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Joseph Warton claimed that The Floure and the Leafe, thought in the eighteenth century to be by Chaucer, was an ‘exquisite vision’ in itself, which ‘has received a thousand new graces from the spirited and harmonious’ version by Dryden. Dryden’s success with his Flower and the Leaf encouraged others to turn to the non-Chaucerian poems of Speght’s edition—some of them offered as genuine, others by writers other than Chaucer. They are mainly ‘visionary’ or ‘allegorical’ in nature and deal with the experience of love, seen from different viewpoints, mingling pathos with satire, and implying attitudes towards women which vary from religious veneration to contempt. The chapter begins by considering the anonymous Lamentation of Mary Magdalene and then compares two versions of The Court of Love: Arthur Maynwaring’s rakish rendering and the more restrained version by Alexander Catcott. John Dart renders The Complaint of the Black Knight in ways that highlight its pathos and affinities with Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite. George Sewell makes his Proclamation of Cupid something of a defence of all women. William Cooke’s The Cuckow and the Nightingale (1774), and Wordsworth’s version of this (1801) keep closer to the letter of their original. Wordsworth’s is a restoration rather than a translation, giving his impression of an old poem rather than an impression of an imaginary dream-walk in a real wood. Dryden had made his version of The Floure and the Leaf reflect on his own times, suggesting a visionary reconciliation of the troubles of his century.

This chapter examines the criticism of Chaucer by John Dryden, famously described by Samuel Johnson as ‘the father of English criticism’. Dryden’s remarks on Chaucer in the Preface to his Fables Ancient and Modern are discussed in detail, with particular attention being paid to the paradoxical and apparently contradictory suggestions that they contain, and to the seemingly rambling and unmethodical style of Dryden’s exposition. Dryden’s understanding of Chaucer’s metre and versification are examined and compared with those of Chaucer’s editors, Urry and Thomas Morell. It is argued that contrary to the suggestions of some later commentators, Dryden’s remarks about the imperfections of Chaucer’s metrics are perfectly understandable in the light of the texts of Chaucer that were available to him, since no form of pronunciation could have made those texts scan consistently as iambic pentameter. Dryden’s larger suggestion that Chaucer is both antiquated and comparable to Virgil is explored. Dryden’s admiration for Chaucer’s good sense, comprehensive soul, descriptions of human nature, and perpetual paternal place in the course of English poetry is described in relation to Dryden’s master paradox: that the laws governing human nature are inescapably permanent, while every single aspect of their manifestations changes continually and inexorably.

This Introduction offers a discussion, based on Pope’s Temple of Fame, of the difficulties of assessing the standing and influence of any poet at one time, or across stretches of time, and of determining the effects of one poem closely modelled on another. It is asked what the conditions are that enable some poetical works to survive the depredations of time. How is it that some voices continue to be heard despite the ever-changing cacophony of the House of Rumour? The Introduction then notes the general lack of interest in Chaucer by modern students of eighteenth-century poetry, and describes, in general terms, the eighteenth-century editions and biographies of Chaucer and the various kinds of translation and imitation of his work that were made in the period.

Of all Chaucer’s personages, the Wife of Bath was the most celebrated in the eighteenth century. The words of her Prologue and Tale—or reports or imitations of her words—appear in a wide variety of forms: plays, translations, imitations, dictionaries, anthologies, poetic commonplace books, and in the footnotes to editions of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and occasionally Horace and Juvenal. Presentations of the Wife vary from Blake’s monster to the figure who talks her way into heaven itself in the much-reprinted ballad The Wanton Wife of Bath. This chapter discusses the depictions of the Wife in John Gay’s The Wife of Bath (1713), in versions of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, by Pope and by Andrew Jackson, and in retellings of The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Richard Brathwaite, Dryden, George Ellis, and Voltaire.

