Efficacy of Several Candidate Protein Biomarkers in the Differentiation of Vaginal from Buccal Epithelial Cells*

Abstract: Currently, there is no accurate method to differentiate vaginal epithelial cells from buccal epithelial cells in biological samples typically encountered in forensic casework. This study tested the expression of a selection of candidate proteins in buccal and vaginal epithelial cells. We investigated six candidate biomarkers, such as loricrin, vimentin, stratifin, cytokeratin 4, cytokeratin 13, small proline‐rich protein 2, and involucrin, using Western blot analysis on whole protein extracts and immunohistochemistry (IHC) on intact cells in an attempt to identify cell‐specific markers that would differentiate these cells by microscopy. Involucrin, loricrin, and stratifin showed differential expression during Western blot analysis and were carried through to IHC. Although proteins unique to vaginal epithelial cells and buccal epithelial cells were not identified from among the proteins tested, the increased expression levels of two proteins, loricrin and stratifin in vaginal cells, when compared to buccal cells, do provide encouraging results in the search for epithelial cell‐specific markers.     

The Wang Lixiong prophecy: ‘Palestinization’ in Xinjiang and the consequences of Chinese state securitization of religion

ABSTRACT

In Your Western Regions, My Turkestan (2007), Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong warned of the ‘Palestinization’ of the Xinjiang question, defined as reaching ‘a critical point in time’ where Uyghurs and Han Chinese enter an interminable ‘ethnic war’. Following the knife attack on Han civilians in Kunming (2014), seen by many as an act of Uyghur terror, Wang reminded us that he had foreseen this trajectory seven years earlier. This article outlines Wang’s six interpretations of ‘Palestinization’ in the Xinjiang context, then shows how tightened regulations on religion and intrusive religious policing was the main catalyst for local retaliatory violence in 2012–2015. I contend that state securitization of religion was counterproductive, heightening societal insecurity and promoting inter-ethnic conflict between Uyghur and Han communities. In Chen Quanguo’s era of ‘de-extremification’, the state’s purported attempt to ‘purify’ Islamic practice continues to be experienced on the ground as violation of pure, halal space.     

Trajectories of public administration and administrative history in Australia: Rectifying ‘a curious blight’?

Anyone who has taught courses or conducted research under the rubric of ‘public administration’ must have been troubled more or less frequently by two characteristics of his ‘field’‐ its nebulous scope and its lack of any distinctive technique. He must have felt himself a Jack of all trades as he pottered amateurishly about, now on the fringes of administrative law, now at the margins of accounting and budgeting, and then at the edges of industrial relations and occupational psychology. As a teacher, how often did he face a class of public servants, each more expert and experienced in some specialty than he was in any?