Reproductive life disorders in Italian celiac women. A case-control study

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study is to explore the association between celiac disease and menstrual cycle, gestation and puerperal disorders. METHODS: The association between celiac disease and menstrual cycle, gestation and puerperal disorders in a sample of 62 childbearing age women (15-49 age) was assessed within an age and town of residence matched case-control study conducted in 2008. Main outcome measures were the presence of one or more disorders in menstrual cycle and the presence of one or more complication during pregnancy. RESULTS: 62 celiac women (median age: 31.5, range: 17-49) and 186 healthy control (median age: 32.5, range: 15-49) were interviewed. A higher percentage of menstrual cycle disorders has been observed in celiac women. 19.4% frequency of amenorrhea was reported among celiac women versus 2.2% among healthy controls (OR = 33, 95% CI = 7.17-151.8;, p = 0.000). An association has been observed between celiac disease and oligomenorrhea, hypomenorrhea, dysmenorrhea and metrorrhagia (p < 0.05). The likelihood of having at least one complication during pregnancy has been estimated to be at least four times higher in celiac women than in healthy women (OR = 4.1, 95% CI = 2-8.6, p = 0.000). A significant correlation has emerged for celiac disease and threatened abortion, gestational hypertension, placenta abruption, severe anaemia, uterine hyperkinesia, intrauterine growth restriction (p < 0.001). A shorter gestation has on average been observed in celiac women together with a lower birth weight of celiac women babies (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The occurrence of a significant correlation between celiac disease and reproductive disorders could suggest to consider celiac disease diagnostic procedures (serological screening) in women affected by these disorders

Supramolecular mechanics in a metal-organic framework

A combination of variable-temperature and variable-pressure single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction is used to study the thermo- and piezo-mechanical properties of the metal-organic framework (MOF) silver(i) 2-methylimidazolate, Ag(mim). We find the material to exhibit a number of anomalous mechanical properties: negative thermal expansion, colossal positive thermal expansion and the most extreme negative linear compressibility yet observed for a MOF. By considering the mechanical response of individual supramolecular motifs we are able to rationalise the varied and unconventional behaviour of the bulk material. A general inverse correspondence between strength of supramolecular interaction and magnitude of mechanical response is identified. We propose that the consideration of MOF structures in terms of their underlying mechanical building units provides a straightforward qualitative method of directing framework design in order to maximise anomalous mechanical response. © 2012 The Royal Society of Chemistry

The University of Cambridge, academic expertise and the British empire, 1885–1962

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Environment and Planning A: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. The final published version will be available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15594802This paper examines how imperial travel of British academics shaped the production of knowledge and colonial policy from the 1880s to the 1960s. It employs an innovative, archive based methodology that examines the changing geographies of all recorded academic travel from the University of Cambridge in conjunction with the extensive overseas journeys of Sir Frank Leonard Engledow, Drapers’ Professor of Agriculture from 1930 to 1957 and a key advisor to the Colonial Office on tropical agriculture. Drawing on recent work in geography and science studies, this study outlines how scientific expertise was increasingly sought by colonial governments at the eve of decolonisation due to a lack of scientific infrastructure and growing social upheavals in the colonies. The analysis discusses related geographical shifts in the engagement of British academics with the colonial world and identifies a profound deepening of the uneven integration of different areas of empire into academic networks after 1945. Based on Engledow’s contribution to the Moyne Commission on theWest Indies (1938–1939) and ensuing colonial reform, it is argued that he represented, like many other late colonial British academic experts, a distinctively post- Victorian imperialist, whose strong belief in Christian faith, racial differences, colonial networks, humanitarianism, science and planning created an ambivalent positionality that explains why his expertise both supported and undermined colonial rule

Habit, the criminal body and the body politic in England, c. 1700-1800

This article explores the role that ‘habit’ played in discourses on crime in the eighteenth century, a subject which forms an important part of the history of ‘the social’. It seeks to bridge the division between ‘liberal’ positions which see crime as a product of social circumstance and the conservative position which stresses the role of will and individual responsibility, by drawing attention to the role habit played in uniting these conceptions in the eighteenth century. It argues that the Lockean idea that the mind was a tabula rasa, and that the character was thereby formed through impression and habit, was used as a device to explain the ways in which certain individuals rather than others happened to fall into a life of crime, a temptation to which all were susceptible. This allowed commentators to define individuals as responsible for their actions, which accepting the significance of environmental factors in their transgressions. Further, the notion that the character was formed through habit enabled reformers to promote the idea that crime could be combated through mechanisms of prevention and reformation, which targeted both the individual criminal and which sought more generally to reduce the likelihood of crime