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Oocyte Insights

Women are born with egg cells called oocytes that mature later in life, one during each menstrual cycle, ready to be fertilised. This mouse ovary shows its own precious oocytes, artificially coloured in red with yellow nuclei. Unfortunately, oocytes are often damaged when treating cancer with chemotherapy, leaving many women infertile. But there is hope. Chemotherapies often work by causing cancer cells to self-destruct – scientists found something similar happening inside oocytes as a side effect. Usually a protein called CHK2 only switches on in oocytes with damaged DNA, to prevent them from being fertilised – but chemo switches it on in all the healthy ones too. By temporarily blocking CHK2 with a drug, researchers saved the healthy smaller mouse oocytes (like those bottom left) that would otherwise have perished. In the future, similar drugs may be offered to female cancer patients, perhaps providing hope of a new family after their recovery.

Written by John Ankers

Image by the Schimenti Lab, Cornell University

Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine, Ithaca, New York, NY, USA

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in Genetics, August 2017

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

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A lyric illustration I did for @tearawaymag celebrating #nzmusicmonth 🎧 Ft a cute mako shark and two great whites 🦈💕 #swimandsleeplikeashark #unknownmortalorchestra #illustration #lyricsquote #sharks #sharkweek

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An #illustration of @doddleoddle 🌻 #instaart #insta #dodie #dodieyellow #youtuber

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Context: have been reading Elena Ferrante's 'The Days of Abandonment' this week so everything feels like it's on fire 🔥 #illustration #instaart #insta #raccoon #eattrashbefree

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A #doodle inspired by the amazing work of @gemmacorrell 👗👙👠

#comic #sketchbook

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Imagine twelve year old Harry not even knowing how awful his childhood with Dursleys had been until he gets to the Burrow.

Imagine him seeing Percy asleep with a book on his lap, and being baffled that a kid might feel comfortable enough in his own home to be so vulnerable in the living room. 

Imagine Molly coming up to the attic to say goodnight to Ron and Harry, and Harry glancing at Ron when he hears her footsteps, trying to figure out what they had done wrong that day.

Imagine him asking George who does all the house chores, and thinking it’s a joke when George answers, “we all do.” 

Imagine Ginny pestering Arthur with questions over the Daily Prophet, and Harry trying to shoot her warning looks to stop it! but then Mr. Weasley looks up and patiently answers every single one. 

Imagine Bill popping in for a visit one evening and Harry being floored when Bill stops to chat with him. 

Imagine Fred chasing after Harry in the yard, playfighting, but Harry actually begins to run for real fear of being hurt. 

Imagine Molly burning something on the stove my accident and tossing it, imagine Harry mentioning to Ron, offhandedly, “she could’ve given that one to me, it’s what I eat at home when I mess up dinner” and not knowing why Ron is horrified.

Imagine Harry seeing what a normal, functioning family looks like, and realizing the absence of love in his own life. 

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😍😍😍

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gjW8jMVnEA)

NEW FD!!

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Double Exposure Images by Nevess

Alexis a.k.a. Nevess is an 18-year-old artist from Paris, France who has already mastered an aspect of surrealism thanks to his practice of digital double exposure. 

Usually I spend 3 or 4 hours making one double exposure creation. I love creating unique pieces of art, with a lot of details, I also try to vary every photo as much as possible (nature, city, landscapes, etc…) and work really hard to obtain the best result I can.

Meet us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

posted by Margaret

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Male protagonist to female character: I don't even know why I'm telling you all this personal information, I just met you

Me: You've been socialized to view women as receptacles for your emotions and she can't tell you to fuck off because she's at work and doesn't wanna get fired, next question

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爱•死•你 // Love you to death

Based on an old fairytale “The Rose-Elf” about a woman keeping her lovers skull in a pot after he was murdered and crying into it day and night. Soon a jasmine plant grew from it.

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succulentsaurs

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New Post has been published on Cinephiled

New Post has been published on http://www.cinephiled.com/interview-french-director-anne-fontaine-on-the-powerful-and-haunting-the-innocents/

Interview: French Director Anne Fontaine on the Powerful and Haunting ‘The Innocents’

Warsaw, December 1945. The second World War is finally over and French Red Cross doctor Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked Benedictine nun (Agata Buzek) appears at the clinic begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy. A non-believer, Mathilde enters the sisters’ fiercely private world, dictated by the rituals of their order and the strict Rev. Mother (Agata Kulesza). Fearing the shame of exposure, the hostility of the occupying Soviet troops and local Polish communists and while facing an unprecedented crisis of faith, the nuns increasingly turn to Mathilde as their beliefs and traditions clash with harsh realities. I spoke with director Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel, Gemma Bovery) about this beautiful and intense film.

Danny Miller: This is such a gorgeous movie about a very difficult topic. How closely was it based on actual facts?

Anne Fontaine: There really was this young French doctor who was working for the Red Cross in 1945 who helped the nuns that were raped by the Soviet army. Her real name was Madeleine Pauliac and she left a diary about her time in Poland including her meetings with these sisters who were pregnant. But she only recorded the basic facts. We took those and interpreted the psychology of it for our film.

