Drawing from fieldwork and interviews with middle-class sex workers, this essay considers the relationship between the class-privileged women and men who are increasingly finding their way into sex ...work and more generalized patterns of economic restructuring. How has the emergence of new communications technologies transformed the meaning and experience of sexual commerce for sex workers and their customers? What is the connection between the new `respectability' of sexual commerce and the new classes of individuals who now participate in commercial sexual transactions? This essay concludes by exploring some of the key transformations that are occurring within middle-class commercial sexual encounters, including the emergence of `bounded authenticity' (an authentic, yet bounded, interpersonal connection) as a particularly desirable and sought-after sexual commodity.
Over the past decade, abolitionist feminist and evangelical Christian activists have directed increasing attention toward the “traffic in women” as a dangerous manifestation of global gender ...inequalities. Despite renowned disagreements around the politics of sex and gender, these groups have come together to advocate for harsher penalties against traffickers, prostitutes’ customers, and nations deemed to be taking insufficient steps to stem the flow of trafficked women. In this essay, I argue that what has served to unite this coalition of “strange bedfellows” is not simply an underlying commitment to conservative ideals of sexuality, as previous commentators have offered, but an equally significant commitment to carceral paradigms of justice and to militarized humanitarianism as the preeminent mode of engagement by the state. I draw upon my ongoing ethnographic research with feminist and evangelical antitrafficking movement leaders to argue that the alliance that has been so efficacious in framing contemporary antitrafficking politics is the product of two historically unique and intersecting trends: a rightward shift on the part of many mainstream feminists and other secular liberals away from a redistributive model of justice and toward a politics of incarceration, coincident with a leftward sweep on the part of many younger evangelicals toward a globally oriented social justice theology. In the final section of this essay, I consider the resilience of these trends given a newly installed and more progressive Obama administration, positing that they are likely to continue even as the terrain of militarized humanitarian action shifts in accordance with new sets of geopolitical interests.
This article draws upon recent works in sociology, jurisprudence, and feminist theory in order to assess the ways in which feminism, and sex and gender more generally, have become intricately ...interwoven with punitive agendas in contemporary US politics. Melding existing theoretical discussions of penal trends with insights drawn from my own ethnographic research on the contemporary anti-trafficking movement in the United States—the most recent domain of feminist activism in which a crime frame has prevailed against competing models of social justice—I elaborate upon the ways that neoliberalism and the politics of sex and gender have intertwined to produce a carceral turn in feminist advocacy movements previously organized around struggles for economic justice and liberation. Taking the anti-trafficking movement as a case study, I further demonstrate how human rights discourse has become a key vehicle both for the transnationalization of carceral politics and for the reincorporation of these policies into the domestic terrain in a benevolent, feminist guise. I conclude by urging greater and more nuanced attention to the operations of gender and sexual politics within mainstream analyses of contemporary modes of punishment, as well as a careful consideration of the neoliberal carceral state within feminist discussions of gender, sexuality, and the law.
Regulating Sex is an anthology that presents debates over the role of the state in constructing and controlling erotic practice, intimacy, and identity. The purpose of this edited volume is to ...address sexual dilemmas in law and the state in substantive areas such as same-sex domestic partnerships, sexual economies, and childhood sexuality via a series of spirited dialogues between socio-legal scholars from diverse disciplinary, national, and political perspectives.
Although much is known about how circadian systems control daily cycles in the physiology and behavior of Drosophila and several vertebrate models, marine invertebrates have often been overlooked in ...circadian rhythms research. This study focuses on the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, a species that has received increasing attention within the scientific community for its potential as a model research organism. The recently sequenced genome of N. vectensis makes it an especially attractive model for exploring the molecular evolution of circadian behavior. Critical behavioral data needed to correlate gene expression patterns to specific behaviors are currently lacking in N. vectensis.
