Young peoples' views of online historical archives

Digitized collections are ‘a rich source of instructional material for history teachers’ [1 p314] but it has been noted these ‘remained largely underused’. There is ‘a growing interest in both improving the user experience and in justifying the creation of digital collections to multiple stakeholders’ [2 p339]. Within the UK an estimated £130m has been invested in digitisation projects [3]. Re-cent changes to the UK National Curriculum for history have placed greater emphasis upon the importance of understanding methods of historical enquiry and the use of evidence. Therefore, the digitized collections created by this investment should be a vital classroom tool. This study set out to investigate within the UK the level of awareness of these resources and their value to young learners aged 8-16 years. There were two stages to this qualitative study. Stage one was the delivery of a workshop which introduced young learners to a range of digital archives. After this the young people were given a period of time to use the online archives and explore the difference forms of historical evidence. Stage two involved focus groups with a sample of the young people during which participants were asked to discuss their end-user experience. Key findings included enhanced personal learning experience, development of a personal connection to the past, and identification of issues related to usability and practical application in a classroom learning context

Heterogeneity of VH-JH gene rearrangement patterns: an insight into the biology of B cell precursor ALL

Oligoclonal B cell proliferation, as defined by the presence of more than one leukemic clone, has been detected in approximately 20% to 30% of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) using PCR or Southern blotting. An accurate assessment of these populations is required to avoid false negative measurements of minimal residual disease (MRD) in follow-up bone marrow (BM) samples of ALL patients. In this study, we analysed 29 ALL patients with two or more immunoglobulin heavy (IGH) chain gene rearrangements in the presentation samples using IGH fingerprinting PCR and sequence analysis. Thirty-nine (51%) of 76 sequences (from 15 patients), shared no VNDNJ homology (ie different CDR3 regions). In the remaining 14 patients, at least two related VH sequences were identified in each patient (identical DNJ sequences). Numerical abnormalities of chromosome 14 was detected in 10 patients. Eight patients were analysed at presentation and relapse. In four of them, expansion of a minor presentation-clone was detected at relapse while the major presentation clone disappeared, confirming 'subclonal evolution'. Finally, in our cohort of patients, the presence of related or unrelated IGHclones did not influence overall survival