The Baker street roommates:friendship, romance and sexuality of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in the Doyle canon and BBC’s Sherlock

Abstract. In the novel A Study in Scarlet, first published in 1887, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson had a chance meeting inside the chemical laboratory of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in the year 1881. This meeting led to a friendship and career that still captures the imaginations of readers around the world over a hundred years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first became chronicling the adventures of the world’s greatest detective and his trusty companion, the dear doctor. The one adaptation that has possibly gained the most widespread popularity and devoted following is BBC’s Sherlock, taking place in contemporary, 21st century England instead of the original Victorian setting. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Doctor Watson, Sherlock has successfully updated Doyle’s classic characters in a way that appeals to modern audiences while largely maintaining the spirit of the original stories. In this thesis I will explore the main characters, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and their relationship as is portrayed in both the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories and the modern adaptation. In both the original works and Sherlock, the strong friendship shared between the two men is often strained by Holmes eccentric habits, which will be at the forefront of my study into the characters. I will also delve into the intricacies in the friendship that are caused by the late Victorian setting of the original stories: the close friendship shared by two males, which would have been perceived as perfectly normal in the context of the original setting, has later been analysed by “Sherlockians” as having homosexual undertones. The modern adaptation plays with these readings, as the relationship between the main characters is often mistakenly interpreted to be homosexual by other characters inside the show; this has created tension between the showrunners, who insist that the main pair are heterosexual despite the clear queer undertones, and a notable portion of the fanbase who desire representation of sexual minorities. With the sexuality of the main characters being one of the vocal points of the research, the paper will also touch upon the canonical, heteronormative relationships of both leads and the misogynistic views of Sherlock Holmes.Tiivistelmä. Sherlock Holmesin ja John Watsonin ensikohtaaminen tapahtui St. Bartholemew’s-sairaalan kemian laboratoriossa vuonna 1881, joka kuvataan vuonna 1887 julkaistussa romaanissa Punaisten kirjainten arvoitus. Tämä tapaaminen johti ystävyyteen ja uraan, joka edelleen vangitsee lukijansa ympäri maailman, yli sata vuotta sen jälkeen kun Sir Arthur Conan Doyle alkoi kirjoittamaan maailman parhaan etsivän ja hänen luotetun kumppaninsa, rakkaan tohtorin seikkailuista. BBC:n tuottama, moderniin 2000-luvun Englantiin sijoittuva Uusi Sherlock on adaptaationa saavuttanut valtavaa suosiota sekä vannoutuneen fanikunnan. Sarja, jota tähdittävät Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock Holmesina sekä Martin Freeman John Watsonina, on onnistuneesti päivittänyt Doylen klassiset hahmot tavalla joka vetoaa moderniin yleisöön, samalla pitkälti säilyttäen alkuperäisten tarinoiden hengen. Työssäni tutkin päähahmoja, Sherlock Holmesia ja John Watsonia, sekä heidän välistään suhdetta kuten se on kuvattu Arthur Conan Doylen alkuperäisteoksissa sekä modernissa adaptaatiossa. Tutkielmalle keskeisiä ovat Holmesin omalaatuiset tavat, jotka molemmissa versioissa rasittavat hahmojen välistä vahvaa ystävyyttä. Keskeinen osa tutkimusta on myös tämän ystävyyden tulkitsemisen monisyisyys, jonka aiheuttaa alkuperäistöiden viktoriaaninen tapahtumapaikka: kahden miehen välinen läheinen ystävyys, joka oli alkuperäismiljöön kontekstissa täysin normaali, on myöhemmissä analyyseissä tulkittu sisältävän homoseksuaalisia vivahteita. Moderni adaptaatio leikittelee näiden tulkintojen kanssa, sillä Holmesin ja Watsonin välinen suhde tulkitaan usein virheellisesti homoseksuaaliseksi sarjan sisällä. Tämä on luonnut jännitettä sarjan tekijöiden ja seksuaalisten vähemmistöjen representaatiota toivovien fanien välillä, sillä tekijät vakuuttavat päähahmojen olevan heteroseksuaalisia suhteen homoseksuaalisista vivahteista huolimatta. Hahmojen seksuaalisuuden ollessa yksi tutkielman pääkohdista sivuan myös molempien kanonisia heteronormatiivisia suhteita, sekä Sherlock Holmesin misogyynisiä näkemyksiä

Confirmation of an exoplanet using the transit color signature: Kepler-418b, a blended giant planet in a multiplanet system

