists. This is no longer the case. The rise of new materialisms, networked and object-oriented ontologies and demands for the ‘renaturalization of politics’ (Grosz, 2011; Sharp, 2011) have turned the political into the biopolitical in much of radical contemporary political theory. Here, the biopolitical is often in tension with the Foucauldian discourses of the last few decades, affirming alternative possibilities rather than merely critiquing regimes of power (Malabou, 2008; Kirby, 2011; Taussig, 2018). One factor in this shift has been the impact of anthropogenic climate change and global warming on the contemporary political imagination, increasingly refracted through conceptualizations of the Anthropocene (Tsing, 2015; Cohen et al, 2016; Chandler, 2018). A second factor has been that the life sciences no longer appear to support understandings of deterministic differences but rather to cast evolution in sympoietic and entangled ways, making biology appear as no longer essentialising but as increasingly importable into politics, in ways which disrupt modernist or liberal conceptions of the culture/nature divide (Haraway, 2016). Two important but very different engagements, which reflect these affirmative readings of biopolitics, are reviewed here, from the fields of postcolonial literature and gender and race in international politics

Lymphocyte Subpopulation Number and Function in Infancy

Normal values for percentages of lymphocyte subpopulations and functional responses to mitogen stimulation in infancy are not well established. In the present study, lymphocyte subpopulations were examined in umbilical cord blood samples and in peripheral blood samples drawn before 7 and 24 months of age (mean age 10.4 months) from a healthy population of infants born in Tucson, Arizona. Results indicate significant increases occurred from birth to later infancy in the percentages of total T cells (CD3), T-cell subsets (CD4, CD8) and B cells (CD20). The CD4/CD8 ratio and the functional responses to ConA and PWM mitogens significantly decreased from birth to later infancy. PHA responsiveness did not show a significant change. Results from cross-sectional analyses (n=271) were supported in a smaller longitudinal subset (n=37). There were no detectable ethnic- or gender-related differences in cord blood or samples obtained in later infancy. The normal values established in this study will be useful in studies of immune-system maturation and in the clinical evaluation of newborns, infants, and toddlers suspected of either acquired or congenital immune-deficiency states

'An Apotheosis of Well-Being': Durkheim on austerity and double-dip recessions

This article is an attempt to contribute a view on the economic crisis from classical sociology, a voice often missing from the sociological response to the crisis. The work of Émile Durkheim provides a unique perspective here centred on morality and inequality produced in a historical context akin to our neoliberal times. It is argued there are four key points to take from Durkheim’s work. Firstly, that the initial credit crunch can be more fully understood with reference to the economic anomie which Durkheim sees as ‘chronic’ in a time of marketization. Secondly, that this creates an antagonistic relationship between a supposedly self-dependent rich and lazy poor. Thirdly, this conception of self-dependency and individual initiative makes any attempt to regulate the economy akin to sacrilege. Finally, the state is unwilling to intervene due to the emergence of ‘pseudo-democracies’. Therefore, Durkheim’s theory accounts for the initial crisis, austerity and double-dip recessions in a sociological framework. The article concludes by returning to the centrality of morality to the crisis for Durkheim and highlighting the omission of this in contemporary debates

Counterparts: Clothing, value and the sites of otherness in Panapompom ethnographic encounters

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Anthropological Forum, 18(1), 17-35, 2008 [copyright Taylor & Francis], available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00664670701858927.Panapompom people living in the western Louisiade Archipelago of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, see their clothes as indices of their perceived poverty. ‘Development’ as a valued form of social life appears as images that attach only loosely to the people employing them. They nevertheless hold Panapompom people to account as subjects to a voice and gaze that is located in the imagery they strive to present: their clothes. This predicament strains anthropological approaches to the study of Melanesia that subsist on strict alterity, because native self‐judgments are located ‘at home’ for the ethnographer. In this article, I develop the notion of the counterpart as a means to explore these forms of postcolonial oppression and their implications for the ethnographic encounter

