We studied neuroinflammation in individuals with late-life, depression, as a risk factor for dementia, using [11C]PK11195 positron emission tomography (PET). Five older participants with major depression and 13 controls underwent PET and multimodal 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with blood taken to measure C-reactive protein (CRP). We found significantly higher CRP levels in those with late-life depression and raised [11C]PK11195 binding compared with controls in brain regions associated with depression, including subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, and significant hippocampal subfield atrophy in cornu ammonis 1 and subiculum. Our findings suggest neuroinflammation requires further investigation in late-life depression, both as a possible aetiological factor and a potential therapeutic target.

Chronic disease, mobility limitations and low physical functioning are determinants of an earlier age of retirement. Therefore, long-term population trends in these factors may have an impact on the proportion of individuals near traditional retirement age who continue to work. Our objective is to develop a projection model that accounts for trends in these factors in order to estimate the proportion of the population aged 55–74 with the capacity to participate in the labour force. We used logistic regression models to quantify how chronic disease, mobility and functional status predict labour force participation among individuals aged 55–59. Next, we obtained estimates of the population prevalence of each of these predictors for the years 2010–2050. We then used estimated coefficients from the logistic regression models to predict the age-specific probability of capacity for work up to the age of 74. We find that population capacity for work depends on trends in disability and on level of education. Future population capacity for work depends on trends in functional limitations primarily in the population with lower levels of education. Changes in functional limitations, changes in the environment, technology and social policy targeted towards individuals with lower levels of education could result in mitigation of future decreasing capacity for work in the population near retirement age.

An 85-year-old villager named Erieza Kintu died at Kabubu in the county of Bulemezi, kingdom of Buganda, sometime in 1965. His passing was virtually unnoticed, except by relatives and a few neighbors. Through my research trips between 1962 and 1964 had on several occasions brought me to within a few miles of his house, I never met Kintu. Yet he is one of my best sources for the history of Buganda in the 1890s. Indeed, his memory of the so called “rebellion” by Kabaka Mwanga against the British in 1897 is the single best source I know, particularly valuable as an “insider” eyewitness participant. Even more importantly, unlike the earlier “official” histories of Mwanga's uprising, Kintu's view is from the point of the losers in the conflict—those who had resisted the new order of Christianity, private land tenure, and protectorate status within the British empire.

As so often happens with the vanquished, their history was suppressed by the victors, who—through the control of schooling and the printing press— ensured that only their own version of the conflict would become history. Yet somehow, at the age of almost seventy years the non-literate Erieza Kintu managed to dictate his oral memoirs to the manager of the Baganda Cooperative Society Press, and the result was Sulutani Anatoloka, a printed pamphlet that went on sale in Kampala priced one shilling a copy. After a few days no doubt the small edition was sold out and disappeared from view. Fortunately, one copy wound up in the hands of a prominent anthropologist from the University of Chicago, Lloyd Fallers, who was director of the East African Institute of Social Research at Makerere University in the early 1950s. Years later, when Fallers returned to Chicago, he brought back the pamphlet and offered me a photocopy, which I translated from Luganda into English in 1964. At that time I knew nothing about the author, except what was printed in his memoir covering the years from 1892 to 1899, nor did I know the circumstances surrounding the publication, or even the date when it had been printed. So here was a mysterious, unique, and potentially invaluable historical source—if only one could investigate its provenance.

On 24 May 1966 the 500-year-old kingdom of Buganda came to an end. That was the day that Prime Minister Obote sent Colonel Idi Amin to attack the Mengo palace of Kabaka Frederick Mutesa, who was also the President of Uganda. A 120-man bodyguard defended the Kabaka; Amin had automatic and heavy weapons. Nevertheless, Obote was much annoyed that the palace held out against Amin's troops. An audience watched the battle from nearby hilltops, where expatriates and others brought out folding chairs, until a mid-afternoon thunderstorm sent everyone scurrying for cover. The Kabaka used this interruption to scale the rear wall of Mengo palace, where he hailed a passing taxicab and set off for Burundi and ultimately exile in London. Obote divided Buganda into two separate districts (East Mengo and West Mengo), promoted Amin, and gave him the palace as a barracks for his “paratroop” battalion, and more importantly also gave him Buganda's legislative hall—the Bulange—to become Amin's national military headquarters.

The casualties in the “battle of Mengo” were certainly few in number compared to the destruction Amin would wreak after his coup in 1971. But one invisible casualty of the Bulange occupation was especially significant for historians. The Bulange was not only the seat of the Lukiiko, the Ganda legislature, it was also the storage building for the Buganda government archives, which went back to the 1890s, and were still well organized anu maintained in 1956-58 when Peter Gutkind made use of them for his doctoral research. By 1963 storage space was becoming scarce when Rowe made several visits to Shaykh Ali Kulumba, the Speaker of the Lukiiko. Shaykh Kulumba opened up cupboards and closets packed with archival folders from floor to ceiling. Clearly the archives were still being preserved, but organization and access had suffered. Three years later, when Amin occupied the Bulange, he simply destroyed the entire archive—the historical record of sixty years of Buganda government ceased to exist.

Herbivorous and deposit-feeding gastropods are a major component of archaeological shell middens worldwide. They provide a wealth of information about subsistence, economy, environment, and climate, but are generally considered to be less than ideal for radiocarbon dating because they can ingest sediment while they graze, inadvertently consuming terrestrial carbon in the process. However, few studies of 14C activity in herbivores or deposit-feeding gastropods have been conducted into this diverse range of animals that inhabit many environmental niches. Here, we present results investigating 14C variability in shells belonging to the families Strombidae and Potamididae from the Bogi 1 archaeological site, Caution Bay, southern coastal Papua New Guinea (PNG). These shells make up 39.3% of the shell MNI in the excavation units studied and some of these species are the most common taxa of neighboring sites. It would therefore be advantageous to establish if there are any 14C offsets associated with such animals, and identify those that can give reliable calendar ages. Our methodology combines a high-resolution excavation protocol, selection of short-lived samples identified to species level, and a triisotope approach using 14C, δ13C, and δ18O to evaluate the source of variability in shells. Our results indicate that considerable variation exists between different species of Strombidae with some inhabiting muddier environments that act as sinks for limestone-derived sediments with depleted 14C content. The magnitude of variation is, however, overshadowed by that measured in the mudwhelk, Cerithidea largillierti, which has the largest spread in 14C of any shellfish studied so far at Caution Bay. This animal ingests sediment within the estuary that contains 14C derived from both enriched and depleted sources.