Christopher Phillips

Impact of Behçet’s syndrome on health-related quality of life: influence of the type and number of symptoms

OBJECTIVE To assess the overall impact of Behçets syndrome (BS) on quality of life and the specific impact of the type and number of symptoms on the quality of life of adults with BS. METHODS A questionnaire was mailed to the 641 adult members of the Behçets Syndrome Society in the UK. Participants provided information on socio-demographic characteristics, disease duration, current symptoms (mouth ulcers, genital ulcers, skin lesions, fatigue, joint problems, stomach/bowel problems, eye problems, pathergy reaction, headaches and other neurological problems), symptom control and quality of life (the EQ-5D index). Linear regression was used to test the associations of the type and number of symptoms with the EQ-5D index. RESULTS Of the 447 members, 400 who returned the questionnaires had a confirmed diagnosis of BS. Of them, 362 had information on the variables selected for this analysis (76% females and 94% white British). The mean EQ-5D index was 0.47 (S.D. 0.38). Of the 10 symptoms assessed, joint problems had the strongest impact on quality of life, followed by neurological problems, pathergy reaction and stomach/bowel problems (adjusted coefficients of -0.15, -0.13, -0.11 and -0.18, respectively). Furthermore, the number of symptoms was significantly related to the EQ-5D index after adjustment for socio-demographic characteristics, disease duration and symptom control. The EQ-5D index decreased by -0.05 U for every additional symptom reported. CONCLUSIONS BS has a considerable impact on quality of life. Both the type and number of symptoms affect the quality of life of adults with BS.

Policy-driven access control over a distributed firewall architecture

Motivated by a scientific application, where virtual organisations are dynamically created to achieve specific goals by sharing resources and information, we propose the synthesis of two lines of research: policy-based access control and distributed firewalls. Through this fusion we expect to deliver a scalable method of setting up security infrastructures for Grid computing infrastructures.

Sectarianism and conflict in Syria

This article challenges the sectarian narrative of Syria’s current civil war, which relies on several false assumptions about the nature of political identity. It first questions how sectarian the uprising and civil war actually are, suggesting that the conflict is ‘semi-sectarian’, given the multiple other fault lines of contention, notably class, ideology and other non-sect, sub-state ties. It then draws on the theoretical debates between primordialists, ethno-symbolists and modernists to historicise political identity development in Syria. In doing so, it reasserts the modernist case, emphasising how political identities in Syria, both national and sectarian, have developed in a complex interrelated manner in the modern era and how the recent violent mobilisation of sectarian identity is the result of long- and short-term structural, economic, socio-cultural and political factors rather than unchanging ancient animosities. Of these, the most vital remain structural changes and elite reactions to them, with the prospect of state collapse in Syria’s future the most likely cause of a descent into further sectarian chaos.

“The devil's in the detail”: Release of an expanded, enhanced and dynamically revised forensic STR Sequence Guide

The STR sequence template file published in 2016 as part of the considerations from the DNA Commission of the International Society for Forensic Genetics on minimal STR sequence nomenclature requirements, has been comprehensively revised and audited using the latest GRCh38 genome assembly. The list of forensic STRs characterized was expanded by including supplementary autosomal, X- and Y-chromosome microsatellites in less common use for routine DNA profiling, but some likely to be adopted in future massively parallel sequencing (MPS) STR panels. We outline several aspects of sequence alignment and annotation that required care and attention to detail when comparing sequences to GRCh37 and GRCh38 assemblies, as well as the necessary matching of MPS-based allele descriptions to previously established repeat region structures described in initial sequencing studies of the less well known forensic STRs. The revised sequence guide is now available in a dynamically updated FTP format from the STRidER website with a date-stamped change log to allow users to explore their own MPS data with the most up-to-date forensic STR sequence information compiled in a simple guide.

Syria's Torment

While there is a sliver of hope that a negotiated solution in Syria can be found, the Assad regime seems willing to destroy the country rather than give up power. The future looks bleak.

