Ninth Oxford Conference Organised by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC)

Conference Report

Ninth Oxford Conference Organised by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC)     

Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication

Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui. eds. Oxford: Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 1996.664 pp.     

Inside Organizations: Anthropologists at Work

Inside Organizations: Anthropologists at Work. David N. Gellner and Eric Hirsch. eds. Oxford: Oxford International Publishers, 2001. 256 pp.     

World Health and the Oxford International Biomedical Centre

Some of the problems associated with World Health are considered. The Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC) was launched in 1992 to respond to those challenges. Its mission and goals, track record, and new programmes are described.     

Trends in African Historical Studies

Ivory and Slaves: Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century. Edward A. Alpers .
The Traditional History of the Jie of Uganda. John Lamphear . Oxford Studies in African Affairs, John D. Hargreaves and George Shepperson, eds.
Kings and Kinsmen: Early Mbundu States in Angola. Joseph C. Miller . Oxford Studies in African Affairs, John D. Hargreaves and George Shepperson, eds.
Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. Ivor Wilks .     

Tenth Oxford Conference Organized by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (OIBC)

A series of events organized at Mansfield College and Magdalen College School by Oxford International Biomedical Centre from March 29th to April 1st 2004, is reported. There were more than 60 active participants (speakers, moderators and discussants) plus the general audience. A special programme for the group of five youngsters from developing and restructuring countries, for the first time in the 10 years history of OIBC conferences, was also run.     

High β diversity in the flora of Californian serpentine 'islands'

Identification of global biodiversity hotspots is a leading conservationpriority ( Hotspots.Conservation International, Washington, DC; Precious Heritage: The Statusof Biodiversity in the United States. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK), but weknow little about the nature and structure of such hotspots. Botanical richnessin one recently identified hotspot, the California Floristic Province, has longbeen attributed by evolutionists to edaphic and climatic heterogeneity. Here we demonstrate that the flora restricted (endemic) toserpentine soil, the state's most botanically distinctive substrate, showsunusually high ' diversity' – i.e., spatial variation inspecies composition – among regions, although ''diversity within any given region is low. Conservation of an endemic-rich florarequires a network of sites to capture this among-region or spatial component ofdiversity.     

Family values

Evolutionary Genetics (2nd edn) by J. Maynard Smith, Oxford University Press, 1998. £50.00 hbk, £19.95 pbk (368 pages) ISBN 0 19 850232 X/0 19 850231 1Selection in Natural Populations by J.B. Mitton, Oxford University Press, 1998. £50.00 hbk (252 pages) ISBN 0 19 506352 XProgress and Prospects in Evolutionary Biology edited by J.R. Powell, Oxford University Press, 1997. £49.50 hbk (576 pages) ISBN 0 19 507691 5Evolution on Islands edited by P.R. Grant, Oxford University Press, 1997. £24.99 pbk (348 pages) ISBN 0 19 850 1714     

The correlates of research success.

A survey was carried out of the undergraduate backgrounds and research achievements of 885 (94.1%) of all 940 medically qualified professors and readers in medical faculties in the United Kingdom. A total of 217 (24.5%) of the graduates in these senior academic positions had graduated from Oxford or Cambridge and 137 (15.5%) had an intercalated BSc. The corresponding figures for a control group matched for sex and date of graduation were 118 (13.3%) for Oxford and Cambridge (academic to control odds ratio 2.11:1) and 34 (3.8%) for the BSc (odds ratio 4.58:1). Those with an intercalated BSc in the clinical specialties raised substantially more research grants from the Medical Research Council than their peers from Oxford and Cambridge or those without a BSc. The Oxford and Cambridge group raised more grants in the non-clinical specialties. Bibliometric analysis was carried out on the United Kingdom graduates within the broad specialty of medicine (n = 218) matched for date of graduation. Academics with a BSc had a better publication record over 10 years (median number of original publications 72) than the Oxford and Cambridge group (median 59) and a substantially better record than those from other schools without a BSc (median 46). Citation analysis was carried out on subsets of the above sample matched for date of graduation and frequency of publication. Those with an intercalated BSc were cited more often (8.04 citations/paper) than the Oxford and Cambridge graduates (7.63) and substantially more than their peers without a BSc (4.16). These data show very clearly that research training or experience, or both, as an undergraduate has a substantial influence on career development and correlates positively with subsequent research performance many years later.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The Ethics of Reproductive Technology edited by Kenneth D. Alpern. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992
Medical Confidentiality and Legal Privilege by Jean V. McHale. London and New York: Routledge, 1993
The Codes of Codes , edited by Daniel J. Kevles and Leroy Hood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992
The Troubled Dream of Life: Living with Mortality by Daniel Callahan. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1993
International Directory of Bioethics Organizations. Anita L. Nolen and Mary Carrington Coutts, editors. Bioethics Resource Series, Volume 1. Washington, DC: Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University, 1993
The Codification of Medical Morality, Volume One: Medical Ethics and Etiquette in the Eighteenth Century , edited by Robert Baker, Dorothy Porter and Roy Porter. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993
Pursuing Parenthood: Ethical Issues in Assisted Reproduction by Paul Lauritzen. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993     