We announce confirmation of Kepler-418b, one of two proposed planets in this system. This is the first confirmation of an exoplanet based primarily on the transit color signature technique. We used the Kepler public data archive combined with multicolor photometry from the Gran Telescopio de Canarias and radial velocity follow-up using FIES at the Nordic Optical Telescope for confirmation. We report a confident detection of a transit color signature that can only be explained by a compact occulting body, entirely ruling out a contaminating eclipsing binary, a hierarchical triple, or a grazing eclipsing binary. Those findings are corroborated by our radial velocity measurements, which put an upper limit of ~1 Mjup on the mass of Kepler-418b. We also report that the host star is significantly blended, confirming the ~10% light contamination suspected from the crowding metric in the Kepler light curve measured by the Kepler team. We report detection of an unresolved light source that contributes an additional ~40% to the target star, which would not have been detected without multicolor photometric analysis. The resulting planet-star radius ratio is 0.110 +/- 0.0025, more than 25% more than the 0.087 measured by Kepler, leading to a radius of 1.20 +/- 0.16 Rjup instead of the 0.94 Rjup measured by the Kepler team. This is the first confirmation of an exoplanet candidate based primarily on the transit color signature, demonstrating that this technique is viable from ground for giant planets. It is particularly useful for planets with long periods such as Kepler-418b, which tend to have long transit durations. Additionally, multicolor photometric analysis of transits can reveal unknown stellar neighbors and binary companions that do not affect the classification of the transiting object but can have a very significant effect on the perceived planetary radius.Comment: accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysic

Polynomial sequences for bond percolation critical thresholds

In this paper, I compute the inhomogeneous (multi-probability) bond critical surfaces for the (4,6,12) and (3^4,6) lattices using the linearity approximation described in (Scullard and Ziff, J. Stat. Mech. P03021), implemented as a branching process of lattices. I find the estimates for the bond percolation thresholds, p_c(4,6,12)=0.69377849... and p_c(3^4,6)=0.43437077..., compared with Parviainen's numerical results of p_c \approx 0.69373383 and p_c \approx 0.43430621 . These deviations are of the order 10^{-5}, as is standard for this method, although they are outside Parviainen's typical standard error of 10^{-7}. Deriving thresholds in this way for a given lattice leads to a polynomial with integer coefficients, the root in [0,1] of which gives the estimate for the bond threshold. I show how the method can be refined, leading to a sequence of higher order polynomials making predictions that likely converge to the exact answer. Finally, I discuss how this fact hints that for certain graphs, such as the kagome lattice, the exact bond threshold may not be the root of any polynomial with integer coefficients.Comment: submitted to Journal of Statistical Mechanic

Critical surfaces for general inhomogeneous bond percolation problems

We present a method of general applicability for finding exact or accurate approximations to bond percolation thresholds for a wide class of lattices. To every lattice we sytematically associate a polynomial, the root of which in $[0,1]$ is the conjectured critical point. The method makes the correct prediction for every exactly solved problem, and comparison with numerical results shows that it is very close, but not exact, for many others. We focus primarily on the Archimedean lattices, in which all vertices are equivalent, but this restriction is not crucial. Some results we find are kagome: $p_c=0.524430...$, $(3,12^2): p_c=0.740423...$, $(3^3,4^2): p_c=0.419615...$, $(3,4,6,4):p_c=0.524821...$, $(4,8^2):p_c=0.676835...$, $(3^2,4,3,4)$: $p_c=0.414120...$ . The results are generally within $10^{-5}$ of numerical estimates. For the inhomogeneous checkerboard and bowtie lattices, errors in the formulas (if they are not exact) are less than $10^{-6}$.Comment: Submitted to J. Stat. Mec

Glial cells are functionally impaired in juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis and detrimental to neurons.

The neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs or Batten disease) are a group of inherited, fatal neurodegenerative disorders of childhood. In these disorders, glial (microglial and astrocyte) activation typically occurs early in disease progression and predicts where neuron loss subsequently occurs. We have found that in the most common juvenile form of NCL (CLN3 disease or JNCL) this glial response is less pronounced in both mouse models and human autopsy material, with the morphological transformation of both astrocytes and microglia severely attenuated or delayed. To investigate their properties, we isolated glia and neurons from Cln3-deficient mice and studied their basic biology in culture. Upon stimulation, both Cln3-deficient astrocytes and microglia also showed an attenuated ability to transform morphologically, and an altered protein secretion profile. These defects were more pronounced in astrocytes, including the reduced secretion of a range of neuroprotective factors, mitogens, chemokines and cytokines, in addition to impaired calcium signalling and glutamate clearance. Cln3-deficient neurons also displayed an abnormal organization of their neurites. Most importantly, using a co-culture system, Cln3-deficient astrocytes and microglia had a negative impact on the survival and morphology of both Cln3-deficient and wildtype neurons, but these effects were largely reversed by growing mutant neurons with healthy glia. These data provide evidence that CLN3 disease astrocytes are functionally compromised. Together with microglia, they may play an active role in neuron loss in this disorder and can be considered as potential targets for therapeutic interventions