The Arabism Debate and the Arab Uprisings

This article explores how the Arab Uprisings have affected academic debates over the importance of Arab identity in regional and domestic politics. Does the spreading of protest from one Arab state to another in 2011 indicate Arabisms continued salience, or does the subsequent rise of regional sectarianism represent its death-knell? Are older debates between ‘New Arabists’ and ‘post-Arabists’ still relevant or is a new framework needed that better reflects the post-2011 Arab world?

A Mobility-Based Routing Protocol for CR Enabled Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

With the fast development of hardware and chipset functionality and capability, smart devices equipped with advanced technologies, such as Cognitive Radio (CR) will offer promising opportunities for mobile network. The authors in this work design a mobility based routing protocol (CRMBR) which operates in CR enabled Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). The adopted cross layer structure transfers the cognitive sensing data, such as channel quality and available bandwidth, from Physical layer up to MAC/Network layers periodically. Network layer uses such information for executing route selection algorithm while MAC layer runs the sub-channel scheduling algorithm based on CR data before each transmission. CRMBR further employs an advanced acknowledgment scheme in MAC layer for sub-channel selection to reduce the control overhead while forwarding data in MANETs. The performance of CRMBR is investigated via simulations on OpNET platform and the results confirm its favorable operation within CR MANET environments compared to two classic routing protocols in Ad hot networks: AODV and DSR.

Comparison of Y-chromosome haplotypes in three racial groups and the possibility of predicting ethnic origin

Abstract Currently, most STRs found on the Y-chromosome exhibit much lower levels of polymorphism when compared to autosomal STRs. However, unlike autosomal STRs, they often show marked differences in allele frequency distributions between racial groups. Two hundred unrelated males from each of the three principal ethnic groupings within the UK were typed for 11 loci and used to build a predictive model for those classifications. An additional 50 individuals from each group were used in a blind trial to validate the model and the utility of the assignments assessed by calculating likelihood ratios. Use of a haplotype consisting of only three Y-chromosome STRs correctly identified 81%, 96% and 70% of individuals who defined themselves as white, black or South Asian.

Smart Energy Harvesting Routing Protocol for WSN based E-Health Systems

This paper proposes a novel routing protocol called Smart Energy Harvesting Routing Protocol (SEHR) for data transmission in Wireless Sensor Network based e-Health systems (WSNEH). WSNEH is a sophisticated network environment where multiple types of mobile sensors are involved, employing different forms of data transmission without a pre-defined infrastructure, constrained by various power supplies. Given the fast developing techniques for ambient energy harvesting in WSN, the proposed SEHR route selection scheme operates alongside flexible energy harvesting resources, estimating real-time node energy consumption, predicting a nodes own energy harvesting capability before a route is set up. Diverse strategies are designed for different data types, as appropriate. Overall SEHR aims to prolong whole networks lifetime. Simulation results show that SEHR greatly outperforms other routing protocols in the challenging WSNEH environment.

An Investigation of Variation in the Sizing of Short Tandem Repeat Loci

Forensic identity testing has been transformed by the development of PCR-based systems to investigate polymorphic short tandem repeat (STR) loci, offering greatly increased sensitivity over DNA single locus probe testing while providing discrete allelic types (Lygo et al 1993). The use of automated DNA sequence apparatus to measure the size of STR alleles in DNA amplified with fluorescently labelled primers has increased the sensitivity of this system further. Alleles are sized with reference to an internal lane standard and types designated according to the number of repeat units present (DNA Commission of the International Society for Forensic Haemogenetics, 1992). Variation in the size measurement of alleles in an allelic ladder has been examined by Kimpton et al (1993); Lygo et al (1994) have extended this work to validate their forensic casework samples. The current study was performed to investigate, within our own laboratory, the reproducibility of STR sizes within and between gels. The same allelic types in different individuals were also examined to investigate whether variability was greater than when repeated measurements were made on the same sample.