A Damascene Conversion:Additional Accommodation Church of St George and St Thomas

Additional Accommodation Church of St George and St Thomas - Critical Appraisal ‘A Damascene Conversion’ by Shane O’Toole in The Sunday Times December 2008.

Seven new loci associated with age-related macular degeneration

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a common cause of blindness in older individuals. To accelerate the understanding of AMD biology and help design new therapies, we executed a collaborative genome-wide association study, including >17,100 advanced AMD cases and >60,000 controls of European and Asian ancestry. We identified 19 loci associated at P <5 × 10(-8). These loci show enrichment for genes involved in the regulation of complement activity, lipid metabolism, extracellular matrix remodeling and angiogenesis. Our results include seven loci with associations reaching P <5 × 10(-8) for the first time, near the genes COL8A1-FILIP1L, IER3-DDR1, SLC16A8, TGFBR1, RAD51B, ADAMTS9 and B3GALTL. A genetic risk score combining SNP genotypes from all loci showed similar ability to distinguish cases and controls in all samples examined. Our findings provide new directions for biological, genetic and therapeutic studies of AMD.

Sex, Politics and Religion: The Transformation of the Figure of the Fairy Queen from Thomas off Ersseldoune to ‘‘Thomas Rymer’’

Our earliest version of the Thomas Rymer story is the medieval romance Thomas off Ersseldoune (c.1430). There is a four hundred year lacuna before the ballad “Thomas Rymer”, our next surviving version, is recorded in the early 1800s. In the intervening time the narrative changed very little but the dynamic of the piece, radically. The romance transformed into the highly subversive ballad, “Thomas Rymer”. Central to this transformation is the reconceptualization of the romance's heroine. Referred to simply as the “lufly lady” and caught between her husband, the fay King, and a mere mortal, Thomas, she becomes in the ballad the powerful Queen of the Fairies. The ballad is structured around a series of revelations in which the enigmatic Queen assumes the roles of Eve and Mary, and finally Christ Himself. I will explore the implications of this extraordinary ballad. Moreover, I suggest that it is Queen Elizabeth herself who, ironically, enables the heroine's transformation. “Ironically” because it appears that it was Elizabeth's own restrictions, designed to suppress heretical, seditious or radical literature, which forced Thomas off Ersseldoune (and many other romances which employed religious imagery or figures) out of the written domain and into the oral tradition. And yet, it is Elizabeth who, in creating the image of herself as a female prince, as the Faerie Queen, inspires a new literary vocabulary designed to describe female executive power, without which it would have been impossible to imagine a figure such as the ballad's Queen of the Fairies.

"From Indomania to Indophobia":Thomas De Quincey's Providential Orientalism

Thomas De Quincey’s terrifying oriental nightmares, reported to sensational acclaim in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821), have become a touchstone of romantic imperialism in recent studies of the literature of the period (Leask 1991; Barrell 1992 et al). De Quincey’s collocation of “all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions” in the hypnagogic hallucinations that characterized what he called “the pains of opium” seems to anticipate neatly Said’s theory of orientalism, whereby the orient was supplied by the west with “a mentality, a genealogy, an atmosphere,” the attitudinal basis as he argues for the continuing march of imperialism from the late eighteenth century. Yet, as Thomas Trautmann (1997) has pointed out, orientalist scholarship based in India and led by the influential Asiatic Society of Bengal in the late eighteenth century was extremely enthusiastic about Indian classical antiquity. The early orientalist scholarship posited ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious links between Europe and India, while recognizing the greater antiquity of Indian civilization. This favourable attitude (which Trautmann calls “Indomania”) was overtaken in the nineteenth century by disavowal of that scholarship and repugnance (which he calls “Indophobia”), influenced by utilitarian and evangelical attitudes to colonialism. De Quincey’s lifespan covers this crucial period of change. My paper examines his evangelical upbringing and interest in biblical and orientalist scholarship to suggest his anxious investment in these modes of thinking. I will suggest that the bizarre orientalist fusions of his dreams can be better understood in the context of changing attitudes to the imperialism during the period. An examination of his work provides a far more dynamic understanding of the processes of orientalism than the binary model suggested by Said. The transformation implied from imperial scholarship to governance, I will suggest, is not irrelevant to a world which continues to pull apart on various grounds of race and ethnicity, and reflects on our own role in the academy today.

Book review of Atlas of Anatomy by Patrick W. Tank and Thomas R. Gest:Book review of Atlas of Anatomy

Book review of Atlas of Anatomy by Patrick W. Tank and Thomas R. Gest

On the nudging terms at open boundaries in regional ocean models

For open boundary conditions (OBCs) in regional models, a nudging term added to radiative and/or advective conditions during the wave or flow propagation outward from the model domain of interest is widely used, to prevent the predicted boundary values from evolving to become quite different from the external data, especially for a long-term integration. However, nudging time scales are basically unknown, leading to many empirical selections. In this paper, a method for objectively estimating nudging time scales during outward propagation is proposed, by using internal model dynamics near the boundary. We tested this method and other several commonly used OBCs for cases of both an idealized model domain and a realistic configuration, and model results demonstrated that the proposed method improves the model solutions. Many similarities are found between the nudging and mixing time scales, in magnitude, spatial and temporal variations, since the nudging mainly replaces the effect of the mixing terms in this study. However, the mixing time scale is not an intrinsic property of the nudging term because in other studies the nudging term might replace terms other than the mixing terms and, thus, should reflect other characteristic time scales.

