Mod Pop Methods

This article reconstructs queer popular culture as a way of exploring media production studies as a trans history project. It argues that queer and trans insights into gender are indispensible to feminist media studies. The article looks at The Ugliest Girl in Town series (ABC, 1968–69), a satire amplifying a purported real-life fad in flat chests, short haircuts, and mod wigs, to restore texture to the everyday landscape of popular entertainment. Approaching camp as a genderqueer practice, the article presents the program as one of many indications of simultaneously queer and trans representation in the new media moment of the late 1960s. Behind-the-scenes visions of excavated archival research inform an analysis of the series as a feminist text over and against its trans misogyny, which evaluates and ranks women based on their looks, bodies, and appearance while excessively sexualizing and even more stringently appraising, policing, and punishing trans women, women perceived to be trans, and oppositional forms of femininity. The program captures both the means of gender regulation and detachment from it, the experience of gender embodiment, and the promise of presenting and being perceived as many genders. Ugly is an awful word in the way it is usually wielded, but it can be reclaimed. Examining this rarely cited and often misconstrued Screen Gems series helps to demonstrate a more equitable distribution of creative credit for queer trans content across the television industry and the subcultures it commodified in the 1960s.

Effect of High Hydrostatic Pressure Processing on Lycopene Isomers

Lycopene is known for its preventive mechanism of action against various types of cancers and chronic diseases. It is an acyclic C40 non-polar carotenoid that is found in tomatoes in various geometrical isomeric forms. In nature, the predominant form is the all-trans isomeric form (80-97%) in tomato and tomato related products. However research indicates that >50% of the lycopene in human body is found in the cis isomeric form, thereby leading to the hypothesis that the cis form is the more bioavailable /bioactive form in the human body.Today’s consumers seek processed products that are minimally processed and have retained their overall quality. This has lead scientists to explore non–thermal processing technologies like High Hydrostatic Pressure (HHP) processing technology. Our hypothesis that energy input can cause isomerization lead us to study the increase in cis isomer content on using HHP processing technology. Semi preparative scale HPLC method was used to purify the isomers. Lycopene isomers in tributyrin (model systems) and tomato homogenate (real food systems) were used. The HHP equipment was manufactured by Elmhurst Research, Inc. It is a 10L tilt vessel assembly with horizontal loading and vertical operation. The pressure treatment varied from 320Mpa-620Mpa for 3 minutes at ambient conditions. Treatment of both the systems showed an increase in the cis isomer content compared to the control. The all-trans content reduced by ~70% in model systems and the cis content increased by ~44% in model systems. The all-trans content increased by ~50% in food systems and the cis content also increased by ~35% in food systems. The results indicate that pressure causes conformational change from the all-trans to cis isomer form; thereby indicating that high-pressure application can induce cis isomerization.

Improved Determination of Isolated trans Isomers in Edible Oils by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy Using Spectral Reconstitution

A substantially more sensitive and accurate alternative to the single-bounce attenuated total reflectance (SB-ATR) Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic method of AOAC/American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS) was developed for determination of isolated trans isomers, based on transmission measurements using a technique called spectral reconstitution (SR). The method involves the 1:1.5 dilution of an oil with odorless mineral spirits (OMS) containing a spectralmarker. The resulting reduction in sample viscosity facilitates the use of a transmission flow cell, with the spectralmarker serving to determine the precise dilution ratio. This allows the spectral contributions of the OMS to be eliminated and a facsimile of the neat oil spectrum to be mathematically reconstituted. The transmission- SR (T-SR) procedure was initially evaluated relative to SB-ATR to track changes in the trans content of mixtures of unhydrogenated canola and a highly hydrogenated sunflower oil (030% trans). The results indicated that the T-SR procedure had the potential to serve as the basis of an accurate quantitative method. A subsequent T-SR calibration based on the spectral ratioing principle of the SB-ATR AOAC/AOCSmethod was developed by gravimetrically adding trielaidin (04%) to extra virgin olive oil (EVO), producing an excellent linear response with a standard deviation (SD) of <0.04% trans. Subsequent comparison of SB-ATR and T-SR calibrations developed for 5 oils of different types, each spiked with low levels of trielaidin (01.2% trans), clearly indicated that SB-ATR was signal-limited, whereas the T-SR procedure performed well. The EVO calibration was subsequently used to predict the added trans content of these spiked oils, after the spectrum of the corresponding unspiked oil had been ratioed out. The resulting plot of predicted versus added trans was linear, with a slope of 1.02 and an overall SD of <0.05% trans. When the spectra of these oils were ratioed against the spectrum of EVO, the trans predictions for some of the oils were offset by 23 percentage points, emphasizing the need for the appropriate trans-free reference oil to perform accurate analyses. If the latter condition is met, then T-SR provides a very simple technique, with the potential for automation, for analysis of oils by transmission spectroscopy, with approximately 20 the sensitivity of the AOAC/AOCS SB-ATR method.