The impact of molecular biology on assessment of water quality: advantages and limitations of current techniques

The advent of molecular biology has had a dramatic impact on all aspects of biology, not least applied microbial ecology. Microbiological testing of water has traditionally depended largely on culture techniques. Growing understanding that only a small proportion of microbial species are culturable, and that many microorganisms may attain a viable but non-culturable state, has promoted the development of novel approaches to monitoring pathogens in the environment. This has been paralleled by an increased awareness of the surprising genetic diversity of natural microbial populations. By targeting gene sequences that are specific for particular microorganisms, for example genes that encode diagnostic enzymes, or species-specific domains of conserved genes such as 16S ribosomal RNA coding sequences (rrn genes), the problems of culture can be avoided. Technical developments, notably in the area of in vitro amplification of DNA using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), now permit routine detection and identification of specific microorganisms, even when present in very low numbers. Although the techniques of molecular biology have provided some very powerful tools for environmental microbiology, it should not be forgotten that these have their own drawbacks and biases in sampling. For example, molecular techniques are dependent on efficient lysis and recovery of nucleic acids from both vegetative forms and spores of microbial species that may differ radically when growing in the laboratory compared with the natural environment. Furthermore, PCR amplification can introduce its own bias depending on the nature of the oligonucleotide primers utilised. However, despite these potential caveats, it seems likely that a molecular biological approach, particularly with its potential for automation, will provide the mainstay of diagnostic technology for the foreseeable future

PILOT and cosmic shear

Cosmic shear offers a remarkbly clean way to measure the equation of state of the Universe and its evolution. Resolution over a wide field is paramount, and Antarctica offers unique possibilities in this respect. There is an order of magnitude gain in speed over temperate sites, or a factor three in surface density. This means that PILOT outperforms much larger telescopes elsewhere, and can compete with the proposed DUNE space mission. Keywords: Antarctic astronomy, Surveys, Adaptive optics, Weak lensingComment: 6 pages, Proceedings of 2nd ARENA conference 'The Astrophysical Science Cases at Dome C', Potsdam, 17-21 September 200

Minimal Faithful Permutation Degrees for Irreducible Coxeter Groups and Binary Polyhedral Groups

In this article we calculate the minimal faithful permutation degree for all of the irreducible Coxeter groups. We also exhibit new examples of finite groups that possess a quotient whose minimal degree is strictly greater than that of the group.Comment: 22 page

'Tis better to be seen.

The article presents the author's experience related to leisure activities. He says as, "The sound of my Adidas sprigs scratching and clawing at the concrete as I sprint down Wendywood Lane towards the school draws attention and interested looks, not to mention amusement, from the early morning gardeners and people shuffling out to collect the paper. With lungs nearly bursting and my breath heaving painfully in my chest, the picket fences and hydrangeas blur beside me as I eventually round the corner to the back of the school fields. I scan the horizon for my school colors. I can just make out the yellow and blue strip of my hockey team as they gather together by the dug outs. Parents are starting to gather on the sideline and joust for the position closest to the coach. I search along the line for a glimpse of my father. Not there yet. I know that he'll be there soon.

Developing researchers in the arts and humanities: lessons from a pilot programme to develop discipline-specific research skills

Although increasing emphasis is placed on the provision of research training for doctoral students, much of the support currently available is generic in nature, rather than tailored to the student’s particular field(s) of study. In this paper, I briefly review UK graduate education for arts and humanities research students, and some of the ways in which the distinctive demands of their discipline(s) shape the research student experience and hence their development needs. I describe the design and delivery of a pilot programme of discipline-specific research skills development, co-ordinated by the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies, which aims to address such needs; and I evaluate its success. I conclude with some recommendations for future practice; in particular, I argue that doctoral training provision is more effective when it involves a subject-specific approach in which practising academics from the discipline(s) play a significant role – both in terms of fostering an improved level of student engagement with the programme, and of delivering training and development opportunities which are tailored to the student’s particular context and needs

The Liverpool Care Pathway

For many practising doctors, especially in general practice or in general internal medicine, decisions at the end of life are often some of the most difficult. Not only is decision making difficult, but implementation may create a further set of problems. Most of us are orientated to doing something – usually something that is active, promoting life or health. Many end of life decisions demand something different: the acceptance that life is coming to an end and that the quality of the final phase of the patient’s illness is to offer a good death. The doctor must reorientate his or her thinking to a different, less distinct target. Reference to the the development of the Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient (LCP).peer-reviewe

Howard Barker’s ‘monstrous assaults’: eroticism, death and the antique text

Howard Barker is a writer who has made several notable excursions into what he calls ‘the charnel house…of European drama.’ David Ian Rabey has observed that a compelling property of these classical works lies in what he calls ‘the incompleteness of [their] prescriptions’, and Barker’s Women Beware Women (1986), Seven Lears (1990) and Gertrude: The Cry (2002), are in turn based around the gaps and interstices found in Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women (c1627), Shakespeare’s King Lear (c1604) and Hamlet (c1601) respectively. This extends from representing the missing queen from King Lear, who Barker observes, ‘is barely quoted even in the depths of rage or pity’, to his new ending for Middleton’s Jacobean tragedy and the erotic revivification of Hamlet’s mother. This paper will argue that each modern reappropriation accentuates a hidden but powerful feature in these Elizabethan and Jacobean plays – namely their clash between obsessive desire, sexual transgression and death against the imposed restitution of a prescribed morality. This contradiction acts as the basis for Barker’s own explorations of eroticism, death and tragedy. The paper will also discuss Barker’s project for these ‘antique texts’, one that goes beyond what he derisively calls ‘relevance’, but attempts instead to recover ‘smothered genius’, whereby the transgressive is ‘concealed within structures that lend an artificial elegance.’ Together with Barker’s own rediscovery of tragedy, the paper will assert that these rewritings of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama expose their hidden, yet unsettling and provocative ideologies concerning the relationship between political corruption / justice through the power of sexuality (notably through the allure and danger of the mature woman), and an erotics of death that produces tragedy for the contemporary age