scholarly journals Glasgow encounters with tropical diseases

Parasitology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 144 (12) ◽  
pp. 1561-1566
Author(s):  
FRANCIS E. G. COX

SUMMARYThe period 1875–1925 was remarkable in the history of parasitology mainly for the elucidation of the life cycles of parasites causing important parasitic diseases and the incrimination of vectors in their transmission. These discoveries were made by a small number of scientists working in the tropics a number of whom were Scots. Sir Patrick Manson, the discoverer of the mosquito transmission of filarial worms, was instrumental in directly or indirectly encouraging other Scots including Douglas Argyll-Robertson, David Blacklock, David Bruce, David Cunningham, Robert Leiper, William Leishman, George Low, Muriel Robertson and Ronald Ross, who all made significant discoveries across a wide spectrum of tropical diseases. Among these, William Leishman, Robert Leiper and Muriel Robertson were all graduates of the University of Glasgow and their achievements in the fields of leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, dracunculiasis and African sleeping sickness, together with subsequent developments in these fields, are the subjects of the ten papers in this Special Issue of Parasitology.

As already stated in a report to the Advisory Committee for the Tropical Diseases Research Fund, dated May 9, 1910, I noticed early in February, 1910, while examining in class work a stained specimen of rat’s blood infected with what was supposed to be T. gambiense , a marked peculiarity in the morphology. This peculiarity was so striking that I doubted whether the trypanosome with which I was dealing was really T. gambiense . On making enquiries I was told that the strain was derived from a case of Sleeping Sickness then in Prof. Ross’s clinic in the Royal Southern Hospital, Liverpool. To make certain that there was no error in this statement I myself infected a rat from the patient’s blood. The same forms were, however, again encountered. After convincing myself that these forms were constantly present in infected rats, and that they were not shown by the rats infected with the old laboratory strain of T. gambiense maintained at the Runcorn Laboratory, I decided through pressure of work to ask Dr. Fantham (now working in the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, under funds allotted by the Advisory Committee for the Tropical Diseases Research Fund) to be so good as to assist me in the description of the morphology of this trypanosome. The following paper is the outcome of our joint work.—[J. W. W. Stephens.] History of the Strain . The trypanosomes used during this investigation were obtained from W. A., male, aged 26, a native of Northumberland, who was infected in North-East Rhodesia in September, 1909. It is necessary to set forth the itinerary of W. A. while in Africa, as he was never actually in an area infested with Glossina palpalis , so far as records are available, and indeed was never nearer (Kasama) than some 86 miles from such an area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Zhang ◽  
Sneha Ray ◽  
Leah Imlay ◽  
Lauren Callaghan ◽  
Hanspeter Niederstrasser ◽  
...  

<p>The spiroindimicins are a unique class of chlorinated indole alkaloids characterized by three heteroaromatic rings structured around a congested spirocyclic stereocenter. Here, we report the first total synthesis of (+)-spiroindimicin A, which bears a challenging C-3’/C-5’’-linked spiroindolenine. We detail our initial efforts to effect a biomimetic oxidative spirocyclization from its proposed natural precursor, lynamicin D, and describe how these studies shaped our final abiotic 9-step solution to this complex alkaloid built around a key asymmetric Pd-catalyzed spirocyclization. Scalable access to spiroindimicins A, H, and their congeners has enabled discovery of their activity against several parasites relevant to human health, providing potential starting points for new therapeutics for the neglected tropical diseases leishmaniasis and African sleeping sickness.</p>


1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-177
Author(s):  
JOHN D. HARGREAVES

This special issue of Pedagogica Historica, a journal published from the University of Gent, presents a selection of eighteen papers from an international conference on the history of education held in Lisbon in 1993. The texts are in English and French, although there are no contributors from France or Britain. The contributions deal with general themes and European backgrounds as well as colonial experience. Six which relate to Africa will be briefly described here.


2005 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANN TAYLOR ◽  
WIM VAN DER WURFF

Whether judged by the amount of intrinsic interest, the number of knock-on effects, or the sheer volume of scholarly work devoted to it, it seems safe to say that one of the major issues in English historical syntax is the shift from object–verb (OV) to verb–object (VO) order. Over the last three decades in particular, a large body of literature has grown up that has resulted in an increasingly detailed picture of this change. No doubt in part because the recent introduction of electronic corpora has provided a boost to data-oriented work, the popularity of this change shows no imminent signs of abating. Evidence for the continuing popularity of this topic was demonstrated at two conferences held at the University of Leiden Centre for Linguistics in 2003 (the second Holland–York Symposium on the History of English Syntax in April 2003, and the Conference on Comparative Diachronic Syntax in August 2003). Although neither of the meetings had the shift from OV to VO in English as a special theme, the conference programmes together included no fewer than eight papers on the topic. Seven of these can be found in this special issue, which aims to illuminate selected aspects of the alternation between OV and VO order in the history of English; the collection of articles is rounded off by a review of a recent monograph on the subject.


