Search

Drawing on Debord's the society of the spectacle and Evans and Giroux's notion of the spectacle of violence, this paper argues that a discourse on war, organised violence, and global politics has been disseminated through a military-entertainment complex that has commodified militarism into a practice of consumption. Drawing on first-person shooter (FPS) video games as a context, the paper considers the market for these games, the conditions of their creation, and the way they are marketed. The paper discusses three ways in which FPS games function as part of a contemporary spectacle of violence: through their intertextual connections to other forms of military entertainment; through the immersive experience they offer; and through the geopolitical position they establish. The paper concludes by establishing FPS games as complex, sophisticated cultural artefacts that both draw on and shape wider discourses on war and the military, in the age of the spectacle of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global commodity capitalism necessitates the fast and efficient movement of all manner of entities across the globe. Importantly, this commercial flow needs to be secured against the undocumented and unregulated flow of illegitimate people, finance and information, counterfeits, drugs, terror and other undesirables. The organizational practices of business logistics are central for achieving this objective. Yet they have received little attention in management and organization studies to date. We suggest a fruitful avenue is via Foucault's notion of 'biopower' – particularly his less discussed concept (in management studies, at least) of an apparatus of security. This is useful for understanding the emergent organizational/management practices of security in the border spaces in which business logistics operate. If 'Society Must Be Defended', as Foucault ironically notes in his famous lecture series that introduces biopower, then so too must contemporary organizations and their net-like activities within the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often suggested that some occupations are inherently more suited to men or to women. Such beliefs can become norms that can have powerful effects on those who inhabit, or wish to enter, such occupations. This article explores the discursive framing of gendered occupations by considering the experience of cis female military firefighter officers in the masculine world of the Corpo de Bombeiros Militar in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo. We identify this Global South organization as extremely gendered but also profoundly colonial in its patriarchal order and its hierarchical culture and structure. We use Kristeva's and Butler's work on abjection to understand how these officers and their bodies are differentiated. Based on interviews and document analysis, we foreground their abjection using three examples: the organization's physical entrance test, the maternal body and its masculine organizational grammar. Yet, just as they are targets of exclusion, these women and their bodies are also necessary to maintain the hypermasculinity of this organization. Our contribution is to analyse abjection in a specific hypergendered organizational context where masculinity is not only amplified by the co-presence of military service and firefighting, but also where gender relations, structure and culture have deep colonial roots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to a recent special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management in which Shelby Hunt celebrates the achievements of 40 years of marketing strategy. In noting the passing of the 'old guard', Hunt calls on a new generation of scholars to meet the challenges confronting marketing and to develop new theories and frameworks to advance Marketing Strategy into Era V. We take for our inspiration Hunt's own words, specifically his reference to the 'promising' and 'problematic' that he uses to characterise the current and latent state of marketing strategy. To build our vision and map out our agenda we offer an alternative reading of this discipline through the idea of Marketing Strategy as Discourse (MSAD). Within the paper, we outline the role that discourse can perform as a resource to reconfigure our appreciation of marketing strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Augmented glycolysis in cancer cells is a process required for growth and development. The Warburg effect provides evidence of increased glycolysis and lactic acid fermentation in cancer cells. The lactate end-product of glycolysis is receiving growing traction for its role as a cell signalling molecule. Ovarian cancer (OvCa) is also characterised by altered glucose metabolism. We aim to explore circulating lactate levels in patients with high-grade serous OvCa (HGSOC) and to elucidate the expression of the lactate receptor hydroxycarboxylic acid receptor 1 (HCAR1) in OvCa. Methods: HCAR1 expression was detected in patient biopsy cores using immunohistochemistry, while lactate was measured from whole blood with a Biosen-C line clinic measuring system. Results: We noted significantly elevated lactate levels in OvCa patients (4.3 ± 1.9 mmol/L) compared with healthy controls (1.4 ± 0.6 mmol/L; p < 0.0001), with an AUC of 0.96. The HCAR1 gene is overexpressed in OvCa compared to healthy controls (p < 0.001). Using an OvCa tissue microarray (>75% expression in 100 patients), high protein expression was also recorded across all epithelial OvCa subtypes and ovarian normal adjacent tissue (NAT). Conclusions: Lactate monitoring is a simple, cost-efficient test that can offer point-of-care results. Our data suggest that the potential of circulating lactate as a screening biomarker in OvCa merits further research attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of the study was to determine the effect of supramaximal exercise intensity during constant work-rate cycling to exhaustion on the accumulated oxygen deficit (AOD) and to determine the test--retest reliability of AOD. Methods: Twenty-one trained male cyclists and triathletes (mean ± SD for age and maximal oxygen uptake [...O2max] were 41 ± 7 y and 4.53 ± 0.54 L/min, respectively) performed initial tests to determine the linear relationship between ...O2 and power output, and ...O2max. In subsequent trials, AOD was determined from exhaustive square-wave cycling trials at 105%, 112.5% (in duplicate), 120%, and 127.5% ...O2max. Results: Exercise intensity had an effect (P = .011) on the AOD (3.84 ± 1.11, 4.23 ± 0.96, 4.09 ± 0.87, and 3.93 ± 0.89 L at 105%, 112.5%, 120%, and 127.5% ...O2max, respectively). Specifically, AOD at 112.5% ...O2max was greater than at 105% ...O2max (P = .033) and at 127.5% ...O2max (P = .022), but there were no differences between the AOD at 112.5% and 120% ...O2max. In 76% of the participants, the maximal AOD occurred at 112.5% or 120% ...O2max. The reliability statistics of the AOD at 112.5% ...O2max, determined as intraclass correlation coefficient and coefficient of variation, were .927 and 8.72%, respectively. Conclusions: The AOD, determined from square-wave cycling bouts to exhaustion, peaks at intensities of 112.5-120% ...O2max. Moreover, the AOD at 112.5% ...O2max exhibits an 8.72% test--retest reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]