Monitoring young associations and open clusters with Kepler in two-wheel mode

We outline a proposal to use the Kepler spacecraft in two-wheel mode to monitor a handful of young associations and open clusters, for a few weeks each. Judging from the experience of similar projects using ground-based telescopes and the CoRoT spacecraft, this program would transform our understanding of early stellar evolution through the study of pulsations, rotation, activity, the detection and characterisation of eclipsing binaries, and the possible detection of transiting exoplanets. Importantly, Kepler's wide field-of-view would enable key spatially extended, nearby regions to be monitored in their entirety for the first time, and the proposed observations would exploit unique synergies with the GAIA ESO spectroscopic survey and, in the longer term, the GAIA mission itself. We also outline possible strategies for optimising the photometric performance of Kepler in two-wheel mode by modelling pixel sensitivity variations and other systematics.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, white paper submitted in response to NASA call for community input for alternative science investigations for the Kepler spacecraf

Kepler423b: a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting a very old solar-like star

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of the Kepler object of interest KOI-183.01 (Kepler-423b), a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting an old solar-like star every 2.7 days. Our analysis is the first to combine the full Kepler photometry (quarters 1-17) with high-precision radial velocity measurements taken with the FIES spectrograph at the Nordic Optical Telescope. We simultaneously modelled the photometric and spectroscopic data-sets using Bayesian approach coupled with Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. We found that the Kepler pre-search data conditioned (PDC) light curve of KOI-183 exhibits quarter-to-quarter systematic variations of the transit depth, with a peak-to-peak amplitude of about 4.3 % and seasonal trends reoccurring every four quarters. We attributed these systematics to an incorrect assessment of the quarterly variation of the crowding metric. The host star KOI-183 is a G4 dwarf with $M_\star=0.85\pm0.04$ M_\rm{Sun}, $R_\star=0.95\pm0.04$ R_\rm{Sun}, $T_\mathrm{eff}=5560\pm80$ K, $[M/H]=-0.10\pm0.05$ dex, and with an age of $11\pm2$ Gyr. The planet KOI-183b has a mass of $M_\mathrm{p}=0.595\pm0.081$ M$_\mathrm{Jup}$ and a radius of $R_\mathrm{p}=1.192\pm0.052$ R$_\mathrm{Jup}$, yielding a planetary bulk density of $\rho_\mathrm{p}=0.459\pm0.083$ g/cm$^{3}$. The radius of KOI-183b is consistent with both theoretical models for irradiated coreless giant planets and expectations based on empirical laws. The inclination of the stellar spin axis suggests that the system is aligned along the line of sight. We detected a tentative secondary eclipse of the planet at a 2-$\sigma$ confidence level ($\Delta F_{\mathrm{ec}}=14.2\pm6.6$ ppm) and found that the orbit might have a small non-zero eccentricity of $e=0.019^{+0.028}_{-0.014}$. With a Bond albedo of $A_\mathrm{B}=0.037\pm0.019$, KOI-183b is one of the gas-giant planets with the lowest albedo known so far.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A. Planet designation changed from KOI-183b to Kepler-423

Detection of transit timing variations in excess of one hour in the Kepler multi-planet candidate system KOI 806 with the GTC

We report the detection of transit timing variations (TTVs) well in excess of one hour in the Kepler multi-planet candidate system KOI 806. This system exhibits transits consistent with three separate planets -- a Super-Earth, a Jupiter, and a Saturn -- lying very nearly in a 1:2:5 resonance, respectively. We used the Kepler public data archive and observations with the Gran Telescopio de Canarias to compile the necessary photometry. For the largest candidate planet (KOI 806.02) in this system, we detected a large transit timing variation of -103.5$\pm$6.9 minutes against previously published ephemeris. We did not obtain a strong detection of a transit color signature consistent with a planet-sized object; however, we did not detect a color difference in transit depth, either. The large TTV is consistent with theoretical predictions that exoplanets in resonance can produce large transit timing variations, particularly if the orbits are eccentric. The presence of large TTVs among the bodies in this systems indicates that KOI806 is very likely to be a planetary system. This is supported by the lack of a strong color dependence in the transit depth, which would suggest a blended eclipsing binary.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, accepted into A&A Letter