An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914

The General Introduction addresses the unique role of London in English national consciousness and in English literature, given their tendency to represent London as somehow larger than life, as escaping the merely naturalistic and entering the realm of the symbolic or fantastic, with parallels in the great mythopoeic cities of Western culture—Rome, Jerusalem, Athens, Babylon, Troy. It looks at the idea of the City in Classical and Christian culture, as well as London’s development, in the nineteenth-century, into that unprecedented phenomenon, a megalopolis (the Great Wen) that had begun not just to astonish visitors with its size and complexity but to seem alien to its own inhabitants

Stratigraphy and Alteration of the Footwall Volcanic Rocks beneath the Archean Mattabi Massive Sulfide Deposit, Sturgeon Lake, Ontario

A Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota by David Alan Groves in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, March 1984. Plates 1-3 referenced in the thesis are also attached to this record.Subaqueous mafic lava flows and breccias, mafic debris-flow and felsic pyroclastic-flow deposits, and felsic lavas form a 2 km thick succession beneath the Archean Mattabi massive sulfide deposit in northwestern Ontario. The lowermost 500 m is composed of massive amygdaloidal mafic flows, flow breccias, and heterolithic debris flows. Thin (<50m) amygdaloidal felsic lava flows and felsic block and ash deposits overlie the basal mafic flow sequence. This felsic horizon thickens both eastward and westward away from the Mattabi deposit and suggests the former existence of localized felsic vents on a broad shield volcano. Rocks interpreted to be mafic debris-flow and felsic pyroclastic-flow deposits lie above the felsic horizon and represent a change in eruptive style from lava extrusion to phreatomagmatic volcanism. The change is believed to be a result of a shallowing upward sequence and/or an increasing water/magma ratio. The mafic debris-flow deposits are massive to thick-bedded, poorly graded and composed of scoriaceous to amygdaloidal mafic clasts. Felsic pyroclastic-flow deposits include a) massive basal beds and overlying bedded ash tuff, b) well-bedded., graded lapilli tuff and c) massive pumice-rich beds. Felsic pyroclastic deposits intercalate and intermix with mafic debris flow deposits west of Mattabi and together these constitute the upper 500-600 m of the footwall succession. Massive pyroclastic beds truncate mafic debris-flow deposits and mark the culmination of explosive felsic volcanism prior to the ore-forming event. Massive pumiceous pyroclastic beds and quartz-porphyritic ash-flow tuff form the immediate mine footwall strata. Alteration within the footwall strata has been divided into four major mineralogical assemblages: 1) least altered (typical greenschist facies assemblages with moderate carbonatization), 2) iron carbonate-chlorite, 3) sericite and 4) chloritoid. Least-altered assemblage rocks are largely amygdaloidal mafic lava flows and mafic debris-flow deposits which are situated 4 to 5 km west of the Mattabi deposit. Iron carbonate-chlorite alteration is confined largely to felsic pyroclastic rocks and lavas within the upper 600 m of the footwall strata; sericitization is also widespread within these rocks. Chloritoid is developed in both sericite and iron carbonate-chlorite assemblage rocks. Mass balance computations indicate that constant volume has been maintained within all altered lithologies except iron carbonate-chlorite assemblages within felsic lavas; these rocks have undergone a 10 to 20% volume reduction. Iron carbonate-chlorite assemblage rocks display elemental gains of Fe, Mn and CO2, and losses of Si. Sericitization produces marked K and Rb gains at the expense of Na. Comparisons of iron carbonate-chlorite and sericite-assemblage rocks to similar chloritoid-bearing equivalents reveal no consistent elemental trends. It is envisioned that heated connate seawater/rock interactions within mafic lava flows and breccias produced a large reservoir of metal-rich hydrothermal solutions. Synvolcanic faulting allowed the rapid discharge of fluids from the reservoir. Diffuse, semiconformable alteration zones were developed in overlying felsic pyroclastic rocks and lavas as the solutions migrated upward to the seafloor surface. Focused discharge of fluids at several locations resulted in large-scale precipitation of iron sulfides on the seafloor

A candidate liquid chromatography mass spectrometry reference method for the quantification of the cardiac marker 1-32 B-type natriuretic peptide

B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) is a 32 amino acid cardiac hormone routinely measured by immunoassays to diagnose heart failure. While it is reported that immunoassay results can vary up to 45%, no attempt of standardization and/or harmonization through the development of certified reference materials (CRMs) or reference measurement procedures (RMPs) has yet been carried out. B-type natriuretic peptide primary calibrator was quantified traceably to the International System of Units (SI) by both amino acid analysis and tryptic digestion. A method for the stabilization of BNP in plasma followed by protein precipitation, solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography (LC) mass spectrometry (MS) was then developed and validated for the quantification of BNP at clinically relevant concentrations (15-150 fmol/g). The candidate reference method was applied to the quantification of BNP in a number of samples from the UK NEQAS Cardiac Markers Scheme to demonstrate its applicability to generate reference values and to preliminary evaluate the commutability of a potential CRM. The results from the reference method were consistently lower than the immunoassay results and discrepancy between the immunoassays was observed confirming previous data. The application of the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method to the UK NEQAS samples and the correlation of the results with the immunoassay results shows the potential of the method to support external quality assessment schemes, to improve understanding of the bias of the assays and to establish RMPs for BNP measurements. Furthermore, the method has the potential to be multiplexed for monitoring circulating truncated forms of BNP

