‘Hey! Hey! I've seen this one, I've seen this one. It's a classic’: Nostalgia, repeat viewing and cult performance in Back to the Future

This article examines the enduring popularity of Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985) and its status as an emergent cult blockbuster for a new generation of fans. It draws on the findings of a small-scale audience survey conducted at a one-off screening of the film at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in early February 2012, where it was part of the University’s cult film club programme. The responses to the survey are contextualised by examples of fan practices found online; these indicate some of the additional ways in which a continued affection for Back to the Future is expressed by its followers. From these sources, two audience-led approaches are developed as a means to investigate on-going fandom of Back to the Future. The first of these is an exploration of the nature and value of fan nostalgia expressed towards Back to the Future and other “classic” popular culture texts of the eighties.2 This includes an examination of the kinds of nostalgia that are articulated by fans towards films that were released before they were born, and takes Barbara Klinger’s work on the practice of re-watching films as a starting point (2006). The second approach considers the popular acting partnership of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, and draws on the emergent academic study of cult stardom and performance (Mathijs and Sexton 2011; Egan and Thomas 2013). Through an exploration of these two audience-led approaches, I consider whether it is possible to observe an on-going process of cultification in relation to the Back to the Future franchise in a number of significant ways

“Stay disconnected" : Eventising Star Wars for transmedia audiences

In the run up to the release of The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015) a proliferation of attractions and interactive screenings emerged around the Star Wars franchise. This article primarily explores participant responses to one of these events, Secret Cinema’s staging of The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), which ran from June to September 2015 in London. Alongside this, discussions of the Star Wars at Madame Tussauds exhibition are also considered, as a different kind of immersive attraction that a number of the research participants visited during the same period. Using original qualitative data, the article examines audience experiences of these events in three key ways. Firstly, it explores responses to both the formal and informal participatory elements of the immersive experience, such as interactive sets, personalised address, audience performance and cosplay. Secondly, the article considers issues of ‘liveness’ and exclusivity, analysing the relationship between the contemporary immersive experience and its cultural forerunner, the cult film screening. Finally, it explores responses to branding strategies and the commercial culture surrounding the attractions, interrogating the ways in which these heighten, inhibit or otherwise effect audience participation and enjoyment of them

‘Blood, guts and Bambi eyes’ : Urotsukidoji and the Transcultural Reception and Regulation of Anime

The regulation and reception of anime in Britain has, historically, been fraught with difficulty. In 1992, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rejected the first instalment of Urotsukidoji, a controversial series of erotic anime, on the grounds of its sexually explicit content; this decision set a precedent for the way in which they would continue to censor anime for the following two decades. Nearly twenty years later, in 2009, Clause 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act, also colloquially known as the ‘Dangerous Cartoons Act’, made it a criminal offence to possess non-photographic pornographic images of children, including CGI, cartoons, manga images and drawings. Through an examination of the BBFC's archival materials on Urotsukidoji – Legend of the Overfiend, supplemented by references to a small number of newspaper articles published during this period, this article offers a range of insights into the historical context in which the current series of debates surrounding the ‘Dangerous Cartoons Act’ can be situated and assessed. These are used to consider the transcultural flow of genres across national borders, and the difficulties that a regulator from one culture encounters when dealing with controversial material originating from another, such as Japan, that has a substantially different set of social values and artistic conventions. Furthermore, this case highlights the important role played by distribution companies in shaping the production and evolution of genres within the transcultural marketplace

Ecological and Genomic Attributes of Novel Bacterial Taxa That Thrive in Subsurface Soil Horizons.