Modelling the fate of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the North Sea system

The environmental fate of selected persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the North Sea system is modelled with a high resolution Fate and Transport Ocean Model (FANTOM) that uses hydrodynamic model output from the Hamburg Shelf Ocean Model (HAMSOM). Large amounts of POPs enter the North Sea from the surrounding highly populated, industrialised and agricultural countries. Major pathways to the North Sea are atmospheric deposition and river inputs, with additional contributions coming from bottom sediments and adjacent seas. The model domain covers the entire North Sea region, extending northward as far as the Shetland Islands, and includes adjacent basins such as the Skagerrak, Kattegat, and the westernmost part of the Baltic Sea. Model resolution (for both models) is 1.5’ latitude x 2.5’ longitude (approximately 3 km horizontal resolution) with 30 vertical levels. The POP model also has 20 sediment layers. Important model processes controlling the fate of POPs in the North Sea system are discussed. Results focus on Lindane gamma- HCH or gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane) and PCB 153.

Assessment of a zoomed global model for the North Sea by comparison with a conventional nested regional model

Assessment of marine downscaling of global model simulations to the regional scale is a prerequisite for understanding ocean feedback to the atmosphere in regional climate downscaling. Major difficulties arise from the coarse grid resolution of global models, which cannot provide sufficiently accurate boundary values for the regional model. In this study, we first setup a stretched global model (MPIOM) to focus on the North Sea by shifting poles. Second, a regional model (HAMSOM) was performed with higher resolution, while the open boundary values were provided by the stretched global model. In general, the sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the two experiments are similar. Major SST differences are found in coastal regions (root mean square difference of SST is reaching up to 2°C). The higher sea surface salinity in coastal regions in the global model indicates the general limitation of this global model and its configuration (surface layer thickness is 16 m). By comparison, the advantage of the absence of open lateral boundaries in the global model can be demonstrated, in particular for the transition region between the North Sea and Baltic Sea. On long timescales, the North Atlantic Current (NAC) inflow through the northern boundary correlates well between both model simulations (R~0.9). After downscaling with HAMSOM, the NAC inflow through the northern boundary decreases by ~10%, but the circulation in the Skagerrak is stronger in HAMSOM. The circulation patterns of both models are similar in the northern North Sea. The comparison suggests that the stretched global model system is a suitable tool for long-term free climate model simulations, and the only limitations occur in coastal regions. Regarding the regional studies focusing on the coastal zone, nested regional model can be a helpful alternative.

On sea level change in the North Sea influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation: local and remote steric effects

In this study, contributions of both local steric and remote baroclinic effects (i.e., steric variations external to the region of interest) to the inter-annual variability of winter sea level in the North Sea, with respect to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), for the period of 1953–2010 are investigated. On inter-annual time scales in this period, the NAO is significantly correlated to sea level variations in the North Sea only in the winter months (December–March), while its correlation to sea temperature over much of the North Sea is only significant in January and February. The discrepancy in sea level between observations and barotropic tide and surge models forced by tides and local atmospheric forcing, i.e., local atmospheric pressure effects and winds, in the present study are found to be consistent with previous studies. In the North Sea, local thermosteric effects caused by thermal expansion play a minor role on winter-mean NAO related sea level variability compared with atmospheric forcing. This is particularly true in the southeastern North Sea where water depths are mostly less than 25 m. Our calculations demonstrate that the discrepancy can be mostly explained by remote baroclinic effects, which appear as water mass exchanges on the continental shelf and are therefore only apparent in ocean bottom pressure. In the North Sea, NAO related sea level variations seem to be a hybrid of barotropic and baroclinic processes. Hence, they can only be adequately modelled with three-dimensional baroclinic ocean models that include contributions of baroclinic effects and large-scale atmospheric forcing external to the region of interest.

Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies 11 new loci for anthropometric traits and provides insights into genetic architecture

Approaches exploiting trait distribution extremes may be used to identify loci associated with common traits, but it is unknown whether these loci are generalizable to the broader population. In a genome-wide search for loci associated with the upper versus the lower 5th percentiles of body mass index, height and waist-to-hip ratio, as well as clinical classes of obesity, including up to 263,407 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 4 new loci (IGFBP4, H6PD, RSRC1 and PPP2R2A) influencing height detected in the distribution tails and 7 new loci (HNF4G, RPTOR, GNAT2, MRPS33P4, ADCY9, HS6ST3 and ZZZ3) for clinical classes of obesity. Further, we find a large overlap in genetic structure and the distribution of variants between traits based on extremes and the general population and little etiological heterogeneity between obesity subgroups.

Large-scale association analysis identifies new risk loci for coronary artery disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the commonest cause of death. Here, we report an association analysis in 63,746 CAD cases and 130,681 controls identifying 15 loci reaching genome-wide significance, taking the number of susceptibility loci for CAD to 46, and a further 104 independent variants (r(2)