Raf kinase activation of adenylyl cyclases: isoform-selective regulation

ABSTRACT Adenylyl cyclases (AC), a family of enzymes that catalyze the synthesis of cyclic AMP, are critical regulators of cellular functions. The activity of adenylyl cyclase is stimulated by a range of hormone receptors, primarily via interactions with G-proteins; however, recently we identified an alternate mechanism by which growth factors sensitize adenylyl cyclase activation. We suggested that this mechanism might involve a Raf kinasemediated serine phosphorylation of adenylyl cyclase. However, the direct involvement of a specific form of Raf kinase is yet to be demonstrated. Furthermore, whether this mechanism is generalized to other isoforms of adenylyl cyclase is unknown. In human embryonic kidney 293 cells, we now demonstrate that in reconstitution studies, c-Raf kinase can mediate phosphorylation of AC VI. Furthermore, AC VI coimmunoprecipitates with c-Raf. Raf kinase-dependent regulation of adenylyl cyclase VI is dependent on the integrity of Ser750 in the fourth intracellular loop of the enzyme and Ser603/Ser608 in the C1b region of the molecule. To examine how generalized this effect is, we studied representative isoforms of the major subfamilies of adenylyl cyclase viz., AC I, AC II, and AC V. Raf kinase-dependent sensitization/ phosphorylation of adenylyl cyclases is common to AC VI, AC V, and AC II isoforms but not AC I. In aggregate, these studies indicate that Raf kinase associates with adenylyl cyclases. Furthermore, Raf kinase regulation of adenylyl cyclase is isoform-selective. These functional interactions (as well as the physical association) between adenylyl cyclases and Raf kinases suggest an important but previously unrecognized interaction between these two key regulatory enzymes

New evidence on Allyn Young's style and influence as a teacher

This paper publishes the hitherto unpublished correspondence between Allyn Abbott Young's biographer Charles Blitch and 17 of Young's former students or associates. Together with related biographical and archival material, the paper shows the way in which this adds to our knowledge of Young's considerable influence as a teacher upon some of the twentieth century's greatest economists. The correspondents are as follows: James W Angell, Colin Clark, Arthur H Cole, Lauchlin Currie, Melvin G de Chazeau, Eleanor Lansing Dulles, Howard S Ellis, Frank W Fetter, Earl J Hamilton, Seymour S Harris, Richard S Howey, Nicholas Kaldor, Melvin M Knight, Bertil Ohlin, Geoffrey Shepherd, Overton H Taylor, and Gilbert Walker

An upgrade of the magnetic diagnostic system of the DIII-D tokamak for non-axisymmetric measurements

The DIII-D tokamak magnetic diagnostic system [E. J. Strait, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 77, 023502 (2006)] has been upgraded to significantly expand the measurement of the plasma response to intrinsic and applied non-axisymmetric "3D" fields. The placement and design of 101 additional sensors allow resolution of toroidal mode numbers 1 ≤ n ≤ 3, and poloidal wavelengths smaller than MARS-F, IPEC, and VMEC magnetohydrodynamic model predictions. Small 3D perturbations, relative to the equilibrium field (10(-5) < δB/B0 < 10(-4)), require sub-millimeter fabrication and installation tolerances. This high precision is achieved using electrical discharge machined components, and alignment techniques employing rotary laser levels and a coordinate measurement machine. A 16-bit data acquisition system is used in conjunction with analog signal-processing to recover non-axisymmetric perturbations. Co-located radial and poloidal field measurements allow up to 14.2 cm spatial resolution of poloidal structures (plasma poloidal circumference is ~500 cm). The function of the new system is verified by comparing the rotating tearing mode structure, measured by 14 BP fluctuation sensors, with that measured by the upgraded B(R) saddle loop sensors after the mode locks to the vessel wall. The result is a nearly identical 2/1 helical eigenstructure in both cases.S. R. Haskey wishes to thank AINSE Ltd. for providing financial assistance