The Philadelphia Syndrome, or an insurmountable cultural trauma: Outdated mainstream visual representations of HIV in times of undetectability

In 1981, the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in the US. Almost forty years later, the biomedical situation of people living with HIV (PLWH) in Western countries has significantly improved, and today, PLWH have a normal lifespan with few physical comorbidities. Nevertheless, current media representations of HIV do not seem to have moved past the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s. The film Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Deeme in 1993, has had a huge cultural impact in how society perceives HIV, and many contemporary films and fiction series portraying HIV still represent the condition in the same narrative terms. This analysis sets out to define what could be referred to as the Philadelphia Syndrome, a concept intended to describe the outdated, nostalgic representations of HIV in mainstream cultural productions in the last decade, a period marked in biomedical terms by the success of antiretroviral drugs, chronification, the importance of undetectability, and the increasingly widespread use of the prophylaxis pre-exposition (PrEP). By analyzing ten mainstream blockbuster films and fiction series produced from 2013 to 2022, this study examines the main characteristics of the Philadelphia Syndrome: nostalgia and melodramatic use of the 1980s and 1990s, high stigmatization of gay sexualities, and a neglect of women with HIV

Interactive documentaries and health: combating HIV-related stigma and cultural trauma

Interactive documentaries have been growing in number and importance on the international scene in numerous fields and markets. Interactive documentaries entered the field of health about a decade ago, and since then they have proven to be a worthwhile tool for exploring various health issues, such as living with HIV. More recently, experts and academics have started to explore interactive documentaries dealing with a newly emerging topic: stigma. Stigma can be defined as the establishment of a 'mark' or characteristic identified as deviant and rejected by society. Stigma has negative consequences in every aspect of a person's life. When it comes to health, people with stigmatised conditions have the worst outcomes, a problem ultimately related to their own power and agency. There are many sources of stigma, but the structural sources are the least studied and have the biggest impact on health. The media and culture are two of these structural sources of stigmatization, and cultural trauma has been suggested as one of its mediators. This study seeks to examine interactive documentaries as a tool for raising awareness of the impact of HIV-related stigma and cultural trauma. To this end, it analyses two interactive documentaries, Vertical/Horizontal and The Graying of AIDS, focusing on the device, narrative, and textual elements used by these documentaries to deal with the impact of stigma in health, and elaborating on how these filmic pieces represent people living with stigma and whether that representation challenges or reinforces stigmatization

Spanish Civil war in the construction of Neorealist Greek Cinema: an introductory study of Nikos Koundouros' To Potami

The film director Nikos Koundouros is one of the most important representatives of the Neorealist Cinema that bloomed after the end of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). This film movement was highly influenced by another conflict that took place in the previous decade: the Spanish Civil War. This brief research overview will examine, through pictorial and semiotic analyses, the film To Potami/The River by Nikos Koundouros in order to discover the extent to which this film-maker was influenced by the Spanish conflict. Therefore, this project will shed light on the study of the common historical grounds of Greece and Spain and, at the same time, on the emergent field of Southern Europe cultural studies

The Philadelphia Syndrome, or an insurmountable cultural trauma: Outdated mainstream visual representations of HIV in times of undetectability

In 1981, the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in the US. Almost forty years later, the biomedical situation of people living with HIV (PLWH) in Western countries has significantly improved, and today, PLWH have a normal lifespan with few physical comorbidities. Nevertheless, current media representations of HIV do not seem to have moved past the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s. The film Philadelphia, directed by Jonathan Deeme in 1993, has had a huge cultural impact in how society perceives HIV, and many contemporary films and fiction series portraying HIV still represent the condition in the same narrative terms. This analysis sets out to define what could be referred to as the Philadelphia Syndrome, a concept intended to describe the outdated, nostalgic representations of HIV in mainstream cultural productions in the last decade, a period marked in biomedical terms by the success of antiretroviral drugs, chronification, the importance of undetectability, and the increasingly widespread use of the prophylaxis pre-exposition (PrEP). By analyzing ten mainstream blockbuster films and fiction series produced from 2013 to 2022, this study examines the main characteristics of the Philadelphia Syndrome: nostalgia and melodramatic use of the 1980s and 1990s, high stigmatization of gay sexualities, and a neglect of women with HIV

