Historical Vignette-- Mettray

In 1840, near Tours, France, jurist Frederick Auguste Demetz founded Mettray, a family substitute institution for juveniles. Before opening Mettray, “Demetz trained 27 assistants for. . .seven months.” (Eriksson, T. [1976]. The Reformers: An Historical Survey of Pioneer Experiments in the Treatment of Criminals. New York: Elsevier, 1976, p. 102). The institution was known as a school and employed teachers. Its curriculum consisted of “religion, philosophy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, French, Latin, Greek, German, English, writing, book-keeping, drawing, and music. . .” (Eriksson, 1976, p. 122). Mettray students were “from more or less wealthy social backgrounds,” and they “left it reformed” (Eriksson, 1976, p. 123). In France, reforms in juvenile facilities took center stage around 1900. By that time Mettray had become almost military. . .the institutional population consisted of 325 boys sentenced for crimes, 99 who had been remanded for reformative Treatment (correction paternelle), and 25 who had been handed over . . . by affluent parents. . . .Each week the ‘families’ [groups of prisoners were assigned to a housing unit with a teacher(s) and called a family] had a good conduct competition, the winner being the one with the fewest penalties. The reward was an extra meal with meat and the best placing at institutional festivities. Fourteen different trades could be practiced, but the majority of pupils (a total of 253) did farm work. (Eriksson, 1976, p. 123). Mettray closed in 1937. During its early years it had been the innovative French juvenile institution. Later Mettray had become “the focus of increasingly bitter public criticism.” (Eriksson, 1976, p. 128)

High Clear Bell of Morning by Ann Eriksson

Review of Ann Eriksson\u27s High Clear Bell of Morning

Proof-of-concept of a novel scalable magnetic bead-based cell separation technology

Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) are gaining great interest for the treatment of severe, currently consider incurable, diseases. Therapies based on stem cells have an enormous potential in applications such as cardiac cells and neurons to name a few. However, the production of these cell systems is expensive, complex and lack, nowadays, scalability both for their cultivation and the purification. The lack of scalability is a major bottleneck to bring these therapies to patient at commercial scale. Magnetic beads are well-established for sorting of cells, e.g. magnetic activated cell sorting. However, today´s systems size is still limited in terms of scale-up potential. We have developed a new scalable separation process based on the magnetic bead MAG for the isolation of receptor positive cell subpopulations. We have previously published that our new magnetic bead system MAG is extremely gentle towards cells1 and can easily be scaled up at pilot-scale for the separation of monoclonal antibody from a cell suspension2. In the present study, this magnetic bead system has been further developed for cell separation. In a model system with a mixture of hMSC and HER2+ SK BR3 cells (20:80), a proof-of-concept was demonstrated showing exceptional elimination of the HER2+ cells. Different ligand densities were evaluated, showing that the largest cell removals were achieved with the lowest ligand densities. Furthermore, in a study of mechanical and chemical stress conditions, the MAG separation system showed robustness of sorting performances. From our previous knowledge about the scalability of the MAG magnetic beads separation, this provides promising potential for the production of therapeutic stem cells at larger scale. 1. Brechmann, N. A.; Schwarz, H.; Eriksson, P.-O.; Eriksson, K.; Shokri, A.; Chotteau, V., Antibody capture process based on magnetic beads from very high cell density suspension. Biotechnology and Bioengineering 2021, n/a, (n/a). 2. Brechmann, N. A.; Eriksson, P.-O.; Eriksson, K.; Oscarsson, S.; Buijs, J.; Shokri, A.; Hjälm, G.; Chotteau, V., Pilot-scale process for magnetic bead purification of antibodies directly from non-clarified CHO cell culture. Biotechnology Progress 2019, 35, (3), e2775

Coxeter Groups and Asynchronous Cellular Automata

The dynamics group of an asynchronous cellular automaton (ACA) relates properties of its long term dynamics to the structure of Coxeter groups. The key mathematical feature connecting these diverse fields is involutions. Group-theoretic results in the latter domain may lead to insight about the dynamics in the former, and vice-versa. In this article, we highlight some central themes and common structures, and discuss novel approaches to some open and open-ended problems. We introduce the state automaton of an ACA, and show how the root automaton of a Coxeter group is essentially part of the state automaton of a related ACA.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

A call for resilience index for health and social systems in Africa

This repository item contains a single issue of Issues in Brief, a series of policy briefs that began publishing in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and should not be assumed to represent the views of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future or of Boston University.This policy brief explores the concept of resilience as it applies to health and social systems in Africa, and suggests that development of a multi-dimensional resilience index may help to understand and formulate policy in settings of complex emergencies. This paper is part of the Africa 2060 Project, a Pardee Center program of research, publications and symposia exploring African futures in various aspects related to development on continental and regional scales