A labial art-politics

In this article we focus on the potential for an alignment of certain feminist artistic practices and poststructuralist conceptions of critique that may enable ways of theorising practices of resistance and engender ways of practicing resistance in theory, without the lurch back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. It will be claimed that an ontological conception of art, considered as that which makes a difference in the world, can not only challenge the primacy of the dogmatic and masculine ‘subject who judges’, but also instil ways of thinking about, and ways of enacting, feminist artistic encounters with the capacity to resist dogmatism. The theoretical stakes of this claim are elaborated through complimentary readings of Deleuze and Guattari’s constructivist account of philosophy and Irigaray’s feminist explorations of what it means to think from within the 'labial', rather than from the position of the dominant phallic symbolic order. We argue that this creative conjunction between Irigaray, Deleuze and Guattari provides the resources for a conceptualisation of both feminist artistic practice and the critical practice of poststructuralist philosophy as forms of resistance to the dominant patriarchal order, in ways that can avoid the collapse back into masculinist forms of dogmatism. Revel’s discussion of the role of constituent rather than constituted forms of resistance is employed to draw out the implications of this position for contentious politics. It is concluded that constituent practices of resistance can be understood as a challenge to the phallogocentric symbolic order to the extent that they are practices of a labial art-politic

An Sp1 Modulated Regulatory Region Unique to Higher Primates Regulates Human Androgen Receptor Promoter Activity in Prostate Cancer Cells

Funding: This work was supported by the Chief Scientist’s Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government (http://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/): CWH (CZB-4-477) and IH (ETM/382).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Negative regulation of the androgen receptor gene through a primate specific androgen response element present in the 5' UTR

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Acknowledgements This work was supported by funding from the Chief Scientist Office, Government of Scotland (Grant Nos CZB/4/477 and ETM/258). DNL was supported by the Association for International Cancer Research (Grant No. 03–127)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Molecular brakes regulating mTORC1 activation in skeletal muscle following synergist ablation

The goal of the current work was to profile positive (mTORC1 activation, autocrine/paracrine growth factors) and negative [AMPK, unfolded protein response (UPR)] pathways that might regulate overload-induced mTORC1 (mTOR complex 1) activation with the hypothesis that a number of negative regulators of mTORC1 will be engaged during a supraphysiological model of hypertrophy. To achieve this, mTORC1- IRS-1/2 signaling, BiP/CHOP/IRE1, and AMPK activation were determined in rat plantaris muscle following synergist ablation (SA). SA resulted in significant increases in muscle mass of 4% per day throughout the 21 days of the experiment. The expression of the insulin-like growth factors (IGF) were high throughout the 21st day of overload. However, IGF signaling was limited, since IRS-1 and -2 were undetectable in the overloaded muscle from day 3 to day 9. The decreases in IRS-1/2 protein were paralleled by increases in GRB10 Ser501/503 and S6K1 Thr389 phosphorylation, two mTORC1 targets that can destabilize IRS proteins. PKB Ser473 phosphorylation was higher from 3– 6 days, and this was associated with increased TSC2 Thr939 phosphorylation. The phosphorylation of TSC2 Thr1345 (an AMPK site) was also elevated, whereas phosphorylation at the other PKB site, Thr1462, was unchanged at 6 days. In agreement with the phosphorylation of Thr1345, SA led to activation of AMPK1 during the initial growth phase, lasting the first 9 days before returning to baseline by day 12. The UPR markers CHOP and BiP were elevated over the first 12 days following ablation, whereas IRE1 levels decreased. These data suggest that during supraphysiological muscle loading at least three potential molecular brakes engage to downregulate mTORC1. m

Pulmonary retention of primed neutrophils: a novel protective host response, which is impaired in the acute respiratory distress syndrome.

RATIONALE: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) affects over 200000 people annually in the USA. Despite causing severe, and often refractory, hypoxaemia, the high mortality and long-term morbidity of ARDS results mainly from extra-pulmonary organ failure; however the mechanism for this organ crosstalk has not been determined. METHODS: Using autologous radiolabelled neutrophils we investigated the pulmonary transit of primed and unprimed neutrophils in humans. Flow cytometry of whole blood samples was used to assess transpulmonary neutrophil priming gradients in patients with ARDS, sepsis and perioperative controls. MAIN RESULTS: Unprimed neutrophils passed through the lungs with a transit time of 14.2 s, only 2.3 s slower than erythrocytes, and with <5% first-pass retention. Over 97% of neutrophils primed ex vivo with granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor were retained on first pass, with 48% still remaining in the lungs at 40 min. Neutrophils exposed to platelet-activating factor were initially retained but subsequently released such that only 14% remained in the lungs at 40 min. Significant transpulmonary gradients of neutrophil CD62L cell surface expression were observed in ARDS compared with perioperative controls and patients with sepsis. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated minimal delay and retention of unprimed neutrophils transiting the healthy human pulmonary vasculature, but marked retention of primed neutrophils; these latter cells then 'deprime' and are re-released into the systemic circulation. Further, we show that this physiological depriming mechanism may fail in patients with ARDS, resulting in increased numbers of primed neutrophils within the systemic circulation. This identifies a potential mechanism for the remote organ damage observed in patients with ARDS.This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust, MRC (UK), Papworth Hospital R&D, Intensive Care Society and NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.This is the final published version, also available from http://thorax.bmj.com/content/early/2014/04/04/thoraxjnl-2013-204742.full

