Challenging the empire

This paper considers how Paul Gilroy transformed hitherto dominant understandings of the relationship between race and class by developing an innovative account that foregrounded questions of racist oppression and collective resistance amid the organic crisis of British capitalism. The returns from this rethinking were profound in that he was able to make transparent both the structuring power of racism within the working class, and the necessity for autonomous black resistance. At the same time, significant lacunae in his account are identified, including the neglect of the episodic emergence of working-class anti-racism and the part played by socialists, particularly those of racialized minority descent in fashioning a major anti-racist social movement. The paper concludes with a lament for the disappearance of such work informed by a ‘Marxism without guarantees’ in the contemporary field of racism studies, and asks readers to consider the gains to be derived from such a re-engagement

A systematic review of primary Sjögren’s syndrome in male and paediatric populations

Primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is a chronic multisystem autoimmune rheumatic disease characterised by female predominance. Although the disease is rare in the male and paediatric populations, it has been suggested that it may have a different disease phenotype, which has not been investigated before using a systematic approach. A systematic literature search of PubMed databases (updated to December 2016) was performed to identify all published data on the epidemiological, clinical and laboratory manifestations of pSS in the male and paediatric populations. The literature search of the male and paediatric pSS studies identified 2025 and 186 citations, respectively, out of which 7 and 5 fulfilled our inclusion criteria and were analysed further. The range of age at disease onset was 9.4–10.7 years for children and 39.4–56.9 years at diagnosis for male patients. We identified a prevalence of extra-glandular manifestations between 52.6–92.3% in the male population and 50.0–84.6% in children, while abnormal sialometry was only reported in the paediatric population, with a prevalence between 71.4 and 81.8%. There was a significant variation of positive serological markers, with anti-Ro antibodies reported between 15.7–75.0% and 36.4–84.6%, and anti-La antibodies between 5.6–51.7% and 27.3–65.4%, in the male and paediatric populations, respectively. The characteristics of pSS in the male and paediatric populations varied according to different studies. When compared to data available from pSS adult populations, children diagnosed with pSS reported less dryness and had a higher prevalence of parotitis, lymphadenopathy and systemic symptoms and male patients were younger at the time of diagnosis. This systematic review contributes to a better understanding of the epidemiology of pSS in rare populations. Large longitudinal cohort studies comparing male with female patients and adult with paediatric patients are needed

Counteractive effects of antenatal glucocorticoid treatment on D1 receptor modulation of spatial working memory.

RATIONALE: Antenatal exposure to the glucocorticoid dexamethasone dramatically increases the number of mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons in rat offspring. However, the consequences of this expansion in midbrain dopamine (DA) neurons for behavioural processes in adulthood are poorly understood, including working memory that depends on DA transmission in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). OBJECTIVES: We therefore investigated the influence of antenatal glucocorticoid treatment (AGT) on the modulation of spatial working memory by a D1 receptor agonist and on D1 receptor binding and DA content in the PFC and striatum. METHODS: Pregnant rats received AGT on gestational days 16-19 by adding dexamethasone to their drinking water. Male offspring reared to adulthood were trained on a delayed alternation spatial working memory task and administered the partial D1 agonist SKF38393 (0.3-3 mg/kg) by systemic injection. In separate groups of control and AGT animals, D1 receptor binding and DA content were measured post-mortem in the PFC and striatum. RESULTS: SKF38393 impaired spatial working memory performance in control rats but had no effect in AGT rats. D1 binding was significantly reduced in the anterior cingulate cortex, prelimbic cortex, dorsal striatum and ventral pallidum of AGT rats compared with control animals. However, AGT had no significant effect on brain monoamine levels. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate that D1 receptors in corticostriatal circuitry down-regulate in response to AGT. This compensatory effect in D1 receptors may result from increased DA-ergic tone in AGT rats and underlie the resilience of these animals to the disruptive effects of D1 receptor activation on spatial working memory.The authors’ research is funded by the Wellcome Trust (grant number 086871/Z/08/Z), the MRC (G0701500), a joint award from the MRC (G1000183) and Wellcome Trust (093875/Z/10/ Z) in support of the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at Cambridge University, and an MRC strategic award to the Imperial College-Cambridge University-Manchester University (ICCAM) addiction cluster (G1000018).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00213-016-4405-8