This chapter investigates the presence of Chaucer in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755, 2nd edn, 1773). There are considerable difficulties in reconciling remarks in Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, his plans for an edition of Chaucer, and his references to Chaucer in different parts of the Dictionary. Johnson presented Chaucer with difficulties of every kind, as a historian of the language, as a historian of the course of English poetry, and as a literary critic. His decision to confine his illustrative examples to works composed during and after the sixteenth century should have excluded Chaucer entirely. But Chaucer creeps in (often via Junius’s Etymologicon). Johnson cites lines that appear nowhere in Chaucer’s texts, and misquotes some that do. Some Chaucerian words and phrases (‘Mars armipotent’, ‘gladder’) are attributed to Dryden rather than to their source in Chaucer, and the reader of the Dictionary is offered a great many passages of Chaucer via Dryden. So frequent, indeed, is citation of Dryden’s Chaucerian versions, that some works (e.g. The Character of a Good Parson) appear piecemeal almost entire in the Dictionary.

This chapter deals with eighteenth-century responses to Chaucer’s ‘indecent’ tales. The most popular and most frequently translated versions from The Canterbury Tales were those including indecency of one kind or another. In the earlier eighteenth century, there were mildly indecent poems written in imitation of Chaucer’s ‘style’—some of which were themselves translated into modern versions. This chapter discusses these poems, and versions of The Merchant’s Tale by Pope, The Shipman’s Tale by John Markland and Henry Travers, The Miller’s Tale by Richard Brathwaite, Samuel Cobb, John Smith, and Anon (1791), and The Reeve’s Tale by Anon (1715), Henry Travers, and Thomas Betterton. A central theme is the interest of many translators in the comic dimension of Chaucer’s tales rather than their obscenity as such. Consideration is given to the desire of some translators at the end of the eighteenth century to keep close to Chaucer’s words while avoiding indecency—a tension exhibited in Wordsworth’s Phœbus and the Crow, a version of The Manciple’s Tale. The chapter ends with a consideration of Thomas Betterton’s version of The Reeve’s Tale, which draws on other Chaucer tales to alter Chaucer’s ending, making the tale more conducive to readerly merriment than it is with Chaucer’s coarser and more brutal conclusion. In this poem, as elsewhere in versions of the comic tales, particular, and admiring, attention is paid to the wit and resourcefulness of some of Chaucer’s female characters.

This chapter explores the diverse and sometimes conflicting accounts of Chaucer that were inherited by eighteenth-century writers from their predecessors. The ‘Testimonies’ on Chaucer in Thomas Speght’s editions of 1598 and 1602 are compared and contrasted with those in John Urry’s edition of 1721. The chapter discusses the importance given to Chaucer in poems tracing the overall progress of English poetry by Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, George Daniel, Joseph Addison, Samuel Cobb, and Samuel Wesley. It also investigates the critical accounts of Chaucer by Thomas Rymer, Sir Thomas Pope Blount, and their relation to the same critics’ responses to the poetry of Spenser, and to more recent poetry by Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham. The chapter attempts to distinguish between those who regarded Chaucer as the ‘father’ of English poetry only in the sense of a distant forebear and those who saw him as an active progenitor of poetry in the immediate present. It questions the assumption that Chaucer’s standing was in continuous and universal decline, and explores the way in which Sir John Mennes, Charles Gildon, and Samuel Pepys were able to perceive the strength of Chaucer’s thought, despite the antiquity of his language.

This chapter deals with The Cock and the Fox, Dryden’s version of Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Taking its cue from John Miller’s commentary (1761), and Sir Walter Scott’s suggestion that Dryden’s embellishments to Chaucer’s poem represent those sparks ‘which genius strikes out when in collision with the work of a kindred spirit’, the chapter concentrates on the ways in which Dryden drew on solemn works (particularly Paradise Lost) and on political and theological controversies of his own day to reveal Chaucer’s tale as a poem which, as Scott put it, ‘in grave, ironical narrative, liveliness of illustration, and happiness of humorous description, yields to none that ever was written’. The Cock and the Fox, this chapter suggests, offers an exemplary model of the reading process, which inevitably involves readers’ experience of life and of other related reading, as well as their response to the work which is their immediate concern.

