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Supplemental Material for Pretreatment Serum Lactate Dehydrogenase and Metastases Numbers as Potential Determinants of Anti-PD-1 Therapy Outcome in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma by Wael Abdullah Sultan Ali, Xinxin Huang, Yuehan Wu, Yuxiang Ma, Hui Pan, Jun Liao, Zhang Yang, Shaodong Hong, Yunpeng Yang, Yan Huang, Yuanyuan Zhao, Wenfeng Fang, Hongyun Zhao, and Li Zhang in Cancer Control.

Developing a facile method to prepare edible oleogels under moderate conditions would be of great interest. In this research, oleogels were obtained directly from the mixtures of cellulose particles (average particle size ≈ 25μm), sorbitan fatty acid esters (Span60 and Span40) and medium chain triglycerides (MCT). Results showed that 6% (w/w) cellulose particles combined with 9% (w/w) sorbitan fatty acid esters\ud could form a strong network to trap the oil phase through ultra-sonic treating. The strength of the oleogels could be regulated by the cellulose particles content and its ratio to surfactant. XRD, DSC and SEM data revealed that there was synergetic effect between the cellulose particles and fatty acid esters during the gelation. The cellulose particles covered with Span60 could associate with each other to form a network in the oil phase, in the similar way to the Span60 micelles. These findings would be significant for the development and application of food grade oleogels.

In this study I explore the changing representation of the pregnant body in two recent Chinese texts. Building on existing scholarship, I relate the fictional representation of maternity in Mo Yan’s novel "Frog" (2009) and Xue Xiaolu’s film "Finding Mr Right" (2013) to three consolidating discourses of reform, namely the Chinese family planning program, Chinese feminism, and Chinese globalization. By interrogating the highly symbolic depictions of pregnant women in these texts I meaningfully expand our understanding of the impact of these discourses through various scales and dimensionalities, including the generic, the social and the global. Approaching my topic in an interdisciplinary way, I disturb dualistic arguments that locate women in opposition to the political and reinstate everyday life as an arena of female agency as well as oppression. The introduction consists of a brief history of the implementation of the one-child policy in PRC and an analysis of the allegorical function of pregnancy and childbirth in Seventeen Year films. The main body of the thesis comprises close readings of two fictional texts that take pregnancy and gendered fertility politics as their theme. Written by the first Chinese writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, "Frog" (translated into English in 2015) tells the story of a female obstetrician charged with implementing the one-child policy. Told from the perspective of an unreliable male narrator, the novel deploys techniques of satire and the grotesque. The story arcs across a 60-year history of birth control and mandatory abortion to end in the era of corporate baby farms. The second text is the Hollywood-style comedy "Finding Mr. Right" (2013), which concerns the idle and vain mistress of a mainland tycoon who enters the US to secure American citizenship for the baby she is carrying. The film’s focus on Chinese birth tourism works in tandem with its representation of the mother-to-be as a transnational female consumer who has yet to learn the value of love or money. I consider how the film links transnational practices with neoliberal ideology via a sentimental story in which heterosexual romance is suppressed in favour of female independence and entrepreneurship. I suggest that the medium of comedy allows the film’s writer and director to approach the feminist issues of female sexual citizenship and Chinese fertility politics through the sanctioned lens of maternity, a theme central to Chinese cinema since the Seventeen Year films discussed in the introduction. By comparing "Frog" and "Finding Mr Right", I am able to address the complex history and legacy of China’s one-child policy at the moment of its repeal.