After Possession

Tristan Garcia’s Form and Object has been framed primarily as a contribution to object oriented metaphysics. In this article, I shall explicate and defend four claims that bring it closer to the modern critical tradition: 1) that Garcia’s Form and Object can be read, profitably, within the tradition of reflection upon the nature of possessions, self-possession and possessiveness; 2) that to read the book in this way is to see Garcia as the French heir to C. B. McPherson although it will be argued that what this amounts to is that while McPherson was the anti-Locke, so to speak, Garcia is the anti-Rousseau; 3) that this framing has significant consequences for our reception of Form and Object in that it can be understood as a book that not only marks a moment in debates surrounding speculative realism and object oriented ontology but that it also, and primarily, marks an important moment in debates about the encroachment of things and the culture of possession that, in part, defines modernity; 4) that there is a novel ontological position within Form and Object, one that is neither relational nor individualist, that presents a challenging account of ‘the chance and the price’ of living after possession and how to overcome the deleterious effects of contemporary consumer societies

Critique in the Age of Indifference

In After Finitude, Meillassoux asks an epoch defining question: how can we criticise both ideological dogmatism and sceptical fanaticism if the rise of sceptical fanaticism is an effect of the Kantian critical philosophy one must employ against ideological dogmatism? Meillassoux’s answer is to argue in favour of thought’s ability to access the absolute necessity of contingency. Agamben and Laruelle give an alternative answer. Although very different in style and argument, both aim to disqualify fanatical positions by showing how ‘the belief that belief is all there is’ is not all there is because of the contingent nature of thought about the real. It will be argued that while pursuing logics of disqualification all three thinkers nonetheless employ arguments that render positive claims that sit uncomfortably within their respective systems. The upshot is that the transcendental gesture of critical philosophy – what are the conditions of our positive claims about thought and the world – is halted by an uncritical appeal to the condition of all conditions; intellectual intuition in Meillassoux and an indifferent thought/real in Agamben and Laruelle. But what options remain given that the problem of critique in an age of indifference is a problem that critical philosophy itself has created? The task, it will be argued, is to express the transcendental conditions of what we know about the world and how we know what we know about the world in a manner that retains the contingency of both. But are there variants of contemporary thought that can express the contingency of the real and of thought while remaining within the transcendental apparatus that provides the necessary criteria for the challenge of both ideological dogmatism and sceptical fanaticism? I shall bring the argument to a close by suggesting that two such variants are available – transcendental naturalism and transcendental aestheticism – and that the latter provides a secure but non-dogmatic ground for critique in an age of indifference

Familiarity for Associations? A Test of the Domain Dichotomy Theory

Episodic recognition memory is mediated by functionally separable retrieval processes, notably familiarity (a general sense of prior exposure) and recollection (the retrieval of contextual details), whose relative engagement depends partly on the nature of the information being retrieved. Currently, the specific contribution of familiarity to associative recognition memory (where retrieval of the relationships between pairs of stimuli is required) is not clearly understood. Here we test domain dichotomy theory, which predicts that familiarity should contribute more to associative memory when stimuli are similar (within-domain) than when they are distinct (between-domain). Participants studied stimulus pairs, and at test, discriminated intact from rearranged pairs. Stimuli were either within-domain (name-name or image-image pairs) or between-domain (name-image pairs). Across experiments we employed two different behavioural measures of familiarity, based on ROC curves and a Modified Remember-Know procedure. Both experiments provided evidence that familiarity can contribute to associative recognition; however familiarity was stronger for between-domain pairs - in direct contrast to the domain dichotomy prediction

A training tool to assess laparoscopic image navigation task performance in novice camera assistants

Background: A number of tools for assessing task performance of the laparoscopic have been described, but few focus on the acquisition and assessment of the attainmentof proficiency in novice laparoscopic camera assistants. Our aim was to develop a simulated objective assessment tool for a novice camera assistant.Materials &amp; Methods: A 10-cycle image navigation task tool was developed. This involved a series of 360 degree clockwise and anti-clockwise rotation manoeuvres of a30 degree laparoscope along its shaft, focusing on a predefined geometric target on a 45 degree fixed slope in a laparoscopic box trainer. The tasks were to simultaneouslymaintain neutral horizon, optimum distance and centring. Task accuracy and time to completion were assessed objectively at 3-second intervals on an unedited videorecording.Results: 29 novice medical students were assessed. Novices improved mean total error and task completion time (1st vs. 5th cycle, mean errors 15.4 vs. 8.4, p=0.048; mean task time 158.1 vs. 92.9 seconds, p=0.04). This improvement continued until the task cycle was completed (6th vs. 10th cycles, 7.9 vs. 6.2, p=0.01; 91.9 vs. 76.6 seconds, p&lt;0.0001). There was a significant decrease in centring errors (5.2 vs. 2.4, p=0.001) and horizon (4.8 vs. 2.3, p=0.004), when comparing the 1st versus 5th task cycle. It took 6 cycles for optimum distance to achieve significance (5.4 vs. 3.3, p=0.023).Conclusions: Using our assessment tool, novices achieved an objective proficiency-gain curve for laparoscopic camera navigation tasks. There was improvement in errorsrelated to maintaining horizon, optimum distance and centring. Mean task completion time also decreased. This tool could be used as an additional means of assessment andtraining in novice surgical trainees