Dryden’s critical remarks on Chaucer were felt to have been given crucial illustration and support in his reworkings of a number of Chaucerian poems. This chapter is devoted to Palamon and Arcite, Dryden’s translation of Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. It examines two remarkable critical claims: Dryden’s own assertion that The Knight’s Tale was a poem resembling, in kind and in quality, the Aeneid and the Iliad, and Thomas Warton’s belief that Chaucer’s poem had contributed to making Dryden’s version ‘the most animated and harmonious piece of versification in the English language’. Both these views met with both resistance and approval during the eighteenth century, but with the latter predominating. Thomas Gray considered that in Palamon and Arcite Dryden had forged, selected, or invented a poetic diction that was internally coherent and effectively free of the linguistic conventions of any time. Thomas Morell and others drew attention to the shared presence and treatment of the gods—and human responses to those gods—in Chaucer, Homer, and Dryden. Dryden, this chapter suggests, positively embraced the anachronisms in The Knight’s Tale to which Johnson was to object. His translation abounds in echoes of other writers whose sentiments were analogous to Chaucer’s or had been inspired by him. His overall endeavour was to bring the largest possible range of human and literary experience to his poem.

After a brief general survey of the responses to Chaucer that followed after Dryden’s Fables, this chapter concentrates on three related topics: eighteenth-century accounts of Chaucer’s characterization in The Canterbury Tales; attempts to divine the character of Chaucer the Man from his Works; and different (and sometimes conflicting) understandings of the character and characteristics of Chaucer’s verse. It is argued that Chaucer’s characters were seen by commentators from Dryden to Blake both as vivid portrayals of his contemporaries and as exemplary illustrations of permanent features of human nature. Attempts to derive impressions of Chaucer the Man from the poet’s Work (and to interpret the Work in the light of the Life), it is shown, were often vitiated by the unreliability of the sources cited—many of them poems attributed to Chaucer but not actually by him. The short poem thought to have been written by Chaucer speaking in propria persona on his deathbed (and translated into modern English by Walter Harte and Christopher Smart), offered eighteenth-century readers an image of the poet as a man of philosophical wisdom and serenity. The debate on the merits and defects of Chaucer’s versification (and their significance for the evaluation of his work) continued through the editions of Urry, Morell, and Thomas Tyrwhitt. The issues raised in that debate are investigated by examining the treatment of similar portions of Chaucer’s texts by his various editors and commentators.

This chapter investigates the interest shown by Joseph and Thomas Warton, Richard Hurd, and others in the ‘wild’, ‘pathetic’, ‘romantic’, and distinctly ‘medieval’ aspects of Chaucer’s work. It explores the contradiction between two accounts of ‘Chaucer’: one that saw him as emerging into the light of ‘nature’ from a dark age of ill-metred romance (as mocked in the tale of Sir Topas), and another in which he was seen as ‘wild and fantastical’ and as a model for modern poems that might fall into the ‘romantic’ category. The chapter explores the relative neglect in the eighteenth century of Troilus and Criseyde and offers a full account of George Ogle’s version of The Clerk’s Tale, examining both its status as a moral fable and Ogle’s framing of that fable in such a way as to complicate its moral perspective. The chapter also documents the way in which, for some readers, it was the Chaucer ‘who left untold / The story of Cambuscan Bold’ who appealed most strongly: The Squire’s Tale, unfinished as it was, was considered by many as Chaucer’s ‘capital poem’. The chapter examines attempts to complete the tale by Edmund Spenser, Samuel Boyce, George Ogle, and others.

This study investigated whether therapeutically relevant concentrations of fluoxetine, which have been shown to reduce plasma glucose and glycated haemoglobin independent of changes in food intake and body weight, regulate beta-cell function and improve glucose homeostasis.Cell viability, insulin secretion, beta-cell proliferation and apoptosis were assessed after exposure of MIN6 beta cells or isolated mouse and human islets to 0.1, 1 or 10 μmol/L fluoxetine. The effect of fluoxetine (10 mg/kg body weight) administration on glucose homeostasis and islet function was also examined in ob/ob mice.Exposure of MIN6 cells and mouse islets to 0.1 and 1 μmol/L fluoxetine for 72 hours did not compromise cell viability but 10 μmol/L fluoxetine significantly increased Trypan blue uptake. The dose of 1 μmol/L fluoxetine significantly increased beta-cell proliferation and protected islet cells from cytokine-induced apoptosis. In addition, 1 μmol/L fluoxetine induced rapid and reversible potentiation of glucose-stimulated insulin secretion from islets isolated from mice, and from lean and obese human donors. Finally, intraperitoneal administration of fluoxetine to ob/ob mice over 14 days improved glucose tolerance and resulted in significant increases in beta-cell proliferation and enhanced insulin secretory capacity.These data are consistent with a role for fluoxetine in regulating glucose homeostasis through direct effects on beta cells. Fluoxetine thus demonstrates promise as a preferential antidepressant for patients with concomitant occurrence of depression and diabetes.