Parasitology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 144 (12) ◽  
pp. 1567-1581 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANCIS E. G. COX

SUMMARYThe period 1875–1925 was remarkable in the history of parasitology partly because of the number of significant discoveries made, especially the elucidation of important life cycles, and partly because of the achievements of the clinicians and scientists who made these discoveries. What is remarkable is that so many of these individuals were Scots. Preeminent in this pantheon was Patrick Manson, who not only discovered the mosquito transmission of filarial worms but was instrumental in directly encouraging others to make significant discoveries in the fields of malaria, Guinea worm disease (dracunculiasis), onchocerciasis, loiasis and schistosomiasis and, indirectly, sleeping sickness and leishmaniasis. This chapter describes and discusses the contributions made by Douglas Argyll-Robertson, Donald Blacklock, David Bruce, David Cunningham, Robert Leiper, William Leishman, George Low, Patrick Manson, Muriel Robertson and Ronald Ross together with short biographical notes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Zhang ◽  
Sneha Ray ◽  
Leah Imlay ◽  
Lauren Callaghan ◽  
Hanspeter Niederstrasser ◽  
...  

<p>The spiroindimicins are a unique class of chlorinated indole alkaloids characterized by three heteroaromatic rings structured around a congested spirocyclic stereocenter. Here, we report the first total synthesis of (+)-spiroindimicin A, which bears a challenging C-3’/C-5’’-linked spiroindolenine. We detail our initial efforts to effect a biomimetic oxidative spirocyclization from its proposed natural precursor, lynamicin D, and describe how these studies shaped our final abiotic 9-step solution to this complex alkaloid built around a key asymmetric Pd-catalyzed spirocyclization. Scalable access to spiroindimicins A, H, and their congeners has enabled discovery of their activity against several parasites relevant to human health, providing potential starting points for new therapeutics for the neglected tropical diseases leishmaniasis and African sleeping sickness.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Markian Dobczansky ◽  
Simone Attilio Bellezza

AbstractThis article introduces a special issue on Ukrainian statehood. Based on the conference “A Century of Ukrainian Statehoods: 1917 and Beyond” at the University of Toronto, the special issue examines the relationship between the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917–1920 and the Soviet Ukrainian state over the long term. The authors survey the history of the Ukrainian SSR and propose two points of emphasis: the need to study the promises of “national” and “social” liberation in tandem and the persistent presence of an “internal other” in Soviet Ukrainian history.


Urban History ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER BORSAY ◽  
LOUISE MISKELL ◽  
OWEN ROBERTS

The publication in 2000 of the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Britain presented British urban historians with an ideal opportunity to take stock of the current state of research in their discipline. For Welsh urban historians it raised a number of particularly thorny issues. Whilst it contained some important chapters focused exclusively on the history of Welsh towns, it also identified Wales as one of the most under-researched areas of urban Britain. This special issue, dedicated specifically to Welsh urban history, has been conceived in part as a response to that finding. It also represents the collective efforts of scholars, new and established, whose research on urban Wales was presented at a conference on ‘Understanding Urban Wales’ at the University of Wales Swansea in September 2003. The event demonstrated the existence of a healthy ‘critical mass’ of scholarship, at both postgraduate and postdoctoral level, on Welsh towns and their development.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-178
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Martin ◽  
Gisela Mateos ◽  
David P. D. Munns ◽  
Edna Suárez-Díaz

This special issue, “Revealing the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project,” highlights the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan, a program of civilian nuclear research established after World War II that also memorialized Michigan’s victims of the two World Wars. It blossomed into a broad-based, multidisciplinary program supporting work pursuing peaceful uses of the atom, understood broadly. It became the basis for sustained interdisciplinary and international collaboration, a conduit for scientific diplomacy, a privileged site for the alliance between the US government and industry, and a pioneer in the education of nuclear engineers. The Phoenix Project was an unusual and highly local phenomenon, but contributors to this issue nevertheless find ways in which it embodied larger trends in the early Cold War. In this introduction, we highlight the multiple dimensions of the Phoenix Project and reflect on the challenges and opportunities posed by writing the history of peculiar entities.


2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (7) ◽  
pp. 743-747 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A Percival ◽  
Herwart Helmstaedt

The Special Issue on the Western Superior Province Lithoprobe and NATMAP transects presents a wide spectrum of contributions from coordinated, multidisciplinary research projects on the western region of Earth's largest Archean craton. Articles include aspects of the geophysical, stratigraphic, geochemical, geochronological, petrological, and structural evidence bearing on the accretionary history of this classic, well-exposed piece of ancient continental crust, as well as analyses of the prospectivity and seismic character of the gold-rich Red Lake greenstone belt.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document