Rest and restitution : convalescence and the public mental hospital in England, 1919–39

Previous histories have tended to look beyond the asylum for innovations in early twentieth-century mental healthcare. In contrast, this thesis appraises the mental hospital as the nexus for a new approach to convalescent care and makes the case for a more integrated conception of institutional and community care in the interwar period. Despite a concentration of convalescent facilities in certain areas, this study argues that the period between 1919 and 1939 witnessed the emergence of a more standardised and coordinated model of care that traversed institutional boundaries. Consequently, it challenges a prevailing view that sees asylum care as separate from developments in borderline care in this period. It is demonstrated that public mental hospitals after 1919 widely added new convalescent villas within their grounds, whilst voluntary organisations diversified and extended their community-based cottage homes. This thesis explores the reasons for this expansion and seeks to explain the functions it served those who planned, managed and utilised mental convalescent homes. It is argued that those with professional interests in the mental hospital focused on the „modern‟ convalescent villa partly as a strategic response to the low status of mental hospitals in the 1920s, as well as to alleviate overcrowding, and oversee recovery in managed and healthful environments. The spatial and rhetorical connection between the admission hospital and the convalescent villa allowed these interests to claim they formed part of a broader movement of mental hygiene and early treatment. In contrast, patient representations of cottage homes offer an alternative perspective of convalescence as a holiday and break from social demands. Particular attention is paid to the case of the London County Council. The analysis focuses on descriptions of convalescent homes found in organisational records. These are compared with plans and photographs to make sense of the uses such homes served

e-Fungi: a data resource for comparative analysis of fungal genomes.

BACKGROUND: The number of sequenced fungal genomes is ever increasing, with about 200 genomes already fully sequenced or in progress. Only a small percentage of those genomes have been comprehensively studied, for example using techniques from functional genomics. Comparative analysis has proven to be a useful strategy for enhancing our understanding of evolutionary biology and of the less well understood genomes. However, the data required for these analyses tends to be distributed in various heterogeneous data sources, making systematic comparative studies a cumbersome task. Furthermore, comparative analyses benefit from close integration of derived data sets that cluster genes or organisms in a way that eases the expression of requests that clarify points of similarity or difference between species. DESCRIPTION: To support systematic comparative analyses of fungal genomes we have developed the e-Fungi database, which integrates a variety of data for more than 30 fungal genomes. Publicly available genome data, functional annotations, and pathway information has been integrated into a single data repository and complemented with results of comparative analyses, such as MCL and OrthoMCL cluster analysis, and predictions of signaling proteins and the sub-cellular localisation of proteins. To access the data, a library of analysis tasks is available through a web interface. The analysis tasks are motivated by recent comparative genomics studies, and aim to support the study of evolutionary biology as well as community efforts for improving the annotation of genomes. Web services for each query are also available, enabling the tasks to be incorporated into workflows. CONCLUSION: The e-Fungi database provides fungal biologists with a resource for comparative studies of a large range of fungal genomes. Its analysis library supports the comparative study of genome data, functional annotation, and results of large scale analyses over all the genomes stored in the database. The database is accessible at http://www.e-fungi.org.uk, as is the WSDL for the web services.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Comparative Genome Analysis of Filamentous Fungi Reveals Gene Family Expansions Associated with Fungal Pathogenesis

Fungi and oomycetes are the causal agents of many of the most serious diseases of plants. Here we report a detailed comparative analysis of the genome sequences of thirty-six species of fungi and oomycetes, including seven plant pathogenic species, that aims to explore the common genetic features associated with plant disease-causing species. The predicted translational products of each genome have been clustered into groups of potential orthologues using Markov Chain Clustering and the data integrated into the e-Fungi object-oriented data warehouse (http://www.e-fungi.org.uk/). Analysis of the species distribution of members of these clusters has identified proteins that are specific to filamentous fungal species and a group of proteins found only in plant pathogens. By comparing the gene inventories of filamentous, ascomycetous phytopathogenic and free-living species of fungi, we have identified a set of gene families that appear to have expanded during the evolution of phytopathogens and may therefore serve important roles in plant disease. We have also characterised the predicted set of secreted proteins encoded by each genome and identified a set of protein families which are significantly over-represented in the secretomes of plant pathogenic fungi, including putative effector proteins that might perturb host cell biology during plant infection. The results demonstrate the potential of comparative genome analysis for exploring the evolution of eukaryotic microbial pathogenesis

'The place was a home from home' : identity and belonging in the English cottage home for convalescing mental patients, 1910-1939

This chapter pays attention to one psychiatric institution that lay beyond the asylum: the cottage home for convalescents. In contrast to a binary relationship between hospital and home, particularly evident in a literature that still focuses on the nineteenth century, the Mental After-Care Association's archive suggests that cottage homes in the twentieth century may have served as clearing houses for the insane within a more complex network of institutional care. In turn, the chapter responds to appeals for more investigation into patients' emotional responses. Although such responses are opaque and often fleeting, the evidence surveyed points to the potential importance of personal circumstance to patients' interpretations of their identity and belonging within these halfway-houses

