A Paper-Based Test for Screening Newborns for Sickle Cell Disease

The high cost, complexity and reliance on electricity, specialized equipment and supplies associated with conventional diagnostic methods limit the scope and sustainability of newborn screening for sickle cell disease (SCD) in sub-Saharan Africa and other resource-limited areas worldwide. Here we describe the development of a simple, low-cost, rapid, equipment- and electricity-free paper-based test capable of detecting sickle hemoglobin (HbS) in newborn blood samples with a limit of detection of 2% HbS. We validated this newborn paper-based test in a cohort of 159 newborns at an obstetric hospital in Cabinda, Angola. Newborn screening results using the paper-based test were compared to conventional isoelectric focusing (IEF). The test detected the presence of HbS with 81.8% sensitivity and 83.3% specificity, and identified SCD newborns with 100.0% sensitivity and 70.7% specificity. The use of the paper-based test in a two-stage newborn screening process could have excluded about 70% of all newborns from expensive confirmatory testing by IEF, without missing any of the SCD newborns in the studied cohort. This study demonstrates the potential utility of the newborn paper-based test for reducing the overall cost of screening newborns for SCD and thus increasing the practicality of universal newborn SCD screening programs in resource-limited settings

Post-Franco Theatre

In the multiple realms and layers that comprise the contemporary Spanish theatrical landscape, “crisis” would seem to be the word that most often lingers in the air, as though it were a common mantra, ready to roll off the tongue of so many theatre professionals with such enormous ease, and even enthusiasm, that one is prompted to wonder whether it might indeed be a miracle that the contemporary technological revolution – coupled with perpetual quandaries concerning public and private funding for the arts – had not by now brought an end to the evolution of the oldest of live arts, or, at the very least, an end to drama as we know it

Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

Benito Pérez Galdós

In Galdós\u27 time, the tensions between such diverse phenomena as coins and credit, free trade and protectionist tariffs, factory work and domestic economy, masculine and feminine, and private and public exacerbated friction among peoples—those of pueblo and rural origins, whose voices rasped and whose bright colors raked the eye, and a nascent, insecure bourgeosie who, fearful of the masses, strove to imitate the aristocracy. Old and new converged also with the question of suffrage and citizenship to aggravate social malaise and political upheavals—Carlist wars, palace intrigues, the Revolution of 1868 and overthrow of Queen Isabel, the brief reign of Amadeo of Savoy, the aborted First Republic and the Bourbon Restoration (1875-1885), which reached Spain from England in the imported person of Alfonso XII. These turbulent events undergird the cultural, historical, and political events of the novels by Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) to be discussed in this chapter. Galdós is the author of seventy-seven novels, twenty-six original plays, and numerous occasional pieces, written between 1867 and 1920. These divide into two main categories: the historical and the contemporary social novels, now more appropriately described as novels of modernity The forty-six historical novels, called Episodios nacionales, make up five series, each consisting of ten interconnected novels, except the fifth series, left unfinished. The thirty-one novels of modernity, published between 1870 and 1915, also divide into two groups: Novelas de la primera época ( Novels of the Early Period, 1870–1879) and Las novelas de la serie contemporánea ( The Contemporary Social Novels, 1881–1915). The novels of the early period comprise Galdós\u27 first attempts at novel writing, as well as four so-called thesis novels : Doña Perfecta (1876), the sequel Gloria (1876–1877), Marianela (1878), and La familia de León Roch ( The Family of León Roch, 1878–1879). The next group of novels represents what Galdós called his segunda manera —his second style, a different kind of writing ... a more sophisticated and varied mode of narrative presentation

Gildas

International audienceGildas est le premier auteur britannique à témoigner des événements postérieurs au départ des légions romaines. C'est par l'analyse de ses modèles, principalement bibliques, et de ses buts que son récit historique allusif, si frustrant, peut être compris et interprété comme un témoignage de premier plan

Tall tales from the archive

The administrative documents preserved in archives tell stories which are shaped by their institutional and governmental context, and are as deceptive and full of invention as more self-consciously literary works. Medieval archives contain a vast repository of historical narratives which, despite their fictional components and bureaucratic manipulation, nevertheless provide vivid insights into everyday life. The rhetorical conventions of such bureaucratic documents as pardons, petitions and appeals represent forms of historical literature which are cultural productions of equal significance to the chronicle or the epic poem. But, unlike court poetry or chronicles, the archives tell us a great deal about the life of ordinary people. In the wake of the discussion of the archive by Foucault and Derrida, the archive has been seen as a symbol of power and a means of control, but often the archive is the chief means by which non-elite groups find their voice