Baseline Assumptions and Future Research Areas for Urban Air Mobility Vehicles

NASA is developing Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concepts to (1) create first-generation reference vehicles that can be used for technology, system, and market studies, and (2) hypothesize second-generation UAM aircraft to determine high-payoff technology targets and future research areas that reach far beyond initial UAM vehicle capabilities. This report discusses the vehicle-level technology assumptions for NASAs UAM reference vehicles, and highlights future research areas for second-generation UAM aircraft that includes deflected slipstream concepts, low-noise rotors for edgewise flight, stacked rotors/propellers, ducted propellers, solid oxide fuel cells with liquefied natural gas, and improved turbo shaft and reciprocating engine technology. The report also highlights a transportation network-scale model that is being developed to understand the impact of these and other technologies on future UAM solutions

The pox in Boswell's London: an estimate of the extent of syphilis infection in the metropolis in the 1770s†

This article provides for the first time a robust quantitative estimate of the amount of syphilis infection in the population of London in the later eighteenth century. A measure of the cumulative incidence of having ever been treated for the pox by the age of 35 is constructed, providing an indicator of over 20 per cent syphilitic infection. The principal primary sources are hospital admissions registers, augmented with an analysis of London’s workhouse infirmaries. A range of potentially confounding factors are taken into account, including the contemporary conflation between syphilis and other sexually transmitted infections, patients who shunned hospitals in favour of private treatment, possible double-counting of patients, institutional patients who may have hailed from outside London, and the complexity of establishing what should constitute the ‘at-risk’ population of London for this period. Cultural and medical historians have demonstrated considerable pre-occupation with venereal disease in the texts of the eighteenth century, while demographic and epidemiological historians, lacking any quantitative evidence, have tended to ignore the disease. This article can now demonstrate for the first time just how extensive syphilis was likely to have been and, by doing so, offer an original contribution to major debates in the history of sexuality and the demography of early modern London.The research for this article was in part facilitated by the funding under the five-year Wellcome Trust Strategic Award 088708, ‘Generation to reproduction’, held at Cambridge University’s History and Philosophy of Science Department, for which Simon Szreter was a co-applicant

Delphi Initiative for Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer (DIRECt) International Management Guidelines

Background & aims: Patients with early-onset colorectal cancer (eoCRC) are managed according to guidelines that are not age-specific. A multidisciplinary international group (DIRECt), composed of 69 experts, was convened to develop the first evidence-based consensus recommendations for eoCRC. Methods: After reviewing the published literature, a Delphi methodology was used to draft and respond to clinically relevant questions. Each statement underwent 3 rounds of voting and reached a consensus level of agreement of ≥80%. Results: The DIRECt group produced 31 statements in 7 areas of interest: diagnosis, risk factors, genetics, pathology-oncology, endoscopy, therapy, and supportive care. There was strong consensus that all individuals younger than 50 should undergo CRC risk stratification and prompt symptom assessment. All newly diagnosed eoCRC patients should receive germline genetic testing, ideally before surgery. On the basis of current evidence, endoscopic, surgical, and oncologic treatment of eoCRC should not differ from later-onset CRC, except for individuals with pathogenic or likely pathogenic germline variants. The evidence on chemotherapy is not sufficient to recommend changes to established therapeutic protocols. Fertility preservation and sexual health are important to address in eoCRC survivors. The DIRECt group highlighted areas with knowledge gaps that should be prioritized in future research efforts, including age at first screening for the general population, use of fecal immunochemical tests, chemotherapy, endoscopic therapy, and post-treatment surveillance for eoCRC patients. Conclusions: The DIRECt group produced the first consensus recommendations on eoCRC. All statements should be considered together with the accompanying comments and literature reviews. We highlighted areas where research should be prioritized. These guidelines represent a useful tool for clinicians caring for patients with eoCRC

Genome-wide identification and phenotypic characterization of seizure-associated copy number variations in 741,075 individuals