To detect the presence of behavioral oscillations in N. vectensis, locomotor activity was evaluated using an automated system in an environmentally controlled chamber. Animals exposed to a 24 hr photoperiod (12 hr light: 12 hr dark) exhibited locomotor behavior that was both rhythmic and predominantly nocturnal. The activity peak occurred in the early half of the night with a 2-fold increase in locomotion. Upon transfer to constant lighting conditions (constant light or constant dark), an approximately 24 hr rhythm persisted in most animals, suggesting that the rhythm is controlled by an endogenous circadian mechanism. Fourier analysis revealed the presence of multiple peaks in some animals suggesting additional rhythmic components could be present. In particular, an approximately 12 hr oscillation was often observed. The nocturnal increase in generalized locomotion corresponded to a 24 hr oscillation in animal elongation.
These data confirm the presence of a light-entrainable circadian clock in Nematostella vectensis. Additional components observed in some individuals indicate that an endogenous clock of approximately 12 hr frequency may also be present. By describing rhythmic locomotor behavior in N. vectensis, we have made important progress in developing the sea anemone as a model organism for circadian rhythm research.
Introduction
Cancer surgery has multiple challenges including localizing small lesions, ensuring negative margins, and identifying synchronous cancers. One of the tools proposed to address these ...issues is intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI). An important consideration in IMI is the quantification of the tumor fluorescence during the procedure and using that data to add clinical value. Currently, the most commonly cited measure of quantification is the tumor-to-background ratio (TBR). Our goal was to evaluate the clinical value of TBR measured with OTL38 NIR tracer during a lung cancer resection.
Methods
Intraoperative data was retrospectively reviewed from a prospectively collected 5-year database. Between 2015 and 2020, 279 patients were included in the study. For standardization, all patients underwent infusion of the same targeted molecular optical contrast agent (OTL38) for lung cancer resections; then, the mean fluorescence intensity of the tumors and background tissues were calculated. To evaluate the clinical efficacy of the TBR calculation, the results were correlated with patient, biologic, tumor, and technological factors.
Results
For pulmonary surgery, patient factors such as gender, age, smoking history, and time from infusion of OTL38 to surgery did not have any statistical significance in predicting the TBR during surgery. In addition, TBR measurements did not correlate with location of the tumor in the lung (
p
= 0.123). There was no statistical correlation of preoperative positron emission tomography measurements (standardized uptake value) with intraoperative TBR. However, there was statistically significant negative correlation of
in situ
TBR measurement and the distance of the lesion from the surface of the organ (
p
< 0.001). Adenocarcinoma spectrum lesions overall had statistically significant correlation with
in situ
fluorescence compared to other NSCLC malignancies (
p
< 0.01) but TBR measurements could not identify histopathologic subtype on univariate analysis (
p
= 0.089). There was a tendency for
in situ
fluorescence for moderately and well-differentiated adenocarcinoma spectrum lesions, but this was not statistically significant. When comparing the
in situ
TBR of benign to malignant nodules in the lung, there was no statistically significant association (
p
= 0.145). In subset analysis, adenocarcinoma spectrum lesions tend to fluoresce at brighter with OTL38 compared to other histologic subtypes.
Conclusion
In our various iterations, the results of our retrospective analysis did not show that TBR measurements during OTL38-guided surgery provide clinically useful information about the nature of the nodule or cancer. The true value of IMI is in the ability for the surgeon to use the fluorescence to guide the surgeon to the tumor and margins, but that sophisticated quantification of the amount of fluorescence may not have clinical utility.
Suspicious nodules detected by radiography are often investigated by biopsy, but the diagnostic yield of biopsies of small nodules is poor. Here we report a method-NIR-nCLE-to detect cancer at the ...cellular level in real-time during biopsy. This technology integrates a cancer-targeted near-infrared (NIR) tracer with a needle-based confocal laser endomicroscopy (nCLE) system modified to detect NIR signal. We develop and test NIR-nCLE in preclinical models of pulmonary nodule biopsy including human specimens. We find that the technology has the resolution to identify a single cancer cell among normal fibroblast cells when co-cultured at a ratio of 1:1000, and can detect cancer cells in human tumors less than 2 cm in diameter. The NIR-nCLE technology rapidly delivers images that permit accurate discrimination between tumor and normal tissue by non-experts. This proof-of-concept study analyzes pulmonary nodules as a test case, but the results may be generalizable to other malignancies.
