The use of product and service brands by popular movie characters has long been a powerful marketing tool, boosting brand awareness and enhancing brand image. Product placement—the appearance of brands in films—not only increases visibili...
Marvel’s 2021 film Eternals presents a new mythology for a new century, for an audience grappling with the complexity of postcolonialism and concerned about resurging white nationalism. Its mythology, while rooted in Western narratives, present...
In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the impaired intestinal barrier is mainly characterized by changes in tight junction protein expression. The functional role of the tight junction-associated MARVEL protein MARVELD3 (MD3) in IBD is yet unknown. (i...
Chinese state-endorsed films have transformed in the past decade. These films make up the “new mainstream”, a genre defined by its ability to match strides with Hollywood commercial cinema. But, what exactly comprises Hollywood’s im...
The approach taken by Marvel and Hanna-Barbera to adapting Godzilla for a young American audience is a form of cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation involves removing the subject from its cultural context. In this case, Marvel and Hanna-Barb...
This article examines how The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) reconfigures cinematic heroism by positioning Sue Storm as the strategic and moral centre of Marvel’s First Family. Prior scholarship on female superheroes has concentrated on Won...
The purpose of this review is to delve into the essence of Annona muricata Linn. A. muricata, also known as soursop, guanabana, and graviola, is a member of the Annonaceae family and has a long history of traditional uses. This is an evergreen plant...
The X-Men are a superhero team published by Marvel Comics. Initially marketed as a team of teenage superheroes, the franchise eventually began emphasizing the “mutant metaphor” as a narrative device that differentiated it from other comic...
25 March 2010
Alcohol abuse is a serious medical and social problem. Although light to moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial to cardiovascular health, heavy drinking often results in organ damage and social problems. In addition, genetic susceptibility to the...
This essay examines how Black girl narratives are finding and making space and place in the arena of comic books and television. With the rise in Black girl (super)hero protagonists on the comic book pages and adapted television shows, it is essentia...
Examining the ambivalent place of the sideshow and the laboratory within Victorian culture and its reimaginings, this essay explores the contradiction between the narratively orchestrating role and peripheral location of the sideshow in Leslie Parry&...
The film Black Panther (2018) has been the subject of extensive discussion, particularly within the context of representational politics in contemporary Hollywood cinema. This critical scoping review maps how academic literature interprets the film&l...
Ford Madox Ford famously intended his First World War tetralogy Parade’s End to have “for its purpose the obviating of all future wars”. But why do we engage in war to begin with? Modernist literature provides some provocative expla...
Upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) accounts for 5–10% of all UCs. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been established for UCs. The prognostic and predictive potential of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression to stratify p...
The theme of love as resistance to authority is the centerpiece of a two-millennia-long tradition in Western poetry known as carpe diem (a phrase credited to the Latin poet Horace). This essay begins by analyzing one of the most famous later examples...
Micromachines, small-scale engineered devices prepared to carry out exact tasks at the micro level, have garnered great interest across different fields such as drug delivery, chemical synthesis, and biomedical applications. In emerging applications,...
5 July 2021
There have been calls for more enjoyable Physical Activity (PA) interventions which focus on ensuring a positive affective response. This study explored how using a narrative, characters, and music in a video-led PA session might influence the sense...
Podophyllum hexandrum Royle, also known as Podophyllum emodi Wall, holds significant ecological, ornamental, and medicinal values. However, it has become endangered due to overexploitation, prolonged seed dormancy, slow natural regeneration, and clim...
The MAL gene encodes a 17-kDa protein containing four putative transmembrane segments whose expression is restricted to human T cells, polarized epithelial cells and myelin-forming cells. The MAL protein has two unusual biochemical features. First, i...
The MAL family of integral membrane proteins consists of MAL, MAL2, MALL, PLLP, CMTM8, MYADM, and MYADML2. The best characterized members are elements of the machinery that controls specialized pathways of membrane traffic and cell signaling. This re...
The objective of this research was to look into the self-reported food consumption and wastage behavior in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and the motivations to prevent this waste. The data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic ou...
The COVID-19 pandemic has represented a major global challenge. In Latin America, both Brazil and Peru reported the highest levels of impact in terms of proportional infection and death rates. Within this context, this study sought to compare food co...
The adoption of Digital Twin (DT) solutions for industrial purposes is increasing among small- and medium-sized enterprises and is already being integrated into many large-scale companies. As there is an increasing need for faster production and shor...
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are chronic inflammatory disorders of the intestines. The underlying inflammation activates the coagulation cascade leading to an increased risk of developing arterial and...
Retinoic acid, the active metabolite of Vitamin A, is important for the appropriate development of the nervous system (e.g., neurite outgrowth) as well as for cognition (e.g., memory formation) in the adult brain. We have shown that many of the effec...
