This thoughtful examination of a century of travel writing about the American West overturns a variety of popular and academic stereotypes. Looking at both European and American travelers' accounts ...of the West, from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America to William Least Heat-Moon's Blue Highways, David Wrobel offers a counter narrative to the nation's romantic entanglement with its western past and suggests the importance of some long-overlooked authors, lively and perceptive witnesses to our history who deserve new attention. Prior to the professionalization of academic disciplines, the reading public gained much of its knowledge about the world from travel writing. Travel writers found a wide and respectful audience for their reports on history, geography, and the natural world, in addition to reporting on aboriginal cultures before the advent of anthropology as a discipline. Although in recent decades western historians have paid little attention to travel writing, Wrobel demonstrates that this genre in fact offers an important and rich understanding of the American West—one that extends and complicates a simple reading of the West that promotes the notions of Manifest Destiny or American exceptionalism. Wrobel finds counterpoints to the mythic West of the nineteenth century in such varied accounts as George Catlin's Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium (1852), Richard Francis Burton's The City of the Saints (1861), and Mark Twain's Following the Equator (1897), reminders of the messy and contradictory world that people navigated in the past much as they do in the present. His book is a testament to the instructive ways in which the best travel writers have represented the West.
For many years, basic and clinical researchers have taken advantage of the analytical sensitivity and specificity afforded by mass spectrometry in the measurement of proteins. Clinical laboratories ...are now beginning to deploy these work flows as well. For assays that use proteolysis to generate peptides for protein quantification and characterization, synthetic stable isotope-labeled internal standard peptides are of central importance. No general recommendations are currently available surrounding the use of peptides in protein mass spectrometric assays.
The Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium of the National Cancer Institute has collaborated with clinical laboratorians, peptide manufacturers, metrologists, representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, and other professionals to develop a consensus set of recommendations for peptide procurement, characterization, storage, and handling, as well as approaches to the interpretation of the data generated by mass spectrometric protein assays. Additionally, the importance of carefully characterized reference materials-in particular, peptide standards for the improved concordance of amino acid analysis methods across the industry-is highlighted. The alignment of practices around the use of peptides and the transparency of sample preparation protocols should allow for the harmonization of peptide and protein quantification in research and clinical care.
Global West, American Frontier Wrobel, David M.
Pacific historical review,
02/2009, Letnik:
78, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article questions the common assumption that nineteenth-century audiences in America and around the world viewed the American western frontier as an exceptional place, like no other place on ...earth. Through examination of travel writings by Americans and Europeans who placed the West into a broader global context of developing regions and conquered colonies, we see that nineteenth-century audiences were commonly presented with a globally contextualized West. The article also seeks to broaden the emphasis in post-colonial scholarship on travel writers as agents of empire who commodified, exoticized, and objectified the colonized peoples and places they visited, by suggesting that travel writers were also often among the most virulent critics of empire and its consequences for the colonized.
Biliary Atresia: The Canadian Experience Schreiber, Richard A., MD, FRCP(C); Barker, Collin C., MSc(Epid), MD, FRCP(C); Roberts, Eve A., MD, FRCP(C) ...
The Journal of pediatrics,
12/2007, Letnik:
151, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Objective To determine the outcomes of Canadian children with biliary atresia. Study design Health records of infants born in Canada between January 1, 1985 and December 31, 1995 (ERA I) and between ...January 1, 1996 and December 31, 2002 (ERA II) who were diagnosed with biliary atresia at a university center were reviewed. Results 349 patients were identified. Median patient age at time of the Kasai operation was 55 days. Median age at last follow-up was 70 months. The 4-year patient survival rate was 81% (ERA I = 74%; ERA II = 82%; P = not significant NS). Kaplan-Meier survival curves for patients undergoing the Kasai operation at age ≤30, 31 to 90, and >90 days showed 49%, 36%, and 23%, respectively, were alive with their native liver at 4 years ( P < .0001). This difference continued through 10 years. The 2- and 4-year post-Kasai operation native liver survival rates were 47% and 35% for ERA I and 46% and 39% for ERA II ( P = NS). A total of 210 patients (60%) underwent liver transplantation; the 4-year transplantation survival rate was 82% (ERA I = 83%, ERA II = 82%; P = NS). Conclusions This is the largest outcome series of North American children with biliary atresia at a time when liver transplantation was available. Results in each era were similar. Late referral remains problematic; policies to ensure timely diagnosis are required. Nevertheless, outcomes in Canada are comparable to those reported elsewhere.