Background. Early detection and complete resection are important prognostic factors for esophageal cancer (EC). Intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) using tumor-targeted tracers is effective in ...many cancer types. However, there are no EC-specific IMI tracers. We sought to test a cathepsin activity-based tracer (VGT-309) for EC resection. Methods. Murine (AKR, HNM007) and human (OE19) EC cell lines were screened for cathepsin expression by western blotting. In vitro binding affinity of VGT-309 was evaluated by fluorescence microscopy. Flank tumor models were developed by injecting EC cells into the flanks of BALB/c or athymic nude mice. Mice pretreated with a cathepsin inhibitor (JPM-OEt) were used to confirm on target binding. Animals were injected with 2 mg/kg VGT-309, underwent IMI, and were sacrificed 24 hours after injection. Results. Cathepsins B, L, S, and X were expressed by EC cell lines, and all cell lines were labeled in vitro with VGT-309. Fluorescent signal was eliminated when cells were pretreated with JPM-OEt. On biodistribution analysis, VGT-309 accumulated in the liver, kidneys, and spleen without other organ involvement. VGT-309 selectively accumulated in flank allografts and xenografts, with mean signal-to-background ratio of 5.21 (IQR: 4.18-6.73) for flank allografts and 4.34 (IQR: 3.75-5.02) for flank xenografts. Fluorescence microscopy and histopathological analysis confirmed the selective accumulation of the tracer in tumors compared to background normal tissues. Conclusions. VGT-309 is an effective tracer for IMI of esophageal cancer. There is potential for clinical translation both as an adjunct to endoscopic detection and for complete removal of disease during esophagectomy.
Bernstein examines the emergent activist coalition between feminists and evangelical Christians around the forced sexual labor of women and girls. She draws upon her ethnographic work with feminist ...and evangelical antitrafficking activists, situating the contemporary coalition-building in a historical trajectory that looks back to earlier alliances between Christians and feminists against commercial sexuality. She considers how it is that prostitution, something previously of concern only to local law enforcement and to relatively small numbers of committed feminists and sex-worker activists, has come to occupy the center of an ever spiraling array of faith-based and secular activist agendas, human rights initiatives, and legal instruments.
Le présent article s’appuie sur des travaux récents en sociologie, jurisprudence et théorie féministe pour évaluer de quelle manière le féminisme, et plus généralement le sexe et le genre, en sont ...venus à être fortement associés aux thématiques punitives dans la politique étasunienne (et par extension mondiale) contemporaine. En fusionnant les discussions théoriques existantes sur les tendances pénales avec les conclusions de ma propre recherche ethnographique sur le mouvement anti-traite contemporain aux USA – sphère de l’activisme féministe ayant vu le plus récemment la perspective pénaliste prendre le pas sur les autres modèles possibles de justice sociale – j’explore les différentes façons dont le néolibéralisme et le traitement politique du genre et du sexe ont produit de concert un virage carcéral au sein de mouvements militants auparavant structurés autour de luttes pour la justice économique et la libération personnelle. Abordant le mouvement anti-traite comme une étude de cas, je démontre en outre comment le discours sur les droits humains a servi à véhiculer non seulement une transnationalisation des politiques carcérales, mais aussi une résurgence de celles-ci sur le plan domestique, sous des dehors bienveillants et féministes. Je conclus en appelant les analyses généralistes des modes de châtiment contemporains à porter une attention plus grande et plus nuancée au fonctionnement des politiques de genre et de sexe, et les débats féministes autour du genre, de la sexualité et du droit à travailler sérieusement la question de l’État carcéral néolibéral.
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