Warm dark matter and the ionization history of the Universe

In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying reionization. This has an impact on the ionization history of the Universe and measurements of the optical depth to reionization, of the evolution of the global fraction of ionized gas and of the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, can be used to set constraints on the mass of the dark matter particle. However, the suppression of the fraction of ionized medium in these scenarios can be partly compensated by varying other parameters, as the ionization efficiency or the minimum mass for which halos can host star-forming galaxies. Here we use different data sets regarding the ionization and thermal histories of the Universe and, taking into account the degeneracies from several astrophysical parameters, we obtain a lower bound on the mass of thermal warm dark matter candidates of $m_X > 1.3$ keV, or $m_s > 5.5$ keV for the case of sterile neutrinos non-resonantly produced in the early Universe, both at 90\% confidence level.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Dual antibacterial effect of immobilized quaternary ammonium and aliphatic groups on PVC

A coating comprising quaternary ammonium salts (QAS) and aliphatic moieties was formed on the poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) surface in order to confer antibacterial activity. This was achieved by grafting mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane onto PVC, followed by aminopropyltriethoxysilane. Betaine and dodecenyl succinic anhydride (DDSA) were bonded to free amine groups. The modified PVC samples were characterized by FT-IR, showing that the PVC surface was successfully coated. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy showed the spatial distributions of the elements Si and S, indicating that the coatings were homogeneous. Betaine and DDSA coated PVC showed a better antibacterial performance than the controls. This antibacterial effect was extremely reinforced in betaine-DDSA modified PVC showing greater antibacterial activity than both treatments separately applied. Antibacterial activity against Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus subtilis was studied in the treated samples showing that the coating was effective against Gram positive and Gram negative species.Fil: Villanueva, María Emilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; ArgentinaFil: Salinas, Ana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; ArgentinaFil: González, Joaquín Antonio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; ArgentinaFil: Teves, Sergio. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica; ArgentinaFil: Copello, Guillermo Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Química y Metabolismo del Fármaco; Argentin

A fresh look into the interacting dark matter scenario

The elastic scattering between dark matter particles and radiation represents an attractive possibility to solve a number of discrepancies between observations and standard cold dark matter predictions, as the induced collisional damping would imply a suppression of small-scale structures. We consider this scenario and confront it with measurements of the ionization history of the Universe at several redshifts and with recent estimates of the counts of Milky Way satellite galaxies. We derive a conservative upper bound on the dark matter-photon elastic scattering cross section of $\sigma_{\gamma \rm{DM}} < 8 \times 10^{-10} \, \sigma_T \, \left(m_{\rm DM}/{\rm GeV}\right)$ at $95\%$~CL, about one order of magnitude tighter than previous {constraints from satellite number counts}. Due to the strong degeneracies with astrophysical parameters, the bound on the dark matter-photon scattering cross section derived here is driven by the estimate of the number of Milky Way satellite galaxies. Finally, we also argue that future 21~cm probes could help in disentangling among possible non-cold dark matter candidates, such as interacting and warm dark matter scenarios. Let us emphasize that bounds of similar magnitude to the ones obtained here could be also derived for models with dark matter-neutrino interactions and would be as constraining as the tightest limits on such scenarios.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures. v2: matches the published version. Included discussion on the applicability of constraints derived on dark matter-photon interactions to dark matter-neutrino interactions. References adde

Participación Política, Medios de Comunicación y Redes Sociales en los Adolescentes Catalanes

El grado de implicación política de los adolescentes es una cuestión abierta que atraviesa el debate académico generación tras generación. Actualmente, esta cuestión se ve salpicada por la irrupción de las redes sociales y los nuevos medios. El presente artículo estudia la vinculación entre el uso de medios, redes sociales y el interés por la política de una amplia muestra de estudiantes catalanes del último curso de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. La investigación concluye que las dinámicas de participación política y las plataformas de debate de los adolescentes no difieren en exceso de las generaciones mayores y que, por tanto, las redes sociales no parecen haber afectado al grado de implicación política de los adolescentes