Tumour markers in breast cancer.

The clinical usefulness of 8 potential tumour markers has been evaluated in 69 patients with Stage I and II breast cancer and 57 patients with Stage III and IV. Serum CEA concentrations were raised in 13% of patients with local and 65% of those with advanced breast cancer. In patients with clinical evidence of progression or regression of tumour, serum CEA levels changed appropriately in 83% of cases. Taking 4 of the markers (carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), lactalbumin, alpha subunit and haptoglobin) serum concentrations of one or more were raised in 33% of patients with local disease and 81% of those with advanced breast cancer. However, marker concentrations were often only marginally raised, and are unlikely to provide sensitive guide to tumour burden. CEA, lactalbumin and alpha subunit were detectable in 68%, 43% and 40% respectively of extracts of primary breast cancers

Rethinking the social impacts of the arts

The paper presents a critical discussion of the current debate over the social impacts of the arts in the UK. It argues that the accepted understanding of the terms of the debate is rooted in a number of assumptions and beliefs that are rarely questioned. The paper goes on to present the interim findings of a three‐year research project, which aims to rethink the social impact of the arts, with a view to determining how these impacts might be better understood. The desirability of a historical approach is articulated, and a classification of the claims made within the Western intellectual tradition for what the arts “do” to people is presented and discussed

Uncertainty and the influence of group norms in the attitude–behaviour relationship

This is the author's post-print version of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in the British Journal of Social Psychology. Reproduced with permission from the British Journal of Social Psychology © The British Psychological Society 2007. The definitve version is available at: http://www.bpsjournals.co.uk/journals/bjsp/Two studies were conducted to examine the impact of subjective uncertainty on conformity to group norms in the attitude–behaviour context. In both studies, subjective uncertainty was manipulated using a deliberative mindset manipulation (McGregor, Zanna, Holmes, & Spencer, 2001). In Study 1 (N=106), participants were exposed to either an attitude-congruent or an attitude-incongruent in-group norm. In Study 2 (N=83), participants were exposed to either a congruent, incongruent, or an ambiguous in-group norm. Ranges of attitude–behaviour outcomes, including attitude-intention consistency and change in attitude-certainty, were assessed. In both studies, levels of group-normative behaviour varied as a function of uncertainty condition. In Study 1, conformity to group norms, as evidenced by variations in the level of attitude-intention consistency, was observed only in the high uncertainty condition. In Study 2, exposure to an ambiguous norm had different effects for those in the low and the high uncertainty conditions. In the low uncertainty condition, greatest conformity was observed in the attitude-congruent norm condition compared with an attitude-congruent or ambiguous norm. In contrast, individuals in the high uncertainty condition displayed greatest conformity when exposed to either an attitude-congruent or an ambiguous in-group norm. The implications of these results for the role of subjective uncertainty in social influence processes are discussed

ALMA Observations of Supernova Remnant N49 in the LMC. I. Discovery of CO Clumps Associated with X-Ray and Radio Continuum Shells

N49 (LHA 120-N49) is a bright X-ray supernova remnant (SNR) in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We present new 12CO (J = 1–0, 3–2), H i, and 1.4 GHz radio continuum observations of the SNR N49 using Mopra, ASTE, ALMA, and ATCA. We have newly identified three H i clouds using ATCA with an angular resolution of ~20'': one associated with the SNR and the others located in front of the SNR. Both the CO and H i clouds in the velocity range from 281 to 291 km s−1 are spatially correlated with both the soft X-rays (0.2–1.2 keV) and the hard X-rays (2.0–7.0 keV) of N49 on a ~10 pc scale. CO 3–2/1–0 intensity ratios indicate higher values of the CO cloud toward the SNR shell with an angular resolution of ~45'', and thus a strong interaction was suggested. Using the ALMA, we have spatially resolved CO clumps embedded within or along the southeastern rim of N49 with an angular resolution of ~3''. Three of the CO clumps are rim brightened on a 0.7–2 pc scale in both hard X-rays and the radio continuum: this provides further evidence for dynamical interactions between the CO clumps and the SNR shock wave. The enhancement of the radio synchrotron radiation can be understood in terms of magnetic field amplification around the CO clumps via a shock–cloud interaction. We also present a possible scenario in which the recombining plasma that dominates the hard X-rays from N49 was formed via thermal conduction between the SNR shock waves and the cold/dense molecular clumps

