Marlowe, May 1593, and the 'Must-Have' Theory of Biography

The enduring ability of the name of Christopher Marlowe to generate speculation and controversy regardless of the exiguity of the materials at our disposal never ceases to astonish. The temptation to try to extrapolate Marlowe's artistic intentions not only from the text of his plays and poems, but from the little that is known about his dramatic career, continues to lead those who write about his life down blind alleys. This tendency to make use of what I like to describe as the ‘must-have’ theory of biography, according to which Marlowe must have thought this or must have known that, is widespread. A few years ago, I attempted to demonstrate how little we know for certain about Marlowe's life. Since the publication of Constructing Christopher Marlowe in 2000, however, several further attempts to explain what happened in the weeks leading up to Marlowe's death in Deptford on 30 May 1593 have been published. While M. J. Trow and Taliesin Trow suggest that he was simply the victim of an Elizabethan contract killing, David Riggs insists that Elizabeth I personally gave the order for Marlowe to be murdered.4 In the ‘Revised Edition’ of his conspiracy thesis, The Reckoning: The Murder of Christopher Marlowe, Charles Nicholl follows Professor Riggs in suspecting government complicity in Marlowe's death

Rehabilitating Sir Thomas Bertram

Recent readings of Mansfield Park as criticism of the landed elite fail to take into consideration the radical-conservative nature of Austen’s satire. Although Sir Thomas Bertram is clearly to blame for his family’s moral shortcomings, Austen’s treatment of him carefully balances his strengths and weaknesses. Recent misrepresentations of Mansfield Park’s colonial dimension have also contributed to misleading assessments of Austen’s intentions. Sir Thomas’s values are shared by Edmund and Fanny Price, and the ideology of benevolent paternalism upheld by Austen in Mansfield Park, in which landlords offer both material and spiritual guidance to their dependents, remains an essentially conservative one

Democratising Digitisation : Making History with Community Music Societies in Digitally Enabled Collaborations

In post-COVID times we are focusing quite rightly on the plight of our major cultural institutions; but just as important are the local societies that enrich our community life, including amateur music societies, devastated by stringent social-distancing requirements and the health and safety implications of live performance in small spaces. We propose a vision of digitally enabled collaboration that may help these societies rebuild their sense of community and purpose, by working together with academics, archives, and a major US arts centre to reconnect with their past and enrich understanding of their own histories and traditions within a broader national context

Searching for music: understanding the discovery, acquisition, processing and organization of music in a domestic setting for design

This series of studies make it clear that a wide range of both physical and digital resources are involved in domestic music consumption. The selection of digital resources is particularly evident, and it can be observed that domestic music consumption is a fragmented business, taking advantage of many different "channels'' for getting, using and preparing music. While there are not a series of common channels, each home displayed a variety of methods in respect to using metadata in multiple different modalities: regardless, the activities involved in getting, using and preparing music cohere through a noticeable, emergent set of workflows. We find that not only does metadata support searching, as one might expect, but also it pervades all parts of the workflow and is used in real-time as a reflexive artifact and in terms of its future perceived/prescribed use. The findings of the research raise a series of possibilities and issues that form the basis for understanding and designing for metadata use

Mutation of praR in Rhizobium leguminosarum enhances root biofilms, improving nodulation competitiveness by increased expression of attachment proteins

Summary In Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae, quorumsensing is regulated by CinR, which induces the cinIS operon. CinI synthesizes an AHL, whereas CinS inactivates PraR, a repressor. Mutation of praR enhanced biofilms in vitro. We developed a light (lux)-dependent assay of rhizobial attachment to roots and demonstrated that mutation of praR increased biofilms on pea roots. The praR mutant out-competed wild-type for infection of pea nodules in mixed inoculations. Analysis of gene expression by microarrays and promoter fusions revealed that PraR represses its own transcription and mutation of praR increased expression of several genes including those encoding secreted proteins (the adhesins RapA2, RapB and RapC, two cadherins and the glycanase PlyB), the polysaccharide regulator RosR, and another protein similar to PraR. PraR bound to the promoters of several of these genes indicating direct repression. Mutations in rapA2, rapB, rapC, plyB, the cadherins or rosR did not affect the enhanced root attachment or nodule competitiveness of the praR mutant. However combinations of mutations in rapA, rapB and rapC abolished the enhanced attachment and nodule competitiveness. We conclude that relief of PraR-mediated repression determines a lifestyle switch allowing the expression of genes that are important for biofilm formation on roots and the subsequent initiation of infection of legume roots

A united statement of the global chiropractic research community against the pseudoscientific claim that chiropractic care boosts immunity.

BACKGROUND: In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) posted reports claiming that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. These claims clash with recommendations from the World Health Organization and World Federation of Chiropractic. We discuss the scientific validity of the claims made in these ICA reports. MAIN BODY: We reviewed the two reports posted by the ICA on their website on March 20 and March 28, 2020. We explored the method used to develop the claim that chiropractic adjustments impact the immune system and discuss the scientific merit of that claim. We provide a response to the ICA reports and explain why this claim lacks scientific credibility and is dangerous to the public. More than 150 researchers from 11 countries reviewed and endorsed our response. CONCLUSION: In their reports, the ICA provided no valid clinical scientific evidence that chiropractic care can impact the immune system. We call on regulatory authorities and professional leaders to take robust political and regulatory action against those claiming that chiropractic adjustments have a clinical impact on the immune system

Screening ethnically diverse human embryonic stem cells identifies a chromosome 20 minimal amplicon conferring growth advantage

The International Stem Cell Initiative analyzed 125 human embryonic stem (ES) cell lines and 11 induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines, from 38 laboratories worldwide, for genetic changes occurring during culture. Most lines were analyzed at an early and late passage. Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis revealed that they included representatives of most major ethnic groups. Most lines remained karyotypically normal, but there was a progressive tendency to acquire changes on prolonged culture, commonly affecting chromosomes 1, 12, 17 and 20. DNA methylation patterns changed haphazardly with no link to time in culture. Structural variants, determined from the SNP arrays, also appeared sporadically. No common variants related to culture were observed on chromosomes 1, 12 and 17, but a minimal amplicon in chromosome 20q11.21, including three genes expressed in human ES cells, ID1, BCL2L1 and HM13, occurred in >20% of the lines. Of these genes, BCL2L1 is a strong candidate for driving culture adaptation of ES cells

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Disappointed Swift

Swift promoted an image of himself as a champion of liberty whose urge to vex his age through satire was provoked by 'savage indignation'. Although his anger is often rhetorical, i was also a response to what Swift regarded as a series of disappointments, beginning in his youth, and going on into his old age, and the insults and humiliations he experienced as Dean of St Patrick's, Dublin, in what he deemed to be his exile in Ireland. Believing that he was 'born to a million of disappointments', and tracing his misfortunes back to the middle of the seventeenth century when his father emigrated to Ireland, Swift felt he had been dispossessed by 'Cromwell's Hellish Crew'. Swift's hatred of Cromwell has been almost entirely ignored by those who have written about his life and politics