Michelle J. Smith

Effect of converting enzyme inhibition on renin synthesis and secretion in mice.

We have investigated the relative importance of renal renin stores and de novo synthesis during stimulation of renin secretion and the role of transcription and posttranscriptional factors in providing increased synthesis of renin. When enalapril was administered to previously untreated mice, plasma renin concentration increased 40-fold within 1.5 hours, and remained at a high level for the 8 days of the experiment. Renal renin decreased by 82% after 24 hours and thereafter increased to levels higher than controls. Calculations of renin turnover, based on data for the rate of metabolism of renin in plasma, indicated that most of the renin released in the first 24 hours could be accounted for by the decrease in renal renin stores, indicating that de novo synthesis played only a minor role. After 24 hours, however, when both plasma renin concentration and renal renin increased, the calculated rate of renin synthesis increased to nearly 40 times the rate in controls. When enalapril was administered to mice that had been depleted of plasma and renal renin by chronic sodium loading, plasma renin concentration increased markedly within 1.5 hours, but to only half the level achieved in the previously untreated mice. No decrease in renal renin occurred, suggesting that the renal renin remaining after chronic sodium loading was not available for release. Renal renin messenger RNA increased 4.5-fold after 6 hours, and after 8 days had increased to 5.0 times the level at day 0. The increase in calculated rate of renin synthesis was maximal between 5 and 8 days, when it was 54 times greater than at day 0. During enalapril treatment, there were marked increases in the granulation of the juxtaglomenilar cells and in the amount of rough endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus they contained. These results suggest that posttranscriptional factors play a major role in determining the rate of renin synthesis.

Effect of mineralocorticoids and salt loading on renin release, renal renin content and renal renin mRNA in mice.

1. DOCA and 9α‐fludrocortisone were given to mice on a high‐sodium diet for periods of up to 20 weeks, resulting in decreases in plasma renin concentration, renal renin concentration and renal renin mRNA with both treatments.

Influence of Angiotensin II (AII) and Angiotensin I (AI) on Renal Renin Synthesis and Release

This study examined the effect of exogenous AI and AII on renin synthesis and release. AII or AII + AI were given using osmotic minipumps, over a 7 day period to rats receiving oral Enalapril. Enalapril caused a marked increase in renin release and synthesis. AII abolished the rise in plasma and renal renin observed with Enalapril. AI had no inhibitory or stimulatory effect on renin release or synthesis in rats receiving Enalapril and AII.

Be(ing) Prepared: Girl Guides, Colonial Life, and National Strength

Most British youth groups with a nationalistic or imperial focus in the late Victorian and Edwardian period were created for boys, such as the enduring and internationally popular Boy Scouts. As I have argued in the previous chapters, however, there was a place imagined for girls within the imperial project. Girls’ involvement in the maintenance of the Empire was configured as equally important, if not more so, than that of the boys who were trained for front-line military defence. However, despite the uniqueness of the Girl Guides’ ‘character training’ for girls, the Guide movement has, until recently, been critically ignored or briefly considered only as a mere derivative of the Scouts (Springhall, 1977, p. 130). Tammy M. Proctor’s history Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (2009) has rightfully begun the process of treating the subject of girls in Scouting as an important area of inquiry in its own right and reassessing Guiding’s ‘underrated impact on the modern world’ (p. xx). Despite such critical re-evaluation of the cultural importance of the girls’ movement, little attention has been paid to Guiding’s founding handbook, which has been regarded as ‘essentially a rewritten version of Scouting for Boys’ (Rosenthal, 1984, p. 11). This kind of dismissal ignores significant changes which were made to the scheme and its original handbook, The Handbook for Girl Guides; or, How Girls Can Help Build the Empire,1 In order to make the move¬ment suitable for Edwardian girls.

Animating child activism:: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s Fern Gully (1992)

Informed by ecocriticism, this article conducts a comparative examination of two contemporary animated childrens films, Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fern Gully (1992). While both films advocate for the prevention of deforestation, they are, to varying degrees, antithetical to environmentalism. Both films reject the principles of deep ecology in displacing responsibility for environmental destruction on to ‘supernatural’ forces and exhibit anthropocentric concern for the survival of humans. We argue that these films constitute divergent methodological approaches for environmental consciousness-raising in childrens entertainment. The western world production demonstrates marked conservatism in its depiction of identity politics and ‘cute’ feminization of nature, while Hayao Miyazakis film renders nature sublime and invokes complex socio-cultural differences. Against FernGullys ‘othering’ of working-class and queer characters, we posit that Princess Mononoke is decidedly queer, anti-binary and ideologically bi-partisan and, in accord with the underlying principle of environmental justice, asks child audiences to consider compassion for the poor in association with care for nature.

