Antiquité et psychologie des ruines

Antiquity and the Ruin: vision, time, emotion, fragmentarity and the reception of the past. An international conference, June 5th-7th 2008, University of London, Institute in Paris. For the sociologist Georg Simmel (in his 1911 essay “Die Ruine”), ruins embody a tension between culture and nature; the human process of construction is balanced by the natural process of ruination, generating a new whole, one which allows those who experience ruins aesthetically to overcome their sense of aliena..

Magna Mater and the poet unmanned (Ovid, Fasti 4.179-372)

Ovid’s treatment of the Magna Mater festival in Fasti Book 4 resonates significantly both with his earlier work and with his exile poetry. The episode offers more than one potential figure, it is argued, for the poet and his traumatic experience of punishment at the hands of the emperor. Some significant parallels might prompt readers to perceive an analogy between Ovid, whose experience of exile is repeatedly figured as a painful wound, and Attis, the castrated acolyte of the Magna Mater. More compelling ultimately is the parallel between Ovid and Claudia Quinta, whose reputation, wrongly impugned, is vindicated by the goddess

Lessons for the heart: loving reason and embracing loss (Letter 74)

The arguments Seneca articulates in Letter 74, in support of his claim that only the honestum is to be regarded as good and that this is the key to a happy life, are for the most part highly exhortatory. In particular, Seneca urges the reader to love reason: ama rationem. This instruction, pairing love and reason, might seem paradoxical. Amor in Stoic thought is generally classified as one of the emotions, adfectus, apt to disturb and distract us from the achievement of Stoic calm. What kind of love might be at stake here? Seneca seems to suggest in this letter that an attachment to reason is analogous to and indeed can take the place of our attachment to friends and family members. Can we really hope to refocus the feelings we might have developed for our fellow humans onto the abstract ideas of virtue or reason? This letter, on my reading, makes a bold attempt to harness the emotion embedded in human interdependence (where love is always precarious, alert to the threat of loss) and to refocus it on a secure and lasting object

Influences on diet quality in older age:The importance of social factors

Background: poor diet quality is common among older people, but little is known about influences on food choice, including the role of psychosocial factors at this age.Objective: to identify psychosocial correlates of diet quality in a community-dwelling population of men and women aged 59–73 years; to describe relationships with change in diet quality over 10 years.Design: Longitudinal cohort, Hertfordshire Cohort Study (HCS).Subjects: HCS participants assessed at baseline (1998–2003: 1,048 men, 862 women); 183 men and 189 women re-assessed in 2011.Methods: diet was assessed by administered food frequency questionnaire; diet scores were calculated to describe diet quality at baseline and follow-up. A range of psychosocial factors (social support, social network, participation in leisure activities, depression and anxiety, sense of control) were assessed by questionnaire.Results: at baseline, better diet quality was related to a range of social factors, including increased confiding/emotional social support (men and women), practical support (men) and a larger social network (women) (all P < 0.05). For both men and women, greater participation in social and cognitive leisure activities was related to better diet quality (P < 0.005). There were few associations between measured psychosocial factors at baseline and change in diet score over 10 years, in the follow-up sub-group. However, greater participation in leisure activities, especially cognitive activities, at baseline was associated with smaller declines in diet quality over the 10-year follow-up period for both men (P = 0.017) and women (P = 0.014).Conclusions: in community-dwelling older adults, a range of social factors, that includes greater participation in leisure activities, were associated with diets of better quality

Reliable, verifiable and efficient monitoring of biodiversity via metabarcoding

To manage and conserve biodiversity, one must know what is being lost, where, and why, as well as which remedies are likely to be most effective. Metabarcoding technology can characterise the species compositions of mass samples of eukaryotes or of environmental DNA. Here, we validate metabarcoding by testing it against three high‐quality standard data sets that were collected in Malaysia (tropical), China (subtropical) and the United Kingdom (temperate) and that comprised 55,813 arthropod and bird specimens identified to species level with the expenditure of 2,505 person‐hours of taxonomic expertise. The metabarcode and standard data sets exhibit statistically correlated alpha‐ and beta‐diversities, and the two data sets produce similar policy conclusions for two conservation applications: restoration ecology and systematic conservation planning. Compared with standard biodiversity data sets, metabarcoded samples are taxonomically more comprehensive, many times quicker to produce, less reliant on taxonomic expertise and auditable by third parties, which is essential for dispute resolution.We thank Yang Yahan, Alice Wang, Vincent Moulton, David Warton and Wadud Miah for support and advice and to Ding Zhaoli for sequencing. LA, YT, AN and RK were supported by the Queensland‐Chinese Academy of Sciences (QCAS) Biotechnology Fund (GJHZ1130) and Griffith University. DPE was supported by a STEP fellowship at Princeton University. SP was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council, Forestry Commission, Norfolk Biodiversity Information Service and Suffolk Biodiversity Partnership. Additional support for DPE, PW, FAE, THL and WHH was provided by a grant from the High Meadows Foundation to DSW. YQJ, XYW and DWY were supported by Yunnan Province (20080A001), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (0902281081, KSCX2‐YW‐Z‐1027), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31170498), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012FY110800), the University of East Anglia, and the State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution at the Kunming Institute of Zoology

