Action Intention Modulates the Activity Pattern in Early Visual Areas

The activity pattern in the early visual cortex (EVC) can be used to predict upcoming actions as it is functionally connected to higher-order motor areas. However, the mechanism by which the EVC enhances action-relevant features is unclear. We explored this using fMRI. Participants performed Align or Open Hand movements to two oriented objects. We localized the calcarine sulcus, corresponding to the periphery, and the occipital pole, corresponding to the fovea. During planning, univariate analysis did not reveal significant results so we used multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to decode action type and object orientation. Though objects were located in the periphery, we found a significant decoding accuracy for orientation in an action-dependent manner in the occipital pole and action network areas. We established the functional connectivity between the EVC and somatomotor areas during planning using psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis. Taken together, our results show object orientation is modulated by action preparation

Phylo-epidemiological and pathogenic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in London with implications for vaccine develpoment

PhDApproximately one-third of the global population is infected with tuberculosis causing approximately 1.7 million deaths. Currently, the BCG vaccine is used to protect against TB, but it cannot prevent primary infection or reactivation of latent infection. Ideally a vaccine should protect against a diverse array of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains and promote a strong, long-lasting TH1 cell-mediated immune response. Whilst evaluating the efficiency of novel vaccines using laboratory control strains (M. tuberculosis H37Rv, H37Ra and M. bovis-BCG), it is important to test efficacy against a representative panel of wild-type circulating strains. In England 42.2% of TB cases are reported in London and the diversity of nationalities generates a diverse pool of strains consisting of globally representative TB strains. The aim of the study was to construct a representative panel of strains for vaccine evaluation studies and general TB research. Common M. tuberculosis strains were identified by performing molecular MIRUVNTR and spoligotyping on 2363 isolates from TB cases reported in London during a one-year period. Epidemiological analysis demonstrated there were representatives from 13 global regions, including high TB burden countries. An algorithm was designed to select strains for a preliminary panel based on associations between MTBC families in clusters of more common strains, the country of birth and VNTR sub-clusters. The preliminary panel contained 42 MTBC strains belonging to 10 MTBC families from patients born in 17 countries. Results of phylogenetic analysis of all 2363 isolates was used to select a smaller panel of strains from the preliminary panel to represent MTBC lineages to investigate if wild-type strains were phenotypically similar. The final panel included five strains from each of the Baker et al., 2004 M. tuberculosis lineages (M. tuberculosis Beijing, LAM10, two CAS, EAI5 strains representing lineage I, II, III, IV, respectively) and an M. africanum strain. In vitro tissue culture experiments demonstrated significantly higher growth of the Beijing strain compared to the other wild-type and laboratory strains. Higher growth rates of this strain were also observed in a cell-free culture system. Aerosol challenge of guinea pigs with wild-type strains showed a quicker dissemination of the EAI5 strain from the lung to the spleen 16 days post-challenge, but significantly higher c.f.u. count of the Beijing strain in the spleen 56 days post-challenge. Collectively, the data demonstrated that there are phenotypic differences between wild-type circulating MTBC strains

Using Cognitive Interviewing to Develop an Online Survey of Parent Perspectives on Data Sharing

Cognitive interviewing is a qualitative method to identify survey problems. This method can advance survey validity and reliability by incorporating participant perspectives during questionnaire development. Despite its utility, cognitive interviewing is rarely used in pediatric and perinatal epidemiology. This paper discusses the use and implications of cognitive interviewing in the development of an online survey of a complex, uncommon topic in the parenting population: parental perspectives on data sharing with secondary researchers via repositories. Participants were recruited randomly from two Alberta birth cohorts. Participation entailed a one-on-one interview, where participants completed a draft online questionnaire and answered probing questions. The cognitive interviews yielded three major insights for survey improvement. First, the interviewer witnessed varied participant experiences with the survey: some participants enjoyed the process, while others struggled to point of frustration. Reframing the language and adding polar questions aimed to promote comprehension. Second, the topic’s complexity revealed the utility of “educational” questions, which may not provide new information, but would allow participants to think through issues. Third, “educational” questions and sufficiency of background information must be tempered to avoid the survey length being overly-burdensome to participants. By increasing comprehension and lessening frustration, researchers increase the accuracy of data collected from parents on a complex, uncommon topic

Discriminatory ability of hypervariable variable number tandem repeat loci in population-based analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains, London, UK

To address conflicting results about the stability of variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) loci and their value in prospective molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, we conducted a large prospective population-based analysis of all M. tuberculosis strains in a metropolitan setting. Optimal and reproducible conditions for reliable PCR and fragment analysis, comprising enzymes, denaturing conditions, and capillary temperature, were identified for a panel of hypervariable loci, including 3232, 2163a, 1982, and 4052. A total of 2,261 individual M. tuberculosis isolates and 265 sets of serial isolates were analyzed by using a standardized 15-loci VNTR panel, then an optimized hypervariable loci panel. The discriminative ability of loci varied substantially; locus VNTR 3232 varied the most, with 19 allelic variants and Hunter-Gaston index value of 0.909 . Hypervariable loci should be included in standardized panels because they can provide consistent comparable results at multiple settings, provided the proposed conditions are adhered to

Change Your Look, Change Your Luck: Religious Self-Transformation and Brute Luck Egalitarianism

My intention in this paper is to reframe the practice of veiling as an embodied practice of self-development and self- transformation. I argue that practices like these cannot be handled by the choice/chance distinction relied on by those who would restrict religious minority accommodations. Embodied self- transformation necessarily means a change in personal identity and this means the religious believer cannot know if they will need religious accommodation when they begin their journey of piety. Even some luck egalitarians would find leaning exclusively on preference and choice to find who should be burdened with paying the full costs of certain choices in one’s life too morally harsh to be justifiable. I end by briefly illustrating an alternative way to think about religious accommodation that does not rely on the choice/chance distinction

Are entrepreneurs becoming more risk averse?

Are entrepreneurs becoming more risk averse? When you mention the word ‘entrepreneur’ most people will automatically think of someone who is a risk taker. Our traditional view of entrepreneurs is that they are innovative, opportunists and have a low aversion to risk taking. However, we have observed an interesting trend in the UK Independent TV Production Industry. Entrepreneurs are becoming more risk averse

Disciplinde With Holesome Reede: Edmund Spenser, Robert Burton, and the Profits of Reading

Disciplinde with Holesome Reede: Edmund Spenser, Robert Burton, and the Profits of Reading offers an extended comparative reading of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590-96) and Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621-50), taking as its cue these texts’ shared claims to bibliotherapeutic possibilities: that Spenser’s is intended to ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’, and that Burton hopes his writings will ‘medicinally worke upon the whole body [... and] not only recreate, but rectify the minde’. Reading these claims in light of medical, philosophical, and theological contexts, I explore how Spenser and Burton conceptualise the potentially profitable (and, conversely, pernicious) possibilities of reading in medicinal, economic, and recreative terms. Central to the thesis is the idea that such claims to reformative efficacy depend on the authors’ shaping and inculcation of certain kinds of readerly habits, and that, correlating to the contiguous nature of world and text, the fashioning of a reader constitutes the fashioning of an ethical and healthy subject: in short, the thesis follows early modern thought in eliding the hermeneutic and the therapeutic. As such, the thesis will throughout explore how both The Faerie Queene and the Anatomy encode, challenge, and frustrate their own interpretive practices. Shaping a readership trained in careful attention and profound memory constitutes the work of reading that is both laborious and edifying. At the same time, whilst celebrating each work’s complex particularity, the thesis demonstrates how comparative work on texts rarely – and only ever fleetingly – drawn into conversation might shed new light on the ways in which intellectual traditions span and develop across form, genre, and period

From Opposition to Creativity: Saba Mahmood’s Decolonial Critique of Teleological Feminist Futures

Saba Mahmood’s anthropological work studies the gain in skills, agency and capacity building by the women’s dawa movement in Egypt. These women increase their virtue toward the goal of piety by following dominant, often patriarchal norms. Mahmood argues that “teleological feminism” ignores this gain in agency because this kind of feminism only focuses on opposition or resistance to these norms. In this paper I defend Mahmood’s “anti-teleological” feminist work from criticisms that her project valorizes oppression and has no vision for a nonoppressive feminist future. I argue the future envisioned by teleological feminists gets caught in “the Hegelian” trap of replicating past oppression in their feminist future. I find in Mahmood’s work the tools to escape this trap. I argue, rather than a movement of overcoming oppression, Mahmood’s work suggests an immanent and creative movement that emphasizes difference for a truly new future. I turn to a Bergsonian metaphor and argue that this movement can be seen as akin to the movement of biological evolution. I conclude using the work of Eve Sedgwick that the Egyptian women that Mahmood studies are being read in a “paranoid” fashion and demonstrate using Leila Ahmed a better “reparative” reading of these women