State of Emergency: A Greek Inheritance

This PhD comprises a book and thesis. State of Emergency is an interdisciplinary work of travel, history, memoir and biography, with sections cut and summarised to meet the word count. The thesis has evolved through an open-minded enquiry into ways of re-evaluating the history and discourse of travel writing, challenging critical approaches and seeking a new way forward by using personal stories. It presents an original analogy for research, criticism and creative writing called ‘core-sampling’. State of Emergency demonstrates its practical application. State of Emergency follows the footsteps of my ancestor George Bowen, author of the 1854 John Murray Handbook to Greece, the world’s first stand-alone practical guide to Greece. Travelling with Bowen's Handbook and unpublished journal, I open up a contested imperial past, while witnessing an economic meltdown and migrant crisis that again thrust Greece onto the world stage, prompting urgent questions about national destiny, colonialism, migration, travel, and uses of the past. The thesis examines Bowen and his Handbook from historical, critical and postcolonial perspectives, and enquires into ways of re-evaluating the aesthetics and politics of travel and life-writing. It asks how to navigate Bowen’s imperial legacy and position myself as a travel writer. ‘Core-sampling’, a geological method of excavation, provides an analogy for an interrogation of self, other, place and the past, unearthing connections that can promote empathy and self-knowledge, and avoid pitfalls of imperialist objectification, and self-obsession. Analysis is drawn from history, anthropology, philosophy and literary and postcolonial criticism, and case studies include works of life-writing.AHRC SWWDTP Society of Authors Authors’ Foundation Award John Murray Charitable Trust Yaddo Foundation Hawthornden Foundation Santander Travel GrantA version of Chapter 1 has appeared as ‘George Bowen and his 1854 Murray Handbook for Travellers in Greece’ in Romance, Revolution and Reform, Issue 4, ’Transnationalism in the Long-Nineteenth Century’ https://www.rrrjournal.com/latest-edition ISSN 2517-785

Paper Session I-A - Interstellar Initiatives

The limits of space exploration are moving outwards with time; from sounding rockets, to Earth orbit, to the Moon, to the nearer planets, and to the outer planets. With the first steps, as far as the Moon, unmanned probes have been followed by manned spacecraft. We expect both unmanned and manned spaceflight to continue outwards for the foreseeable future

Histidinol dehydrogenase from Neurospora crassa

Histidinol dehydrogenase from Neurospora crass

Evolutionary history of the ADRB2 gene in humans

No abstract available

Self-sampling for cervical screening offered at the point of invitation: A cross-sectional study of preferences in England

OBJECTIVES: This study assessed preferences for human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling if offered as an alternative to clinician-based screening at the point of invitation for cervical screening. SETTING AND METHODS: An online questionnaire was completed by screening-eligible women living in England (n = 3672). Logistic regressions explored associations between demographic characteristics and screening preferences, stratified by previous screening attendance. Reasons for preferences were also assessed. RESULTS: Half of participants (51.4%) intended to choose self-sampling, 36.5% preferred clinician screening, 10.5% were unsure, and <2% preferred no screening. More irregular and never attenders chose self-sampling, compared with regular attenders (71.1% and 70.1% vs. 41.0% respectively). Among regular attenders, self-sampling was preferred more frequently by the highest occupational grade, older and lesbian, gay and bisexual women, and those with experience of blood self-tests. In the irregular attender group, older women and those with experience of blood self-tests were more likely to choose self-sampling. In ‘never attenders’, self-sampling was less popular in ethnic minority groups. CONCLUSIONS: If offered a choice of screening, around half of women in England may choose self-sampling, but a substantial proportion would still opt for clinician screening. Screening providers will need to manage a high take-up of self-sampling if many regular attenders switch to self-sampling

A fully automated procedure for the parallel, multidimensional purification and nucleotide loading of the human GTPases KRas, Rac1 and RalB

Small GTPases regulate many key cellular processes and their role in human disease validates many proteins in this class as desirable targets for therapeutic intervention. Reliable recombinant production of GTPases, often in the active GTP loaded state, is a prerequisite for the prosecution of drug discovery efforts. The preparation of these active forms can be complex and often constricts the supply to the reagent intensive techniques used in structure base drug discovery. We have established a fully automated, multidimensional protein purification strategy for the parallel production of the catalytic G-domains of KRas, Rac1 and RalB GTPases in the active form. This method incorporates a four step chromatography purification with TEV protease-mediated affinity tag cleavage and a conditioning step that achieves the activation of the GTPase by exchanging GDP for the non-hydrolyzable GTP analogue GMPPnP. We also demonstrate that an automated method is efficient at loading of KRas with mantGDP for application in a SOS1 catalysed fluorescent nucleotide exchange assay. In comparison to more conventional manual workflows the automated method offers marked advantages in method run time and operator workload. This reduces the bottleneck in protein production while generating products that are highly purified and effectively loaded with nucleotide analogues

