Scenographies of the Inner World

SCENOGRAPHIES OF THE INNER WORLD is a reflection on my progress as an artist through this focused time of my doctoral studies, documenting how art and research have become intricately woven. Through drawing, sculpture, installation and moving image, my practice has evolved responding to personal experience, memory and myth, and the evocative language of philosophy and psychoanalysis. I have investigated a transitional space, mediated between internal and external perception - a hinterland between the mind and body where the unconscious leaves a trace. This residue of lived experience haunts the present and troubles the senses and through research in psychoanalytical theory, I have sought to deepen my understanding of these psychic processes. I describe how ideas are generated from collecting discarded objects, and materials whose meanings are then transformed, elaborated or obscured by the creative process and mode of presentation. The object in psychoanalysis has revealed a matrix of inter-relationships between ourselves and others. The object’s presence in the work of contemporary artists has enriched and challenged my ideas. While thinking and making can inspire, performative embodiment has connected me deeply to my past. In researching my family history and the legacies of displacement and exile, my work has explored ideas of ‘haunting’, revealing loss, trauma and abjection: evocations transmitted across generations. These themes, each evolving out from the other, evoke a journey from the surface to the depths, from thoughts to feelings. Concepts of psychic fragmentation and splitting have been a starting point to express the pathology of trauma. Often, hybrid bodies are vibrantly present, while also evoking that which dwells beyond the body. Testing the unsettling tipping points of absurdity and abjection I have trusted a process of free association and serendipity to discover the unexpected and the uncannily familiar

Laser Ablation System for Solid Sample Analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometry

A laser ablation sample introduction system, based on a Nd : YAG laser with an X-Y-Zdirectional sampling head, has been designed and constructed for use with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry. A study has been made of a number of parameters which affect the performance of the system to establish the optimum operating conditions. South African Reference Material (SARM) rock samples have been analysed using the system, and the results obtained have been compared with the certificate values. The importance of using closely matrix-matched samples and standards is demonstrated. Precision studies on SARM 5 (pyroxenite) show that both intra- and inter-sample precisions are typically 10% (relative standard deviation )

Over 1200 drugs-related deaths and 190,000 opiate-user-years of follow-up : relative risks by sex and age-group

Heroin users/injectors' risk of drugs-related death by sex and current age is weakly estimated both in individual cohorts of under 1000 clients, 5000 person-years or 50 drugs-related deaths and when using cross-sectional data. A workshop in Cambridge analysed six cohorts who were recruited according to a common European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) protocol from drug treatment agencies in Barcelona, Denmark, Dublin, Lisbon, Rome and Vienna in the 1990s; and, as external reference, opiate-user arrestees in France and hepatitis C diagnosed ever-injectors in Scotland in 1993-2001, both followed by database linkage to December 2001. EMCDDA cohorts recorded approximately equal numbers of drugs-related deaths (864) and deaths from other non-HIV causes (865) during 106,152 person-years of follow-up. External cohorts contributed 376 drugs-related deaths (Scotland 195, France 181) and 418 deaths from non-HIV causes (Scotland 221, France 197) during 86,417 person-years of follow-up (Scotland 22,670, France 63,747). EMCDDA cohorts reported 707 drugs-related deaths in 81,367 man-years {8.7 per 1000 person-years, 95% CI: 8.1 to 9.4} but only 157 in 24,785 person-years for females {6.3 per 1000 person-years, 95% CI: 5.4 to 7.4}. Except in external cohorts, relative risks by current age-group were not particularly strong, and more modest in Poisson regression than in cross-sectional analyses: relative risk was 1.2 (95% CI: 1.0-1.4) for 35-44 year olds compared to 15-24 year 3 olds, but 1.4 for males (95%CI: 1.2-1.6), and dramatically lower at 0.44 after the first year of follow-up (95% CI: 0.37-0.52)

A Study to Validate a Self-Reported Version of the ONS Drug Dependence Questionnaire

Aim: A prospective study to establish the reliability of a self-completion version of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) questionnaire for assessing drug dependence of substance misuse clients. Method: A total of 47 treatment seeking opioid-dependent clients completed the self-complete version of the ONS questionnaire (ONS-sc) followed by the interviewer-administered ONS questionnaire (ONS-ia) at a single clinic appointment. Scores for four Class A drugs (heroin, methadone, speed and crack/cocaine) from both formats were compared. Results: The observed agreement was 87% or more and Cohen's kappa was 0.7 (p < 0.001) or more for all four Class A drugs. Sensitivity for each Class A drugs was 56% or higher and specificity was 87% or higher. Sensitivity for severe heroin dependency was 98% (CI 89–100%). There was a 100% correlation between the ONS-sc and positive urine analysis for heroin use. However, methadone and crack/cocaine drug use appeared under reported. Conclusion: ONS-sc is a feasible, practical and time-saving alternative to a detailed interview on drug dependence. Further research with a larger sample size and non-opiate-dependent clients are needed, as this could prove a useful tool for monitoring clients in everyday practice, or for survey purposes where interviews are impractical

HFE mutations, iron deficiency and overload in 10 500 blood donors

People with genetic haemochromatosis (GH) accumulate iron from excessive dietary absorption. In populations of northern European origin, over 90% of patients are homozygous for the C282Y mutation of the HFE gene. While about 1 in 200 people in the general population have this genotype the proportion who develop clinical haemochromatosis is not known. The influence of HFE genotype on iron status was investigated in 10 556 blood donors. The allele frequencies of the C282Y and H63D mutations were