Transgenic sterile insect technique in Anopheles mosquitos

Imperial Users onl

Whitman, Christ, and the Crystal Palace Police: A Manuscript Source Restored

Investigates the anecdote about Whitman being watched by the police at the 1853 Crystal Palace Exhibition, an anecdote that William Douglas O\u27Connor wrote out but then cancelled in a manuscript about Whitman that he prepared for Moncure Conway; argues that the anecdote is significant in what it reveals about Whitman\u27s attitude toward and relationship with policemen, as well as what it reveals about the possible origins of Leaves of Grass in Whitman\u27s reactions to Bertel Thorwaldsen\u27s statues of "Christ and His Apostles," which were on display at the Crystal Palace

Exploring correlation structures of metabolomics data for quality control and biomarker discovery

Metabolomics is a technology which allows us to probe a wide array of interactions between metabolites. These interactions can be revealed by statistical correlations between metabolite levels that may arise via a range of mechanisms. To measure metabolite levels, two main techniques are used: Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). For the measurement of correlation structure high analytical reproducibility of the assays is required. While NMR has previously been shown to be reproducible, LC-MS, has not been similarly assessed. To assess the reproducibility of LC-MS for urinary metabolomics, a multi-laboratory study was devised. We find that the technology is highly reproducible, both within and between laboratories with CVs of < 17%, < 5s drift and under 10% ppm between labs. In LC-MS, ionisation of a single compound can lead to multiple charged species such as isotopologues, adducts etc. These multiple signals have a high mutual correlation and we show that this allows them to be identified with high sensitivity and specificity. The inferred statistical interactions between different metabolites can also be affected by analytical errors. An algorithm was designed to remove statistical metabolite links that could have been caused by the analytical technique. Using this method, a higher confidence can be placed on the remaining interactions, suggesting that they are potential biological interactions. Finally, most biological interactions are dynamic in nature, leading to correlations through time between metabolite levels. To explore these dynamic links, two temporal approaches were developed. These methods are designed to discover temporal correlations between metabolites and to test whether they vary between bio- logical conditions. We successfully demonstrate the methods in both LC-MS and NMR datasets. Overall, this thesis shows that correlation structure in metabolic profiling data is reliable, can be successfully filtered to improve quality and can be interrogated to reveal a new kind of dynamic metabolic biomarker.Open Acces

LEGITIMACY OF CORRECTIONS AS A MENTAL HEALTH CARE PROVIDER: PERSPECTIVES FROM U.S. AND EUROPEAN SYSTEMS

Large numbers of seriously mentally ill persons are being incarcerated because their disturbed behavior is criminalized. The criminal justice system is struggling to manage the needs of these mentally ill persons in correctional settings. This article examines the problem of the incarcerated mentally ill in terms of whether or not the correctional setting is an ethically legitimate place to house and treat these persons. First, it briefly summarizes how we arrived at this problem in the U.S. Then, it examines the problem today in the U.S. and comparatively in European nations. Finally, it closes with recommendations for establishing treatment outside correctional settings and how to best address the issue of mental illness within correctional settings

A new encoding scheme for visible light communications with applications to mobile connections

A new, novel and unconventional encoding scheme called concurrent coding, has recently been demonstrated and shown to offer interesting features and benefits in comparison to conventional techniques, such as robustness against burst errors and improved efficiency of transmitted power. Free space optical communications can suffer particularly from issues of alignment which requires stable, fixed links to be established and beam wander which can interrupt communications. Concurrent coding has the potential to help ease these difficulties and enable mobile, flexible optical communications to be implemented through the use of a source encoding technique. This concept has been applied for the first time to optical communications where standard light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been used to transmit information encoded with concurrent coding. The technique successfully transmits and decodes data despite unpredictable interruptions to the transmission causing significant drop-outs to the detected signal. The technique also shows how it is possible to send a single block of data in isolation with no pre-synchronisation required between transmitter and receiver, and no specific synchronisation sequence appended to the transmission. Such systems are robust against interference -- intentional or otherwise -- as well as intermittent beam blockage