Associations between perceived neighbourhood problems and quality of life in older adults with and without osteoarthritis:Results from the Hertfordshire cohort study

This study examined whether the association of quality of life (QoL) with perceived neighbourhood problems is stronger in older adults with osteoarthritis (OA) than in those without OA. Of all 294 participants, 23.8% had OA. More perceived neighbourhood problems were associated with a stronger decrease in QoL over time in participants with OA (B=-0.018; p=0.02) than in those without OA (B=-0.004; p=0.39). Physical activity did not mediate this relationship. Older adults with OA may be less able to deal with more challenging environments

BHPR research: qualitative1. Complex reasoning determines patients' perception of outcome following foot surgery in rheumatoid arhtritis

Background: Foot surgery is common in patients with RA but research into surgical outcomes is limited and conceptually flawed as current outcome measures lack face validity: to date no one has asked patients what is important to them. This study aimed to determine which factors are important to patients when evaluating the success of foot surgery in RA Methods: Semi structured interviews of RA patients who had undergone foot surgery were conducted and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis of interviews was conducted to explore issues that were important to patients. Results: 11 RA patients (9 ♂, mean age 59, dis dur = 22yrs, mean of 3 yrs post op) with mixed experiences of foot surgery were interviewed. Patients interpreted outcome in respect to a multitude of factors, frequently positive change in one aspect contrasted with negative opinions about another. Overall, four major themes emerged. Function: Functional ability & participation in valued activities were very important to patients. Walking ability was a key concern but patients interpreted levels of activity in light of other aspects of their disease, reflecting on change in functional ability more than overall level. Positive feelings of improved mobility were often moderated by negative self perception ("I mean, I still walk like a waddling duck”). Appearance: Appearance was important to almost all patients but perhaps the most complex theme of all. Physical appearance, foot shape, and footwear were closely interlinked, yet patients saw these as distinct separate concepts. Patients need to legitimize these feelings was clear and they frequently entered into a defensive repertoire ("it's not cosmetic surgery; it's something that's more important than that, you know?”). Clinician opinion: Surgeons' post operative evaluation of the procedure was very influential. The impact of this appraisal continued to affect patients' lasting impression irrespective of how the outcome compared to their initial goals ("when he'd done it ... he said that hasn't worked as good as he'd wanted to ... but the pain has gone”). Pain: Whilst pain was important to almost all patients, it appeared to be less important than the other themes. Pain was predominately raised when it influenced other themes, such as function; many still felt the need to legitimize their foot pain in order for health professionals to take it seriously ("in the end I went to my GP because it had happened a few times and I went to an orthopaedic surgeon who was quite dismissive of it, it was like what are you complaining about”). Conclusions: Patients interpret the outcome of foot surgery using a multitude of interrelated factors, particularly functional ability, appearance and surgeons' appraisal of the procedure. While pain was often noted, this appeared less important than other factors in the overall outcome of the surgery. Future research into foot surgery should incorporate the complexity of how patients determine their outcome Disclosure statement: All authors have declared no conflicts of interes

Shared heritability and functional enrichment across six solid cancers

Correction: Nature Communications 10 (2019): art. 4386 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12095-8Quantifying the genetic correlation between cancers can provide important insights into the mechanisms driving cancer etiology. Using genome-wide association study summary statistics across six cancer types based on a total of 296,215 cases and 301,319 controls of European ancestry, here we estimate the pair-wise genetic correlations between breast, colorectal, head/neck, lung, ovary and prostate cancer, and between cancers and 38 other diseases. We observed statistically significant genetic correlations between lung and head/neck cancer (r(g) = 0.57, p = 4.6 x 10(-8)), breast and ovarian cancer (r(g) = 0.24, p = 7 x 10(-5)), breast and lung cancer (r(g) = 0.18, p = 1.5 x 10(-6)) and breast and colorectal cancer (r(g) = 0.15, p = 1.1 x 10(-4)). We also found that multiple cancers are genetically correlated with non-cancer traits including smoking, psychiatric diseases and metabolic characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis revealed a significant excess contribution of conserved and regulatory regions to cancer heritability. Our comprehensive analysis of cross-cancer heritability suggests that solid tumors arising across tissues share in part a common germline genetic basis.Peer reviewe