The Community Correction Order, introduced in Victoria, Australia in 2012, provides a sentencing option that enables eligible offenders to serve their sanction in the community, with access to treatment or other rehabilitative activities. This paper contributes to a scant body of research investigating the specific needs of this group, their barriers to inclusion and the extent to which they experience the rehabilitative aspects of Community Correction Orders. It draws on survey data collected from 200 adults (137 men and 63 women) on Community Correction Orders in outer west metropolitan Melbourne and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with a sub-set of 20 participants. Long-term unemployment, severe economic hardship, physical and mental health issues, social isolation and troubled personal relationships were common. While participants experienced the punitive aspects of Community Correction Orders, there was limited evidence that they were supported to address key issues that may be predictive of future offending. Support to re/engage in education, training and employment was a key area of unmet need and engagement in other therapeutic programs was low. Opportunities to enhance the rehabilitative potential of Community Correction Orders are discussed, with the paper highlighting that there is a need for rigorous evaluation of community work program activities.

The soils of the Maritime and sub-Antarctic experience extreme environmental conditions but nonetheless host biological communities that can survive low temperatures, limited water availability and short day lengths or even the complete absence of solar radiation during the winter. We determined the soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (N), soil microbial biomass (SMB), labile carbon (LC) and respiration rate (RR) in soil samples from the longest latitudinal transect (approximately 2,000 km) ever sampled exclusively in the Maritime and sub-Antarctic, comprising 69 sites located between South Georgia (54°S) and south-eastern Alexander Island (72°S). With the exception of the most northerly location (South Georgia), the greatest SMB values occurred at 67–68°S, despite the harsh environmental conditions. This is consistent with the relative nutrient richness of the soils at these latitudes, as indicated by large SOC and total soil N concentrations, which are in turn probably linked to more abundant guano and excreta deposition by sea birds and seals, which have fewer and smaller areas of ice-free terrain to land or haul out on further south. South of 68°S, SOC values declined with increasing latitude, which is probably due to increasingly extreme environmental conditions. We also found that the SOC and SMB values, the proportion of SOC considered labile (LC/SOC) and the carbon mineralization rates expressed as either RR/SOC or RR/SMB were all small compared with values from less extreme temperate and tropical regions. However, the proportion of the SOC in the microbial biomass (SMB/SOC) was substantially greater than that reported for non-polar soils. We conclude that although the soils of the Maritime and sub-Antarctic have small and relatively inactive microbial communities, they are characterized by efficient conversion of organic resources into microbial biomass and large affinities for added substrates. Highlights: Soil carbon parameters are reported from sites along the longest latitudinal transect in Antarctica ever sampled. The soil microbial biomass tended to peak at 67–68°S, coinciding with relative SOC and N abundance in the soil, probably arising from guano and excreta from sea birds and mammals. The soil microbial community was small but highly efficient at converting organic resources into microbial biomass, as indicated by large microbial biomass/soil organic carbon ratios.

OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to identify the demographic and clinical features in an urban cohort of people with type 1 diabetes who developed a ≥50% decline in estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We evaluated 5,261 people with type 1 diabetes (51% female, 13.4% African Caribbean) with baseline eGFR >45 mL/min/1.73 m2 between 2004 and 2018. The primary end point was an eGFR decline of ≥50% from baseline with a final eGFR RESULTS Of the cohort, 263 (5%) reached the primary end point. These individuals were more likely to be of African Caribbean ethnicity, be older, have a longer duration of diabetes, have higher systolic blood pressure and HbA1c, have more prevalent retinopathy, and have higher albuminuria (all P < 0.05). In multivariable Cox regression models, African Caribbean ethnicity emerged as a significant risk factor for the primary end point (hazard ratio 1.57, 95% CI 1.19, 2.08) compared with other ethnicities and independent of established risk factors (P < 0.01). The incidence rate for the primary end point in African Caribbean people was double that in non–African Caribbean people (16 vs. 7.7 per 1000 patient-years, P < 0.001). A similar significant independent impact of African Caribbean ethnicity for secondary end points (≥40% and ≥30% fall in eGFR) was observed. CONCLUSIONS We report a novel observation that African Caribbean ethnicity increased the risk of kidney function loss in people with type 1 diabetes, an effect that was independent of traditional risk factors. Further studies are needed to examine the associated pathophysiology that may explain this observation.

Aims: Duodenal mucosal resurfacing (DMR) is an endoscopic procedure developed to improve metabolic parameters and restore insulin sensitivity in patients with diabetes. Here we report long-term DMR safety and efficacy from the REVITA-1 study. Materials and Methods: REVITA-1 was a prospective, single-arm, open-label, multicenter study of DMR feasibility, safety, and efficacy in patients with type 2 diabetes (hemoglobin A1c [HbA1c] of 7.5–10.0% (58–86 mmol/mol)) on oral medication. Safety and glycemic (HbA1c), hepatic (alanine aminotransferase [ALT]), and cardiovascular (HDL, triglyceride [TG]/HDL ratio) efficacy parameters were assessed (P values presented for LS mean change). Results: Mean ± SD HbA1c levels reduced from 8.5 ± 0.7% (69.1 ± 7.1 mmol/mol) at baseline (N = 34) to 7.5 ± 0.8% (58.9 ± 8.8 mmol/mol) at 6 months (P < 0.001); and this reduction was sustained through 24 months post-DMR (7.5 ± 1.1% [59.0 ± 12.3 mmol/mol], P < 0.001) while in greater than 50% of patients, glucose-lowering therapy was reduced or unchanged. ALT decreased from 38.1 ± 21.1 U/L at baseline to 32.5 ± 22.1 U/L at 24 months (P = 0.048). HDL and TG/HDL improved during 24-months of follow-up. No device- or procedure-related serious adverse events, unanticipated device effects, or hypoglycemic events were noted between 12 and 24 months post-DMR. Conclusions: DMR is associated with durable improvements in insulin sensitivity and multiple downstream metabolic parameters through 24 months post-treatment in type 2 diabetes. Clinical trial reg. no. NCT02413567, clinicaltrials.gov.

Key messages The number of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) worldwide is expected to increase from 463 million in 2019 to 700 million in 2045, with a prevalence of more than 10% in Europe. Besides a role for genetics, causative factors include obesity, diet high in refined sugar and fat, and sedentary lifestyle. These factors may contribute to increased hepatic and peripheral insulin resistance, and thereafter pancreatic beta cells increase their insulin production to facilitate glucose uptake. …

Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell were almost exact contemporaries. Born within two years of one another, both men attended Magdalen College, Oxford, in their youth, and they both took up their studies at the college in the wake of the Glorious Revolution. From this moment onward, the lives and public careers of Addison and Sacheverell would be curiously intertwined. Scholarship and college life would bring them together as friends, but politics and public fame would pull them apart. A contrast between the agreeable Addison and the distasteful Sacheverell is commonplace in eighteenth-century studies, and not without reason. As perhaps the chief proponent of a new culture of ‘politeness’ for post-revolutionary Britain, Addison is well known for his friendliness, if not perhaps for his volubility, in company. Addison’s powerful reputation as the patron saint of eighteenth-century politeness did not sit well with his ties to Sacheverell, whose firebrand reputation was deeply controversial in his lifetime and only declined further as time went by. For this reason, the youthful friendship of the two Magdalen scholars has been a source of awkwardness for later commentators. This chapter places the friendship between Addison and Sacheverell within the context of post-revolutionary political and literary culture

