University of Westminster

About: University of Westminster is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 2944 authors who have published 8426 publications receiving 200236 citations. The organization is also known as: Westminster University & Royal Polytechnic Institution.

Vitamin C mediates chemical aging of lens crystallins by the Maillard reaction in a humanized mouse model.

Abstract: Senile cataracts are associated with progressive oxidation, fragmentation, cross-linking, insolubilization, and yellow pigmentation of lens crystallins. We hypothesized that the Maillard reaction, which leads browning and aroma development during the baking of foods, would occur between the lens proteins and the highly reactive oxidation products of vitamin C. To test this hypothesis, we engineered a mouse that selectively overexpresses the human vitamin C transporter SVCT2 in the lens. Consequently, lenticular levels of vitamin C and its oxidation products were 5- to 15-fold elevated, resulting in a highly compressed aging process and accelerated formation of several protein-bound advanced Maillard reaction products identical with those of aging human lens proteins. These data strongly implicate vitamin C in lens crystallin aging and may serve as a model for protein aging in other tissues particularly rich in vitamin C, such as the hippocampal neurons and the adrenal gland. The hSVCT2 mouse is expected to facilitate the search for drugs that inhibit damage by vitamin C oxidation products.

Isolation of fluoroquinolone-resistant O25b:H4-ST131 Escherichia coli with CTX-M-14 extended-spectrum β-lactamase from UK river water

Abstract: Objectives We analysed water sampled from the River Thames in London for Escherichia coli resistant to oxyimino-cephalosporins and/or fluoroquinolones, particularly seeking isolates with CTX-M extended-spectrum s-lactamases (ESBLs) and members of the clinically important O25b:H4-ST131 lineage. Methods River water was collected from three urban sites on the River Thames by the City of London Port Health Authority on two occasions 1 week apart. Coliforms and E. coli were identified by the Quanti-Tray™ method. Disc susceptibility tests were performed and MICs were determined for E. coli isolates resistant to either ciprofloxacin or cefpodoxime and genetic relatedness was determined by PFGE and real-time PCR. PCR was used for phylogenetic and plasmid typing, to detect antibiotic resistance genes and to detect ISEcp1 upstream of blaCTX-M genes. blaCTX-M alleles were identified by sequencing. Results The mean E. coli count, as the most probable number, from the first river samples, taken on a falling tide on 23 March 2010, was 4.7?×?104/100 mL and 30 ciprofloxacin-resistant colonies were isolated. Twenty of the 30 colonies belonged to clone ST131; 10 of these had blaCTX-M-14 whereas the remaining 10 lacked ESBLs. The ST131 isolates represented two different PFGE types. No ciprofloxacin- or cefpodoxime-resistant E. coli were isolated from the second river sample taken at low tide. CTX-M-15, the most common ESBL in clinical E. coli, was not detected in the river samples. Conclusions Water from the River Thames in West London is contaminated, perhaps transiently, with antibiotic-resistant E. coli belonging to the clinically important O25b:H4-ST131 lineage.

Peacebuilding and the politics of non-linearity: rethinking ‘hidden’ agency and ‘resistance’

Abstract: This article reflects upon the shift away from linear understandings of peacebuilding, which assumed that Western ‘blueprints’ could be imposed upon non-compliant elites. Today, it is increasingly suggested, in both policy and academic literatures, that there should be a shift towards non-linear approaches. Rather than focusing upon Western policy prescriptions intra-elite bargaining and formal institutional structures, these understandings stress non-linearity, hybridity, local societal processes and practices and the importance of ‘hidden’ agency and resistance. This article highlights that, while these approaches set up a critique of liberal linear approaches, they tend to reify hybrid, non-liberal or non-linear outcomes as the product of local inter-subjective attachments. In this way, they reproduce the voluntarist and idealist understandings of liberal peace, locating the problems or barriers to peace and development at the cognitive or ideational level rather than considering the barriers of economic and social context.

State Crime, Human Rights, and the Limits of Criminology

Abstract: THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO SUGGEST HOW CRIMINOLOGY CAN REMEDY ITS neglect of the important phenomenon of state crime, without adopting such a broad definition of "crime" as to destroy what coherence criminology has as a distinct field of study. To assess the universality of our approach we employ examples from two different state traditions, Anglo-American and Turkish. Our definition allows us to examine countries as diverse as Turkey and the United Kingdom from the perspective of a continuum, rather than as two discrete, incomparable state formations -- authoritarian and democratic. One of our reasons for selecting Turkey as a comparative example is that it is a democratizing state with an authoritarian historical backdrop. Torture of detainees, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, violent public order policing, forced evacuations, the razing of whole villages, and the routine harassment of trade unionists, media workers, and human rights defenders form the human rights landscape in much of Turkey (see Amnesty International, 1998; European Commission, 1998; Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 1997, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 1999). Torture is, however, in breach of Article 17 of the Constitution and Articles 243 and 245 of the penal code, and is punishable by up to five years of imprisonment. Proposals documented in the new draft penal code are set to increase the powers of the courts in punishing state officials found guilty of torture and ill treatment of detainees. In some celebrated cases, state officials have been charged with criminal conduct, but they are few and the crimes a re many. In 1999, six police officers were sentenced to five and one-half years each for torturing a suspect to death in 1993, but most other cases against state officials have resulted in very lenient sentences, fines, or acquittals. The violence of the Turkish state is of a different order of magnitude to that employed in most liberal democracies. Yet instances of violent crime by British and American state officials are not difficult to find -- recent revelations about the Los Angeles Police Department, and allegations of brutality against officers at the Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth prisons in England are among the more obvious examples. Less well-publicized is the extent to which legally unjustifiable violence is routinely used by police to enforce social discipline in some working-class areas (Choongh, 1997; Waddington, 1999). Despite the arguments of some theorists (e.g., Giddens, 1985) to the contrary, the use and threat of physical violence remain central to state power in liberal democracies. Cover's remarks on American criminal trials bring this out vividly: If convicted the defendant customarily walks -escorted--to prolonged confinement, usually without significant disturbance to the civil appearance of the event. It is, of course, grotesque to assume that the civil facade is voluntary." ...There are societies in which contrition and shame control defendants' behaviour to a greater extent than does violence.... But I think it is unquestionably the case in the United States that most prisoners walk into prison because they know they will be dragged or beaten into prison if they do not walk (Cover, 1986: 1, 607). The legal limits of legitimate force are inherently vague -- it is impossible to define in advance exactly what form of dragging or beating the prisoner may legitimately receive -- and strict enforcement of what limits do exist is intrinsically difficult and will often be contrary to the interests of the enforcing agency. It would therefore be surprising to discover any state in which criminal or legally ambiguous acts of violence by state agents did not occur. It would be equally astounding if any state were able to eliminate the innumerable opportunities for predatory crime inherent in economic regulation and revenue-raising (Smart, 1999). Some states, however, plainly commit far more and more serious crimes than others do, and it might be expected that these differences would be among the central concerns of criminology (Comfort, 1950). …