The Union of Hearts Depicted: Gladstone, Home Rule and United Ireland

First paragraph: William Ewart Gladstone detested political cartoons. They embodied caricature, the exaggeration of a particular feature into a deformity to excite ridicule or hatred. Cartoons, Gladstone once pointed out, had not existed in ancient Greece. There the ideal of human beauty was so deeply cherished that its distortion was not tolerated. Yet cartoons did the statesman powerful service during his long career. Their very frequency consolidated his image as a popular politician, bringing out qualities such as courage and tenacity that he was happy to have publicised. Nowhere, however, did they advance his cause more than in Ireland after the introduction of Home Rule. The nationalist journal United Ireland, as the illustrations in this paper will show, gave currency to striking depictions of Gladstone; and they vividly portrayed the union of hearts between England and Ireland that he preached so persistently in the late 1880s. The purpose of this article is to examine a sample of the cartoons, but first they need to be placed in their context

Supramolecular Organization of the Repetitive Backbone Unit of the Streptococcus pneumoniae Pilus

Streptococcus pneumoniae, like many other Gram-positive bacteria, assembles long filamentous pili on their surface through which they adhere to host cells. Pneumococcal pili are formed by a backbone, consisting of the repetition of the major component RrgB, and two accessory proteins (RrgA and RrgC). Here we reconstruct by transmission electron microscopy and single particle image reconstruction method the three dimensional arrangement of two neighbouring RrgB molecules, which represent the minimal repetitive structural domain of the native pilus. The crystal structure of the D2-D4 domains of RrgB was solved at 1.6 Å resolution. Rigid-body fitting of the X-ray coordinates into the electron density map enabled us to define the arrangement of the backbone subunits into the S. pneumoniae native pilus. The quantitative fitting provide evidence that the pneumococcal pilus consists uniquely of RrgB monomers assembled in a head-to-tail organization. The presence of short intra-subunit linker regions connecting neighbouring domains provides the molecular basis for the intrinsic pilus flexibility

Fosmidomycin Uptake into Plasmodium and Babesia-Infected Erythrocytes Is Facilitated by Parasite-Induced New Permeability Pathways

., a mouse malaria parasite. and related parasites. Our data provide further evidence that parasite-induced new permeability pathways may be exploited as routes for drug delivery

Using brain cell-type-specific protein interactomes to interpret neurodevelopmental genetic signals in schizophrenia

Genetics have nominated many schizophrenia risk genes and identified convergent signals between schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders. However, functional interpretation of the nominated genes in the relevant brain cell types is often lacking. We executed interaction proteomics for six schizophrenia risk genes that have also been implicated in neurodevelopment in human induced cortical neurons. The resulting protein network is enriched for common variant risk of schizophrenia in Europeans and East Asians, is down-regulated in layer 5/6 cortical neurons of individuals affected by schizophrenia, and can complement fine-mapping and eQTL data to prioritize additional genes in GWAS loci. A sub-network centered on HCN1 is enriched for common variant risk and contains proteins (HCN4 and AKAP11) enriched for rare protein-truncating mutations in individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Our findings showcase brain cell-type-specific interactomes as an organizing framework to facilitate interpretation of genetic and transcriptomic data in schizophrenia and its related disorders

Home Rule for Ireland (1874-1914): the Great Missed Opportunity?

Nationalism in Ireland is one of the oldest political traditions of that country, one that acquired new effectiveness and influence in the late nineteenth century. Between 1874 and 1914, British and Irish politicians elaborated and debated various schemes of constitutional reform, with a view to transforming the unitary parliamentary state into either a federation or a union with a special devolved parliament for the whole of Ireland. The latter went under the name of Home Rule, because it was about giving the Irish control of their domestic affairs without terminating the 1800 Union with Britain. Home Rule fell far short of independence, or even what later came to be known as “Dominion Status.” Yet it bitterly divided British and Irish political opinion for two generations and brought the country to the brink of civil war by 1912. Passed, but not implemented, in 1914 (because of Ulster’s strong opposition), Home Rule was then revised and passed again by the UK parliament in 1920. At that stage, however, it was “too little, too late” for the nationalists, who demanded full independence and were prepared to fight for it (in the War of Independence of 1919-21 and the Civil War of 1922-3). Was Home Rule the great missed opportunity to avoid such bloodshed and long-term unrest? This article concludes that a peaceful solution would have been possible, had it not been for the polarization of the debate and the militancy fomented by London-based leaders, who realised that Home Rule elicited fury and militancy among both English and Scottish imperialists while, at the same time, it galvanised the Liberals into frenzies of selfless idealism. That Gladstone, Salisbury, Balfour, Chamberlain, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill and Bonar Law were able to capitalise so much from the issues raised by the “Irish Question” suggests that the latter went unanswered because it was, ultimately, a “British Question”—or a question about which the British people had very strong views

Gladstone and the Irish civil service

an analysis of the impact of Gladstone's home rule proposal on the Irish civil service and its organization and their influence on the evolution of British policy on the Irish administration