In the dedicated pursuit of dedicated capital: restoring an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism

Tony Blair’s landslide electoral victory on May 1 (New Labour Day?) presents the party in power with a rare, perhaps even unprecedented, opportunity to revitalise and modernise Britain’s ailing and antiquated manufacturing economy.* If it is to do so, it must remain true to its long-standing (indeed, historic) commitment to restore an indigenous investment ethic to British capitalism. In this paper we argue that this in turn requires that the party reject the very neo-liberal orthodoxies which it offered to the electorate as evidence of its competence, moderation and ‘modernisation’, which is has internalised, and which it apparently now views as circumscribing the parameters of the politically and economically possible

Beyond the Insider—Outsider Perspective: The Study of Religion as a Study of Discourse Construction

This essay reflects on contemporary theorizing of religion which embodies an explicit critique of the imperial project, seeing that by most common consent the scholarly disciplinary field of religious studies (history of religion, phenomenology of religion, Religionswissenschaft) is a late nineteenth century invention that coincides with the emergence of anthropology and ethnography as epiphenomena of the colonial project (whether as Orientalism or as exoticism the Other is rendered manageable subjects). The scholarly study of religion is, therefore, simultaneously a study of the history of theory and concept formation, and the social, cultural, and political work performed by such study and theorizing. The metatheory of the study of religion is a main focus of the essay. Alongside that, the essay focuses more pointedly on the concept of discourse, and considers the extraordinary situation where the same methodological vocabulary that functions in religious studies also functions in critical theological studies, which relativizes the division of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ perspectives. Yet both are conventionally practised either in isolation from each other as distinct theoretical and disciplinary bounded/defined study fields, or—the other and almost direct opposite—religious studies being performed in the context of theological study, situated in and offered by theological faculties. An overview of recent debates in the field of religious studies serves to highlight the continued struggle to demarcate the boundaries between the study of religion and the study of theology—in some of the recent, very strident debates mainstream religious studies is labelled as nothing more than theology. This contribution, then, aims at a kind of metatheoretical reflection on the study of religion and theology both as discourses that serve mythmaking, identity formation, culturally strategic purposes. That is, from the discourse perspective that is proposed here, it is possible to move beyond the definitional divide between religious studies and theology—even beyond ‘religion’ itself—to focus on the mundanely material practices that constitute that which is called religion. In the way in which the terms are used it is clear that the terminologies themselves bear the imprint of historical social discourses that occasioned the rise of their use. This essay, then, is something of a metacritique of the language of the study of religion—beyond religion, and beyond the study of religion and theology

Modelling social identification and helping in evacuation simulation

Social scientists have criticised computer models of pedestrian streams for their treatment of psychological crowds as mere aggregations of individuals. Indeed most models for evacuation dynamics use analogies from physics where pedestrians are considered as particles. Although this ensures that the results of the simulation match important physical phenomena, such as the deceleration of the crowd with increasing density, social phenomena such as group processes are ignored. In particular, people in a crowd have social identities and share those social identities with the others in the crowd. The process of self categorisation determines norms within the crowd and influences how people will behave in evacuation situations. We formulate the application of social identity in pedestrian simulation algorithmically. The goal is to examine whether it is possible to carry over the psychological model to computer models of pedestrian motion so that simulation results correspond to observations from crowd psychology. That is, we quantify and formalise empirical research on and verbal descriptions of the effect of group identity on behaviour. We use uncertainty quantification to analyse the model’s behaviour when we vary crucial model parameters. In this first approach we restrict ourselves to a specific scenario that was thoroughly investigated by crowd psychologists and where some quantitative data is available: the bombing and subsequent evacuation of a London underground tube carriage on July 7th 2005

