Playing Monopoly: Actor/Manager Robert William Elliston (1774–1831) and the Struggle for a Free Stage in London 1802–32

This study reveals the complexity of relationships inherent in a system of theatre governance shaped by exclusive rights. Royal patents granted in 1662 entrusted sole guardianship of the ‘national’ or ‘regular’ drama to two ‘patent’ or ‘legitimate’ theatres (ultimately, established as The Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Covent Garden). These held privileged access to the traditional canon of serious, literary drama, including Shakespeare. The monopoly regime’s power, re-affirmed in The Theatre Licensing Act 1737, prevented all other playhouses, labelled ‘minor’, from producing the national corpus of plays, and from employing ‘the spoken word’: continuous speech unaccompanied by music. ‘Minor’ theatres were restricted to exhibitions of movement, music, and rhyme, commonly termed ‘burletta’. By the early 1800s a consensus held the ‘patent’ regime responsible for degrading rather than preserving dramatic standards. Actor/manager Robert William Elliston purchased his first London ‘minor’ theatre in February 1809. From that moment he began a largely self-interested campaign to overthrow the monopoly. Seeking an equitable footing, Elliston made a series of formal challenges, but when they failed he abandoned official channels. Thereafter, while remaining within the law, he adopted subversive means to gain his goal of a free stage. The Times’s review of Elliston’s first circumvention of the law in August 1809, an innovative ‘burletta’-ized Macbeth, lauded his ‘irregular’ production, while recognizing this novel version as a landmark incursion into the ‘legitimate’ canon. Elliston’s pioneering role in the struggle for reform, recorded in 1926, has been little researched since. The thesis re-evaluates Elliston’s agency in the ‘patent’ cartel’s demise, so contributing to a re-assessment of the narrative of the monopoly regime, and the ideological and social significance of its abolition. Once free competition was achieved, the theatre became a space in which the ‘legitimate’ canon could be accessed by every class of theatre-goer

Influence of Absolute Humidity, Temperature and Population Density on COVID-19 Spread and Decay Durations: Multi-prefecture Study in Japan

This study analyzed the spread and decay durations of the COVID-19 pandemic in different prefectures of Japan. During the pandemic, affordable healthcare was widely available in Japan and the medical system did not suffer a collapse, making accurate comparisons between prefectures possible. For the 16 prefectures included in this study that had daily maximum confirmed cases exceeding ten, the number of daily confirmed cases follow bell-shape or log-normal distribution in most prefectures. A good correlation was observed between the spread and decay durations. However, some exceptions were observed in areas where travelers returned from foreign countries, which were defined as the origins of infection clusters. Excluding these prefectures, the population density was shown to be a major factor affecting the spread and decay patterns, with R2=0.39 (p<0.05) and 0.42 (p<0.05), respectively, approximately corresponding to social distancing. The maximum absolute humidity was found to affect the decay duration normalized by the population density (R2>0.36, p <0.05). Our findings indicate that the estimated pandemic spread duration, based on the multivariate analysis of maximum absolute humidity, ambient temperature, and population density (adjusted R2=0.53, p-value<0.05), could prove useful for intervention planning during potential future pandemics, including a second COVID-19 outbreak.Comment: Submitted to: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Healt

Evolución del germen dental trasplantado heterotópicamente en la dermis: un estudio histológico en la rata

En este estudio hemos analizado la potencialidad de desarrollo del germen dental en fase de corona. Para ello, los gérmenes dentales de rata recién nacida fueron trasplantados en las bolsas dérmicas de la oreja de ratas isogénicas. Siete y catorce días después del trasplante, se desarrollaron las estructuras morfológicas dentales típicas, con ameloblastos y odontoblastos bien diferenciados. Ulteriormente, los procesos de reacción inflamatoria del tejido huésped con infiltración celular abocaron a la desaparición de los tejidos dentales. Desde el primer momento de nuestro análisis, los trasplantes desarrollaron una dentina anómala u osteoide cuyo tamaño fue paulatinamente incrementando con el tiempo, llegando a sustituir al resto de los tejidos dentales. Esta dentina osteoide, fruto tanto de la transformación de los odontoblastos del trasplante en células de alta actividad secretora como de la inducción que el germen dental ejerce en el tejido huésped circundante; y a diferencia de la observada en estudios previos, mostró diversos grados de polimerización fibrilar, lo que nos induce a sugerir que nuestro modelo puede ser un buen medio de estudiar los mecanismos de reacción en la formación de tejidos reactivos a la lesión dental.The main goal of this study was the analysis of the developmental potentiality of tooth germ from late bell stage on, after its heterotopic placement within the skin. Teeth germs of newborn rats were grafted within a skin pouch of the ear of adult rats. Seven to fourteen days after grafting, dental germs developed normal dental structures in which ameloblasts and odontoblasts were well differentiated. Twenty to forty-one days after graft, the inflammatory host reaction destroyed the dental developed tissues by cell infiltration. The dentin of the grafts was of osteoid characteristics, and its size increased dependinng on grafting time until the complete substitution of all dental tissues. This atypical dentin showed several degrees of polymerisation from collagen fibres smooth dentin devoid near the graft a to fibres rich dentin far from the dental germ. Present results suggest that this type of dental graft could be a valuable model to study the self-development of dental tissues and the reactive mechanisms taking place after dental injuries

