In Memoriam Professor Matthew H. Kaufman

In Memoriam to the late Professor Matthew H. Kaufman written by Owen Dudley Edward

A Case of Identity: John Adams and Massachusettensis

This article undertakes an interdisciplinary reexamination of the claims of American revolutionary John Adams (1735–1826) that Jonathan Sewall (1729–96) was a lead author of the influential Loyalist tracts Massachusettensis (Dec. 12, 1774–April 3, 1775). The Massachusettensis letters constitute the most cogent articulation of Loyalist ideology on the eve of the American Revolution. Adams replied with his Novanglus letters (Jan. 23–April 17, 1775). While Adams believed that Sewall was the author or coauthor of Massachusettensis, scholars subsequently attributed sole authorship to Daniel Leonard (1740–1829), a Loyalist refugee who claimed authorship whilst in exile in England. After reviewing the historical and literary evidence and the results of authorship attribution tests, we proffer four historiographical conclusions. First, Massachusettensis was probably coauthored by Leonard and Sewall with Sewall exercising editorial direction over this and other Loyalist propaganda. This validates Adams’s contention that Sewall had a principal role in Massachusettensis’s composition. Second, Adams’s presumption of Sewall’s authorship shaped the writing of both Massachusettensis and Novanglus, as revealed in a critical reading of the debate. Third, Adams biographers and Revolution scholars have underestimated the extent to which the literary contest with “Massachusettensis” was instrumental in John Adams’s radicalization. Fourth, the Novanglus-Massachusettensis debate was shrouded in friendship: publicly it encapsulated the signal ideological differences between Patriots and Loyalists while privately crowning a friendly rivalry between Adams and Sewall of fifteen years’ standing. Their friendship may have facilitated communication between British headquarters and the American rebels in the weeks preceding the outbreak of military hostilities. In sum, this article demonstrates the vitality of friendship as an analytical category for political history. Friendship has been under studied by historians of the American Revolutionary Era but the Revolution was at its most revolutionary in the division of intimate friends like Adams and Sewall

Analysis of factors influencing the ultrasonic fetal weight estimation

Objective: The aim of our study was the evaluation of sonographic fetal weight estimation taking into consideration 9 of the most important factors of influence on the precision of the estimation. Methods: We analyzed 820 singleton pregnancies from 22 to 42 weeks of gestational age. We evaluated 9 different factors that potentially influence the precision of sonographic weight estimation ( time interval between estimation and delivery, experts vs. less experienced investigator, fetal gender, gestational age, fetal weight, maternal BMI, amniotic fluid index, presentation of the fetus, location of the placenta). Finally, we compared the results of the fetal weight estimation of the fetuses with poor scanning conditions to those presenting good scanning conditions. Results: Of the 9 evaluated factors that may influence accuracy of fetal weight estimation, only a short interval between sonographic weight estimation and delivery (0-7 vs. 8-14 days) had a statistically significant impact. Conclusion: Of all known factors of influence, only a time interval of more than 7 days between estimation and delivery had a negative impact on the estimation

Cancer Biomarker Discovery: The Entropic Hallmark

Background: It is a commonly accepted belief that cancer cells modify their transcriptional state during the progression of the disease. We propose that the progression of cancer cells towards malignant phenotypes can be efficiently tracked using high-throughput technologies that follow the gradual changes observed in the gene expression profiles by employing Shannon's mathematical theory of communication. Methods based on Information Theory can then quantify the divergence of cancer cells' transcriptional profiles from those of normally appearing cells of the originating tissues. The relevance of the proposed methods can be evaluated using microarray datasets available in the public domain but the method is in principle applicable to other high-throughput methods. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using melanoma and prostate cancer datasets we illustrate how it is possible to employ Shannon Entropy and the Jensen-Shannon divergence to trace the transcriptional changes progression of the disease. We establish how the variations of these two measures correlate with established biomarkers of cancer progression. The Information Theory measures allow us to identify novel biomarkers for both progressive and relatively more sudden transcriptional changes leading to malignant phenotypes. At the same time, the methodology was able to validate a large number of genes and processes that seem to be implicated in the progression of melanoma and prostate cancer. Conclusions/Significance: We thus present a quantitative guiding rule, a new unifying hallmark of cancer: the cancer cell's transcriptome changes lead to measurable observed transitions of Normalized Shannon Entropy values (as measured by high-throughput technologies). At the same time, tumor cells increment their divergence from the normal tissue profile increasing their disorder via creation of states that we might not directly measure. This unifying hallmark allows, via the the Jensen-Shannon divergence, to identify the arrow of time of the processes from the gene expression profiles, and helps to map the phenotypical and molecular hallmarks of specific cancer subtypes. The deep mathematical basis of the approach allows us to suggest that this principle is, hopefully, of general applicability for other diseases

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead