Bombers, Bunkers, and Badges: The Cold War Materialised in National Museums Scotland

How does an object become a Cold War object? Through its military installations, defence industry as well as the strength of its peace movement, Scotland was a key site of the Cold War in the UK. While there has been some research on how to classify such sites in the context of the ‘Cold War’, there has been very little systematic enquiry on how far the movable material culture originating from these sites and places are also recognised as ‘Cold War’ objects in the museums which acquired them. This thesis investigates to what extent have Cold War meanings become attached to objects in the collection of National Museums Scotland (NMS). Taking an object biographical approach, this thesis explores the life of selected objects from its creation, through its use life, to its life as a museum object. Museum objects are at the heart of this research, coupled with archival material and oral testimonies from people involved at various points of the object’s life. This research is arranged by considering Cold War objects from a global macro-level to a local micro-level perspective. Each chapter focuses on an object or cluster of objects to determine at what points Cold War meanings have or have not become attached to them, and what this means for the authenticity and values ascribed to them. Case studies include the Ferranti Meteor aircraft, the Dounreay Fast Reactor control room, equipment used by the Royal Observer Corps, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ephemera, and a collection of Soviet and Space Race badges. This study contributes to Cold War heritage scholarship by demonstrating how pivotal people and place are in attributing Cold War meanings to material objects. It also makes suggestions on the practical implications on discovering Cold War objects within museum collections

Synthesis, structure and unusual reactivity of a stable 3-(oxazolidin-2-ylidene)thiophen-2-one

The authors thank EPSRC (UK) for a DTA studentship (Grant EP/L505079/1) and the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea University.Treatment of 2- and 3-thienyloxazolines with butyllithium and bis(trimethylsilyl) peroxide results in ring hydroxylation to give products which exist mainly as the oxazolidinylidenethiophenones. The 3-oxazolidinylidenethiophen-2-one is a rare example of a stable heterocyclic ortho-quinone methide analog which shows a varied pattern of reactivity, including both C- and O-alkylation, Michael addition via C-5 to an acetylenic ester, tetrachlorobenzannulation across positions 4 and 5, and formation of a hexacyclic fused-ring product with N-phenyltriazolinedione. Crystal structures of the products are dominated by inter- and intramolecular NH to CO hydrogen bonding.PostprintPeer reviewe

Rationalisation of patterns of competing reactivity by X-ray structure determination : reaction of isomeric (benzyloxythienyl)oxazolines with a base

Funding: We thank EPSRC (UK) for a DTA studentship to ADH (Grant EP/L505079/1) and the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea University.Three isomeric (benzyloxythienyl)oxazolines 9 , 11 and 13 have been prepared and are found, upon treatment with strong base, to undergo either Wittig rearrangement or intramolecular attack of the benzylic anion on the oxazoline function to give products derived from cleavage of the initially formed 3-aminothienofuran products. This pattern of reactivity is directly linked to the distance between the two reactive groups as determined by X-ray diffraction, with the greatest distance in 11 leading to exclusive Wittig rearrangement, the shortest distance in 13 giving exclusively cyclisation-derived products, and the intermediate distance in 9 leading to both processes being observed. The corresponding N-butyl amides were also obtained in two cases and one of these undergoes efficient Wittig rearrangement leading to a thieno[2,3-c]pyrrolone product.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Access to diarylmethanols by Wittig rearrangement of ortho-, meta- and para-benzyloxy-N-butylbenzamides

Authors thank EPSRC (UK) for a DTA studentship to ADH (Grant EP/L505079/1), EPSRC (UK) and CRITICAT Centre for Doctoral Training for a studentship to RAI (Grant code: EP/L016419/1) and the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea University.The N-butyl amide group, CONHBu, has been found to be an effective promoter of the [1,2]-Wittig rearrangement of aryl benzyl ethers and thus allow the two-step synthesis of isomerically-pure substituted diarylmethanols starting from simple hydroxybenzoic acid derivatives. The method is compatible with a wide range of functional groups including methyl, methoxy and fluoro, although not with nitro and, unexpectedly, is applicable to meta as well as ortho and para isomeric series.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Automated Fidelity Assessment for Strategy Training in Inpatient Rehabilitation using Natural Language Processing

