The Labour Government, the Treasury and the £6 pay policy of July 1975

The 1974-79 Labour Government was elected in a climate of opinion that was fiercely opposed to government intervention in the wage determination process, and was committed to the principles of free collective bargaining in its manifestoes. However, by December 1974 the Treasury was advocating a formal incomes policy, and by July 1975 the government had introduced a £6 flat rate pay norm. With reference to archival sources, the paper demonstrates that TUC and Labour Party opposition to incomes policy was reconciled with the Treasury's advocacy by limiting the Bank of England‟s intervention in the foreign exchange market when sterling came under pressure. This both helped to achieve the Treasury's objective of improving the competitiveness of British industry, and acted as a catalyst for the introduction of incomes policy because the slide could be attributed to a lack of market confidence in British counter-inflation policy

A new design of friction test rig and determination of friction coefficient when warm forming an aluminium alloy

To facilitate reduced fuel consumption and increase environmental friendliness, in recent years, demands for lightweight vehicles have been increasing, and interest in hot or warm forming of sheet aluminium alloys for use in vehicle body structures, has grown. For better understanding and optimisation of the forming processes, knowledge of friction coefficient between tooling and work-piece, at elevated temperature, is critical. However, because of difficulties with measurement at elevated temperature, most studies on friction are limited to room temperature. In this study, a friction rig was designed for isothermal tests at elevated temperature. The test rig enables pure sliding between pins (made of a tool steel) and a metal sheet. The friction behaviour of Forge Ease 278, a water based solid lubricant pre-applied to aluminium alloy AA5754, was investigated, under isothermal warm forming conditions, using the test rig. The effects of testing temperature, sliding speed and applied pressure on the friction coefficient were studied. It was found that Forge Ease produced a low friction coefficient of around 0.05, above room temperature and below 250 °C. The lubricant performance degrades at 350 °C and the friction coefficient increases markedly. Both sliding speed (up to 150 mm s -1 ) and applied pressure (up to 12.8 MPa) had no significant effect on friction coefficient of Forge Ease

18F-FDG PET/MRI for staging and interim response assessment in pediatric and adolescent Hodgkin lymphoma: a prospective study with 18F-FDG PET/CT as reference standard

Rationale: Treatment regimens for pediatric Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL) depend on accurate staging and treatment response assessment, based on accurate disease distribution and metabolic activity depiction. With the aim of radiation dose reduction, we compared the diagnostic performance of 18F-FDG PET/MR to a 18F-FDG PET/CT reference standard for staging and response assessment. Methods: Twenty-four patients (mean age 15.4 years, range 8-19.5 years) with histologically proven HL were prospectively and consecutively recruited in 2015 and 2016, undergoing both 18F-FDG PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/MRI at initial staging (N n = 24) and at response assessment (N n = 21). Diagnostic accuracy of 18F-FDG PET/MRI for both nodal and extra-nodal disease was compared to 18F-FDG PET/CT, which was considered as the reference standard. Discrepancies were retrospectively classified as perceptual or technical errors and 18F-FDG PET/MRI and 18F-FDG PET/CT were corrected by removing perceptual error. Agreement with Ann-Arbor staging and Deauville grading was also assessed. Results: For nodal and extranodal sites combined, corrected staging 18F-FDG PET/MRI sensitivity was 100% (95% confidence interval (CI) 96.7%-100%), specificity 99.5% (95%CI 98.3%-99.9%). Corrected response assessment 18F-FDG PET/MRI sensitivity was 83.3% (95%CI 36.5%-99.1%), specificity 100% (95%CI 99.2%-100%). Modified Ann-Arbor staging agreement between F18-FDG PET/CT and 18F-FDG PET/MRI was perfect (k = 1.0, P = 0.000). Deauville grading agreement between 18F-FDG PET/MRI and 18F-FDG PET/CT was excellent (k = 0.835, P = 0.000). Conclusion:18F-FDG PET/MRI is a promising alternative to 18F-FDG PET/CT for staging and response assessment in children with Hodgkin lymphoma

Transporter gene acquisition and innovation in the evolution of Microsporidia intracellular parasites.

