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Fashionable Fictions and the Currency of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel, by Lauren Gillingham; pp. vii + 310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023, $110.00. Lauren Gillingham offers an alternate history of [...]

Bodies are everywhere in the poetry of Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper). They dance in ecstasy, are wound about with snakes, doze in the grass, stomp grapes for [...]

'Readers call a book good when they find it useful,' asserts Charlotte Templin in her study of literary pedagogy and the canon, 'The Male-Dominated Curriculum in English: How Did We [...]

Introduction The generation of IgA in the mucosal compartments is a dominant immunological process that is crucial for homeostasis between the gut commensal flora and the local immunological environment (1, [...], B cell activation factor of the TNF family (BAFF) is a potent B cell survival factor. BAFF overexpressing transgenic mice (BAFF-Tg mice) exhibit features of autoimmune disease, including B cell hyperplasia and hypergammaglobulinemia, and develop fatal nephritis with age. However, basal serum IgA levels are also elevated, suggesting that the pathology in these mice may be more complex than initially appreciated. Consistent with this, we demonstrate here that BAFF-Tg mice have mesangial deposits of IgA along with high circulating levels of polymeric IgA that is aberrantly glycosylated. Renal disease in BAFF-Tg mice was associated with IgA, because serum IgA was highly elevated in nephritic mice and BAFF-Tg mice with genetic deletion of IgA exhibited less renal pathology. The presence of commensal flora was essential for the elevated serum IgA phenotype, and, unexpectedly, commensal bacteria-reactive IgA antibodies were found in the blood. These data illustrate how excess B cell survival signaling perturbs the normal balance with the microbiota, leading to a breach in the normal mucosal-peripheral compartmentalization. Such breaches may predispose the nonmucosal system to certain immune diseases. Indeed, we found that a subset of patients with IgA nephropathy had elevated serum levels of a proliferation inducing ligand (APRIL), a cytokine related to BAFF. These parallels between BAFF-Tg mice and human IgA nephropathy may provide a new framework to explore connections between mucosal environments and renal pathology.

The Arctic is currently undergoing dramatic environmental transformations, but it remains largely unknown how these changes compare with long-term natural variability. Here we present a lake sediment sequence from the Canadian Arctic that records warm periods of the past 200,000 years, including the 20th century. This record provides a perspective on recent changes in the Arctic and predates by approximately 80,000 years the oldest stratigraphically intact ice core recovered from the Greenland Ice Sheet. The early Holocene and the warmest part of the Last Interglacial (Marine Isotope Stage or MIS 5e) were the only periods of the past 200,000 years with summer temperatures comparable to or exceeding today's at this site. Paleoecological and geochemical data indicate that the past three interglacial periods were characterized by similar trajectories in temperature, lake biology, and lakewater pH, all of which tracked orbitally-driven solar insolation. In recent decades, however, the study site has deviated from this recurring natural pattern and has entered an environmental regime that is unique within the past 200 millennia. chironomids | climate change | diatoms | paleolimnology | polar www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0907094106

As she sought to differentiate herself from her traditionally 'Victorian' counterparts, the New Woman interrogated and challenged her role within established social institutions. Calling for the reform of ideas about [...]

The facts of the situation are fairly straightforward: George III, 'old, mad, blind, despised, and dying,' was declared unfit to rule in 1811 and his son, the Prince of Wales, [...]

'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife' (3). The celebrated first line of Jane [...]

IN JANE AUSTEN AND THE PROVINCE OF WOMANHOOD, Alison Sulloway notes, "with the exception of Anne Elliot, all the heroines either meet their lovers at balls or their creator provides [...]

Anthropometric data was obtained from male sample of the New Zealand Fire Services to develop a sizing system appropriate for protective clothing. Data on the NZFS was found to be similar in certain vertical dimensions to data from other comparable countries, although girth dimensions differed. Information on body dimensions is now part of purchase requirements for items used by the force.

Society Dancing: Fashionable Bodies in England, 1870-1920, by Theresa Jill Buckland; pp. x + 247. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 50.00 [pound sterling], $90.00. How did the staid [...]

Balloons and round objects such as marbles, balls, peanuts and hard candy pose the greatest risk for young children who aspirate them. Researchers analyzed the records of 165 children who had surgery to remove a foreign object in their airway. Sixty-nine percent of the children were three years old or younger. Objects removed included food such as nuts, fruit pieces and popcorn. Non-food items included pen caps, small plastic pieces and coins. Five of the objects were larger than the Small Parts Test Fixture, an object used by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to determine the size of an object that could not be aspirated by a child. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 29% of all childhood deaths from asphyxiation of a foreign object between 1972 and 1992 were caused by balloons, 19% were caused by balls and marbles and 20% by toy parts., Objective.--To characterize the types, shapes, and sizes of objects causing choking or asphyxiation in children and to compare these characteristics to current standards. Design.--To evaluate morbidity, retrospective 5-year medical record survey; to evaluate mortality, data reanalysis. Settings.--Pediatric hospital and consumer product testing laboratory. Patients.--All children (n=165) who underwent endoscopy for foreign body aspiration or ingestion at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (Pa) between 1989 and 1993 and children (n=449) whose deaths due to choking on man-made objects were recorded by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) between 1972 and 1992. Main Outcome Measures.--Objects removed from children's aerodigestive tracts were characterized by location, procedure for removal, and type. Objects causing death were characterized by type, shape, and consistency. Three dimensional objects that had caused asphyxiation were analyzed by computer simulated models. Results.--Of the 165 children treated by endoscopy, 69% were 3 years of age or younger. Foreign bodies most often ingested or aspirated were food (in 36 children). and coins (in 60 children). Of 449 children whose deaths after aspirating foreign bodies were reported to the CPSC, 65% were younger than 3 years. Balloons caused 29% of deaths overall. Conforming objects such as balloons caused a significantly P

Dancing Out of Line: Ballrooms, Ballets, and Mobility in Victorian Fiction and Culture, by Molly Engelhardt; pp. xiii + 226. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009, $49.95, 44.50 [pounds sterling]. With [...]

Hope High School in Arkansas has adopted the 4:4 block schedule for the 1994-1995 school year. The model breaks down the school year into 90-day terms with four 90-minute classes per term. The schedule change was selected to maximize coverage of all essential course materials and to increase student participation in the instructional process. Block scheduling has given improved conditions for teaching and freed up more time for students to finish work at school.

Sarah Waters's novel 'Tipping the Velvet' reveals her awareness of twentieth-century relationship between performance and sexuality for women. Her protagonist and narrator, Nancy Astley's experiences in the Victorian music hall bears a troubled relationship to ideas and ideals of women's music, transforming a domestic accomplishment of the drawing room that is designed to attract a husband, into spectacle and means of employment.