Colonial Feminism and Australian Literary Culture in Ethel and Lilian Turner's the Parthenon (1889–92)

The Parthenon is a unique example of a colonial Australian magazine published for girl readers by two aspirant writers, Ethel and Lilian Turner. In addition to its domestic content, typical of womens magazines, it also sought to contribute to nascent Australian literary culture. This article locates the Parthenon within the history of colonial womens publishing and literary culture, and situates its content within the context of the Woman Movement of the period. It reads the Parthenons telling picture of young womens perceptions of colonial literary culture and of the need to balance literary aspirations with domestic responsibilities through the lens of the “expediency feminism” advocated by the Dawn, a womens magazine published by Louisa Lawson from 1888. The article argues that the Parthenons superficially conservative opinion of womens supreme calling being in the home rather than the newspaper office or university library was in alignment with the arguments made by the Woman Movement to advocate for womens greater participation in the public sphere. The comparison of these contemporaneous monthly publications written and produced by women enables an understanding of the ways in which late nineteenth-century attempts to encourage womens careers and independence were grounded in domesticity.

Colonial Girlhood/Colonial Girls

Settler colonies and colonies of occupation, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Ireland and South Africa, provided a space for girls to experience freedom from, and the potential to reconfigure, British norms of femininity. For Indigenous girls, colonialism brought with it new kinds of scrutiny and competing feminine ideals. Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950 draws together leading and emerging international scholars for a multidisciplinary examination of how colonial girlhood was constructed, and redefined, in both British and colonial texts and cultures. Since girlhood in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries extends from childhood to the age of marriage, it represents a complex category encompassing various life stages and kinds of femininity, as well as differences based on class and race.

Education and Work in Service of the Nation

Canadian and Australian girls’ fiction of the early twentieth century contains surprising differences in feminine ideals with respect to education and work. In Chapter 4, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver explain that the question of a young women’s career in post-federated Australia ‘saw a convergence of narratives that each competed for relevance along very specific lines of argument: to do with propriety... job security, reasonable rates of incomes and expectations of career advancement, working conditions, and, in each case, the impact or effect these things might have on femininity and the role it plays in the nation’s future’.1 This same question remains central to girls’ fiction in both Canada and Australia in this period. Girls’ fiction in these white settler colonies has many similarities, containing strong ideals related to domesticity, education, employment and femininity. The question of a girl’s occupation and the skills she needs to become a successful young woman is central to these texts. The important differences are based on education, in which the Canadian attitudes towards women’s higher education and employment are generally much more positive. Although Canadian girls’ texts also typically conclude with marriage (and presumably motherhood), Canadian girls like L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Nellie McClung’s Pearlie Watson are offered the opportunity to pursue higher education and use this education to teach others.

Developing Pedagogy and Hybridised Femininity in the Girls’ School Story

The rise of the girl reader inspired the creation of genres of fiction specifically marketed for her consumption. The girls’ school story appeared in the 1880s, substantially later than the mid-Victorian boys’ genre, and, as it became a publishing phenomenon in the twentieth century, developed to reflect modern femininity. Beginning with eighteenth-century fiction with a school setting, such as Sarah Fielding’s The Governess; or, Little Female Academy (1749), and through to the influential Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) — which marked the beginning of the truly popular boys’ school stories, and later featured in periodicals such as the Boy’s Own Paper — the school story assumed many different forms before girls’ school novels proliferated.

Fantastic and Domestic Girls and the Idolisation of ‘Improving’ Others

The protagonists of E. Nesbit’s trilogy of fantasy novels, which comprises Five Children and It (1902), The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904), and The Story of the Amulet (1906),1 act as the first British travellers to historical places and imaginary realms, including a tropical island inhabited by ‘primitives’. Though Nesbit’s stories were not exclusively intended for girl readers, their girl protagonists nevertheless support the imperial project through civilising ‘native’ inhabitants and mothering their brothers away from parental help. British colonialism was grounded in the logic of the parent-child relationship, with the phrase ‘mother country’ used to refer to the imperial centre, marking Britain’s colonies as children in need of development and instruction. Within the language of a parental influence, colonial rule, however, has been largely conceptualised in masculine terms.2 In the first half of this chapter, I consider how Nesbit’s trilogy reconfigures the imperial parent-child/ruler-colony metaphor through the girl protagonist, Anthea, whose maternal capabilities aid not only in exploration, but also in negotiating with and placating indigenous peoples. More pointedly, I propose that Nesbit inserts mothering into the imperial parent-child metaphor.