And this doctor really had to keep what she was doing a secret from the Red Cross?

Oh, yes, she had to disobey her superiors in order to help the nuns. This was a direct transgression against her orders.

I saw Lou de Laage last year as a chess-playing teenager in The Tournament and was amazed to see her in this kind of role which she performs so beautifully. And the two main Polish actresses, Agata Buzek and Agata Kulesza, are simply extraordinary. How did you find them?

I was very lucky because there are such amazing actors in Poland, they are very well trained. I chose Agata Buzek first for the important role of Sister Maria. I had seen her in this Jason Statham movie, of all things, called Redemption, my producer had shown this to me, and it was hard to imagine her in The Innocents. But then we met and I found her to be a really incredible actress. I didn’t think of Agata Kulesza in the beginning because she was so much younger than how I imagined the Mother Abbess and also very beautiful and sexy but she asked to do a screen test and you wouldn’t believe the transformation, I didn’t even recognize her. It was great to have an actress of that caliber in this very difficult role, she was perfect. With Lou it was a little more complex. As you say, she was very young and hadn’t ever had an adult lead role in a serious film like this. We did tests with a bunch of French actresses but I was entranced by Lou’s charisma and her incredible beauty and strength. I really think she is one of our most interesting actors in France today. And she had that timeless look to her face, I could so see her in 1945.

As the Mother Abbess, Agata Kulesza has to do something in the film that’s pretty shocking and violent. Did you talk to her a lot about her character’s motivation for that moment?

The very first scene I shot with her was when she is crying in the church after she had done that horrible thing and she is really suffering. We talked a lot about why the Mother Abbess would have done that. What was so great about all of these actresses is that they were intensely interested in the whole story, not just their parts. With Agata Kulesza and Agata Buzek, we talked every single day about what was happening inside the minds of their characters and what was going on for them emotionally. In the process of doing that, we occasionally rewrote some of the dialogue so it would match. It was an incredible experience to work with such sensitive actresses.

It’s hard to watch that scene with Mathilde at the Soviet checkpoint even though she’s saved from a worse fate. Even though this is a movie and no one is really being hurt, are such scenes difficult to shoot for the actors involved?

Oh yes, very. When you do these kinds of scenes, you choreograph them very carefully and plan very well but at some point you just have to get in there, you can’t hold back. I felt this scene was extremely important for Mathilde’s understanding of the nuns — it’s something that makes her change how she is with them. So it had to be quite brutal. We were shooting it outside in Poland in the bitter cold, and we had to make sure it felt real and true.

It certainly felt real. As did all of the scenes in the film, including the births of the babies.

Yes, scenes like those are so intense that everyone has to stay very focused and inside the situation, you just can’t think about anything else. You prepare and rehearse as much as you can in advance, and then you have to just believe in the actors that you chose.

I’m Jewish and grew up fascinated by the nuns I saw in the movies but they were very sentimentalized such as the ones in The Sound of Music or The Trouble with Angels. The life of the convent that you show in this film is so much more austere and realistic. Did you have a lot of religious people consulting on set?

The best preparation I did was going on two long retreats in that community. I lived with the nuns for a while and really tried to understand what it was like to be in this community from the inside. I was lucky because they really adopted me. They knew I was about to make this film and they were very touched by the story so they let me participate in everything thy do: pray, eat, work. That helped so much. But I also had consultants on the film, including a wonderful priest who helped me choose the Latin songs that the nuns sing.

What do you think the film says about faith?

That it is something very fragile and very fluid. It’s not something that once you have it, it’s there forever. Personally, I am not somebody who believes in God, I believe in people and art and many things, but I don’t believe in God even though I had a Catholic education. But I learned so much living with the nuns and working on this film. I also learned that even though our story is set in the 1940s, this kind of thing is still going on every day. Wherever there are wars and fundamentalism, these kinds of abuses are still happening.

Has Russia ever acknowledged what some of the Soviet troops did during this time?

No, they really don’t want this story to be known at all. Of course, as I say, it wasn’t only the Russians, it’s still happening. But, you know, this film was bought by countries all over the world except for Russia. I was in Vietnam last month for a retrospective of my movies and when they showed The Innocents, this one government representative asked me if the movie was a statement against communism. Of course I said that is not the message of the movie in any way. Some people still have a hard time discussing the content of the film.

Do you know if any of the convents in Poland who had these things happen ever found a solution like the one we see at the end of your film?

To be honest, I met people from a convent in Vietnam where the nuns adopted local orphans which then made it possible for the children of the actual sisters to mix in with the others. I combined that reality with the story of this real French doctor. I believe such things did also happen in Poland, but not at the same convent where this woman worked. In real life, sadly, Madeleine Pauliac died very young, shortly after working with these nuns, I believe she was killed in a car accident.

I was very grateful for this ending in The Innocents.

I don’t think I could have directed the movie without that ending. It’s still a very harsh film but I needed that element of hope — to know that not everything wsa completely awful and terrible.

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Lady Macbeth: the quickest way to a gentlemen's heart is through the fourth and fifth rib

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Timmy was always a bit different from the other ostriches