Willow growth in response to nutrients and moisture on a clay landfill cap soil. I. Growth and biomass production

The growth and biomass production by willow (Salix viminalis L.) was studied in lysimeters containing Oxford clay landfill cap soil with different amendments, bulk densities and watering regimes. Three years from planting, stem biomass in well-watered plants was least (0.28 kg plant(-1)) with high bulk density soil (1480 kg m(-3)) and no nutritional amendment but was increased 10-fold (2.53 kg plant(-1)) by reducing soil bulk density (1200 kg m3) and adding amendments. In comparison, on a sandy loam soil it was 6.23 kg plant(-1). There were similar differences in number of stems plant(-1), stem basal area plant(-1) and plant leaf area which can be attributed to low nitrogen and phosphorus levels in Oxford clay. Water stress reduced stem biomass production by 26-37% and caused higher root:stem ratios. These were also higher on Oxford clay than on the sandy loam. Successful biomass production from willow on Oxford clay landfill caps will therefore require nutritional amendment.     

Book reviews

William T. Burke. The New International Law of Fisheries: UNCLOS 1982 and Beyond. 1994. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. 382 pp. ISBN 0–19–825251‐X (cloth), $105.00.

Jon M. Van Dyke, Durwood Zealke, and Grant Hewison, eds. Freedom for the Seas in the 21st Century: Ocean Governance and Environmental Harmony. 1993. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. 504 pp. ISBN 1–55963–241–0 (cloth), $55.00. ISBN 1–55963–242–9 (paper), $27.50.     

Mentally abnormal prisoners on remand: II—Comparison of services provided by Oxford and Wessex regions

Most regional health authorities have or plan to have secure units for treating mentally abnormal offenders. A retrospective study was carried out to compare the effectiveness of the health care services for men remanded to Winchester prison from Oxford and Wessex regions over the five years 1979-83. Thirty seven (30%) of 124 prisoners from Oxford region were rejected for treatment compared with 36 (16%) of the 220 men from Wessex region. Men from Oxford region were significantly more likely to be recommended for admission to a special hospital than those from Wessex (13/124 (10%) v 9/220 (4%), respectively) and significantly less likely to be recommended for admission to a hospital in the catchment area (35/124 (28%) v 94/220 (43%)). Men on remand from Oxford region were significantly more often perceived as being disruptive or aggressive by hospital staff and more likely to be labelled as having psychopathic or personality disorders. These differences may have reflected different attitudes towards mentally abnormal offenders and the allowances in the services available in the two regions; in particular, Oxford region did not have a secure unit or a forensic psychiatrist.If mentally ill prisoners do not receive the treatment that they need they run the risk of being criminalised. Most such men are best treated in general psychiatric units; only a few require secure conditions and staff with specialised psychiatric skills.     

Performance of a new chromogenic plating medium for the isolation of Listeria monocytogenes from marine environments

AIMS: This study investigated the performance of a new chromogenic plating medium for the detection of Listeria monocytogenes from naturally contaminated samples obtained from marine environments in Morocco in comparison with the conventional plating media PALCAM and Oxford. METHODS: A total of 479 marine samples (sea water, sediment and mussels) were collected from 16 littoral sites in the region of Agadir (western centre of Morocco). They were examined for the presence of L. monocytogenes using a slight modification of the standardized French method (AFNOR V 08-055) for the detection of L. monocytogenes from food and three different isolation media: PALCAM, Oxford and a new chromogenic plating medium. RESULTS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY: The Oxford and the new chromogenic plating media were found relatively more efficient than the PALCAM medium for the isolation of L. monocytogenes (chi-square test, P < 0.05) from marine samples. However, the new chromogenic plating medium was significantly more selective for L. monocytogenes (P < 0.005) than the two other isolation media as 87.5% of the suspect colonies on this medium were indeed confirmed through identification of the isolates vs 12.7% for Oxford and only 3.8% for the PALCAM medium.     

alpha-L-fucosidase polymorphism in human semen, blood, and vaginal fluid

The diallelic enzyme alpha-L-fucosidase has been found to be highly active in semen. Eight distinct enzyme bands were observed in each homozygote and the heterozygote consisted of a combination of bands. The isoelectric points ranged between pI 4.34 and 6.65. Activity was found to be much lower in vaginal fluid, not more than three cathodal bands were visible in any sample examined. In leucocytes, 5 bands were detected in homozygotes whilst in serum only two faint anodal bands could be detected. Activity was low in vaginal fluid and could not be detected in urine or saliva. Population studies were carried out on semen samples from Oxford and Basingstoke and on lymphocyte samples from Oxford. The data were in agreement with Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium. The common allele (Fu 1) had a frequency of 0.704 in Oxford semen samples.     

