Interaction of microbiology and pathology in women undergoing investigations for infertility.

BACKGROUND: Cases of endometriosis with no tubal damage are associated with infertility, suggesting an immunological rather than mechanical barrier to reproduction. Laparoscopy and falloposcopy results of clinically asymptomatic women undergoing investigation of infertility were correlated with the outcomes of microbiological screening for Chlamydia trachomatis, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Mycoplasma hominis, ureaplasma species, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Neisseria meningitidis and Chlamydia pneumoniae. METHODS: A total of 44 women presenting to a hospital IVF service for laparoscopic or laparoscopic/falloposcopic investigation of infertility provided endocervical swabs, fallopian tube washings, and peripheral whole blood for analysis. RESULTS: Of these 44 women, 15.9% (7) showed evidence of C. trachomatis infection as detected by either PCR or EIA serology. Of these 7 women, 5 (71%) had no or mild endometriosis and 2 (29%) had moderate or severe endometriosis. Of the remaining 37 women who showed no evidence of chlamydial infection, 15 (40.5%) had no or mild endometriosis. CONCLUSION: Women with infertility, but without severe endometriosis at laparoscopy, showed a trend towards tubal damage and a higher rate of previous C. trachomatis infection. Although not statistically significant, this trend would suggest that, where moderate to severe tubal damage is found to be the primary cause of infertility, C. trachomatis infection could be a likely cause for such tubal damage

The development of policing in Britain in the next five years.

The British police service is currently going through a radical transformation phase. The present Tory-led coalition government has set out an agenda to bring about drastic changes in policing. These proposed changes are unprecedented in the history of policing since 1829. The police service is governed by a tripartite arrangement of checks and balances laid down under the Police Act 1964. By this I mean that there are three key players in relation to police governance in Britain: the Home Secretary, the local police authority and the chief constable. The future of policing in the next five years is set out clearly by the Home Secretary, Theresa May MP, under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, which is currently being reviewed in the House of Lords. The recent phone hacking scandal has made it imperative for the British public to have a closer look at the police service in relation to proper accountability. There have been references to police corruption as far back as the era of 'parish constables', dating back to 1800, when it was alleged that police officers took bribes, got drunk whilst on duty and lacked moral credibility to protect and serve us (Critchley, 1978). In the seventies and eighties the British public was informed of another scandal involving members of Scotland Yard and criminal gangs in the East End of London. In this article, I shall argue that the issue of police corruption is not a new phenomenon. It is has been an ongoing issue that has haunted the police for over a century. This article is divided into three parts. In the first part of the article I present the following issues: the Metropolitan Police policing plan 2011-2014; the merits and demerits of the policing plan; tripartite police accountability and its shortcomings; democratic accountability and localisation of policing; the professionalisation of policing and the creation of the Police Body; review of police pay and benefits; and the impact of this on police officers' morale. In the second part of my article I present some of the criticisms levelled against the ongoing police reforms. I will look at the criticisms from both internal and external perspectives. By internal criticism, I mean police officers' opposition to the reforms. By external criticism, I mean criticisms from criminologists and members of the British public. In the third part of my article I made my position clear on where I stand in relation to the ongoing police reforms. I shall argue that the current ongoing job cuts in the police service are a disaster waiting to happen, and that our safety has been compromised by politicians. We are now living at the mercy of criminals and law breakers due to manpower shortage. We are all living witnesses to the ongoing public disturbances in Tottenham, Enfield, Brixton, Peckham, Walthamstow and Croydon, in London. The speed of the spread of these riots to other cities like Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool occurred on an unimaginable scale. We all watched how difficult it was for the police to restore order and normality. Rioters looted and plundered goods and burnt down buildings as if no laws existed in our country. A complete breakdown of law and order put the lives of citizens at risk. My article makes a passionate appeal to the present coalition government to rethink the issue of reducing the numbers of police officers protecting us. I shall argue that we need more police officers in Britain not fewer. The level of anger and social discontent is higher than the government ever anticipated, partly because of economic hardship. My argument is that economic hardship is not an excuse to commit burglary, theft, arson, murder and criminal damage with intent to endanger life. Rioters are shameless opportunists, a bunch of hoodlums, criminals who have no place in any civilised society, who should be made to face the due process of law

Rethinking the law and politics of democratic police accountability

This paper evaluates the work and impact of a number of Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales and attempts to refocus public discourse and scrutiny on their Police and Crime Plans as a key prism through which their performance should be measured. Drawing upon the literature published by various PCCs, the Stevens Commission, the Home Affairs Committee and numerous academics, the paper will argue that a major reform of democratic police accountability in England and Wales is needed. Due to the often voluminous and piecemeal nature of the documents published on the PCCs’ websites, the textual analysis is limited to the Police and Crime Plans for Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the London Metropolitan are