Locating Community among People with Schizophrenia living in a Diverse Urban Environment

Increasing the community participation of people with severe mental illness is a primary goal of recovery-oriented services. Despite this emphasis, the construct of community remains understudied and poorly articulated. This study provides an in-depth examination of the experiences, beliefs, behaviors, and spaces that constitute community participation for a highly diverse group of people with schizophrenia who are urban dwellers. An in-depth, longitudinal qualitative design was employed with 30 individuals with schizophrenia residing in inner-city neighborhoods in Canada’s largest city. For these individuals, community participation is a dynamic process, shaped by illness and non-illness-associated social relationships and spaces, self-concept, and the resources accessible to the person. The complexity of factors that are associated with “community” for people with schizophrenia, with overlays of culture, poverty, victimization, and discrimination, calls for a critical examination of the community rhetoric employed in practice and policy contexts

Commissioning of the CMS High Level Trigger

The CMS experiment will collect data from the proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a centre-of-mass energy up to 14 TeV. The CMS trigger system is designed to cope with unprecedented luminosities and LHC bunch-crossing rates up to 40 MHz. The unique CMS trigger architecture only employs two trigger levels. The Level-1 trigger is implemented using custom electronics, while the High Level Trigger (HLT) is based on software algorithms running on a large cluster of commercial processors, the Event Filter Farm. We present the major functionalities of the CMS High Level Trigger system as of the starting of LHC beams operations in September 2008. The validation of the HLT system in the online environment with Monte Carlo simulated data and its commissioning during cosmic rays data taking campaigns are discussed in detail. We conclude with the description of the HLT operations with the first circulating LHC beams before the incident occurred the 19th September 2008

The CMS Magnetic Field Map Performance

Peer reviewe

Screening of DUB activity and specificity by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry

Deubiquitylases (DUBs) are key regulators of the ubiquitin system which cleave ubiquitin moieties from proteins and polyubiquitin chains. Several DUBs have been implicated in various diseases and are attractive drug targets. We have developed a sensitive and fast assay to quantify in vitro DUB enzyme activity using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Unlike other current assays, this method uses unmodified substrates, such as diubiquitin topoisomers. By analyzing 42 human DUBs against all diubiquitin topoisomers we provide an extensive characterization of DUB activity and specificity. Our results confirm the high specificity of many members of the OTU and JAMM DUB families and highlight that all USPs tested display low linkage selectivity. We also demonstrate that this assay can be deployed to assess the potency and specificity of DUB inhibitors by profiling 11 compounds against a panel of 32 DUBs

Production of Scalar Higgs Bosons Associated with Z0Z^0 Boson at the CERN LHC in the MSSM

We investigate the associated production of a scalar Higgs boson ($h^0$ or $H^0$) with $Z^0$ boson in the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM) at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), including the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ annihilation at the tree level and gluon fusion via quark and squark loops. We quantitatively analyze the total cross sections in the mSUGRA scenario. For the production of $h^0$ associated with $Z^0$, we find that in most of the parameter regions, the contributions from initial $b\bar{b}$ and $gg$ are at a level of one percent of the total cross section and therefore almost insignificant. For the production of $H^0$ associated with $Z^0$, the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ channel can be much larger than those from light quark initial states. Especially for large $\tan\beta$, the increment can reach about one order of magnitude. Thus, when considering the associated production of $H^0$ and $Z^0$ at the LHC, the contributions from $b\bar{b}$ annihilation should be taken into account seriously.Comment: 19 pages, 8 figures, RevTeX4; one reference added, minor changes, conclusion unchanged; Journal-ref adde