To ensure smooth robot operations, parameters of its kinematic model and a registration transformation between robot base and world coordinate frame must be determined. Both tasks require data acquired by external sensors that can measure either 3D l...
The excessive use of fossil fuels has caused great concern due to modern environmental problems, particularly air pollution. The above situation demands that different areas of research aim at a sustainable movement to reduce CO
Dengue virus (DENV) infection continues to be a public health challenge, lacking a specific cure. Vaccination remains the primary strategy against dengue; however, existing live-attenuated vaccines display variable efficacy across four serotypes, inf...
Southern east Africa is prone to some extreme weather events and interannual variability of the hydrological cycle, including tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall events. Most of these events occur during austral summer and are linked to shifts in th...
CD8 T-cells are critical in controlling infection by intracellular pathogens. Upon encountering antigen presenting cells, T-cell receptor activation promotes the differentiation of naïve CD8 T-cells into strongly proliferating activated and effect...
The performance of marker-based, six degrees of freedom (6DOF) pose measuring systems is investigated. For instruments in this class, the pose is derived from locations of a few three-dimensional (3D) points. For such configurations to be used, the r...
11 February 2020
The Houston–Galveston–Brazoria (HGB) region faces numerous environmental and public health challenges from both natural disasters and industrial activity, but the historically disadvantaged communities most often impacted by such risks ha...
Background/Objectives: Neurodegenerative cerebellar ataxia (CA) is a movement disorder caused by progressive cell death in the cerebellum. Motor imagery represents a potential therapeutic tool to improve motor function by “exercising” bra...
Notch signalling is a critical regulator of multiple developmental processes through its ability to control gene expression and thereby influence cell fate specification and cell proliferation through direct cell–cell communication. Although No...
The geological complexity of Java Island, Indonesia, has resulted in the extensive distribution of very soft clay soils, posing significant challenges to geotechnical design and construction. A reliable estimation of the geotechnical properties of th...
People are using plants with health-boosting properties, such as oregano species, in their daily diet. Nowadays, these plants, characterized as potential functional foods, are being extensively scientifically analyzed. Bearing that in mind, as well a...
The LCP (Liquid Crystal Polymer) known as Vectra is synthesized by acidolysis of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid with 6-hydroxy-2-naphthoic acid. The apparently simple acidolysis mechanism for LCP polycondensation is in fact a complex blend of mechanisms. Kine...
Aircraft are considered to be today one of the most impressive engineering marvels of mankind ever made. While servicing commercial and/or private air transport, milestones of state-of art-technology are being achieved one after another, regularly, o...
The human hand is a marvel of evolutionary engineering—an intricate system of bones, tendons, nerves, vessels, and soft tissues that enables precision, strength, sensation, and expression [...]
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the current era offers the ultimate possibility for prosperous corporate life, especially in the transport sector. Industry 4.0 covers artificial intelligence, big data, or industrial IoT, and thus spatial cognition alg...
At the molecular level biology is intrinsically noisy. The forces that regulate the myriad of molecular reactions in the cell are tiny, on the order of piconewtons (10−12 Newtons), yet they proceed in concerted action making life possible. Unde...
Using fingerprints used mainly in machine learning schemes of the potential energy surface, we detect in a fully algorithmic way long range effects on local physical properties in a simple covalent system of carbon atoms. The fact that these long ran...
Cyclodextrins (CDs) are known to us for 130 years, yet they remain ever as new and as fascinating as in their early years, when Villiers marveled at the unexpected growth of “beautiful radiated crystals” in the alcoholic media of his expe...
In this interview, mathematician and computer art pioneer Frieder Nake addresses the emergence of the algorithm as central to our understanding of art: just as the craft of computer programming has been irreplaceable for us in appreciating the marvel...
Microsatellite instability (MSI), high tumor mutation burden (TMB-H) and programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression are hot biomarkers related to the improvement of immunotherapy response. Two cohorts of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) we...
The emergence of bioprinting in recent years represents a marvellous advancement in 3D printing technology. It expands the range of 3D printable materials from the world of non-living materials into the world of living materials. Biomaterials play an...
Alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG) is one of the key metabolites that play a crucial role in cellular energy metabolism. Bariatric surgery is a life-saving procedure, but it carries many gastrointestinal side effects. The present study investigated the benefi...
This article examines a recent form of marketing superhero comics that has garnered extensive media attention and has been promoted as the next big step in comics production: the decision by companies like Marvel Comics and DC Comics to offer selecti...
Various organisms, including bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals, secrete proteins and peptides that self-assemble into ordered amyloid fibrils that perform different physiological functions [...]
In the rapidly evolving landscape of genetic engineering, the advent of CRISPR-Cas technologies has catalyzed a paradigm shift, empowering scientists to manipulate the genetic code with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency. Despite the remarkable ca...
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