Jubilee mugs:the monarchy and the Sex Pistols

With rare exceptions sociologists have traditionally had little to say about the British monarchy. In the exceptional cases of the Durkheimian functionalism of Shills and Young (1953), the left humanism of Birnbaum (1955), or the archaic state/backward nation thesis of Nairn (1988), the British nation has been conceived as a homogenous mass. The brief episode of the Sex Pistols' Jubilee year song 'God Save the Queen' exposed some of the divisions within the national 'mass', forcing a re-ordering of the balance between detachment and belonging to the Royal idea. I argue that the song acted as a kind of 'breaching experiment'. Its wilful provocation of Royalist sentiment revealed the level of sanction available to the media-industrial complex to enforce compliance to British self-images of loyal and devoted national communicants

Intelligence within BAOR and NATO's Northern Army Group

During the Cold War the UK's principal military role was its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) through the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), together with wartime command of NATO's Northern Army Group. The possibility of a surprise attack by the numerically superior Warsaw Pact forces ensured that great importance was attached to intelligence, warning and rapid mobilisation. As yet we know very little about the intelligence dimension of BAOR and its interface with NATO allies. This article attempts to address these neglected issues, ending with the impact of the 1973 Yom Kippur War upon NATO thinking about warning and surprise in the mid-1970s. It concludes that the arrangements made by Whitehall for support to BAOR from national assets during crisis or transition to war were - at best - improbable. Accordingly, over the years, BAOR developed its own unique assets in the realm of both intelligence collection and special operations in order to prepare for the possible outbreak of conflict

The Lantern Vol. 27, No. 2, Spring 1959

• The Case for a Stratified Society • Education Courses • Some Thoughts for God\u27s Thinking Creatures • Sawdust to the Oats? • To Change the Things I Can... • Vignette • I Meet Goliath • Reverie and Reminiscence • On Flight • In Defense of Jazz • A Description • Line of Retreat • Alan Lomax and the American Folk Song • Dawn Stillness • Seasons • Two Poems • Despair • Too Late • Education • For All Practical Purposes He Was Bald • Contrast • I Belong to the Sea • Waves • Love • The Glory and the Dreamhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/lantern/1077/thumbnail.jp

Freedom, Servitude and Voluntary Labor

We present an economic framework to revisit and reframe some important debates over the nature of free versus unfree labor and the economic consequences of emancipation. We use a simple general equilibrium model in which labor can be either free or coerced and where land and labor will be exchanged on markets that can be competitive or manipulated or via other non-market collusive arrangements. By working with variants of the same basic model under different assumptions about initial economy-wide factor endowments and asset ownership we can compare equilibrium distributional outcomes under different institutional and contractual arrangements including markets with free labor and free tenancy, slavery, and tenancy arrangements with tied labor-service obligations. Analysis of these different contractual and organizational forms yields insights that accord with common sense, but that are often overlooked or downplayed in academic debates, particularly amongst economists

Development and validation of a comprehensive genomic diagnostic tool for myeloid malignancies.

The diagnosis of hematologic malignancies relies on multidisciplinary workflows involving morphology, flow cytometry, cytogenetic, and molecular genetic analyses. Advances in cancer genomics have identified numerous recurrent mutations with clear prognostic and/or therapeutic significance to different cancers. In myeloid malignancies, there is a clinical imperative to test for such mutations in mainstream diagnosis; however, progress toward this has been slow and piecemeal. Here we describe Karyogene, an integrated targeted resequencing/analytical platform that detects nucleotide substitutions, insertions/deletions, chromosomal translocations, copy number abnormalities, and zygosity changes in a single assay. We validate the approach against 62 acute myeloid leukemia, 50 myelodysplastic syndrome, and 40 blood DNA samples from individuals without evidence of clonal blood disorders. We demonstrate robust detection of sequence changes in 49 genes, including difficult-to-detect mutations such as FLT3 internal-tandem and mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL) partial-tandem duplications, and clinically significant chromosomal rearrangements including MLL translocations to known and unknown partners, identifying the novel fusion gene MLL-DIAPH2 in the process. Additionally, we identify most significant chromosomal gains and losses, and several copy neutral loss-of-heterozygosity mutations at a genome-wide level, including previously unreported changes such as homozygosity for DNMT3A R882 mutations. Karyogene represents a dependable genomic diagnosis platform for translational research and for the clinical management of myeloid malignancies, which can be readily adapted for use in other cancers

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Neutralising immunity to omicron sublineages BQ.1.1, XBB, and XBB.1.5 in healthy adults is boosted by bivalent BA.1-containing mRNA vaccination and previous Omicron infection

The global COVID-19 landscape is increasingly complex; emerging new variants rapidly cause waves of infection in people with variably induced immunity. Most individuals now have so-called hybrid immunity from both infection and vaccination. However, sequential infecting variants, induction of immunity, and subsequent waning are interlinked, and immune protection against new variants is unclear

Methylation of class II transactivator gene promoter IV is not associated with susceptibility to Multiple Sclerosis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex trait in which alleles at or near the class II loci <it>HLA-DRB1 </it>and <it>HLA-DQB1 </it>contribute significantly to genetic risk. The MHC class II transactivator (<it>MHC2TA</it>) is the master controller of expression of class II genes, and methylation of the promoter of this gene has been previously been shown to alter its function. In this study we sought to assess whether or not methylation of the <it>MHC2TA </it>promoter pIV could contribute to MS disease aetiology.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In DNA from peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a sample of 50 monozygotic disease discordant MS twins the <it>MHC2TA </it>promoter IV was sequenced and analysed by methylation specific PCR.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>No methylation or sequence variation of the <it>MHC2TA </it>promoter pIV was found.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of this study cannot support the notion that methylation of the pIV promoter of <it>MHC2TA </it>contributes to MS disease risk, although tissue and timing specific epigenetic modifications cannot be ruled out.</p