Commodified BDSM Services: Professional Dominatrices' Views on Their Work and Its Criminalization.

In this article, we report research participants' experiences providing professional bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism (BDSM), and other fetish services in Canada. Like many sexual service providers, professional dominatrices often argue that their work challenges patriarchal and oppressive systems of sexual and gender conformity. These women assert that Canadians misunderstand the range of activities that fall under "BDSM" and the dynamics of power within the provider/client relationship.

A radio transient with unusually slow periodic emission.

The high-frequency radio sky is bursting with synchrotron transients from massive stellar explosions and accretion events, but the low-frequency radio sky has, so far, been quiet beyond the Galactic pulsar population and the long-term scintillation of active galactic nuclei. The low-frequency band, however, is sensitive to exotic coherent and polarized radio-emission processes, such as electron-cyclotron maser emission from flaring M dwarfs, stellar magnetospheric plasma interactions with exoplanets and a population of steep-spectrum pulsars, making Galactic-plane searches a prospect for blind-transient discovery. Here we report an analysis of archival low-frequency radio data that reveals a periodic, low-frequency radio transient.

The role of immune-related myeloid cells in angiogenesis.

Macrophage function is not restricted to the innate and adaptive immune responses, but also includes host defence, wound healing, angiogenesis and homeostatic processes. Within the spectrum of macrophage activation there are two extremes: M1 classically activated macrophages which have a pro-inflammatory phenotype, and M2 alternatively activated macrophages which are pro-angiogenic and anti-inflammatory. An important property of macrophages is their plasticity to switch from one phenotype to the other and they can be defined in their polarisation state at any point between the two extremes.

Ex vivo expansion of human outgrowth endothelial cells leads to IL-8-mediated replicative senescence and impaired vasoreparative function.

Harnessing outgrowth endothelial cells (OECs) for vasoreparative therapy and tissue engineering requires efficient ex vivo expansion. How such expansion impacts on OEC function is largely unknown. In this study, we show that OECs become permanently cell-cycle arrested after ex vivo expansion, which is associated with enlarged cell size, β-galactosidase activity, DNA damage, tumor suppressor pathway activation, and significant transcriptome changes.

Endothelial progenitors as tools to study vascular disease.

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have great clinical value because they can be used as diagnostic biomarkers and as a cellular therapy for promoting vascular repair of ischaemic tissues. However, EPCs also have an additional research value in vascular disease modelling to interrogate human disease mechanisms. The term EPC is used to describe a diverse variety of cells, and we have identified a specific EPC subtype called outgrowth endothelial cell (OEC) as the best candidate for vascular disease modelling because of its high-proliferative potential and unambiguous endothelial commitment.

Myeloid angiogenic cells act as alternative M2 macrophages and modulate angiogenesis through interleukin-8.

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) promote angiogenesis, and clinical trials have shown such cell therapy to be feasible for treating ischemic disease. However, clinical outcomes have been contradictory owing to the diverse range of EPC types used. We recently characterized two EPC subtypes, and identified outgrowth endothelial cells as the only EPC type with true progenitor and endothelial characteristics.

Victimization in off-street sex industry work.

The victimization experienced by street-based sex workers has led many observers to argue that prostitution is inherently dangerous. However, street-based workers form the minority of sex workers in Canada. Can their experiences validly be generalized to other types of prostitution? The research presented in this article examines whether female off-street sex workers face the same degree of victimization as female street-based sex workers in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Computational fluid dynamic prediction of the residence time of a vortex separator applied to disinfection.

A Hydrodynamic Vortex Separator (HDVS) has been modelled using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in order to predict the residence time of the fluid at the overflow and underflow outlets. A technique which was developed for use in Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) was used to determine the residence time and the results have been compared with those determined experimentally. It is shown that in using CFD, it is possible to predict the mean residence time of the fluid and to study the response to a pulse injection of tracer.

Construction and transfection of a ribozyme targeting human caspase-3.

Caspase-3 is a key executioner cysteine protease involved in programmed cell death or apoptosis. A ribozyme to human caspase-3 was designed, tested by in vitro cleavage, and transfected into a drug-resistant variant (DLKP-A5F) of a human lung carcinoma cell line (DLKP). By both stable and transient transfection, this ribozyme was shown to be effective at down-regulating human caspase-3 mRNA and protein levels.

99mTc-SnF2 colloid "LLK": particle size, morphology and leucocyte labelling behaviour.

99mTc-SnF2 colloid (Radpharm LLK) leucocyte labelling agent is used in whole blood, exploiting phagocytosis. The objectives of this work were to optimize leucocyte labelling in leucocyte-enriched plasma, and to investigate: (i) the effect of temperature and other factors on labelling efficiency; (ii) the selectivity for different leucocyte types; (iii) the viability of the labelled cells and efflux of the radiolabel; and (iv) the physical characteristics of the colloid. Density gradient centrifugation was used to investigate the labelling efficiency, cell selectivity and efflux, Trypan blue to study the viability, and laser scattering, electron microscopy and membrane filtration to investigate particle size and morphology.