Background People with psychotic disorders have reduced life expectancy largely because of physical health problems, especially cardiovascular disease, that are complicated by the use of tobacco and cannabis. Objectives We set out to (1) chart lifestyle and substance use choices and the emergence of cardiometabolic risk from the earliest presentation with psychosis, (2) develop a pragmatic health promotion intervention integrated within the clinical teams to improve the lifestyle choices and health outcomes of people with psychosis and (3) evaluate the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of that health promotion intervention. Design We performed a longitudinal cohort study of people presenting with their first episode of psychosis in three mental health trusts and followed up participants for 1 year [work package 1, physical health and substance use measures in first episode of psychosis (PUMP)]. We used an iterative Delphi methodology to develop and refine a modular health promotion intervention, improving physical health and reducing substance use in psychosis (IMPaCT) therapy, which was to be delivered by the patient’s usual care co-ordinator and used motivational interviewing techniques and cognitive–behavioural therapy to improve health choices of people with psychosis (work package 2). We then conducted a multicentre, two-arm, parallel-cluster, randomised controlled trial to determine the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of using the intervention with people with established psychosis (work package 3: IMPaCT randomised controlled trial) in five UK mental health trusts. The work took place between 2008 and 2014. Participants All people aged between 16 and 65 years within 6 months of their first presentation with a non-organic psychosis and who were proficient in English were eligible for inclusion in the PUMP study. Participants in the work package 2 training development were staff selected from a range of settings, working with psychosis. Participants in the phase 3 Delphi consensus and manual development comprised three expert groups of (1) therapists/researchers recruited from the local and national community, (2) clinicians and (3) service users, each of whom took part in two iterative review and feedback sessions. For work package 3, IMPaCT randomised controlled trial, care co-ordinators in participating community mental health teams who were permanently employed and had a minimum of four eligible patients (i.e. aged between 18 and 65 years with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder) on their caseload were eligible to participate. In studies 1 and 3, patient participants were ineligible if they were pregnant or had a major illness that would have had an impact on their metabolic status or if they had a significant learning disability. All participants were included in the study only after giving written confirmed consent. Main outcome measures Cardiometabolic risk markers, including rates of obesity and central obesity, and levels of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and lipids, were the main outcomes in work package 1 (PUMP), with descriptive data presented on substance use. Our primary outcome measure for the IMPaCT randomised controlled trial was the physical or mental health component Short Form questionnaire-36 items quality-of-life scores at 12 months. Results Obesity rates rose from 18% at first presentation with psychosis to 24% by 1 year, but cardiometabolic risk was not associated with baseline lifestyle and substance use choices. Patterns of increase in the levels of HbA1c over the year following first presentation showed variation by ethnic group. We recruited 104 care co-ordinators, of whom 52 (with 213 patients) were randomised to deliver IMPaCT therapy and 52 (with 193 patients) were randomised to deliver treatment as usual, in keeping with our power calculations. Of these 406 participants with established psychosis, 318 (78%) and 301 (74%) participants, respectively, attended the 12- and 15-month follow-ups. We found no significant effect of IMPaCT therapy compared with treatment as usual on the physical or mental health component Short Form questionnaire-36 items scores at either time point in an intention-to-treat analysis [physical health score (‘d’) –0.17 at 12 months and –0.09 at 15 months; mental health score (‘d’) 0.03 at 12 months and –0.05 at 15 months] or on costs. Nor did we find an effect on other cardiovascular risk indicators, including diabetes, except in the case of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which showed a trend for greater benefit with IMPaCT therapy than with treatment as usual (treatment effect 0.085, 95% confidence interval 0.007 to 0.16; p = 0.034). Limitations Follow-up in work package 1 was challenging, with 127 out of 293 participants attending; however, there was no difference in cardiometabolic measures or demographic factors at baseline between those who attended for follow-up and those who did not. In work package 3, the IMPaCT randomised controlled trial, care co-ordinators struggled to provide additional time to their patients that was devoted to the health promotion intervention on top of their usual clinical care contact with them. Conclusions Cardiometabolic risk is prominent even soon after first presentation with psychosis and increases over time. Lifestyle choices and substance use habits at first presentation do not predict those who will be most cardiometabolically compromised 1 year later. Training and supervising care co-ordinators to deliver a health promotion intervention to their own patients on top of routine care is not effective in the NHS for improving quality of life or reducing cardiometabolic risk. Future work Further work is needed to develop and evaluate effective, cost-effective and affordable ways of preventing the emergence of and reversing existing cardiometabolic risk indicators in people with psychosis. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN58667926. Funding This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research programme and will be published in full in Programme Grants for Applied Research; Vol. 8, No. 1. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

In 2008 we published an article in this journal entitled Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership (Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008). The article was based on a major literature re...