The acquisition of genes by horizontal transfer can impart entirely new biological functions and provide an important route to major evolutionary innovation. Here we have used ancient gene reconstruction and functional assays to investigate the impact of a single horizontally transferred nucleotide transporter into the common ancestor of the Microsporidia, a major radiation of intracellular parasites of animals and humans. We show that this transporter provided early microsporidians with the ability to steal host ATP and to become energy parasites. Gene duplication enabled the diversification of nucleotide transporter function to transport new substrates, including GTP and NAD+, and to evolve the proton-energized net import of nucleotides for nucleic acid biosynthesis, growth and replication. These innovations have allowed the loss of pathways for mitochondrial and cytosolic energy generation and nucleotide biosynthesis that are otherwise essential for free-living eukaryotes, resulting in the highly unusual and reduced cells and genomes of contemporary Microsporidia

Disease severity adversely affects delivery of dialysis in acute renal failure

Background/Aims: Methods of intermittent hemodialysis (IHD) dose quantification in acute renal failure (ARF) are not well defined. This observational study was designed to evaluate the impact of disease activity on delivered single pool Kt/V-urea in ARF patients. Methods: 100 patients with severe ARF (acute intrinsic renal disease in 18 patients, nephrotoxic acute tubular necrosis in 38 patients, and septic ARF in 44 patients) were analyzed during four consecutive sessions of IHD, performed for 3.5-5 h every other day or daily. Target IHD dose was a single pool Kt/V-urea of 1.2 or more per dialysis session for all patients. Prescribed Kt/V-urea was calculated from desired dialyzer clearance (K), desired treatment time (t) and anthropometric estimates for urea distribution volume (V). The desired clearance (K) was estimated from prescribed blood flow rate and manufacturer's charts of in vivo data obtained in maintenance dialysis patients. Delivered single pool Kt/V-urea was calculated using the Daugirdas equation. Results: None of the patients had prescription failure of the target dose. The delivered IHD doses were substantially lower than the prescribed Kt/V values, particularly in ARF patients with sepsis/septic shock. Stratification according to disease severity revealed that all patients with isolated ARF, but none with 3 or more organ failures and none who needed vasopressive support received the target dose. Conclusion: Prescription of target IHD dose by single pool Kt/V-urea resulted in suboptimal dialysis dose delivery in critically ill patients. Numerous patient-related and treatment-immanent factors acting in concert reduced the delivered dose. Copyright (C) 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel

A novel isolator-based system promotes viability of human embryos during laboratory processing

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) and related technologies are arguably the most challenging of all cell culture applications. The starting material is a single cell from which one aims to produce an embryo capable of establishing a pregnancy eventually leading to a live birth. Laboratory processing during IVF treatment requires open manipulations of gametes and embryos, which typically involves exposure to ambient conditions. To reduce the risk of cellular stress, we have developed a totally enclosed system of interlinked isolator-based workstations designed to maintain oocytes and embryos in a physiological environment throughout the IVF process. Comparison of clinical and laboratory data before and after the introduction of the new system revealed that significantly more embryos developed to the blastocyst stage in the enclosed isolator-based system compared with conventional open-fronted laminar flow hoods. Moreover, blastocysts produced in the isolator-based system contained significantly more cells and their development was accelerated. Consistent with this, the introduction of the enclosed system was accompanied by a significant increase in the clinical pregnancy rate and in the proportion of embryos implanting following transfer to the uterus. The data indicate that protection from ambient conditions promotes improved development of human embryos. Importantly, we found that it was entirely feasible to conduct all IVF-related procedures in the isolator-based workstations

FLORA: a novel method to predict protein function from structure in diverse superfamilies

Predicting protein function from structure remains an active area of interest, particularly for the structural genomics initiatives where a substantial number of structures are initially solved with little or no functional characterisation. Although global structure comparison methods can be used to transfer functional annotations, the relationship between fold and function is complex, particularly in functionally diverse superfamilies that have evolved through different secondary structure embellishments to a common structural core. The majority of prediction algorithms employ local templates built on known or predicted functional residues. Here, we present a novel method (FLORA) that automatically generates structural motifs associated with different functional sub-families (FSGs) within functionally diverse domain superfamilies. Templates are created purely on the basis of their specificity for a given FSG, and the method makes no prior prediction of functional sites, nor assumes specific physico-chemical properties of residues. FLORA is able to accurately discriminate between homologous domains with different functions and substantially outperforms (a 2–3 fold increase in coverage at low error rates) popular structure comparison methods and a leading function prediction method. We benchmark FLORA on a large data set of enzyme superfamilies from all three major protein classes (α, β, αβ) and demonstrate the functional relevance of the motifs it identifies. We also provide novel predictions of enzymatic activity for a large number of structures solved by the Protein Structure Initiative. Overall, we show that FLORA is able to effectively detect functionally similar protein domain structures by purely using patterns of structural conservation of all residues