‘Life after last orders’: microbiology as a career

The 2003 conference of the International Biodegradation and Biodeterioration Society (www.biodeterioration. org) and the International Biodegradation Research Group (www.ibrg.org), was held last September at the Manchester Metropolitan University. The conference, ‘Management and Control of Undesirable Microorganisms’, followed the usual format of lectures, questions, posters and social events, but an additional event was staged for younger society members. Funding from FEMS, the Federation of European Microbiology Societies, in the form of a Young Scientists Grant, enabled the attendance of delegates from across Europe including the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Russia, Uzbekistan and the UK. These delegates, and the rest of the conference, were invited to a workshop entitled ‘Life after Last Orders’, where some of the slightly older members of the Society described their career paths. Informal 5–10 minute presentations were followed by question/answer sessions, which also included some interesting contributions from the floor. The session was chaired by the two youngest members of IBBS Council, Kathryn Whitehead, a PhD student at MMU, and Chris van der Gast, from the University of Oxford Centre for Environmental Biotechnology. The following narratives describe the career paths of two ‘experienced’ microbiologists! It was fascinating to hear how the careers of one's peers had developed.     

Classification of antituberculosis herbs for remedial purposes by using fuzzy sets

Using fuzzy set theory, we created a system, that assesses a herb's usefulness for the treatment of tuberculosis, based on ethnobotanical data. We analysed two systems which contain different amount of inputs. The first system contains four inputs, the second one contains six inputs. We used the Takagi–Sugeno–Kanga model. Mamdani model is poor at representation as it needs more fuzzy rules than that of TSK to model a real world system where accuracy is demanded.It has been employed a fuzzy controller, and a fuzzy model, in successfully solving difficult control and modelling problems in practice. It is implemented in the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox in Matlab.The data for inputs are gathered in the database named SOPAT (selection of plants against tuberculosis), which is part of a project coordinated by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre. In this database there could be up to one millon plant species. It would be cumbersome to select a remedy from one (or some) of these species looking at the data base one-by-one. By means of the fuzzy set theory this remedy can be chosen very quickly.     

Genotypic and phenotypic analyses reveal distinct population structures and ecotypes for sugar beet‐associated Pseudomonas in Oxford and Auckland

Fluorescent pseudomonads represent one of the largest groups of bacteria inhabiting the surfaces of plants, but their genetic composition in planta is poorly understood. Here, we examined the population structure and diversity of fluorescent pseudomonads isolated from sugar beet grown at two geographic locations (Oxford, United Kingdom and Auckland, New Zealand). To seek evidence for niche adaptation, bacteria were sampled from three types of leaves (immature, mature, and senescent) and then characterized using a combination of genotypic and phenotypic analysis. We first performed multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of three housekeeping genes (gapA, gltA, and acnB) in a total of 152 isolates (96 from Oxford, 56 from Auckland). The concatenated sequences were grouped into 81 sequence types and 22 distinct operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Significant levels of recombination were detected, particularly for the Oxford isolates (rate of recombination to mutation (r/m) = 5.23 for the whole population). Subsequent ancestral analysis performed in STRUCTURE found evidence of six ancestral populations, and their distributions significantly differed between Oxford and Auckland. Next, their ability to grow on 95 carbon sources was assessed using the Biolog? GN2 microtiter plates. A distance matrix was generated from the raw growth data (A₆₆₀) and subjected to multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis. There was a significant correlation between substrate utilization profiles and MLSA genotypes. Both phenotypic and genotypic analyses indicated presence of a geographic structure for strains from Oxford and Auckland. Significant differences were also detected for MLSA genotypes between strains isolated from immature versus mature/senescent leaves. The fluorescent pseudomonads thus showed an ecotypic population structure, suggestive of adaptation to both geographic conditions and local plant niches.     

Classification of antituberculosis herbs for remedial purposes by using fuzzy sets

Using fuzzy set theory, we created a system, that assesses a herb's usefulness for the treatment of tuberculosis, based on ethnobotanical data. We analysed two systems which contain different amount of inputs. The first system contains four inputs, the second one contains six inputs. We used the Takagi-Sugeno-Kanga model. Mamdani model is poor at representation as it needs more fuzzy rules than that of TSK to model a real world system where accuracy is demanded. It has been employed a fuzzy controller, and a fuzzy model, in successfully solving difficult control and modelling problems in practice. It is implemented in the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox in Matlab. The data for inputs are gathered in the database named SOPAT (selection of plants against tuberculosis), which is part of a project coordinated by the Oxford International Biomedical Centre. In this database there could be up to one million plant species. It would be cumbersome to select a remedy from one (or some) of these species looking at the data base one-by-one. By means of the fuzzy set theory this remedy can be chosen very quickly.     

Problematic fossils

A. Hoffman & M. H. Nitecki (eds.) 1987: Problematic Fossil Taxa. Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics no. 5. 267 pp. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0–19–503992–0. Price £60 (bound).