Marine Biodiversity of Aotearoa New Zealand

The marine-biodiversity assessment of New Zealand (Aotearoa as known to Māori) is confined to the 200 nautical-mile boundary of the Exclusive Economic Zone, which, at 4.2 million km2, is one of the largest in the world. It spans 30° of latitude and includes a high diversity of seafloor relief, including a trench 10 km deep. Much of this region remains unexplored biologically, especially the 50% of the EEZ deeper than 2,000 m. Knowledge of the marine biota is based on more than 200 years of marine exploration in the region. The major oceanographic data repository is the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), which is involved in several Census of Marine Life field projects and is the location of the Southwestern Pacific Regional OBIS Node; NIWA is also data manager and custodian for fisheries research data owned by the Ministry of Fisheries. Related data sources cover alien species, environmental measures, and historical information. Museum collections in New Zealand hold more than 800,000 registered lots representing several million specimens. During the past decade, 220 taxonomic specialists (85 marine) from 18 countries have been engaged in a project to review New Zealand's entire biodiversity. The above-mentioned marine information sources, published literature, and reports were scrutinized to give the results summarized here for the first time (current to 2010), including data on endemism and invasive species. There are 17,135 living species in the EEZ. This diversity includes 4,315 known undescribed species in collections. Species diversity for the most intensively studied phylum-level taxa (Porifera, Cnidaria, Mollusca, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Kinorhyncha, Echinodermata, Chordata) is more or less equivalent to that in the ERMS (European Register of Marine Species) region, which is 5.5 times larger in area than the New Zealand EEZ. The implication is that, when all other New Zealand phyla are equally well studied, total marine diversity in the EEZ may be expected to equal that in the ERMS region. This equivalence invites testable hypotheses to explain it. There are 177 naturalized alien species in New Zealand coastal waters, mostly in ports and harbours. Marine-taxonomic expertise in New Zealand covers a broad number of taxa but is, proportionately, at or near its lowest level since the Second World War. Nevertheless, collections are well supported by funding and are continually added to. Threats and protection measures concerning New Zealand's marine biodiversity are commented on, along with potential and priorities for future research

When What's Left Is Right: Visuomotor Transformations in an Aged Population

Background: There has been little consensus as to whether age-related visuomotor adaptation effects are readily observable. Some studies have found slower adaptation, and/or reduced overall levels. In contrast, other methodologically similar studies have found no such evidence of aging effects on visuomotor adaptation. A crucial early step in successful adaptation is the ability to perform the necessary transformation to complete the task at hand. The present study describes the use of a viewing window paradigm to examine the effects of aging in a visuomotor transformation task. Methods: Two groups of participants, a young adult control group (age range 18–33 years old, mean age = 22) and an older adult group (age range 62–74, mean age = 68) completed a viewing window task that was controlled by the user via a computer touchscreen. Four visuomotor ‘‘flip’ ’ conditions were created by varying the relationship between the participant’s movement, and the resultant on-screen movement of the viewing window: 1) No flip 2) X-Axis and Y-axis body movements resulted in the opposite direction of movement of the viewing window. In each of the 3) Flip-X and 4) Flip-Y conditions, the solitary X- or Y-axes were reversed. Response times and movement of the window were recorded. Conclusions: Older participants demonstrated impairments in performing a required visuomotor transformation, as evidenced by more complex scanning patterns and longer scanning times when compared to younger control participants. These results provide additional evidence that the mechanisms involved in visuomotor transformation are negatively affected by age

A multifrequency radio continuum study of the Magellanic Clouds - I. Overall structure and star formation rates

We present the first low-frequency Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio continuum maps of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), usingmosaics from the GaLactic Extragalactic All-SkyMWA (GLEAM) survey. In this paper, we discuss the overall radio continuum morphology between 76 and 227 MHz and compare them with neutral hydrogen maps, 1.4 GHz continuum maps and optical images. Variation of diffuse emission is noticeable across the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) but absent across the bar of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). We also measure the integrated flux densities and derive the spectral indices for the MCs. A double power-law model with fixed a1 = -0.1 fit between 19.7 MHz and 8.55 GHz yields a0 = -0.66 ± 0.08 for the LMC. A power-law model yields a8.55GHz85.5MHz = -0.82 ± 0.03 for the SMC. The radio spectral index maps reveal distinctive flat and steep spectral indices for the HII regions and supernova remnants, respectively. We find strong correlation between HII regions and Ha emission. Using a new 150 MHz-Ha relation as a star formation rate indicator, we estimate global star formation rates of 0.068-0.161 M? yr-1 and 0.021-0.050 M? yr-1 for the LMC and SMC, respectively. Images in 20 frequency bands, and wideband averages are made available via the GLEAM virtual observatory server