Copy number variants (CNV) are established risk factors for neurodevelopmental disorders with seizures or epilepsy. With the hypothesis that seizure disorders share genetic risk factors, we pooled CNV data from 10,590 individuals with seizure disorders, 16,109 individuals with clinically validated epilepsy, and 492,324 population controls and identified 25 genome-wide significant loci, 22 of which are novel for seizure disorders, such as deletions at 1p36.33, 1q44, 2p21-p16.3, 3q29, 8p23.3-p23.2, 9p24.3, 10q26.3, 15q11.2, 15q12-q13.1, 16p12.2, 17q21.31, duplications at 2q13, 9q34.3, 16p13.3, 17q12, 19p13.3, 20q13.33, and reciprocal CNVs at 16p11.2, and 22q11.21. Using genetic data from additional 248,751 individuals with 23 neuropsychiatric phenotypes, we explored the pleiotropy of these 25 loci. Finally, in a subset of individuals with epilepsy and detailed clinical data available, we performed phenome-wide association analyses between individual CNVs and clinical annotations categorized through the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO). For six CNVs, we identified 19 significant associations with specific HPO terms and generated, for all CNVs, phenotype signatures across 17 clinical categories relevant for epileptologists. This is the most comprehensive investigation of CNVs in epilepsy and related seizure disorders, with potential implications for clinical practice

History of Medicine #05: 'The Itch': The Strange Story of Skin Disease and Prejudice in the Eighteenth Century

Kevin Siena is Associate Professor at Trent University, Canada, and held an Oxford Brookes International Research Fellowship in 2011. Kevin’s research focuses on early modern British history with special interests in medical history, sex and disease, urban poverty and social welfare. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 15 February 201

Poverty and the pox, venereal disease in London hospitals, 1600-1800

grantor: University of TorontoThis dissertation examines the treatment of venereal disease in London hospitals in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that gender and class played an important role in determining the scope of medical options available to venereal patients, as well as patients' own experiences of medical care. My research engages two main assumptions about early modern institutional venereology. First, it has been thought that London hospitals refused venereal patients on moral grounds until the establishment of the Lock Hospital in 1747. Data from St. Bartholomew's and St. Thomas's Hospitals shows that venereal patients found care at these institutions from as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Moreover, the scope of venereology at these hospitals was great; between twenty and thirty percent of all Bart's patients were in the venereal wards through much of the seventeenth century. Secondly, studies have assumed that moral reformation was the primary impetus behind institutionalized VD care. Moral reformation did become important at the very end of our period, and became quite prevalent in Victorian VD hospitals. However, for the majority of two centuries London hospitals did not strive to reform paupers with VD. This revision shows that venereal patients were legitimate objects of charity from a very early date, and that the Lock Hospital emerged not as a result of Enlightenment, but as a result of demography as London's population bulged as a result of migration. In order to demonstrate the role of gender and class I compare the scope of care available for patients who could afford private treatment. An important public-private gap differentiated the medical experiences of rich and poor. The stigmatized nature of this disease made medical privacy all-important. This study shows that medical confidentiality emerged in this period as a direct result of VD. However, that luxury was not available to paupers who had to utilize hospitals. Wealthy women could also afford to hire female practitioners, while poor women always faced hospital care that was controlled by male administrators and delivered by male doctors. Because of the sexual nature of the pox, gender infused the medical exchange and colored the experiences of venereal patients at every step.Ph.D

The 2020 historical research lecture: writing histories of 2020: first responses and early perspectives

The 2020 Historical Research lecture, ‘Writing histories of 2020’, asked how future historians might study and understand the global coronavirus pandemic. The lecture brought together historians with three distinctive perspectives: contemporary history and writing of the very recent past, histories of record keeping and current archive creation, and the history of contagious disease and its human consequences. The three speakers, Richard Vinen, Claire Langhamer and Kevin Siena, provided early responses on future histories of 2020 and how we might best prepare the ground for these studies. This article provides written versions of these commentaries. Common to each of the contributions, and subsequent discussion, is the ongoing challenge and responsibility of thinking historically at a time when history is clearly ‘in the making’