Historical Society and County Record Publications from the United Kingdom: A Finding Guide

The attached excel sheet is intended to be used as a finding aid for county records series and the publications of various historical societies in the United Kingdom. This document was created to support the work of Professor Margo Todd, her students, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History. The information provided in this document is based on series holdings in the University of Pennsylvania libraries, primarily Van Pelt‐Dietrich, as well as those held in storage at LIBRA. It is designed to give a quick reference to these holdings, where they are located, and which geographic region they cover. It is by no means exhaustive and is a work in progress, but it should give the reader a good idea of the holdings available to the UPenn community

The evolving research agenda for paediatric tuberculosis infection

There are unique challenges facing the diagnosis and management of tuberculosis infection in children. Following exposure to an infectious tuberculosis case and subsequent infection, children frequently progress to tuberculosis disease more rapidly than adults. Increasingly, investigators recognize the concept of sub clinical disease, an entity referring to early asymptomatic disease. Our understanding of the pathogenesis of tuberculosis in children remains limited but could be improved through animal models, laboratory studies evaluating the responses of blood or respiratory samples to mycobacteria in vitro, as well as evaluating immune responses in children exposed to tuberculosis. Identifying children with sub-clinical disease, at high risk of progression to clinically apparent disease, through biomarker discover, would mean that treatment could be targeted to those most likely to benefit. These studies could be embedded in large observational or interventional cohorts. The optimization and discovery of novel treatments for tuberculosis infection in children need to account for mechanisms of action of tuberculosis drugs as well as child-specific factors including pharmacokinetics and appropriate formulations. In this article we present the result of discussions at a large international meeting and the series of research priorities that were developed

CRISPR in context : towards a socially responsible debate on embryo editing

Following the birth in 2018 of two babies from embryos altered using CRISPR-Cas9, human germline gene editing (GGE) moved from abstract concern to reality. He Jiankui, the scientist responsible, has been roundly condemned by most scientific, legal and ethical commentators. However, opinions remain divided on whether GGE could be acceptably used in the future, and how, or if it should be prohibited entirely. The many reviews, summits, positions statements and high-level meetings that have accompanied the emergence of CRISPR technology acknowledge this, calling for greater public engagement to help reach a consensus on how to proceed. These calls are laudable but far from unproblematic. Consensus is not only hugely challenging to reach, but difficult to measure and to know when it might be achieved. Engagement is clearly desirable, but engagement strategies need to avoid the limitations of previous encounters between publics and biotechnology. Here we set CRISPR in the context of the biotechnology and fertility industries to illustrate the lessons to be learned. In particular we demonstrate the importance of avoiding a ‘deficit mode’ in which resistance is attributed to a lack of public understanding of science, addressing the separation of technical safety criteria from ethical and social matters, and ensuring the scope of the debate includes the political-economic context in which science is conducted and new products and services are brought to market. Through this history, we draw on Mary Douglas’ classic anthropological notion of ‘matter out of place’ to explain why biotechnologies evoke feelings of unease and anxiety, and recommend this as a model for rehabilitating lay apprehension about novel biological technologies as legitimate matters of concern in future engagement exercises about GGE