The embodiment of social relations in coronary heart disease

Recent work on the behaviour pattern characteristic of men developing coronary heart disease (CHD) has been aimed at increasing the predictive utility of methods designed to assess 'proneness' and at refining the Type A typology. This has had the indirect effect of restricting the elaboraton of theory relating to clinical evidence drawing upon the personal and social context of CHD. This paper reviews such evidence and concludes that explanations of 'coronary-prone behaviour' should acknowledge that it is embedded in particular uses of the body and in particular forms of social relationship. Based upon this premise, a conceptual analysis is presented to demonstrate that 'coronary proneness' is insufficiently described as a behaviour pattern, but is more usefully considered as a mode of action constituting a contradiction in the person's social relationships. It is further proposed that the bodily style of many CHD patients is necessarily understood as an expression of the development of this modality.

Genotypic diversity, a survival strategy for the apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva

The tick-borne protozoan parasite Theileria parva causes East Coast fever (ECF), a severe lymphoproliferative disease of cattle that is a major constraint to the improvement of livestock in eastern, central and southern Africa. Studies in cattle experimentally infected with T. parva have shown that the protective cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response is tightly focused, with individual animals recognizing only one or two dominant antigens, the identity of which varies with MHC class I phenotype. It is well known that cross-protection between T. parva stocks is limited, but precise evaluation of genetic diversity in field populations of the parasite has been hampered by a lack of molecular markers spanning the genome. A recently described panel of satellite markers has provided evidence for substantial genotypic diversity and recombination but does not provide cover for large segments of the genome. To address this deficiency, we undertook to identify additional polymorphic markers covering these regions and we report herein 42 newly identified PCR-RFLP markers distributed across the 4 T. parva chromosomes, as well as 19 new satellite markers for chromosomes 1 and 2. This brings the total number of available polymorphic markers to 141 for the 8.5 Mb genome. We have used these markers to characterise existing parasite stabilates and have also shown that passage of the parasite through naïve cattle and ticks can lead to substantial changes of parasite populations in resulting stabilates. These markers have also been used to show that passage of mixed parasites through an immunised calf results in the removal of the immunising genotype from the parasite population produced by ticks fed on this animal

Improving particulate carbon loss estimates in eroding peatlands through the use of terrestrial laser scanning

Blanket bogs act as the largest terrestrial store of carbon within the UK. Unfortunately many are degraded with exacerbated erosion being common. Although considerable efforts have been made to quantify carbon fluxes across blanket bogs, less attention has focussed on quantifying losses associated with erosion. Traditional approaches to measuring erosion have relied on erosion pins and sediment traps. However, both methods suffer from several problems and are unable to provide data over large areas. Terrestrial laser scanning has been used widely in geomorphology to create detailed 3D topographic maps in a range of environments. A pilot study was carried out over winter 2010-2011 to test the applicability of terrestrial laser scanning to measure erosion across a blanket bog within the North Pennines, UK. The technique was found to be superior to traditional methods providing high resolution spatial data on surface elevation change. A net increase in the peat surface height of 2.5. mm was calculated from the terrestrial laser scans between October 2010 and March 2011. This compares with a net surface lowering of 38. mm measured using pins. These results suggest that previous erosion data from peatland sites based on pin measurements ought to be treated with caution. However, several improvements are required to the laser scanning technique before it is fully implemented in peatland environments including the development of a filter to remove vegetation from the scan results, and taking account of 'mire-breathing' which can cause surface level rise and fall in peatlands. It is clear that once these factors are dealt with, regular repeated ground based laser scanning will vastly improve our understanding of the role of processes that affect the surface elevation of peatlands including the relative roles of storm events and long-term seasonal cycles, and 'roughening' of the peat surface as a result of needle-ice formation, desiccation and wind-scouring