Strategy training is a multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach that teaches skills to reduce disability among those with cognitive impairments following a stroke. Strategy training has been shown in randomized, controlled clinical trials to be a more feasible and efficacious intervention for promoting independence than traditional rehabilitation approaches. A standardized fidelity assessment is used to measure adherence to treatment principles by examining guided and directed verbal cues in video recordings of rehabilitation sessions. Although the fidelity assessment for detecting guided and directed verbal cues is valid and feasible for single-site studies, it can become labor intensive, time consuming, and expensive in large, multi-site pragmatic trials. To address this challenge to widespread strategy training implementation, we leveraged natural language processing (NLP) techniques to automate the strategy training fidelity assessment, i.e., to automatically identify guided and directed verbal cues from video recordings of rehabilitation sessions. We developed a rule-based NLP algorithm, a long-short term memory (LSTM) model, and a bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT) model for this task. The best performance was achieved by the BERT model with a 0.8075 F1-score. This BERT model was verified on an external validation dataset collected from a separate major regional health system and achieved an F1 score of 0.8259, which shows that the BERT model generalizes well. The findings from this study hold widespread promise in psychology and rehabilitation intervention research and practice.Comment: Accepted at the AMIA Informatics Summit 202

Base-induced cyclisation of ortho-substituted 2-phenyloxazolines to give 3-aminobenzofurans and related heterocycles

The authors thank EPSRC (UK) for a DTA studentship (Grant No. EP/L505079/1) and the EPSRC UK National Mass Spectrometry Facility at Swansea UniversityTreatment of ortho-benzyloxyphenyloxazolines with butyllithium and potassium t-butoxide results in cyclisation with ring-opening of the oxazoline to give 2-aryl-3-aminobenzofurans. The reaction also occurs with the corresponding benzylthio- and benzylamino-compounds to give benzothiophenes and indoles, respectively. Use of an ortho-allyloxyphenyloxazoline gives the corresponding 2-vinylbenzofuran, while both α-methylbenzyloxy and benzylsulfonyl compounds form stable spirooxazolidine products. The X-ray structure of an aminobenzothiophene product has been determined.PostprintPeer reviewe

Homologous Transcription Factors DUX4 and DUX4c Associate with Cytoplasmic Proteins during Muscle Differentiation

Hundreds of double homeobox (DUX) genes map within 3.3-kb repeated elements dispersed in the human genome and encode DNA-binding proteins. Among these, we identified DUX4, a potent transcription factor that causes facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). In the present study, we performed yeast two-hybrid screens and protein co-purifications with HaloTag-DUX fusions or GST-DUX4 pull-down to identify protein partners of DUX4, DUX4c (which is identical to DUX4 except for the end of the carboxyl terminal domain) and DUX1 (which is limited to the double homeodomain). Unexpectedly, we identified and validated (by co-immunoprecipitation, GST pull-down, co-immunofluorescence and in situ Proximal Ligation Assay) the interaction of DUX4, DUX4c and DUX1 with type III intermediate filament protein desmin in the cytoplasm and at the nuclear periphery. Desmin filaments link adjacent sarcomere at the Z-discs, connect them to sarcolemma proteins and interact with mitochondria. These intermediate filament also contact the nuclear lamina and contribute to positioning of the nuclei. Another Z-disc protein, LMCD1 that contains a LIM domain was also validated as a DUX4 partner. The functionality of DUX4 or DUX4c interactions with cytoplasmic proteins is underscored by the cytoplasmic detection of DUX4/DUX4c upon myoblast fusion. In addition, we identified and validated (by co-immunoprecipitation, co-immunofluorescence and in situ Proximal Ligation Assay) as DUX4/4c partners several RNA-binding proteins such as C1QBP, SRSF9, RBM3, FUS/TLS and SFPQ that are involved in mRNA splicing and translation. FUS and SFPQ are nuclear proteins, however their cytoplasmic translocation was reported in neuronal cells where they associated with ribonucleoparticles (RNPs). Several other validated or identified DUX4/DUX4c partners are also contained in mRNP granules, and the co-localizations with cytoplasmic DAPI-positive spots is in keeping with such an association. Large muscle RNPs were recently shown to exit the nucleus via a novel mechanism of nuclear envelope budding. Following DUX4 or DUX4c overexpression in muscle cell cultures, we observed their association with similar nuclear buds. In conclusion, our study demonstrated unexpected interactions of DUX4/4c with cytoplasmic proteins playing major roles during muscle differentiation. Further investigations are on-going to evaluate whether these interactions play roles during muscle regeneration as previously suggested for DUX4c