Overexpression of the urokinase receptor splice variant uPAR-del4/5 in breast cancer cells affects cell adhesion and invasion in a dose-dependent manner and modulates transcription of tumor-associated genes

mRNA levels of the urokinase receptor splice variant uPAR-del4/5 are associated with prognosis in breast cancer. Its overexpression in cancer cells affects tumor biologically relevant processes. In the present study, individual breast cancer cell clones displaying low vs. high uPAR-del4/5 expression were analyzed demonstrating that uPAR-del4/5 leads to reduced cell adhesion and invasion in a dose-dependent manner. Additionally, matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) was found to be strongly upregulated in uPAR-del4/5 overexpressing compared to vector control cells. uPAR-del4/5 may thus play an important role in the regulation of the extracellular proteolytic network and, by this, influence the metastatic potential of breast cancer cells

“AI Will Be the Beating Heart of the City”: Connectivity and/as Care in The Line

Artificial intelligence will be “the beating heart” (Bell, 2022, para. 1) of the linear smart city The Line in Saudi Arabia, one of the most expensive and expansive urban living projects of our times—and crucial in the larger vision of a post-oil future for Saudi Arabia. Exemplary of the complex relationship between past and future in constructing alternative urban imaginaries, the promotional material of The Line highlights technology as the best—and apparently only—solution to “maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990, p. 40), while at the same time imagining artificial intelligence itself as a living and “organic” presence in the urban. Following David Pinder’s understanding of cities as always both imagined and real, immaterial and material, this article draws on care as a critical lens to explore the construction of The Line in answer to Nick Dunn’s provoking question: “So can imagining the future change it?” (Dunn, 2018, p. 376). Tracing “care in a manufactured landscape” (Mattern, 2021, p. 144) here highlights the entanglement between technology and sustainability, between organic metaphors and artificial environments, between virtual connection and material exhaustion. Critically examining the promise embedded in contemporary architectural projects to deliver “new and imaginative solutions” (NEOM, 2022e) for the physical, psychological, and environmental exhaustion of urban life, this article proposes an understanding of connectivity and care as increasingly entangled—and argues that the urban vision put forward in The Line, ultimately, hinges on care as connectivity rather than caring interconnections, networked logics rather than networks of belonging

Urban/image: Conceptualizing Amsterdam as urban environment in virtual renderings

This article proposes that virtual renderings of speculative architectural projects provide a crucial entry point into the reimagination of sustainable urban life through the production of nature(s) within the city. Drawing on case studies of ‘sustainable’ building projects in and around Amsterdam, The Netherlands, I aim to trace the entanglement of virtual and real environments in imagining green futures. With the concept of the ‘render ghost’, James Bridle situates the people inhabiting virtual renderings ‘in the liminal space between the present and the future, the real and the virtual, the physical and the digital’ (2013). Similarly, the imaginations of nature within virtual renderings of sustainable buildings are situated at a point of in-between, a constant state of becoming. More than just visualizing their respective architectural design, the virtual renderings visualize these designs in a specific space, a specific environment – and how that environment could and would change through the spatial presence of these buildings. What makes these immaterial elements – ranging from computer-generated images to virtual renderings and augmented reality applications – particularly productive as research objects is the subjective nature of the atmosphere created in and through them, an atmospheric imagination of sustainable futures embedded in what Degen et al. call a ‘field of negotiation, tension and ambivalence’ (2017). Atmospheric in their imagination of urban environments, contingent in their temporality between the past, the present and the future, and ambiguous in their spatial grounding in simultaneously specific and generic surroundings, virtual renderings arguably allow for an engagement with the possibilities of alternative urban futures

Immortal Modernity:Negotiating Istanbul as Global Metropolis in the Turkish Vampire Series Yaşamayanlar

In the mediated versions of American small town life from Forks to Mystic Falls, vampires live inconspicuously among humans – thanks to overcast skies or cast spells. The first-ever Turkish vampire series Yaşamayanlar [Immortals] (2018) takes a fundamentally opposed approach: Brimming with neon lights, Yaşamayanlar provides a very different experience of Istanbul than other exported television series – one that feels eerily close to mediated versions of New York, Berlin, or Los Angeles in the 1990s and early 2000s. Between dark alleyways and stroboscopic night clubs, the series paints a picture of Istanbul not just as dangerous and gritty, but – maybe more crucially – decidedly detached from the historical heritage of the city. This article argues that this re-imagination of Istanbul as a supernatural city is entangled with narratives of modernity, connectivity, and change. In other words: the supernatural does not only shape the metropolis, but the metropolis also shapes the supernatural

“AI Will Be the Beating Heart of the City”: Connectivity and/as Care in The Line

Artificial intelligence will be “the beating heart” (Bell, 2022, para. 1) of the linear smart city The Line in Saudi Arabia, one of the most expensive and expansive urban living projects of our times—and crucial in the larger vision of a post-oil future for Saudi Arabia. Exemplary of the complex relationship between past and future in constructing alternative urban imaginaries, the promotional material of The Line highlights technology as the best—and apparently only—solution to “maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Tronto & Fisher, 1990, p. 40), while at the same time imagining artificial intelligence itself as a living and “organic” presence in the urban. Following David Pinder’s understanding of cities as always both imagined and real, immaterial and material, this article draws on care as a critical lens to explore the construction of The Line in answer to Nick Dunn’s provoking question: “So can imagining the future change it?” (Dunn, 2018, p. 376). Tracing “care in a manufactured landscape” (Mattern, 2021, p. 144) here highlights the entanglement between technology and sustainability, between organic metaphors and artificial environments, between virtual connection and material exhaustion. Critically examining the promise embedded in contemporary architectural projects to deliver “new and imaginative solutions” (NEOM, 2022e) for the physical, psychological, and environmental exhaustion of urban life, this article proposes an understanding of connectivity and care as increasingly entangled—and argues that the urban vision put forward in The Line, ultimately, hinges on care as connectivity rather than caring interconnections, networked logics rather than networks of belonging

Immortal Modernity:Negotiating Istanbul as Global Metropolis in the Turkish Vampire Series Yaşamayanlar

In the mediated versions of American small town life from Forks to Mystic Falls, vampires live inconspicuously among humans – thanks to overcast skies or cast spells. The first-ever Turkish vampire series Yaşamayanlar [Immortals] (2018) takes a fundamentally opposed approach: Brimming with neon lights, Yaşamayanlar provides a very different experience of Istanbul than other exported television series – one that feels eerily close to mediated versions of New York, Berlin, or Los Angeles in the 1990s and early 2000s. Between dark alleyways and stroboscopic night clubs, the series paints a picture of Istanbul not just as dangerous and gritty, but – maybe more crucially – decidedly detached from the historical heritage of the city. This article argues that this re-imagination of Istanbul as a supernatural city is entangled with narratives of modernity, connectivity, and change. In other words: the supernatural does not only shape the metropolis, but the metropolis also shapes the supernatural

Combining carbohydrate substitutions at bioinspired positions with multivalent presentation towards optimising lectin inhibitors: case study with calixarenes.

Carbohydrate derivatisation and glycocluster formation are both known to enhance avidity for lectin binding. Using a plant toxin and human adhesion/growth-regulatory lectins (inter- and intrafamily comparisons) the effect of their combination is examined. In detail, aromatic substituents were introduced at the 2-N or 30-positions of N-acetyllactosamine and the products conjugated to two types of calix[n]arenes (n=4, 6) via thiourealinker chemistry