4 I am not suggesting that regions never slip back into the picture in textbooks or in our U.S. history survey coverage of the twentieth century.\n The regional focus is maintained in coverage of the ...Progressive Era, the 1920s, and 1930s-no great feat given the regional character of much Progressive reform, the regional tensions of the 1920s, the regionalist orientation of much of the New Deal, and the broad backdrop of regionalist thought and artistic endeavor between the wars.14 With the final segment of the course to cover, I am reminded that my students might benefit from special emphasis on the migration (both forced and voluntary) and adjustment experiences of many Americans on the home front during World War II, from war industry workers to Japanese and Japanese American internees. The students may well connect too with a focus on the special status of the West as the center of the Cold War military industrial complex, the regional concerns over Mexican immigration in the 1950s, and the various civil rights movements in the West (gay, women's, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, and Native American).
Mitochondria are essential for numerous cellular processes, yet hundreds of their proteins lack robust functional annotation. To reveal functions for these proteins (termed MXPs), we assessed ...condition-specific protein-protein interactions for 50 select MXPs using affinity enrichment mass spectrometry. Our data connect MXPs to diverse mitochondrial processes, including multiple aspects of respiratory chain function. Building upon these observations, we validated C17orf89 as a complex I (CI) assembly factor. Disruption of C17orf89 markedly reduced CI activity, and its depletion is found in an unresolved case of CI deficiency. We likewise discovered that LYRM5 interacts with and deflavinates the electron-transferring flavoprotein that shuttles electrons to coenzyme Q (CoQ). Finally, we identified a dynamic human CoQ biosynthetic complex involving multiple MXPs whose topology we map using purified components. Collectively, our data lend mechanistic insight into respiratory chain-related activities and prioritize hundreds of additional interactions for further exploration of mitochondrial protein function.
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•PPI mapping of 50 MXPs reveals mitochondrial protein functions•C17orf89 is a CI assembly factor depleted in a case of CI deficiency•LYRM5 interacts with and deflavinates the electron transferring flavoprotein•Proteins involved in coenzyme Q biosynthesis form a dynamic “complex Q”
Mitochondria are essential organelles, yet hundreds of their proteins lack robust functional characterization. Floyd et al. (2016) define interaction partners for 50 such proteins, providing hypotheses about their roles in mitochondria. In particular, their work lends mechanistic insight into respiratory chain activities related to complex I, the electron transferring flavoprotein, and coenzyme Q.
WRobel reviews several books, including, The Great Thirst: Californians & Water. A History by Norris Hundley Jr.; Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, 1850-1920 by ...David Igler; Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s edited by Tom Sitton and William Deverell; and The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles by William Fulton.
The following books are discussed: (1) The Great Thirst: Californians & Water: A History, by Norris Hundley, Jr, (2) Industrial Cowboys: Miller & Lux and the Transformation of the Far West, ...1850-1920, by David Igler, (3) Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s, edited by Tom Sitton and AWilliam Deverell, and (4) The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles, by William Fulton.
Autophagy is an essential cellular process that removes harmful protein species, and autophagy upregulation may be able to protect against neurodegeneration and various pathogens. Here, we have ...identified the essential protein VCP/p97 (VCP, valosin-containing protein) as a novel regulator of autophagosome biogenesis, where VCP regulates autophagy induction in two ways, both dependent on Beclin-1. Utilizing small-molecule inhibitors of VCP ATPase activity, we show that VCP stabilizes Beclin-1 levels by promoting the deubiquitinase activity of ataxin-3 towards Beclin-1. VCP also regulates the assembly and activity of the Beclin-1-containing phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) complex I, thus regulating the production of PI(3)P, a key signaling lipid responsible for the recruitment of downstream autophagy factors. A decreased level of VCP, or inhibition of its ATPase activity, impairs starvation-induced production of PI(3)P and limits downstream recruitment of WIPI2, ATG16L and LC3, thereby decreasing autophagosome formation, illustrating an important role for VCP in early autophagy initiation.
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