Adult vitamin D deficiency leads to behavioural and brain neurochemical alterations in C57BL/6J and BALB/c mice

Epidemiological evidence suggests that low levels of vitamin D may predispose people to develop depression and cognitive impairment. While rodent studies have demonstrated that prenatal vitamin D deficiency is associated with altered brain development, there is a lack of research examining adult vitamin D (AVD) deficiency. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of AVD deficiency on behaviour and brain function in the mouse. Ten-week old male C57BL/6J and BALB/c mice were fed a control or vitamin D deficient diet for 10 weeks prior to, and during behavioural testing. We assessed a broad range of behavioural domains, excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmission in brain tissue, and, in separate groups of mice, locomotor response to d-amphetamine and MK-801. Overall, AVD deficiency resulted in hyperlocomotion in a novel open field and reduced GAD65/67 levels in brain tissue. AVD-deficient BALB/c mice had altered behaviour on the elevated plus maze, altered responses to heat, sound and shock, and decreased levels of glutamate and glutamine, and increased levels of GABA and glycine. By contrast C57BL/6J mice had a more subtle phenotype with no further behavioural changes but significant elevations in serine, homovanillic acid and 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid. Although the behavioural phenotype of AVD did not seem to model a specific disorder, the overall reduction in GAD65/67 levels associated with AVD deficiency may be relevant to a number of neuropsychiatric conditions. This is the first study to show an association between AVD deficiency and prominent changes in behaviour and brain neurochemistry in the mouse

Phosphatidylinositol Transfer Protein, Cytoplasmic 1 (PITPNC1) Binds and Transfers Phosphatidic Acid

Phosphatidylinositol transfer proteins (PITPs) are versatile proteins required for signal transduction and membrane traffic. The best characterized mammalian PITPs are the Class I PITPs, PITPα (PITPNA) and PITPβ (PITPNB), which are single domain proteins with a hydrophobic cavity that binds a phosphatidylinositol (PI) or phosphatidylcholine molecule. In this study, we report the lipid binding properties of an uncharacterized soluble PITP, phosphatidylinositol transfer protein, cytoplasmic 1 (PITPNC1) (alternative name, RdgBβ), of the Class II family. We show that the lipid binding properties of this protein are distinct to Class I PITPs because, besides PI, RdgBβ binds and transfers phosphatidic acid (PA) but hardly binds phosphatidylcholine. RdgBβ when purified from Escherichia coli is preloaded with PA and phosphatidylglycerol. When RdgBβ was incubated with permeabilized HL60 cells, phosphatidylglycerol was released, and PA and PI were now incorporated into RdgBβ. After an increase in PA levels following activation of endogenous phospholipase D or after addition of bacterial phospholipase D, binding of PA to RdgBβ was greater at the expense of PI binding. We propose that RdgBβ, when containing PA, regulates an effector protein or can facilitate lipid transfer between membrane compartments

Extended Emission-Line Regions: Remnants of Quasar Superwinds?

We give an overview of our recent integral-field-unit spectroscopy of luminous extended emission-line regions (EELRs) around low-redshift quasars, including new observations of 5 fields. Previous work has shown that the most luminous EELRs are found almost exclusively around steep-spectrum radio-loud quasars, with apparently disordered global velocity fields, and little, if any, morphological correlation with either the host-galaxy or the radio structure. Our new observations confirm and expand these results. The EELRs often show some clouds with velocities exceeding 500 km/s, ranging up to 1100 km/s, but the velocity dispersions, with few exceptions, are in the 30-100 km/s range. Emission-line ratios show that the EELRs are clearly photoionized by the quasars. Masses of the EELRs range up to >10^10 Msun. Essentially all of the EELRs show relatively low metallicities, and they are associated with quasars that, in contrast to most, show similarly low metallicities in their broad-line regions. The two objects in our sample that do not have classical double-lobed radio morphologies (3C48, with a compact-steep-spectrum source; Mrk1014, radio-quiet, but with a weak compact-steep-spectrum source) are the only ones that appear to have recent star formation. While some of the less-luminous EELRs may have other origins, the most likely explanation for the ones in our sample is that they are examples of gas swept out of the host galaxy by a large-solid-angle blast wave accompanying the production of the radio jets. The triggering of the quasar activity is almost certainly the result of the merger of a gas-rich galaxy with a massive, gas-poor galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole.Comment: ApJ accepted; 19 pages, 11 figures, 3 table