The politics of punishment in colonial Mauritius, 1766-1887

The history of imprisonment in British colonial Mauritius is intertwined with its political economy, most especially the relationship between metropolitan government and plantation owners. Whether labour was predominantly enslaved, apprenticed or indentured, incarceration was part of a broader process through which the regulation of the colonial workforce was taken from the private to the public sphere and became associated with economic development. Nevertheless, prisoners both challenged and used prison regimes as vehicles for the improvement of their lives. Mauritian jails were intensely political arenas in which the changing nature of colonial relations and the regulation of labour was both expressed and contested

How people with dementia use twitter: A qualitative analysis

This is the final version. Available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record. People with dementia are publicly sharing their experiences of living with the condition and acting collectively to produce social change. Social media could support them in doing this, but no previous studies have comprehensively analysed their use of Twitter. The aims of this study were to identify how people with dementia use Twitter and examine the illness identities they create and promote online. Tweetcatcher was used to collect 2774 tweets posted over six months by 12 account holders with dementia, across three countries. Tweets were analysed thematically. Six themes were identified through the analysis: nothing about us without us, collective action, experts by experience, living with dementia not suffering from it, community, and stories of dementia. On Twitter, people with dementia are developing a collective illness identity to further a social movement that is focused on improving the lives of people with dementia. They are also communicating their personal identities by documenting their lived experiences. Twitter is being used to convey positive, rather than negative, messages about dementia. The findings of this study also show that thematic analysis can be applied to micro texts that can combine over time to form longer narratives.National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula (PenCLAHRC)

Sky coverage and tip/tilt error analysis for TMT

A Monte Carlo sky coverage model for laser guide star adaptive optics systems is presented. This model provides fast Monte Carlo simulations of the tip/tilt (TT) wavefront error calculated with minimum variance estimators over natural guide star constellations generated from star models. With this simulation code we are able to generate a TT error budget for the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) facility Narrow Field Infra-Red Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS), and perform several design trade studies. With the current NFIRAOS design, the median TT error at the galactic pole with median seeing is calculated to be 65 nm or 1.8 mas

In vitro evidence consistent with an interaction between wild‐type and mutant SOD1 protein associated with canine degenerative myelopathy

Canine degenerative myelopathy (DM) is a progressive neurological disorder that may be considered to be a large animal model for specific forms of the fatal human disease, familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (fALS). DM is associated with a c118G>A mutation of the superoxide dismutase 1 (Sod1) gene, and a significant proportion of cases are inherited in an autosomal recessive manner in contrast to the largely, but not exclusively, dominant mode of inheritance in fALS. The consensus view is that these Sod1/SOD1 mutations result in a toxic gain of function but the mechanisms remain unclear. Here we used an in vitro neuroblastoma cell line transfection system to monitor wild-type and mutant forms of SOD1 fusion proteins containing either a Cherry or an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) tag. These fusion proteins retained SOD1 enzymatic activity on a native gel assay system. We demonstrate that SOD1 aggregate density is significantly higher in DM transfectants compared to wild-type. In addition, we show by co-immunoprecipitation and confocal microscopy, evidence for a potential interaction between wild-type and mutant forms of SOD1 in co-transfected cells. While in vitro studies have shown SOD1 heterodimer formation in fALS models, this is the first report for DM SOD1. Therefore, despite for the majority of cases there is a difference in the mode of inheritance between fALS and DM, a similar interaction between wild-type and mutant SOD1 forms can occur. Clarifying the role of SOD1 in DM may also be of benefit to understanding the role of SOD1 in fALS

Thymic involution and rising disease incidence with age

For many cancer types, incidence rises rapidly with age as an apparent power law, supporting the idea that cancer is caused by a gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. Similarly, the incidence of many infectious diseases strongly increases with age. Here, combining data from immunology and epidemiology, we show that many of these dramatic age-related increases in incidence can be modeled based on immune system decline, rather than mutation accumulation. In humans, the thymus atrophies from infancy, resulting in an exponential decline in T cell production with a half-life of ∼16 years, which we use as the basis for a minimal mathematical model of disease incidence. Our model outperforms the power law model with the same number of fitting parameters in describing cancer incidence data across a wide spectrum of different cancers, and provides excellent fits to infectious disease data. This framework provides mechanistic insight into cancer emergence, suggesting that age-related decline in T cell output is a major risk factor

The Long Road Home: Driving Performance and Ocular Measurements of Drowsiness Following Night Shift-Work

Because time-of-day effects on sleepiness interact with duration of prior waking, the commute home following a night shift is an especially vulnerable time for night shift workers. The current study aimed to explore the impact of night shift work on critical driving events as well as to explore physiological indices leading up to these events. Sixteen healthy night shift workers (18-65 years) each participated in two 2-hour driving sessions in an instrumented vehicle on a driving track. A baseline driving session was conducted following a night of rest, while another session was conducted following a night of shift work. Objective physiological measurements of drowsiness were monitored and collected continuously throughout the drive session as well as different measures of driving performance. Following the night-shift, drivers had higher Johns Drowsiness Scores (based on ocular measures) and were more likely to experience lane excursion events and investigator-initiated braking events than following a night’s rest. While they also reported increasing failures in lane keeping ability, the pattern was not always consistent with actual observed data. The implications for countermeasures are discussed

Results from a pilot plant using un-promoted potassium carbonate for carbon capture

A pilot plant facility has been designed and built to trial potassium carbonate solvent technology for carbon capture under a range of conditions. The rig is capable of capturing 4 - 10 kg/hr of CO2 from 30 - 55 kg/hr of an air-CO2 mixture, with different packings. A series of trials have been completed with a range of solvent concentrations from 20 wt% to 30 wt% potassium carbonate. The experimental holdup, solvent loading and absorber temperatures have been matched with rate-based simulations in Aspen Plus® software