New-England or A Briefe Enarration of the Ayre, Earth, Water, Fish and Fowles of That Country. With a Description of the Natures, Orders, Habits, and Religion of the Natives; in Latine and English Verse

This text, a Latin poem in dactylic hexameter with an accompanying English translation in heroic verse stands as the earliest surviving work of poetry about New England and the second oldest poem whose origins can be traced directly to the British American colonies. Only two copies of the original 1625 edition are known to survive; one is held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the other is housed at the British Museum. The Latin portion comprises 309 lines and praises the geographic features, flora and fauna of New England, and spends a majority of its verses describing the Native Americans with awe and curiosity. The English version contains 366 lines, frequently uses obscure terminology, and departs too drastically from the original to be of any assistance for discerning the Latin. The author is William Morrell, (ca. 1590-after 1626) who received his Bachelors of Arts from Magdalene College, Cambridge in 1615. On May 23 and 24, 1619 Morrell was ordained as a deacon and priest respectively at Peterborough. Several years later in 1623, after receiving a commission by the ecclesiastical court to oversee and administer any churches which were already or might be instituted in the new colonies, Morrell accompanied English navy Captain Robert Gorges to New England, who was tasked with assisting the establishment of the short-lived Wessagusset Colony in present-day Weymouth. The colony was abandoned in the spring of 1624 due to financial difficulties and tensions with the Natives. Robert Gorges served as Governor-General of New England between 1623 and 1624. Gorges returned to England in 1624, but Morrell remained behind in Plymouth for one year to learn more about New England. These two poems are the fruits of his observations. They were published in 1625 in London by John Dawson. These writings make it clear that Morrell was an able classical scholar. He frequently peppers his English with Latin maxims reminiscent of Virgil and Apuleius and he employs numerous references to classical mythological figures and events

Operational art and the Narva Front 1944, Sinimäed and campaign planning.

There is much written history for the military professional to read, but little is of value to his education. While many works are often wonderful reading, they are too broad or narrow in scope, often lacking the context to be used for serious study by professional soldiers. This work was written with two audiences in mind; my colleagues in the academic world, along with my many comrades who are professional soldiers. The present work was originally conceived as a contribution to historical literature on the subject of military education. More specifically, it was to be an exploration of the concept of operational art and the manner in which planning was doctrinally conducted to articulate battle on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. Any study of war devoid of the theory and doctrine of the period would be of little use to academics and military professionals alike. By the same token, it is often necessary for an author to relate the unfamiliar feelings of combat to a reader in order to give the perspective needed to understand war. Military professionals should study history to become better decision makers. Peter Paret best explained the role of history in relation to military professionals or historians when he said, “ By opening up the past for us, history added to the fund of knowledge that we can acquire directly and also made possible universal concepts and generalizations across time. To enable history to do this, the historian must be objective or as Clausewitz would have said- "as scientific or philosophical as possible.” Decision making must be looked at through the lens of what Clausewitz called “critical analysis." Clausewitz sought to answer the question of “why” something happened in terms of cause and effect. A decisions being examined can only be understood if we know something of the character of the man who made it. These thoughts together provide the foundation on which greater understanding of the art and science of war is built, thus giving the military professional the tools to deconstruct a decision in terms of the problem historically in time and space. This facilitates a greater appreciation and understanding of his trade. The “reenacting process” allows scholars and professional soldiers to reconstruct problems in terms of the terrain and material used during the period; giving a clearer view into the heart of the problem. As students of the art and science of war, we must make every effort to morally, mentally and physically put ourselves in a position to understand why leaders made the decisions they did. While the sheer terror of combat can never be properly replicated, our studies must find a way to understand them. The English language, or any language for that matter has a poor ability to explain in words, written or spoken, the horror of war. War is not just the extension of policy by other means, it is a societal interaction where human beings struggle within the phenomenon called war. We must understand war to be a human activity, thus a social affair. Grasping human emotions, we see events capable of motivating or terrifying combatants in the lonely hours with the extreme violence typical of combat. In this light, we correctly educate ourselves about the true nature of war. War studied at the strategic, operational or tactical-levels should always consider decisions made, particularly in terms of their moral, mental and physical properties. Common elements to the offense or defense are the weather and terrain being fought on. While the weather will ultimately affect each differently, weather has the ability to complicate terrain in ways man to this day cannot conquer. The following pages reflect a military professional’s understanding of the events at Leningrad, Narva and Sinimäed from 68 years ago. Understanding of these events was achieved through German plan for Operation BLAU. An examination of this and other operational-level documents has yielded a tremendous understanding of how the Germans envisioned the retrograde of their forces into the Baltic states. It brings the author joy to know this work can be used to explain the monumental events and sacrifices of others. To this end, I have made my finest attempt

A Massively-Parallel 3D Simulator for Soft and Hybrid Robots

Simulation is an important step in robotics for creating control policies and testing various physical parameters. Soft robotics is a field that presents unique physical challenges for simulating its subjects due to the nonlinearity of deformable material components along with other innovative, and often complex, physical properties. Because of the computational cost of simulating soft and heterogeneous objects with traditional techniques, rigid robotics simulators are not well suited to simulating soft robots. Thus, many engineers must build their own one-off simulators tailored to their system, or use existing simulators with reduced performance. In order to facilitate the development of this exciting technology, this work presents an interactive-speed, accurate, and versatile simulator for a variety of types of soft robots. Cronos, our open-source 3D simulation engine, parallelizes a mass-spring model for ultra-fast performance on both deformable and rigid objects. Our approach is applicable to a wide array of nonlinear material configurations, including high deformability, volumetric actuation, or heterogenous stiffness. This versatility provides the ability to mix materials and geometric components freely within a single robot simulation. By exploiting the flexibility and scalability of nonlinear Hookean mass-spring systems, this framework simulates soft and rigid objects via a highly parallel model for near real-time speed. We describe an efficient GPU CUDA implementation, which we demonstrate to achieve computation of over 1 billion elements per second on consumer-grade GPU cards. Dynamic physical accuracy of the system is validated by comparing results to Euler-Bernoulli beam theory, natural frequency predictions, and empirical data of a soft structure under large deformation

Reprogramming human T cell function and specificity with non-viral genome targeting.

Decades of work have aimed to genetically reprogram T cells for therapeutic purposes1,2 using recombinant viral vectors, which do not target transgenes to specific genomic sites3,4. The need for viral vectors has slowed down research and clinical use as their manufacturing and testing is lengthy and expensive. Genome editing brought the promise of specific and efficient insertion of large transgenes into target cells using homology-directed repair5,6. Here we developed a CRISPR-Cas9 genome-targeting system that does not require viral vectors, allowing rapid and efficient insertion of large DNA sequences (greater than one kilobase) at specific sites in the genomes of primary human T cells, while preserving cell viability and function. This permits individual or multiplexed modification of endogenous genes. First, we applied this strategy to correct a pathogenic IL2RA mutation in cells from patients with monogenic autoimmune disease, and demonstrate improved signalling function. Second, we replaced the endogenous T cell receptor (TCR) locus with a new TCR that redirected T cells to a cancer antigen. The resulting TCR-engineered T cells specifically recognized tumour antigens and mounted productive anti-tumour cell responses in vitro and in vivo. Together, these studies provide preclinical evidence that non-viral genome targeting can enable rapid and flexible experimental manipulation and therapeutic engineering of primary human immune cells

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts