'Another, More Sinister Reality': Class, Youth and Psychopathology from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning to Endless Night

This article analyses how the protagonists of films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1959), The Collector (1965), Blow Up (1966), Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972) were understood in relation to debates over the supposed perils of the new affluence and the erosion of class distinctions that it was presumed to entail. In particular it examines the terms in which these issues were discussed within contemporaneous reviews of the films, terms that were insistently psychological. These protagonists, as well as, to a certain extent, the actors who played them, were seen as representing a nightmare image of a ‘new’ working class that no longer ‘knew its place’, and as manifesting psychological problems that were associated with this intermediate status. Their psychologies were interpreted by many critics as being distinguished by a sense of isolation from external reality and by a hostile relationship to the world characterised by a psychopathic lack of empathy. Such concerns could be seen as establishing certain parallels between working-class realism and the contemporaneous horror film, and indeed the reviews cited in this article demonstrate that working-class realism and horror were seen as having shared points of interest in the 1960s, points that have often been repressed by the tendency to compartmentalise British cinema history into separate or even opposed ‘traditions’

Fregene: Simulation of realistic sequence-level data in populations and ascertained samples

Background: FREGENE simulates sequence-level data over large genomic regions in large populations. Because, unlike coalescent simulators, it works forwards through time, it allows complex scenarios of selection, demography, and recombination to be modelled simultaneously. Detailed tracking of sites under selection is implemented in FREGENE and provides the opportunity to test theoretical predictions and gain new insights into mechanisms of selection. We describe here main functionalities of both FREGENE and SAMPLE, a companion program that can replicate association study datasets.Results: We report detailed analyses of six large simulated datasets that we have made publicly available. Three demographic scenarios are modelled: one panmictic, one substructured with migration, and one complex scenario that mimics the principle features of genetic variation in major worldwide human populations. For each scenario there is one neutral simulation, and one with a complex pattern of selection.Conclusion: FREGENE and the simulated datasets will be valuable for assessing the validity of models for selection, demography and population genetic parameters, as well as the efficacy of association studies. Its principle advantages are modelling flexibility and computational efficiency. It is open source and object-oriented. As such, it can be customised and the range of models extended

Sparrows can't sing : East End kith and kinship in the 1960s

Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963) was the only feature film directed by the late and much lamented Joan Littlewood. Set and filmed in the East End, where she worked for many years, the film deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. Littlewood’s career spanned documentary (radio recordings made with Ewan MacColl in the North of England in the 1930s) to directing for the stage and the running of the Theatre Royal in London’s Stratford East, often selecting material which aroused memories in local audiences (Leach 2006: 142). Many of the actors trained in her Theatre Workshop subsequently became better known for their appearances on film and television. Littlewood herself directed hardly any material for the screen: Sparrows Can’t Sing and a 1964 series of television commercials for the British Egg Marketing Board, starring Theatre Workshop’s Avis Bunnage, were rare excursions into an area of practice which she found constraining and unamenable (Gable 1980: 32). The hybridity and singularity of Littlewood’s feature may answer, in some degree, for its subsequent neglect. However, Sparrows Can’t Sing makes a significant contribution to a group of films made in Britain in the 1960s which comment generally on changes in the urban and social fabric. It is especially worthy of consideration, I shall argue, for the use which Littlewood made of a particular community’s attitudes – sentimental and critical – to such changes and for its amalgamation of an attachment to documentary techniques (recording an aural landscape on location) with a preference for nonnaturalistic delivery in performance

Queering the grammar school boy: class, sexuality and authenticity in the works of Colin MacInnes and Ray Gosling

In 1959 Colin MacInnes published the fourth in his series of social issue novels, Absolute Beginners. In it the unnamed protagonist is constructed as the iconic teenager, slick, cool, creative, with his ex-lover Crépe Suzette as the object of his art and as his Achilles heel. The novel is framed over one summer, against a backdrop of racial tension, which ultimately led the Boy towards adulthood. MacInnes’s protagonist has been dismissed as an emblem rather than a character, and MacInnes himself derided by George Melly as a perpetual teenager. However in this chapter, we will suggest that taken as a whole MacInnes’ work constructs a complex understanding of The Boy’s political possibilities intersecting with sexuality, gender, race and class. By integrating his novelistic work with his journalistic and activist writing, we will demonstrate the complexity of MacInnes’ Boy as an autonomous, queer political agent, embodied in the ultimate Boy; Ray Gosling. Gosling’s own writing becomes a lens through which to root historical understanding of teenagers and teenage cultures as sexual and racial constructs

Back to the Future: The Uses of Television in the Digital Age

This article considers some of the present-day issues, challenges and possibilities facing television broadcasting via a critical examination of the recently published Goldsmiths report on the future of public service television in the twenty-first century. Focusing mainly on UK terrestrial broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5), the article summarises and expands on the report's key findings and recommendations, particularly in relation to questions concerning digitalisation, content, diversity, quality, marketisation, funding and national and regional heritage. The article argues that, despite the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of digital platforms, television viewing remains a common source of information and entertainment and is characterised by meaningful continuities. Additionally, the article outlines the vitally important role played by David Puttnam, chair of the Goldsmiths inquiry, in defending public service television through his active engagement with relevant parliamentary committees and as a widely respected media professional. Finally, the article reflects on the continuing relevance of the 1962 Pilkington Report on Broadcasting, which was similarly commissioned in order to evaluate the purposes of television. In so doing, the article suggests that Pilkington's criticisms of creeping commercialism and the ensuing regulatory proposals still represent a cogent engagement with the idea of public service broadcasting as a primary facilitator of deliberative democracy

Implementation and second-year impacts for New Deal 25 Plus customers in the UK Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration

This report presents findings on the implementation and effectiveness of Britain's Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) demonstration programme for New Deal 25 Plus customers (ND25 Plus) two years after entering the programme. The effectiveness of this programme is being evaluated using a random assignment research design. Over 16,000 people were randomly assigned onto the programme, making this study one of the largest randomised social policy trials ever undertaken in Britain. The analysis relies heavily on data from two waves of a longitudinal customer survey administered at 12 and 24 months respectively, following each individual's date of random assignment (when they entered the study). The survey respondents (around 6,000) are a representative sub-sample of the full sample of ND25 Plus customers enrolled in the study. The analysis also used data on employment, earnings and benefits receipt from administrative records for the entire sample. To provide a richer understanding of the Jobcentre Plus offices' experience of implementing ERA and customers experiences of ERA, the analysis also uses qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with ERA staff and customers

Dense mapping of MYH9 localizes the strongest kidney disease associations to the region of introns 13 to 15

Admixture mapping recently identified MYH9 as a susceptibility gene for idiopathic focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), HIV-associated nephropathy (HIVAN) and end-stage kidney disease attributed to hypertension (H-ESKD) in African Americans (AA). MYH9 encodes the heavy chain of non-muscle myosin IIA, a cellular motor involved in motility. A haplotype and its tagging SNPs spanning introns 12–23 were most strongly associated with kidney disease (OR 2–7; P < 10−8, recessive). To narrow the region of association and identify potential causal variation, we performed a dense-mapping study using 79 MYH9 SNPs in AA populations with FSGS, HIVAN and H-ESKD (typed for a subset of 46 SNPs), for a total of 2496 cases and controls. The strongest associations were for correlated SNPs rs5750250, rs2413396 and rs5750248 in introns 13, 14 and 15, a region of 5.6 kb. Rs5750250 showed OR 5.0, 8.0 and 2.8; P = 2 × 10−17, 2 × 10−10 and 3 × 10−22, respectively, for FSGS, HIVAN and H-ESKD; OR 5.7; P = 9 × 10−27 for combined FSGS and HIVAN, recessive. An independent association was observed for rs11912763 in intron 33. Neither the highly associated SNPs nor the results of resequencing MYH9 in 40 HIVAN or FSGS cases and controls revealed non-synonymous changes that could account for the disease associations. Rs2413396 and one of the highly associated SNPs in intron 23, rs4821480, are predicted splicing motif modifiers. Rs5750250 combined with rs11912763 had receiver operator characteristic (ROC) C statistics of 0.80, 0.73 and 0.65 for HIVAN, FSGS and H-ESKD, respectively, allowing prediction of genetic risk by typing two SNPs

Responsible participation and housing: restoring democratic theory to the scene

Tensions between individual liberty and collective social justice characterise many advanced liberal societies. These tensions are reflected in the challenges posed for representative democracy both by participatory democratic practices and by the current emphasis on (so-called) responsible participation. Based on the example of ‘community’ housing associations in Scotland, this paper explores these tensions. It is argued that the critique of responsibility may have been over-stated – that, in particular, ‘community’ housing associations offer the basis for relatively more inclusive and effective processes of decision-making than council housing, which relies on the traditional processes and institutions of representative local government for its legitimacy

Evaluation of Host Serum Protein Biomarkers of Tuberculosis in sub-Saharan Africa.

Accurate and affordable point-of-care diagnostics for tuberculosis (TB) are needed. Host serum protein signatures have been derived for use in primary care settings, however validation of these in secondary care settings is lacking. We evaluated serum protein biomarkers discovered in primary care cohorts from Africa reapplied to patients from secondary care. In this nested case-control study, concentrations of 22 proteins were quantified in sera from 292 patients from Malawi and South Africa who presented predominantly to secondary care. Recruitment was based upon intention of local clinicians to test for TB. The case definition for TB was culture positivity for Mycobacterium tuberculosis; and for other diseases (OD) a confirmed alternative diagnosis. Equal numbers of TB and OD patients were selected. Within each group, there were equal numbers with and without HIV and from each site. Patients were split into training and test sets for biosignature discovery. A nine-protein signature to distinguish TB from OD was discovered comprising fibrinogen, alpha-2-macroglobulin, CRP, MMP-9, transthyretin, complement factor H, IFN-gamma, IP-10, and TNF-alpha. This signature had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in the training set of 90% (95% CI 86-95%), and, after adjusting the cut-off for increased sensitivity, a sensitivity and specificity in the test set of 92% (95% CI 80-98%) and 71% (95% CI 56-84%), respectively. The best single biomarker was complement factor H [area under the receiver operating characteristic curve 70% (95% CI 64-76%)]. Biosignatures consisting of host serum proteins may function as point-of-care screening tests for TB in African hospitals. Complement factor H is identified as a new biomarker for such signatures