The Legal Issues in Shakespeare\u27s The merchant of Venice and Jonson\u27s Volpone

The aim of this thesis is to explore the legal issues within William Shakespeare\u27s The Merchant of Venice, and Ben Jonson\u27s Volpone. I will attempt to discover the extent to which both plays can be seen as indicative of English jurisprudence applicable to Early Modern England. I shall commence by investigating The Merchant of Venice through outlining the process of signing and sealing a contract, defining the roles of The Court of Chancery and The Court of Common Law and relating the judgements made by Portia and the Court to statutes, precedents and procedures applicable to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Volpone will then be discussed, where topics such as legacy-hunting, criminal offences and the role of the Avocatori as an impartial and fair group, will be explored. The relationship between the law and comic law in relation to the character of Volpone will also be investigated

Targeting in Outer Space: An Exploration of Regime Interactions in the Final Frontier

Space infrastructure is now integral to both civilian life and warfare. Belligerents may find great military advantage in destroying a satellite in orbit, but this could have grave consequences for civilians on earth and create long-lasting space debris. This Article identifies the applicable law by harmonizing international humanitarian law, human rights law, and international space law. The Authors conclude that targeting a satellite in armed conflict will be permissible only as a measure of last resort, not of first response

Combinatorial biomaterials discovery strategy to identify new macromolecular cryoprotectants

Cryoprotective agents (CPAs) are typically solvents or small molecules, but there is a need for innovative CPAs to reduce toxicity and increase cell yield, for the banking and transport of cells. Here we use a photochemical high-throughput discovery platform to identify macromolecular cryoprotectants, as rational design approaches are currently limited by the lack of structure–property relationships. Using liquid handling systems, 120 unique polyampholytes were synthesized using photopolymerization with RAFT agents. Cryopreservation screening identified “hit” polymers and nonlinear trends between composition and function, highlighting the requirement for screening, with polymer aggregation being a key factor. The most active polymers reduced the volume of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) required to cryopreserve a nucleated cell line, demonstrating the potential of this approach to identify materials for cell storage and transport

Using Machine Learning to Improve Neutron Tagging Efficiency in Water Cherenkov Detectors

When an anti-neutrino collides with a proton in the atomic nucleus, it yields an anti-lepton and a free neutron. In a water Cherenkov neutrino detector like Super-K or the next generation Hyper-K, the free neutron is captured by a hydrogen or gadolinium nucleus about one hundred microseconds after the collision. The low-energy signal from the neutron capture (ranging from 2-8 MeV of gamma rays) is recorded by only tens of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), making neutron captures difficult to distinguish from radioactive decay, muon spallation and other background sources. Improved methodologies for neutron tagging can advance understanding and enable new research over a survey of topics in particle physics. In this research, machine learning techniques are employed to optimize the neutron capture detection capability in the new intermediate water Cherenkov detector (IWCD) for Hyper-K. In particular, boosting decision tree (XGBoost) and graph neural network (GCN, DGCNN) models are developed and benchmarked against a statistical likelihood-based approach, achieving up to a 10% increase in classification accuracy. Characteristic features are also engineered from the datasets and analyzed using SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) to provide insight into the pivotal factors influencing event type outcomes. Three main datasets were used for evaluative purposes in this research, each consisting of roughly 1.6 million events in total, divided nearly evenly between neutron capture and a distinct background electron source.NSERC, WatchMalMaster of Science in Applied Computer Scienc

Regioregular alternating polyampholytes have enhanced biomimetic ice recrystallization activity compared to random copolymers and the role of side chain verses main chain hydrophobicity

Antifreeze proteins from polar fish species are potent ice recrystallization inhibitors (IRIs) effectively stopping all ice growth. Additives which have IRI activity have been shown to enhance cellular cryopreservation with potential to improve the distribution of donor cells and tissue. Polyampholytes, polymers with both anionic and cationic side chains, are a rapidly emerging class of polymer cryoprotectants, but their mode of action and the structural features essential for activity are not clear. Here regio-regular polyampholytes are synthesized from maleic anhydride co-polymers to enable stoichiometric installation of the charged groups, ensuring regio-regularity which is not possible using conventional random co-polymerisation. A modular synthetic strategy is employed to enable the backbone and side chain hydrophobicity to be varied, with side chain hydrophobicity found to have a profound effect on the IRI activity. The activity of the regio-regular polymers was found to be superior to those derived from a standard random copolymerisation with statistical incorporation of monomers, demonstrating that sequence composition is crucial to the activity of IRI active polyampholytes

Polyampholytes as emerging macromolecular cryoprotectants

Cellular cryopreservation is a platform technology which underpins cell biology, biochemistry, biomaterials, diagnostics, and the cold chain for emerging cell-based therapies. This technique relies on effective methods for banking and shipping to avoid the need for continuous cell culture. The most common method to achieve cryopreservation is to use large volumes of organic solvent cryoprotective agents which can promote either a vitreous (ice free) phase or dehydrate and protect the cells. These methods are very successful but are not perfect: not all cell types can be cryopreserved and recovered, and the cells do not always retain their phenotype and function post-thaw. This Perspective will introduce polyampholytes as emerging macromolecular cryoprotective agents and demonstrate they have the potential to impact a range of fields from cell-based therapies to basic cell biology and may be able to improve, or replace, current solvent-based cryoprotective agents. Polyampholytes have been shown to be remarkable (mammalian cell) cryopreservation enhancers, but their mechanism of action is unclear, which may include membrane protection, solvent replacement, or a yet unknown protective mechanism, but it seems the modulation of ice growth (recrystallization) may only play a minor role in their function, unlike other macromolecular cryoprotectants. This Perspective will discuss their synthesis and summarize the state-of-the-art, including hypotheses of how they function, to introduce this exciting area of biomacromolecular science

Associations of smoking and alcohol consumption with healthy ageing: a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies.

OBJECTIVES: The number of older people is growing across the world; however, quantitative synthesis of studies examining the impact of lifestyle factors on the ageing process is rare. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies to synthesise the associations of smoking and alcohol consumption with healthy ageing (HA). METHODS: Major electronic databases were searched from inception to March 2017 (prospectively registered systematic reviews registration number CRD42016038130). Studies were assessed for methodological quality. Random-effect meta-analysis was performed to calculate pooled ORs and 95% CI. RESULTS: In total, we identified 28 studies (n=184 543); 27 studies reported results on smoking, 22 on alcohol consumption. 23 studies reported a significant positive association of never or former smoking with HA and 4 non-significant. 12 studies reported a significant positive association of alcohol consumption with HA, 9 no association and 1 negative. Meta-analysis revealed increased pooled OR of HA for never smokers compared with current smokers (2.36, 95% CI 2.03 to 2.75), never smokers compared with former smokers (1.32, 95% CI 1.23 to 1.41), former or never smokers compared with current smokers (1.72, 95% CI 1.20 to 2.47), never smokers compared with past or current smokers (1.29, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.43); drinkers compared with non-drinkers (1.28, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.52), light drinkers compared with non-drinkers (1.12, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.22), moderate drinkers compared with non-drinkers (1.35, 95% CI 0.93 to 1.97) and high drinkers compared with non-drinkers (1.25, 95% CI 1.09 to 1.44). There was considerable heterogeneity in the definition and measurement of HA and alcohol consumption. CONCLUSIONS: There is consistent evidence from longitudinal studies that smoking is negatively associated with HA. The associations of alcohol consumption with HA are equivocal. Future research should focus on the implementation of a single metric of HA, on the use of consistent drinking assessment among studies and on a full-range of confounding adjustment. Our research also highlighted the limited research on ageing in low-and-middle-income countries

Enhancement of macromolecular ice recrystallization inhibition activity by exploiting depletion forces

Antifreeze (glyco) proteins (AF(G)Ps) are potent inhibitors of ice recrystallization and may have biotechnological applications. The most potent AF(G)Ps function at concentrations a thousand times lower than synthetic mimics such as poly(vinyl alcohol), PVA. Here, we demonstrate that PVA’s ice recrystallization activity can be rescued at concentrations where it does not normally function, by the addition of noninteracting polymeric depletants, due to PVA forming colloids in the concentrated saline environment present between ice crystals. These depletants shift the equilibrium toward ice binding and, hence, enable PVA to inhibit ice growth at lower concentrations. Using theory and experiments, we show this effect requires polymeric depletants, not small molecules, to enhance activity. These results increase our understanding of how to design new ice growth inhibitors, but also offer opportunities to enhance activity by exploiting depletion forces, without re-engineering ice-binding materials. It also shows that when screening for IRI activity that polymer contaminants in buffers may give rise to false positive results