Healthcare and the community in modern Britain

The papers in this focus section contribute to a broader historical debate regarding the relationship between 'healthcare and the people'. Opening the section, both thematically and chronologically, Richard Biddle's narrative begins with the community's changing healthcare needs before moving to consider the degree to which local services responded to these changes. A wider significance of his contribution is be found in his assessment of the nature and scale of those local services, provided publicly through the navy in an era when public provision was dominated by the poor law. Meanwhile, Stephen Soanes maps out a professional debate over the extent to which progress in mental hospitals could be achieved through the inclusion of the public. In doing so, Soanes highlights the professional reassertion that the community should be the subject rather than the agent of reform, passive rather than active. This theme is picked up by Leigh Merrick, who documents the sidelining of local authorities as vehicles for public representation within the newly established Scottish National Health Service. This is placed against a backdrop of central failure to resolve disputes, the lowly place given to local authorities under the hierarchical structure of the NHS and a lack of co-operation amongst local authorities themselves. It is, therefore, the notion that the community has been consistently alienated from the governance of public healthcare that dominates these papers

Identification of a regulatory allele of teashirt (tsh) in Drosophila melanogaster that affects wing hinge development.

International audienc

Identification of a regulatory allele of teashirt (tsh) in Drosophila melanogaster that affects wing hinge development.

International audienc

e-Fungi: a data resource for comparative analysis of fungal genomes.

BACKGROUND: The number of sequenced fungal genomes is ever increasing, with about 200 genomes already fully sequenced or in progress. Only a small percentage of those genomes have been comprehensively studied, for example using techniques from functional genomics. Comparative analysis has proven to be a useful strategy for enhancing our understanding of evolutionary biology and of the less well understood genomes. However, the data required for these analyses tends to be distributed in various heterogeneous data sources, making systematic comparative studies a cumbersome task. Furthermore, comparative analyses benefit from close integration of derived data sets that cluster genes or organisms in a way that eases the expression of requests that clarify points of similarity or difference between species. DESCRIPTION: To support systematic comparative analyses of fungal genomes we have developed the e-Fungi database, which integrates a variety of data for more than 30 fungal genomes. Publicly available genome data, functional annotations, and pathway information has been integrated into a single data repository and complemented with results of comparative analyses, such as MCL and OrthoMCL cluster analysis, and predictions of signaling proteins and the sub-cellular localisation of proteins. To access the data, a library of analysis tasks is available through a web interface. The analysis tasks are motivated by recent comparative genomics studies, and aim to support the study of evolutionary biology as well as community efforts for improving the annotation of genomes. Web services for each query are also available, enabling the tasks to be incorporated into workflows. CONCLUSION: The e-Fungi database provides fungal biologists with a resource for comparative studies of a large range of fungal genomes. Its analysis library supports the comparative study of genome data, functional annotation, and results of large scale analyses over all the genomes stored in the database. The database is accessible at http://www.e-fungi.org.uk, as is the WSDL for the web services.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

How many seabirds do we need to track to define home-range area?

In recent years, marine predator and seabird tracking studies have become ever more popular. However, they are often conducted without first considering how many individuals should be tracked and for how long they should be tracked in order to make reliable predictions of a population\u27s home-range area. Home-range area analysis of two seabird-tracking data sets was used to define the area of active use (where birds spent 100% of their time) and the core foraging area (where birds spent 50% of their time). Analysis was conducted on the first foraging trip undertaken by the birds and then the first two, three and four foraging trips combined. Appropriate asymptotic models were applied to the data, and the calculated home-range areas were plotted as a function of an increasing number of individuals and trips included in the sample. Data were extrapolated from these models to predict the area of active use and the core foraging area of the colonies sampled. Significant variability was found in the home-range area predictions made by analysis of the first foraging trip and the first four foraging trips combined. For shags, the first foraging trip predicted a 56% smaller area of active use when compared to the predictions made by combining the first four foraging trips. For kittiwakes, a 43% smaller area was predicted when comparing the first foraging trip with the four combined trips. The number of individuals that would be required to predict the home range area of the colony depends greatly on the number of trips included in the analysis. This analysis predicted that 39 (confidence interval 29-73) shags and 83 (CI: 109-161) kittiwakes would be required to predict 95% of the area of active use when the first four foraging trips are included in the sample compared with 135 (CI 96-156) shags and 248 (164-484) kittiwakes when only the first trip is included in the analysis. Synthesis and applications. Seabird and marine mammal tracking studies are increasingly being used to aid the designation of marine conservation zones and to predict important foraging areas. We suggest that many studies may be underestimating the size of these foraging areas and that better estimates could be made by considering both the duration and number of data logger deployments. Researchers intending to draw conclusions from tracking data should conduct a similar analysis of their data as used in this study to determine the reliability of their home-range area predictions