While most bacterial and archaeal taxa living in surface soils remain undescribed, this problem is exacerbated in deeper soils, owing to the unique oligotrophic conditions found in the subsurface. Additionally, previous studies of soil microbiomes have focused almost exclusively on surface soils, even though the microbes living in deeper soils also play critical roles in a wide range of biogeochemical processes. We examined soils collected from 20 distinct profiles across the United States to characterize the bacterial and archaeal communities that live in subsurface soils and to determine whether there are consistent changes in soil microbial communities with depth across a wide range of soil and environmental conditions. We found that bacterial and archaeal diversity generally decreased with depth, as did the degree of similarity of microbial communities to those found in surface horizons. We observed five phyla that consistently increased in relative abundance with depth across our soil profiles: Chloroflexi, Nitrospirae, Euryarchaeota, and candidate phyla GAL15 and Dormibacteraeota (formerly AD3). Leveraging the unusually high abundance of Dormibacteraeota at depth, we assembled genomes representative of this candidate phylum and identified traits that are likely to be beneficial in low-nutrient environments, including the synthesis and storage of carbohydrates, the potential to use carbon monoxide (CO) as a supplemental energy source, and the ability to form spores. Together these attributes likely allow members of the candidate phylum Dormibacteraeota to flourish in deeper soils and provide insight into the survival and growth strategies employed by the microbes that thrive in oligotrophic soil environments.IMPORTANCE Soil profiles are rarely homogeneous. Resource availability and microbial abundances typically decrease with soil depth, but microbes found in deeper horizons are still important components of terrestrial ecosystems. By studying 20 soil profiles across the United States, we documented consistent changes in soil bacterial and archaeal communities with depth. Deeper soils harbored communities distinct from those of the more commonly studied surface horizons. Most notably, we found that the candidate phylum Dormibacteraeota (formerly AD3) was often dominant in subsurface soils, and we used genomes from uncultivated members of this group to identify why these taxa are able to thrive in such resource-limited environments. Simply digging deeper into soil can reveal a surprising number of novel microbes with unique adaptations to oligotrophic subsurface conditions

Transnational cult paratexts : Exploring audience readings of Tartan’s Asia Extreme brand

Recent scholarship on the branding of contemporary cult Asian cinema for western audiences has frequently drawn on Said’s seminal treatise Orientalism as a means to critique sensationalist marketing materials. Whilst the excessive character of paratexts produced by film distributors such as Tartan clearly facilitates such readings, in this article I argue that this oft-repeated criticism becomes problematic when employed indiscriminately to theorise, by extension, the audiences for these films. Drawing on a recent empirical study of responses to Asian Extreme cinema and its distribution in the UK and North America, I offer an intervention in this debate by constructing a more nuanced interpretation of the ways in which cult audiences articulate their attraction to cinematic representations of cultural differenc

