Humour and the Plurality of Everyday Life: Comical Accounts from an Interface Area in Belfast

This article examines self-referential humour in narrative accounts about experiences of conflict and community division, based on fieldwork undertaken in an interface area in Belfast in the late 2000s and in the 2010s. It has been a classic approach within anthropological studies of humour and jokes to focus on their socially or politically subversive nature. Some anthropologists, however, have viewed this approach sceptically, pointing out the Janus-faced nature of laughter that can turn against the weak, or the ambiguity that humour carries. Sharing the understanding that ambivalence and ambiguity are humour’s intrinsic features, this article argues that these very features make humour crucial to people’s everyday recollections and interactions in a post-conflict, still-much divided, society. Self-comicalisation helps people produce distance, either from themselves or the social group to which they belong, and direct attention to the absurdity of daily life under a long-term conflict in which mundane, day-to-day concerns and intense violence and suffering all flow in parallel. Jokes and comical storytelling capture this plurality of everyday life, which can be shared across the community division. Through attempting to sound out what could and could not be joked about, moreover, people seek out possible interactions in unfamiliar and uncertain relationships

Australian Journalism Research Index, 1992-2001

This is an index of Australian journalism and news media-related articles and books from 1992 onwards. The index is in two main parts: a listing by author, and a listing by subject matter in which an article may appear a number of times. Multi-author articles are listed by each author

Prolonged maturation of prefrontal white matter in chimpanzees

Delayed maturation in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with complex cognitive processing, has been proposed to be specific to humans. However, we found, using a longitudinal design, that prefrontal white matter volume in chimpanzees increased gradually with age, and the increase appears to continue beyond the onset of puberty, as in humans. This provides the first evidence for a prolonged period of prefrontal connection elaboration in great apes

Successful Endoscopic Resection of an Early Carcinoma of the Duodenum

We describe a patient in whom an early carcinoma of the duodenum was able to be resected endoscopically. A 77-year-old man presented with epigastric pain. Upper gastrointestinal endoscopy revealed a mass in the duodenum, and the patient was admitted. A whitish nodular aggregated lesion, measuring 20 mm in diameter, was found in the second portion of the duodenum. Examination of a biopsy specimen showed a Group III tubular adenoma. Endoscopic ultrasonography showed that the lesion was confined to the mucosa. The large size of the lesion suggested the possibility of malignancy. Endoscopic mucosal resection was therefore performed. Histopathologically, the diagnosis was carcinoma in adenoma. The depth of invasion was mucosal. We conclude that endoscopic muosal resection can be used to treat mucosal lesions arising in the duodenum

包括的凝固機能検査による急性期川崎病における止血動態の評価

Introduction: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a systemic vasculitis involving coronary arteries, sometimes resulting in aneurysms and myocardial infarction. Hyper-coagulability in the acute-phase of KD is indicated in some circumstances based on changes of individual clotting factors. Comprehensive coagulation assays, clot waveform analysis (CWA) and thrombin/plasmin generation assay (T/P-GA), have been developed to assess physiological hemostasis, but these techniques have not been applied in KD. Methods: We utilized both assays to analyze coagulation function in KD children (n = 42) prior to intravenous-immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment (Pre), 1-week (1W) and 1-month (1M) post-IVIG. Results: In CWA, the clot time (CT) pre-treatment was prolonged, and was significantly shortened at 1W and 1M. However, the maximum coagulation velocity (|min1|) and acceleration (|min2|) were ~2-fold greater relative to controls, indicating an overall hypercoagulable tendency. These parameters were related to fibrinogen concentration, and were decreased at 1W and declined to normal at 1M. In T/P-GA, the endogenous potentials of thrombin and plasmin were greater relative to control at each of three time-points, and measurements at 1W were greater than those Pre-treatment. The ratios of TG and PG relative to control were similar, however, suggesting well-balanced dynamic coagulation and fibrinolysis. In non-responders to IVIG, the |min1| and |min2| measurements were greater than those in responders at 1W and 1M, suggesting that non-responders remained hypercoagulable after primary treatment. Conclusion: The coagulation data observed in KD were consistent with hypercoagulability, although fibrinolytic function appeared to be well-balanced. Comprehensive assays of this nature could provide valuable information on coagulation potential in KD.博士（医学）・乙第1441号・令和元年12月5日Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Germline multigene panel testing revealed a BRCA2 pathogenic variant in a patient with suspected Lynch syndrome

There has been a rapid advance in germline multigene panel testing by next-generation sequencing, and it is being widely used in clinical settings. A 56-year-old woman suspected of having Lynch syndrome was identified as a BRCA2 pathogenic variant carrier by multigene panel testing. The patient was diagnosed with endometrial cancer at the age of 39 years, and total laparoscopic hysterectomy and bilateral salpingectomy were performed at the age of 49 years; however, bilateral oophorectomy was not performed at that time. As she had a family history of colorectal cancer and a history of endometrial cancer, Lynch syndrome was suspected. However, germline multigene panel testing revealed a pathogenic BRCA2 variant rather than pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes. In this case, with conventional genetic risk assessment, we were unable to determine whether the patient had a high risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer; thus, germline multigene panel testing may provide valuable information to improve disease management strategies for patients in clinical settings. Particularly, germline multigene panel testing may be useful for detecting hereditary tumor syndromes if a patient does not present with a typical family history of cancer