40 research outputs found
Age-related testosterone declines can be detected in men’s fingernails
No full textTestosterone plays multiple roles in the regulation of development, physiology, reproduction, and behavior. Age-related testosterone declines are expected in the population. However, measuring circulating testosterone is especially challenging since concentrations are labile, responding to social situations and challenges. Matrices that integrate long-term testosterone levels are therefore valuable as biomarkers of mean, as well as chronic exposures. Here we report on a simple method to extract and measure accumulated testosterone from human fingernails using commercial EIA kits. Further, we demonstrate known human testosterone sex and age trends. Our method is especially useful for quantifying testosterone in menâ s nails, where a small amount of matrix is required. Thus, this approach is a potential tool for biomonitoring endogenous as well as exogenous testosterone exposure. We suggest considering nails as an alternative matrix for quantifying other steroids as well.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author
A simple method for measuring long-term integrated testosterone levels in men
No full textSteroids play multiple roles in the regulation of development, physiology, reproduction, and behavior. Measuring circulating steroids is especially challenging since concentrations are extremely labile, responding to stressors within minutes. Matrices that integrate long-term steroid levels are therefore valuable as biomarkers of baseline, as well as chronic steroid exposures. Here we report on a simple method to extract and measure accumulated testosterone from human fingernails using commercial EIA kits. Further, we demonstrate known human testosterone sex and age trends. Thus, this method is a potential tool for biomonitoring endogenous as well as exogenous steroid exposure.</jats:p
A simple method for measuring long-term integrated testosterone levels in men
No full textSteroids play multiple roles in the regulation of development, physiology, reproduction, and behavior. Measuring circulating steroids is especially challenging since concentrations are extremely labile, responding to stressors within minutes. Matrices that integrate long-term steroid levels are therefore valuable as biomarkers of baseline, as well as chronic steroid exposures. Here we report on a simple method to extract and measure accumulated testosterone from human fingernails using commercial EIA kits. Further, we demonstrate known human testosterone sex and age trends. Thus, this method is a potential tool for biomonitoring endogenous as well as exogenous steroid exposure.</jats:p
Review: David Silverman (2001). Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction
No full textThe second edition of SILVERMAN's volume on Interpreting Qualitative Data is a fascinating book and will be invaluable to lecturers and advisers of graduate students. It includes enlightening discussions of ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, of Discourse Analysis and ordinary talk, as well as of what can be learned from visual (non-linguistic) materials. As a textbook, however, it suffers from overload. Apart from methods of analysis there is extensive treatment of how to begin research, data collection, as well as models and ethics in research. Every chapter begins and ends with a summary of key points, includes student activities, and provides profuse examples of the points raised (many from the personal experience of the author). The very comprehensiveness of the book is likely to undermine its usefulness for potential researchers—students, who are looking for plain guidance. For advanced researchers, it provides a provocative encounter with a distinguished researcher, theoretician, and pedagogue.
URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs01036
Vladimir Nabokov's Jewish muse
No full textThis thesis characterises Vladimir Nabokov’s engagement with Jewishness, offering a broad yet extensive perspective covering the author’s entire oeuvre, substantiated by granular close reading of individual characters and scenes. This reading is bolstered by archival findings and paratextual sources, as well as by paying keen attention to historical, literary and political contexts that situate Nabokov amidst a wider and troubled tradition of representational challenges. I am guided by thinking which incorporates theories of the Jew through depictions of the body, gender, sex and race, as well as reflecting on Jewish identity, defined as a cultural subject, victim of politics and history, and foil to other ethnic types. Thus, through the framework of the Jewish Muse, I demonstrate how Nabokov presents the Jew as the other (a term which I situate and problematise for my usage) in multiple ways, responding to and challenging binary thinking in both Jewish studies and existing Nabokov scholarship. Crucially, this approach revises various of the dominant assumptions about Nabokov as an author by elucidating a much neglected but essential leitmotif, thus contributing to wider studies concerned with the appropriation, pursuit and representation of those deemed to be other. Drawing on Derrida’s theory of shibboleth I seek to characterise Nabokov’s literary pursuit of the Jew as one which reflects his own feelings of being an outsider, and his authorial desire to access and express the ungraspable. Via the types of ‘The Other’, ‘The Jewess’, ‘The Vulgarian’ and ‘The Helper’ I showcase the scope and diversity of Nabokov’s Jewish Muse in both his Russian and English texts
Persistent ER stress induces the spliced leader RNA silencing pathway (SLS), leading to programmed cell death in Trypanosoma brucei.
