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Existing scholarship on the history of old age displays several puzzling contradictions. Its chronological definitions of old age, which usually begin at around sixty, encompass people of enormous diversity in health, wealth, and even age. Meanwhile, older people themselves reject such definitions. Instead, elderly Britons have typically looked to their own lives in order to understand what it has meant to grow old. In the twentieth century, experiences of old age were shaped by the increasingly humane treatment of older Britons. Yet the British state simultaneously tolerated persistent poverty among the aged. This book addresses these tensions by uniting the public and private histories of aging and by putting the particular challenges of researching old age at the heart of its account.

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AimsWe set out to further develop reflectance spectroscopy for the characterisation and quantification of coronary thrombi. Additionally, we explore the potential of our approach for use as a risk stratification tool by exploring the relation of reflectance spectra to indices of coronary microvascular injury.Methods and resultsWe performed hyperspectral imaging of coronary thrombi aspirated from 306 patients presenting with ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome (STEACS). Spatially resolved reflected light spectra were analysed using unsupervised machine learning approaches. Invasive [index of coronary microvascular resistance (IMR)] and non-invasive [microvascular obstruction (MVO) at cardiac magnetic resonance imaging] indices of coronary microvascular injury were measured in a sub-cohort of 36 patients. The derived spectral signatures of coronary thrombi were correlated with both invasive and non-invasive indices of coronary microvascular injury. Successful machine-learning-based classification of the various thrombus image components, including differentiation between blood and thrombus, was achieved when classifying the pixel spectra into 11 groups. Fitting of the spectra to basis spectra recorded for separated blood components confirmed excellent correlation with visually inspected thrombi. In the 36 patients who underwent successful thrombectomy, spectral signatures were found to correlate well with the index of microcirculatory resistance and microvascular obstruction; R2: 0.80, p < 0.0001, n = 21 and R2: 0.64, p = 0.02, n = 17, respectively.ConclusionMachine learning assisted reflectance spectral analysis can provide a measure of thrombus composition and evaluate coronary microvascular injury in patients with STEACS. Future work will further validate its deployment as a point-of-care diagnostic and risk stratification tool for STEACS care.

This article explores the connected history of the social survey in Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the twentieth century. I describe the movements and international influence of social scientists, ideas and research subjects, which fit with James Vernon's call for a global history of modern Britain and other nations. I argue that the participation of local populations in social surveys helped to shape twentieth-century conceptions of citizenship, social knowledge, and the significance of everyday life around the globe. Further comparison of raw social scientific data will enable a discussion of cultural divergence in the British world due to the local politics of social class and race.This article has been peer reviewed.In May 1942 the occupants of 31 Bridge Street in Hampton refused an invitation to participate in a wartime survey of Melbourne. Wilfred Prest, an economist at the University of Melbourne, had selected this house in a sample that would assess lodgings, occupations and incomes across the city. Prest made a careful and flattering plea for admittance to Bridge Street. He asserted that facts about its inhabitants would be kept secret but that these facts would, in the form of statistics, contribute to the planning of the postwar 'new social order'. 1 The project, he noted reassuringly, 'has the interest and support of government departments, municipal authorities, Trade Union leaders and many well-known citizens, but it depends for its success on the information you are willing to give us'. With that rhetorical flourish, ordinary inhabitants of the city -and their knowledge -were made king. Yet the residents at number 31 remained unconvinced. As recent arrivals to the city, they explained, 'we know nothing of the matters' the survey hoped to elucidate. These residents of Melbourne did not yet see themselves as part of Prest's social scientific equation. They were not alone. As Prest moved from street to street, his survey required endless argument and negotiation. Locals worried that their cooperation would expose them to higher taxes, reveal their illicit home businesses, or put their homes in danger of being condemned. Their