Double-enhancement strategy: a practical approach to a femto-molar level detection of prostate specific antigen--1-antichymotrypsin (PSA/ACT complex) for SPR immunosensing

Prostate specific antigen-a1-antichymotrypsin was detected by a double-enhancement strategy involving the exploitation of both colloidal gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and precipitation of an insoluble product formed by HRP biocatalyzed oxidation. The AuNPs were synthesized and conjugated with horse-radish peroxidase-PSA polyclonal antibody by physisorption. Using the protein-colloid for SPR-based detection of the PSA/ACT complex showed their enhancement as being consistent with other previous studies with regard to AuNPs enhancement, while the enzyme precipitation using DAB substrate was applied for the first time and greatly amplified the signal. The limit of detection was found at as low as 0.027 ng/ml of the PSA/ACT complex (or 300 fM), which is much higher than that of previous reports. This study indicates another way to enhance SPR measurement, and it is generally applicable to other SPR-based immunoassays.

Identity and Geopolitics in Hergé's Adventures of Tintin

This is a study of identity and geopolitics in Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, a series of adventure comics created from 1929 to 1976. The Tintin comics became increasingly popular throughout the mid-twentieth century, and their creator, Hergé, is still a subject of intrigue in the press and popular publications. Recent work in popular geopolitics has pioneered the use of comics as a new type of source material in critical geography. Hergé's approach to the comics format combines an iconic protagonist with detailed and textured environments that draw upon some of the geopolitical discourses of the twentieth century. Three forms of geopolitical meaning are identified within the Tintin comics: discourses of colonialism, European pre-eminence and anti-Americanism. These overlapping trends amount to different facets of one single discourse, which places European ideologies at the centre of its world-view. This is highlighted by focusing on three geographical spaces of the Tintin series, and by contextualising the life and selected works of Hergé. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.

Decoding semantics across fMRI sessions with different stimulus modalities:a practical MVPA study

Both embodied and symbolic accounts of conceptual organization would predict partial sharing and partial differentiation between the neural activations seen for concepts activated via different stimulus modalities. But cross-participant and cross-session variability in BOLD activity patterns makes analyses of such patterns with MVPA methods challenging. Here, we examine the effect of cross-modal and individual variation on the machine learning analysis of fMRI data recorded during a word property generation task. We present the same set of living and non-living concepts (land-mammals, or work tools) to a cohort of Japanese participants in two sessions: the first using auditory presentation of spoken words; the second using visual presentation of words written in Japanese characters. Classification accuracies confirmed that these semantic categories could be detected in single trials, with within-session predictive accuracies of 80-90%. However cross-session prediction (learning from auditory-task data to classify data from the written-word-task, or vice versa) suffered from a performance penalty, achieving 65-75% (still individually significant at p « 0.05). We carried out several follow-on analyses to investigate the reason for this shortfall, concluding that distributional differences in neither time nor space alone could account for it. Rather, combined spatio-temporal patterns of activity need to be identified for successful cross-session learning, and this suggests that feature selection strategies could be modified to take advantage of this.

Teaching (about) Britishness? An investigation into trainee teachers' understanding of Britishness in relation to citizenship and the discourse of civic nationalism

This research was prompted by the developing political discourse proposing the teaching of Britishness and British values in the context of the United Kingdom. This discourse will be reviewed in the first part of the article, in the context of previous work which has sought to assess how Britishness and related concepts might be promoted through education. The second part will be based on questionnaire responses from a sample of students following post-graduate initial teacher training programmes in a number of higher education partnerships. It indicates that, while political discourse and educational policy have sensitised trainee teachers to the agenda, there remains a deep uncertainty and misgiving about this as an educational objective.

Qualitative data analysis:A practical example

The aim of this paper is to equip readers with an understanding of the principles of qualitative data analysis and offer a practical example of how analysis might be undertaken in an interview-based study.

Engineering Innovative Products: A Practical Experience

Engineering Innovative Products: A Practical Experience is a pioneering book that will be of key use to senior undergraduate and graduate engineering students who are being encouraged to explore innovation and commercialization as part of their courses. The book will teach the essential skills of entrepreneurship and address the fundamental requirements needed to establish a successful technology company.

Güler and Öngel v Turkey: Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Strasbourg’s discourse on the justified use of force

This article discusses the discourse on the justified use of force in the Strasbourg Court’s analysis of Article 3. With particular focus on the judgment in Güler and Öngel v Turkey, a case concerning the use of force by State agents against demonstrators, it addresses the question of the implications of such discourse, found in this and other cases, on the absolute nature of Article 3. It offers a perspective which suggests that the discourse on the justified use of force can be reconciled with Article 3’s absolute nature.