The first demonstration of laser action in ruby was made in 1960 by T. H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories, USA. Many laboratories worldwide began the search for lasers using different materials, operating at different wavelengths. In the UK, academia, industry and the central laboratories took up the challenge from the earliest days to develop these systems for a broad range of applications. This historical review looks at the contribution the UK has made to the advancement of the technology, the development of systems and components and their exploitation over the last 60 years.

Little is known about the types of intestinal parasites that infected people living in prehistoric Britain. The Late Bronze Age archaeological site of Must Farm was a pile-dwelling settlement located in a wetland, consisting of stilted timber structures constructed over a slow-moving freshwater channel. At excavation, sediment samples were collected from occupation deposits around the timber structures. Fifteen coprolites were also hand-recovered from the occupation deposits; four were identified as human and seven as canine, using fecal lipid biomarkers. Digital light microscopy was used to identify preserved helminth eggs in the sediment and coprolites. Eggs of fish tapeworm (Diphyllobothrium latum and Diphyllobothrium dendriticum), Echinostoma sp., giant kidney worm (Dioctophyma renale), probable pig whipworm (Trichuris suis) and Capillaria sp. were found. This is the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, Capillaria worm and the giant kidney worm so far identified in Britain. It appears that the wetland environment of the settlement contributed to establishing parasite diversity and put the inhabitants at risk of infection by helminth species spread by eating raw fish, frogs or molluscs that flourish in freshwater aquatic environments, conversely the wetland may also have protected them from infection by certain geohelminths.

Institutionally deprived young children often display distinctive patterns of attachment, classified as insecure/other (INS/OTH), with their adoptive parents. The associations between INS/OTH and developmental trajectories of mental health and neurodevelopmental symptoms were examined. Age 4 attachment status was determined for 97 Romanian adoptees exposed to up to 24 months of deprivation in Romanian orphanages and 49 nondeprived UK adoptees. Autism, inattention/overactivity and disinhibited-social-engagement symptoms, emotional problems, and IQ were measured at 4, 6, 11, and 15 years and in young adulthood. Romanian adoptees with over 6 months deprivation (Rom>6) were more often classified as INS/OTH than UK and Romanian adoptees with less than 6 months deprivation combined. INS/OTH was associated with cognitive impairment at age 4 years. The interaction between deprivation, attachment status, and age for autism spectrum disorder assessment was significant, with greater symptom persistence in Rom>6 INS/OTH(+) than other groups. This effect was reduced when IQ at age 4 was controlled for. Age 4 INS/OTH in Rom>6 was associated with worse autism spectrum disorder outcomes up to two decades later. Its association with cognitive impairment at age 4 is consistent with INS/OTH being an early marker of this negative developmental trajectory, rather than its cause.

The Must Farm pile-dwelling site is an extraordinarily well-preserved Late Bronze Age settlement in Cambridgeshire, UK. The authors present the site's contextual setting, from its construction, occupation and subsequent destruction by fire in relatively quick succession. A slow-flowing watercourse beneath the pile-dwellings provided a benign burial environment for preserving the debris of construction, use and collapse, while the catastrophic manner of destruction introduced a definitive timeframe. The scale of its occupation speaks to the site's exceptional nature, enabling the authors to deduce the everyday flow and use of things in a prehistoric domestic setting.

This essay explores those in pre-modern Britain (chiefly the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) who were accused of corruption and yet denied their guilt and made defenses, disavowals, justifications, protests, vindications or at least sought to explain away, rationalize, or legitimize their behavior, both to themselves and to others. Six, sometimes overlapping, categories of rationales are identified. Focusing on the strategies and arguments used by the allegedly corrupt has both historical and philosophical value. Thinking about such cases helps both the state and its citizens to be as clear as possible about how to define integrity, and judge whether there was, or is, an intention to break, subvert, or manipulate moral codes. Thus it is not merely the legislator or the law court, but also the court of public opinion, that decides such matters; and debates about the acceptability of such defenses are an important part of a process of public debate about where society has drawn, or does now draw, ethical lines. There are degrees of corruption that need careful evaluation. Thinking about the past also raises interesting questions about whether corruption can be judged across time, culture, and space by a set of universal values. I argue that what appear to be universal values evolved over time as a result of particular cultural circumstances and contests over historical scandals. Contesting corruption allegations was an inherently political process: corruption is not just an economic issue but also a political and moral issue that demands contextualization. That process must include an understanding of national histories.

Literary studies is not the only discipline to show a new enthusiasm for religion in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. When Stanley Fish suggested back in 2005 that religion might become the new theoretical center of gravity in the humanities, his declaration was cited frequently and may have proved a little too convenient for those, like myself, who wanted to see a major theoretical realignment in the humanities’ attitude to religion. But, the reality is that Fish is just one of a number of other prominent theorists in the last twenty years or so to have shown a new appreciation for the theoretical resources that religious thought makes available. Although the term religion is understood very differently across thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, Sabo Mahmood, Charles Taylor, and Slavoj Žižek, they share a refusal to accept crude notions of the secularization thesis, with its commitment to seeing religion as an irrelevance in the modern world, and are instead determined to see religion as more than just an antiquated ideology that needs to be unmasked.

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has led to a reduction in HIV-related morbidity and mortality, and the life expectancy of HIV-positive individuals has improved significantly. It is therefore becoming more likely that clinicians will encounter patients with psychiatric manifestations of the disease. This review summarises the evidence on prevalence, manifestations and treatment of psychiatric conditions in HIV-positive adults. The most prevalent psychiatric illness in this population is depression (35.6%), followed by substance misuse, anxiety, psychosis, adjustment disorder and bipolar affective disorder. Neurocognitive impairment is also common, ranging in severity from asymptomatic (the most frequent) to dementia (the least frequent). Effective treatment of both HIV and psychiatric manifestations is essential to maximising life expectancy and quality of life.