Linear angular momentum multiplexing-conceptualization and experimental evaluation with antenna arrays

Linear Angular Momentum Multiplexing is a new method for providing highly spectrally efficient short range communication between a transmitter and receiver, where one may move at speed transverse to the propagation. Such applications include rail, vehicle and hyperloop transport systems communicating with fixed infrastructure on the ground. This paper describes how the scientific concept of linear angular momentum multiplexing evolves from orbital angular momentum multiplexing. The essential parameters for implementing this concept are: a long array at least at one of the ends of the link; antenna element radiation characteristics; and the array element spacing relative to the propagation distance. These parameters are also backed by short range measurements carried out at 2.4GHz used to model the Rice fading channel and determine resilience to multipath fading

Understanding early organogenesis using a simplified in situ hybridization protocol in Xenopus

Organogenesis is the study of how organs are specified and then acquire their specific shape and functions during development. The Xenopuslaevis embryo is very useful for studying organogenesis because their large size makes them very suitable for identifying organs at the earliest steps in organogenesis. At this time, the primary method used for identifying a specific organ or primordium is whole mount in situ hybridization with labeled antisense RNA probes specific to a gene that is expressed in the organ of interest. In addition, it is relatively easy to manipulate genes or signaling pathways in Xenopus and in situ hybridization allows one to then assay for changes in the presence or morphology of a target organ. Whole mount in situ hybridization is a multi-day protocol with many steps involved. Here we provide a simplified protocol with reduced numbers of steps and reagents used that works well for routine assays. In situ hybridization robots have greatly facilitated the process and we detail how and when we utilize that technology in the process. Once an in situ hybridization is complete, capturing the best image of the result can be frustrating. We provide advice on how to optimize imaging of in situ hybridization results. Although the protocol describes assessing organogenesis in Xenopus laevis, the same basic protocol can almost certainly be adapted to Xenopus tropicalis and other model systems

Retinoic acid is a key regulatory switch determining the difference between lung and thyroid fates in Xenopus laevis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The lung and thyroid are derived from the anterior endoderm. Retinoic acid and Fgf signalling are known to be essential for development of the lung in mouse but little is known on how the lung and thyroid are specified in <it>Xenopus</it>.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>If either retinoic acid or Fgf signalling is inhibited, there is no differentiation of the lung as assayed by expression of <it>sftpb</it>. There is no change in expression of thyroid gland markers when retinoic acid signalling is blocked after gastrulation and when Fgf signalling is inhibited there is a short window of time where <it>pax2 </it>expression is inhibited but expression of other markers is unaffected. If exogenous retinoic acid is given to the embryo between embryonic stages 20 and 26, the presumptive thyroid expresses <it>sftpb </it>and <it>sftpc</it>, specific markers of lung differentiation and expression of key thyroid transcription factors is lost. When the presumptive thyroid is transplanted into the posterior embryo, it also expresses <it>sftpb</it>, although <it>pax2 </it>expression is not blocked.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>After gastrulation, retinoic acid is required for lung but not thyroid differentiation in <it>Xenopus </it>while Fgf signalling is needed for lung but only for early expression of <it>pax2 </it>in the thyroid. Exposure to retinoic acid can cause the presumptive thyroid to switch to a lung developmental program.</p

Random walk through fractal environments

We analyze random walk through fractal environments, embedded in 3-dimensional, permeable space. Particles travel freely and are scattered off into random directions when they hit the fractal. The statistical distribution of the flight increments (i.e. of the displacements between two consecutive hittings) is analytically derived from a common, practical definition of fractal dimension, and it turns out to approximate quite well a power-law in the case where the dimension D of the fractal is less than 2, there is though always a finite rate of unaffected escape. Random walks through fractal sets with D less or equal 2 can thus be considered as defective Levy walks. The distribution of jump increments for D > 2 is decaying exponentially. The diffusive behavior of the random walk is analyzed in the frame of continuous time random walk, which we generalize to include the case of defective distributions of walk-increments. It is shown that the particles undergo anomalous, enhanced diffusion for D_F < 2, the diffusion is dominated by the finite escape rate. Diffusion for D_F > 2 is normal for large times, enhanced though for small and intermediate times. In particular, it follows that fractals generated by a particular class of self-organized criticality (SOC) models give rise to enhanced diffusion. The analytical results are illustrated by Monte-Carlo simulations.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figures; in press at Phys. Rev. E, 200