Abiotic and biotic factors control ecosystem biodiversity, but their relative contributions remain unclear. The ultraoligotrophic ecosystem of the Antarctic Dry Valleys, a simple yet highly heterogeneous ecosystem, is a natural laboratory well-suited for resolving the abiotic and biotic controls of community structure. We undertook a multidisciplinary investigation to capture ecologically relevant biotic and abiotic attributes of more than 500 sites in the Dry Valleys, encompassing observed landscape heterogeneities across more than 200 km2. Using richness of autotrophic and heterotrophic taxa as a proxy for functional complexity, we linked measured variables in a parsimonious yet comprehensive structural equation model that explained significant variations in biological complexity and identified landscape-scale and fine-scale abiotic factors as the primary drivers of diversity. However, the inclusion of linkages among functional groups was essential for constructing the best-fitting model. Our findings support the notion that biotic interactions make crucial contributions even in an extremely simple ecosystem., Charles Lee, Daniel Laughlin et al. use structural equation modeling to analyze ecological data from more than 500 sites in the Antarctic Dry Valleys. They find that although abiotic factors are the primary drivers of biodiversity variation, biotic interactions are needed to explain the data fully and may play previously underestimated roles.

Abiotic factors are major determinants of soil animal distributions and their dominant role is pronounced in extreme ecosystems, with biotic interactions seemingly playing a minor role. We modelled co-occurrence and distribution of the three nematode species that dominate the soil food web of the McMurdo Dry Valleys (Antarctica). Abiotic factors, other biotic groups, and autocorrelation all contributed to structuring nematode species distributions. However, after removing their effects, we found that the presence of the most abundant nematode species greatly, and negatively, affected the probability of detecting one of the other two species. We observed similar patterns in relative abundances for two out of three pairs of species. Harsh abiotic conditions alone are insufficient to explain contemporary nematode distributions whereas the role of negative biotic interactions has been largely underestimated in soil. The future challenge is to understand how the effects of global change on biotic interactions will alter species coexistence., Tancredi Caruso et al. analyze biodiversity survey data from the McMurdo Dry Valleys, an extreme desert ecosystem in Antarctica in which abiotic factors are thought to determine species distributions. Focusing on three nematode species, they find that abiotic factors alone cannot explain the data and interaction between species have been historically underestimated.

The loss of cellular water (desiccation) and the resulting low cytosolic water activity are major stress factors for life. Numerous prokaryotic and eukaryotic taxa have evolved molecular and physiological adaptions to periods of low water availability or water-limited environments that occur across the terrestrial Earth. The changes within cells during the processes of desiccation and rehydration, from the activation (and inactivation) of biosynthetic pathways to the accumulation of compatible solutes, have been studied in considerable detail. However, relatively little is known on the metabolic status of organisms in the desiccated state; that is, in the sometimes extended periods between the drying and rewetting phases. During these periods, which can extend beyond decades and which we term 'anhydrobiosis', organismal survival could be dependent on a continued supply of energy to maintain the basal metabolic processes necessary for critical functions such as macromolecular repair. Here, we review the state of knowledge relating to the function of microorganisms during the anhydrobiotic state, highlighting substantial gaps in our understanding of qualitative and quantitative aspects of molecular and biochemical processes in desiccated cells.

This chapter deals with forfeiture clauses, which are designed to provide a contractually regulated early end to the obligations of the parties under the contract. It explains how a forfeiture clause may allow determination for cause or determination without cause. It also points out that a forfeiture clause will not exclude common law rights to terminate and subsist in parallel to the forfeiture clause. This chapter assesses the standard forms of contract that often refer to forfeiture clauses as termination clauses and sometimes use the language of rescission. It defines rescission as the unwinding of a contract back to the point of its inception.