No full textTrypanosomes are parasites that cycle between the insect host (procyclic form) and mammalian host (bloodstream form). These parasites lack conventional transcription regulation, including factors that induce the unfolded protein response (UPR). However, they possess a stress response mechanism, the spliced leader RNA silencing (SLS) pathway. SLS elicits shut-off of spliced leader RNA (SL RNA) transcription by perturbing the binding of the transcription factor tSNAP42 to its cognate promoter, thus eliminating trans-splicing of all mRNAs. Induction of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in procyclic trypanosomes elicits changes in the transcriptome similar to those induced by conventional UPR found in other eukaryotes. The mechanism of up-regulation under ER stress is dependent on differential stabilization of mRNAs. The transcriptome changes are accompanied by ER dilation and elevation in the ER chaperone, BiP. Prolonged ER stress induces SLS pathway. RNAi silencing of SEC63, a factor that participates in protein translocation across the ER membrane, or SEC61, the translocation channel, also induces SLS. Silencing of these genes or prolonged ER stress led to programmed cell death (PCD), evident by exposure of phosphatidyl serine, DNA laddering, increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, increase in cytoplasmic Ca(2+), and decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential, as well as typical morphological changes observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). ER stress response is also induced in the bloodstream form and if the stress persists it leads to SLS. We propose that prolonged ER stress induces SLS, which serves as a unique death pathway, replacing the conventional caspase-mediated PCD observed in higher eukaryotes
Sex differences in the relationship between maternal and foetal glucocorticoids in a free-ranging large mammal
No full textMaternal phenotypes can have long-term effects on offspring phenotypes. These maternal effects may begin during gestation, when maternal glucocorticoid (GC) levels may affect foetal GC levels, thereby having an organizational effect on the offspring phenotype. Recent studies have showed that maternal effects may be different between the sexes. However, how maternal GC levels relate to foetal levels is still not completely understood. Here we related, for the first time in a free-ranging large mammal, the fallow deer ( Dama dama), maternal GC levels with foetal in utero GC levels. We did this in a non-invasive way by quantifying cortisol metabolites from faecal samples collected from pregnant does during late gestation, as proxy for maternal GC level. These were then related to GC levels from hair of their neonate offspring (n = 40). We have shown that maternal GC levels were positively associated with foetal GC levels, but only in female offspring. These findings highlight sex differences, which may have evolved to optimize male growth at the cost of survival
Direct involvement of p53 in the base excision repair pathway of the DNA repair machinery
No full textAbstractThe p53 tumor suppressor that plays a central role in the cellular response to genotoxic stress was suggested to be associated with the DNA repair machinery which mostly involves nucleotide excision repair (NER). In the present study we show for the first time that p53 is also directly involved in base excision repair (BER). These experiments were performed with p53 temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants that were previously studied in in vivo experimental models. We report here that p53 ts mutants can also acquire wild-type activity under in vitro conditions. Using ts mutants of murine and human origin, it was observed that cell extracts overexpressing p53 exhibited an augmented BER activity measured in an in vitro assay. Depletion of p53 from the nuclear extracts abolished this enhanced activity. Together, this suggests that p53 is involved in more than one DNA repair pathway
Modernist Indexicality: The Language of Gender, Race, and Domesticity in Hebrew and Yiddish Modernism
No full textBy focusing on what Michael Silverstein calls nonreferential indexicality—those “features of speech independent of any referential speech event” that point to the “sociological relations of personae in the speech situation” and “accomplish socially constituted ends”—this essay challenges received understandings of the linguistic purchase of modernist innovation. The author examines Hebrew and Yiddish modernist literary texts by Devorah Baron and Dovid Bergelson that employ nonreferential indexicality in order to chart the ruptures in two textual communities, in two particular historical and literary moments when gender norms, alongside racial and ethnic identities, underwent abrupt and vexed change. In these stories, scenes of domestic drama are transformed into modernist narratives of social and cultural transformation. The article contends that a pragmatic linguistic approach to literary texts illuminates how minor language modernist writing contains a self-awareness that not only addresses a cosmopolitan audience but also preserves the contingent and shifting parameters of local linguistic communities.</jats:p