Efecto genotóxico de hidrocarburos aromáticos policíclicos asociados a material particulado

Fil: Tames, M. F. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Tames, M. F. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Carreras, H. A. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Carreras, H. A. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, y Naturales; Argentina.La Organización Mundial de la Salud ha señalado que en ambientes urbanos los hidrocarburos aromáticos policíclicos (HAP’s) son uno de los contaminantes más tóxicos, debido a que son agentes mutagénicos perjudiciales para el hombre aun en pequeñas concentraciones. Si bien existe algunos estudios sobre la capacidad genotóxica del material particulado, ésta podría no ser válida para las ciudades latinoamericanas, debido a que la mayoría de dichos estudios han sido realizados en países desarrollados que poseen características climáticas, geográficas y socioeconómicas considerablemente diferentes a las de las urbes de América Latina.Fil: Tames, M. F. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Tames, M. F. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, y Naturales; Argentina.Fil: Carreras, H. A. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; Argentina.Fil: Carreras, H. A. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, y Naturales; Argentina.Otras Ciencias de la Tierra y relacionadas con el Medio Ambient

Bifidobacterium adolescentis as a key member of the human gut microbiota in the production of GABA

Gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the principal inhibitory neurotransmitter playing a key role in anxiety and depression disorders in mammals. Recent studies revealed that members of the gut microbiota are able to produce GABA modulating the gut–brain axis response. Among members of the human gut microbiota, bifidobacteria are well known to establish many metabolic and physiologic interactions with the host. In this study, we performed genome analyses of more than 1,000 bifidobacterial strains publicly available revealing that Bifidobacterium adolescentis taxon might represent a model GABA producer in human gastrointestinal tract. Moreover, the in silico screening of human/animal metagenomic datasets showed an intriguing association/correlation between B. adolescentis load and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Interestingly, in vitro screening of 82 B. adolescentis strains allowed identifying two high GABA producers, i.e. B. adolescentis PRL2019 and B. adolescentis HD17T2H, which were employed in an in vivo trial in rats. Feeding Groningen rats with a supplementation of B. adolescentis strains, confirmed the ability of these microorganisms to stimulate the in vivo production of GABA highlighting their potential implication in gut–brain axis interactions

ERP evidence suggests executive dysfunction in ecstasy polydrug users

Background: Deficits in executive functions such as access to semantic/long-term memory have been shown in ecstasy users in previous research. Equally, there have been many reports of equivocal findings in this area. The current study sought to further investigate behavioural and electro-physiological measures of this executive function in ecstasy users. Method: Twenty ecstasy–polydrug users, 20 non-ecstasy–polydrug users and 20 drug-naïve controls were recruited. Participants completed background questionnaires about their drug use, sleep quality, fluid intelligence and mood state. Each individual also completed a semantic retrieval task whilst 64 channel Electroencephalography (EEG) measures were recorded. Results: Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) revealed no between-group differences in behavioural performance on the task. Mixed ANOVA on event-related potential (ERP) components P2, N2 and P3 revealed significant between-group differences in the N2 component. Subsequent exploratory univariate ANOVAs on the N2 component revealed marginally significant between-group differences, generally showing greater negativity at occipito-parietal electrodes in ecstasy users compared to drug-naïve controls. Despite absence of behavioural differences, differences in N2 magnitude are evidence of abnormal executive functioning in ecstasy–polydrug users