Rioting and the politics of crisis

This paper draws on selected explanatory accounts of rioting that occurred in England in 2011 for the purpose of illustrating the ways in which scholarly critiques frame quite different senses of what kind of 'crisis' the riots represented. On one side the riots are understood within a 'race and policing' frame placing in a line of continuity with events across time and space and in an on-going crisis of racial subjugation. In direct contrast, another side treats the riots as a crisis of post-politics, in which nihilism has replaced purposive political action. While different types of politics are centred in both approaches, they differ remarkably in relation to racism, with the latter treating race as epiphenomenal. These frames are instances of how critical scholarly understandings draw on events, and it is argued they miss potentially far reaching senses of 'crisis' that can be drawn out of some aspects of rioting

Under-regulated and unaccountable?:Explaining variation in stop and search rates in Scotland, England and Wales

From a position of near parity in 2005/6, by 2012/13 recorded search rates in Scotland exceeded those in England/Wales seven times over. This divergence is intriguing given the demands placed on the police, and the legal capacity to deal with these are broadly similar across the two jurisdictions. The aim of this paper is to unpack this variation. Using a comparative casestudy approach, the paper examines the role of structural ‘top-down’ determinants of policing: substantive powers of search, rules and regulations, and scrutiny. Two arguments are presented. First, we argue that the remarkable rise of stop and search in Scotland has been facilitated by weak regulation and safeguards. Second, we argue that divergence between the two jurisdictions can also be attributed to varying levels of political and public scrutiny, caused, in part, by viewing stop and search almost exclusively through the prism of ‘race’. In Scotland, the significance of these factors is made evident by dint of organisational developments within the last decade; by the introduction of a target driven high-volume approach to stop and search in Strathclyde police force circa 1997 onwards; and the national roll-out of this approach following the single service merger in April 2013. The salient point is that the Strathclyde model was not hindered by legal rules and regulations, nor subject to policy and political challenge; rather a high discretion environment enabled a high-volume approach to stop and search to flourish

Enhancing Community Resilience: Assessing the Role That Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Law Enforcement (LEA) Staff Associations and Networks Can Play in the Fight Against Radicalisation

This chapter discusses the concept of community resilience and explains it in the context of the fight against radicalisation and CVE. Adopting Michael Ungar’s (American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 81:1–17, 2011) definition of resilience, the chapter argues that resilience is not the attribute of a community but the end product of a process whereby identified community capabilities (e.g. willingness to address problems) are harnessed and supported by culturally sensitive resources offered by culturally aware and capable service providers in which the community has trust and confidence. It is argued that the community will naturally navigate to such resources and that resilience will occur because the community is empowered to negotiate and work in partnership with the resource providers to address the adversity (i.e. problem of radicalisation/CVE). The chapter also acknowledges the important role that British Black, Asian and minority police officer staff associations and networks have been playing in engaging with and helping minority ethnic communities in the UK, including addressing issues of radicalisation, and argue that this valuable resource within the British LEA is undermined by very low numbers of BAME officers in counterterrorism activities

The violent frontline: space, ethnicity and confronting the state in Edwardian Spitalfields and 1980s Brixton

This article discusses in comparative terms the relationship between space, ethnic identity, subaltern status and anti-state violence in twentieth century London. It does so by comparing two examples in which the control of the state, as represented by the Metropolitan Police, was challenged by minority groups through physical force. It will examine the Spitalfields riots of 1906, which began as strike action by predominantly Jewish bakers and escalated into a general confrontation between the local population and the police, and the Brixton riots of 1981, a response to endemic police harassment of mainly Caribbean youth and long-term economic discrimination in that area of South London. It will begin by dissecting the association of physical metropolitan space with the diasporic ‘other’ in the Edwardian East End and post-consensus South London, and how this ‘othering’ was influenced both by the state and the anti-migrant far right. It will then interrogate the difficult relationship between the Metropolitan Police and Jewish and Caribbean working class communities, and how this deteriorating relationship exploded into in extreme violence in 1906 and 1981. The article will conclude by assessing how the relationships between space, identity and violence influenced long-term national and communal narratives of Jewish and Caribbean interactions with the British state

Localization of the mosaic transmembrane serine protease corin to heart myocytes

Corin cDNA encodes an unusual mosaic type II transmembrane serine protease, which possesses, in addition to a trypsin-like serine protease domain, two frizzled domains, eight low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor domains, a scavenger receptor domain, as well as an intracellular cytoplasmic domain. In in vitro experiments, recombinant human corin has recently been shown to activate pro-atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), a cardiac hormone essential for the regulation of blood pressure. Here we report the first characterization of corin protein expression in heart tissue. We generated antibodies to two different peptides derived from unique regions of the corin polypeptide, which detected immunoreactive corin protein of approximately 125±135 kDa in lysates from human heart tissues. Immunostaining of sections of human heart showed corin expression was specifically localized to the cross striations of cardiac myocytes, with a pattern of expression consistent with an integral membrane localization. Corin was not detected in sections of skeletal or smooth muscle. Corin has been suggested to be a candidate gene for the rare congenital heart disease, total anomalous pulmonary venous return (TAPVR) as the corin gene colocalizes to the TAPVR locus on human chromosome 4. However examination of corin protein expression in TAPVR heart tissue did not show evidence of abnormal corin expression. The demonstrated corin protein expression by heart myocytes supports its proposed role as the pro-ANP convertase, and thus a potentially critical mediator of major cardiovascular diseases including hypertension and congestive heart failure