Efficacy and safety of two neutralising monoclonal antibody therapies, sotrovimab and BRII-196 plus BRII-198, for adults hospitalised with COVID-19 (TICO): a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of two neutralising monoclonal antibody therapies (sotrovimab [Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline] and BRII-196 plus BRII-198 [Brii Biosciences]) for adults admitted to hospital for COVID-19 (hereafter referred to as hospitalised) with COVID-19. METHODS: In this multinational, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, clinical trial (Therapeutics for Inpatients with COVID-19 [TICO]), adults (aged ≥18 years) hospitalised with COVID-19 at 43 hospitals in the USA, Denmark, Switzerland, and Poland were recruited. Patients were eligible if they had laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 symptoms for up to 12 days. Using a web-based application, participants were randomly assigned (2:1:2:1), stratified by trial site pharmacy, to sotrovimab 500 mg, matching placebo for sotrovimab, BRII-196 1000 mg plus BRII-198 1000 mg, or matching placebo for BRII-196 plus BRII-198, in addition to standard of care. Each study product was administered as a single dose given intravenously over 60 min. The concurrent placebo groups were pooled for analyses. The primary outcome was time to sustained clinical recovery, defined as discharge from the hospital to home and remaining at home for 14 consecutive days, up to day 90 after randomisation. Interim futility analyses were based on two seven-category ordinal outcome scales on day 5 that measured pulmonary status and extrapulmonary complications of COVID-19. The safety outcome was a composite of death, serious adverse events, incident organ failure, and serious coinfection up to day 90 after randomisation. Efficacy and safety outcomes were assessed in the modified intention-to-treat population, defined as all patients randomly assigned to treatment who started the study infusion. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04501978. FINDINGS: Between Dec 16, 2020, and March 1, 2021, 546 patients were enrolled and randomly assigned to sotrovimab (n=184), BRII-196 plus BRII-198 (n=183), or placebo (n=179), of whom 536 received part or all of their assigned study drug (sotrovimab n=182, BRII-196 plus BRII-198 n=176, or placebo n=178; median age of 60 years [IQR 50-72], 228 [43%] patients were female and 308 [57%] were male). At this point, enrolment was halted on the basis of the interim futility analysis. At day 5, neither the sotrovimab group nor the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group had significantly higher odds of more favourable outcomes than the placebo group on either the pulmonary scale (adjusted odds ratio sotrovimab 1·07 [95% CI 0·74-1·56]; BRII-196 plus BRII-198 0·98 [95% CI 0·67-1·43]) or the pulmonary-plus complications scale (sotrovimab 1·08 [0·74-1·58]; BRII-196 plus BRII-198 1·00 [0·68-1·46]). By day 90, sustained clinical recovery was seen in 151 (85%) patients in the placebo group compared with 160 (88%) in the sotrovimab group (adjusted rate ratio 1·12 [95% CI 0·91-1·37]) and 155 (88%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group (1·08 [0·88-1·32]). The composite safety outcome up to day 90 was met by 48 (27%) patients in the placebo group, 42 (23%) in the sotrovimab group, and 45 (26%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group. 13 (7%) patients in the placebo group, 14 (8%) in the sotrovimab group, and 15 (9%) in the BRII-196 plus BRII-198 group died up to day 90. INTERPRETATION: Neither sotrovimab nor BRII-196 plus BRII-198 showed efficacy for improving clinical outcomes among adults hospitalised with COVID-19. FUNDING: US National Institutes of Health and Operation Warp Speed

Community prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in England from April to November, 2020: results from the ONS Coronavirus Infection Survey

Background: Decisions about the continued need for control measures to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) rely on accurate and up-to-date information about the number of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and risk factors for testing positive. Existing surveillance systems are generally not based on population samples and are not longitudinal in design. Methods: Samples were collected from individuals aged 2 years and older living in private households in England that were randomly selected from address lists and previous Office for National Statistics surveys in repeated crosssectional household surveys with additional serial sampling and longitudinal follow-up. Participants completed a questionnaire and did nose and throat self-swabs. The percentage of individuals testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA was estimated over time by use of dynamic multilevel regression and poststratification, to account for potential residual non-representativeness. Potential changes in risk factors for testing positive over time were also assessed. The study is registered with the ISRCTN Registry, ISRCTN21086382. Findings: Between April 26 and Nov 1, 2020, results were available from 1 191 170 samples from 280327 individuals; 5231 samples were positive overall, from 3923 individuals. The percentage of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 changed substantially over time, with an initial decrease between April 26 and June 28, 2020, from 0·40% (95% credible interval 0·29–0·54) to 0·06% (0·04–0·07), followed by low levels during July and August, 2020, before substantial increases at the end of August, 2020, with percentages testing positive above 1% from the end of October, 2020. Having a patient facing role and working outside your home were important risk factors for testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 at the end of the first wave (April 26 to June 28, 2020), but not in the second wave (from the end of August to Nov 1, 2020). Age (young adults, particularly those aged 17–24 years) was an important initial driver of increased positivity rates in the second wave. For example, the estimated percentage of individuals testing positive was more than six times higher in those aged 17–24 years than in those aged 70 years or older at the end of September, 2020. A substantial proportion of infections were in individuals not reporting symptoms around their positive test (45–68%, dependent on calendar time. Interpretation: Important risk factors for testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 varied substantially between the part of the first wave that was captured by the study (April to June, 2020) and the first part of the second wave of increased positivity rates (end of August to Nov 1, 2020), and a substantial proportion of infections were in individuals not reporting symptoms, indicating that continued monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 in the community will be important for managing the COVID-19 pandemic moving forwards