A Jurassic ornithischian dinosaur from Siberia with both feathers and scales

Feathers, not just for the birds? Theropod dinosaurs, thought to be the direct ancestors of birds, sported birdlike feathers. But were they the only feathery dino group? Godefroit et al. describe an early neornithischian dinosaur with both early feathers and scales. This seemingly feathery nontheropod dinosaur shows that feathers were not unique to the ancestors of birds and may even have been quite widespread. Science , this issue p. 451 </jats:p

Adapting to time: Duration channels do not mediate human time perception

Accurately encoding the duration and temporal order of events is essential for survival and important to everyday activities, from holding conversations to driving in fastflowing traffic. Although there is a growing body of evidence that the timing of brief events (< 1 s) is encoded by modality-specific mechanisms, it is not clear how such mechanisms register event duration. One approach gaining traction is a channel-based model; this envisages narrowly-tuned, overlapping timing mechanisms that respond preferentially to different durations. The channelbased model predicts that adapting to a given event duration will result in overestimating and underestimating the duration of longer and shorter events, respectively. We tested the model by having observers judge the duration of a brief (600 ms) visual test stimulus following adaptation to longer (860 ms) and shorter (340 ms) stimulus durations. The channel-based model predicts perceived duration compression of the test stimulus in the former condition and perceived duration expansion in the latter condition. Duration compression occurred in both conditions, suggesting that the channel-based model does not adequately account for perceived duration of visual events

Preparing student radiographers for imaging patients with dementia: an exploratory study of the “what?” and the “how?” in higher education strategy

It has been well established across the spectrum of allied healthcare literature that newly qualified practitioners, fresh from university education, often feel unprepared for their early experiences of managing patients with dementia (Baillie, Cox and Merritt, 2012; Baillie, Merritt and Cox, 2012). Moreover, this situation can have unfortunate knock-on effects regarding practitioner confidence. As Miller, Booth and Spacey (2017) observe, however, such literature rarely goes beyond proposing that ‘more education’ is the solution. Rarely unpacked is what content this education should contain at undergraduate level, and how it should be integrated into extant curricula in order to best benefit graduates in their future clinical work. This exploratory study reports findings emergent of N=6 detailed interviews with final year Diagnostic Radiography students, at the time placed in a variety of hospitals in the North West of England. Employing an analytic approach based in the Straussian model of Grounded Theory (Sloane and Miller, 2017), four global issues were identified: 1. Education around the differentiated forms of dementia should be provided before any student encounters a pertinent patient on placement. 2. Direct education about best practice in communicating with patients with dementia is essential at the earliest possible stage. 3. Bringing in dementia carers and other affected parties can help contextualise potential problems in a non-abstract way. 4. The experiences of undergraduates on other healthcare programmes (particularly nursing) can help inform a student’s-eye understanding of dementia in radiography. It is contended that these findings can open up important pedagogical discussions around an issue that has hitherto remained largely unarticulated in contemporary radiography curricula

Advowsons and private patronage

This article focuses on the role of private patronage within the Church of England. Private patrons own advowsons. These property rights can no longer be traded but may still be bequeathed or transferred without value. When there is a vacancy in a benefice a patron has the right to nominate a new incumbent in accordance with the Patronage (Benefices) Measure 1986. This article uses contemporary and historical records to define private patronage and analyse the current role of the four broad categories of private patrons; private individuals, educational bodies, guilds and patronage societies. Whilst acknowledging the benefits that patronage can bring, this article advocates substantive reform for the future including a sunset rule for private individual patronage. This article suggests that reform of the law of private patronage will make a positive contribution to other contemporary issues before the Church by promoting diversity in vocations, facilitating necessary pastoral reorganisation and adding to the dialogue about the future of the parish system