Treatment of ongoing autoimmune encephalomyelitis with activated B-cell progenitors maturing into regulatory B cells.

The influence of signals perceived by immature B cells during their development in bone marrow on their subsequent functions as mature cells are poorly defined. Here, we show that bone marrow cells transiently stimulated in vivo or in vitro through the Toll-like receptor 9 generate proB cells (CpG-proBs) that interrupt experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) when transferred at the onset of clinical symptoms. Protection requires differentiation of CpG-proBs into mature B cells that home to reactive lymph nodes, where they trap T cells by releasing the CCR7 ligand, CCL19, and to inflamed central nervous system, where they locally limit immunopathogenesis through interleukin-10 production, thereby cooperatively inhibiting ongoing EAE. These data demonstrate that a transient inflammation at the environment, where proB cells develop, is sufficient to confer regulatory functions onto their mature B-cell progeny. In addition, these properties of CpG-proBs open interesting perspectives for cell therapy of autoimmune diseases

Transitional justice and the political 'work' of domestic tourism

The relationship between tourism and transitional justice is little-researched. This paper explores the importance of domestic tourism for enabling citizens to encounter and engage with wider transitional justice projects. This issue is explored with reference to a memorial museum in Romania which interprets political violence and state repression. Semi-structured interviews with 52 domestic tourists were undertaken (using purposive sampling to select participants) and the interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Most visitors reported general sightseeing motives for visiting the museum and may not have anticipated engaging with transitional justice messages. However, their engagement went beyond sightseeing in a range of ways. Visitors participated in acts of memory-work, acknowledged the victims of repression, and recognized the core message of transitional justice – “never again”. They also reflected on the relationship between the recent past and the present, and recognized the role of the museum as a resource for future generations. These experiences were shared by those who had lived through state repression and those who had not. The findings indicate that domestic tourism is a meaningful but overlooked context through which citizens can engage with broader transitional justice projects

Using visual lifelogs to automatically characterise everyday activities

Visual lifelogging is the term used to describe recording our everyday lives using wearable cameras, for applications which are personal to us and do not involve sharing our recorded data. Current applications of visual lifelogging are built around remembrance or searching for specific events from the past. The purpose of the work reported here is to extend this to allow us to characterise and measure the occurrence of everyday activities of the wearer and in so doing to gain insights into the wearer's everyday behaviour. The methods we use are to capture everyday activities using a wearable camera called SenseCam, and to use an algorithm we have developed which indexes lifelog images by the occurrence of basic semantic concepts. We then use data reduction techniques to automatically generate a profile of the wearer's everyday behaviour and activities. Our algorithm has been evaluated on a large set of concepts investigated from 13 users in a user experiment, and for a group of 16 popular everyday activities we achieve an average F-score of 0.90. Our conclusions are that the the technique we have presented for unobtrusively and ambiently characterising everyday behaviour and activities across individuals is of sufficient accuracy to be usable in a range of applications

Encountering the Victims of Romanian Communism: Young People and Empathy in a Memorial Museum

Many states in post-communist East-Central Europe have established memorial museums which aim to tell the story of suffering under the communist regime. They also seek to encourage visitors to develop empathy for the victims of communist repression.This paper explores the responses of a group of young people to a memorial museum in Romania (Sighet Memorial Museum), focusing on how these visitors experienced empathy for the victims of communist-era violence. Data were collected using focus groups. Most participants showed a degree of empa- thy for the victims of suffering but this was usually shallow in nature. However some visitors displayed more“active” empathy (characterized by deeper imaginative and cogni- tive engagement). The paper explores how both the design and environment of the museum and the back- ground experiences of visitors influenced the develop- ment of empathy. It argues that empathy is not an automatic response to suffering and instead can be con- sidered as an interaction between the design of the museum and the background knowledge of visitors. The paper argues that empathy is an important means for young people to participate in remembering the commu- nist period, and is a means to make“prosthetic”memories of an authoritarian past which they have not experienced first-hand

Two types of synchronization in unidirectionally coupled chaotic external-cavity semiconductor lasers

International audienceWe study numerically two distant unidirectionally coupled single-mode semiconductor lasers subject to coherent optical feedback. We show that two fundamentally different types of chaotic synchronization can occur depending on the strengths of the coupling and of the feedback of the receiver laser