In Memoriam: John H. Mansfield

I met John Mansfield in 1968 at the house of a mutual friend. A few months later I started Harvard Law School and was pleased to find I had been assigned to his section of Torts. I had some pretty good teachers that year - Lon Fuller for Contracts, Lloyd Weinreb for Criminal Law, and the great Jack Dawson for Development of Legal Institutions - but I think John was the best of them. (Right up there with Dawson, anyway.) His method was not like anything I had expected from law school. He would have us look at a case one or two pages long and examine every sentence of it, teaching us patiently, by trial and error - mostly error, as it happened - to speak precisely when we spoke, to make sure we got the meaning, or the range of possible meanings, exactly right. I was initially baffled by this method because my interest in law was, and remains, primarily sociological and historical: I want to know what causes legal change, and what happens in social life as a result of that change. John\u27s internal point of view and exacting textual and logical approach to legal doctrine struck me as awfully dry and rather alien. One of the best decisions I ever made was not to fight the approach but to swim along with it and learn to practice it. I never got to be as good at it as John was, but I still hear his voice speaking through mine when I teach first-year Contracts and ask students for better and sharper approximations of what they are trying to say. What John\u27s example taught was to look at every recital of facts, every statement of a legal premise or conclusion, every policy judgment, with fresh eyes - even if one has seen it a hundred times before and thinks he knows what it means. Nothing was too familiar, banal, seemingly obvious, or seemingly absurd to escape that gimlet gaze and probing scalpel. I worked as his research assistant in the summer after my first year, helping him put together historical materials for what became his course on Church and State: he gave me a lot of rope and was fascinated by everything we found. With John one learned what it means to recover radical innocence as a state of mind before an idea or a text

Isoenzyme polymorphism of almond genotypes selected in the region of northern Serbia

Isoenzyme polymorphism was studied in 20 almond (Prunus dulcis [Mill.] D. A. Webb) genotypes selected from seedling populations of unknown almond cultivars in the region of northern Serbia (Vojvodina). Fourteen enzyme systems were studied using the method of vertical polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Ten systems were polymorphic in twelve loci. This polymorphism allowed unique identification of all studied genotypes. The most useful enzyme for analysis of almond genetic variability was menadione reductase. Polymorphism identified for alkaline phosphatase, formate dehydrogenase, glutamate dehydrogenase, malic enzyme, and menadione reductase was reported for the first time in almond. Cluster analysis was used to construct a dendrogram on which five clusters with different number of genotypes could be identified

Newly identified NO-sensor guanylyl cyclase/connexin 43 association is involved in cardiac electrical function

Background: Guanylyl cyclase, a heme-containing alpha 1 beta 1 heterodimer (GC1), produces cGMP in response to Nitric oxide (NO) stimulation. The NO-GC1-cGMP pathway negatively regulates cardiomyocyte contractility and protects against cardiac hypertrophy-related remodeling. We recently reported that the beta 1 subunit of GC1 is detected at the intercalated disc with connexin 43 (Cx43). Cx43 forms gap junctions (GJs) at the intercalated disc that are responsible for electrical propagation. We sought to determine whether there is a functional association between GC1 and Cx43 and its role in cardiac homeostasis. Methods and Results: GC1 and Cx43 immunostaining at the intercalated disc and coimmunoprecipitation from membrane fraction indicate that GC1 and Cx43 are associated. Mice lacking the alpha subunit of GC1 (GC alpha 1 knockout mice) displayed a significant decrease in GJ function (dye-spread assay) and Cx43 membrane lateralization. In a cardiac-hypertrophic model, angiotensin II treatment disrupted the GC1-Cx43 association and induced significant Cx43 membrane lateralization, which was exacerbated in GC alpha 1 knockout mice. Cx43 lateralization correlated with decreased Cx43-containing GJs at the intercalated disc, predictors of electrical dysfunction. Accordingly, an ECG revealed that angiotensin II-treated GCa1 knockout mice had impaired ventricular electrical propagation. The phosphorylation level of Cx43 at serine 365, a protein-kinase A upregulated site involved in trafficking/assembly of GJs, was decreased in these models. Conclusions: GC1 modulates ventricular Cx43 location, hence GJ function, and partially protects from electrical dysfunction in an angiotensin II hypertrophy model. Disruption of the NO-cGMP pathway is associated with cardiac electrical disturbance and abnormal Cx43 phosphorylation. This previously unknown NO/Cx43 signaling could be a protective mechanism against stress-induced arrhythmia

Aortic Embolism in Cats: Prevalence, Surgical Treatment and Electrocardiography

Aortic embolism (caudal arterial thromboembolism) was diagnosed over a four-year-period in 14 out of 2,000 cats in a hospital clinic population (7/1,000). Including 35 cases reported in the literature, the average age of 50 cats with aortic embolism was 6-8 years (range one to 16 years). Of these, 37 were males and 13 were females. Endocarditis with thrombosis was the most frequently observed cause of aortic embolism, although aortic arteriosclerosis was reported in one cat. The clinical and pathological features of aortic embolism in five cats are described in this report. In electrocardiograms of four of these, arrhythmias or conduction disturbances were recorded. Intact emboli in the aorta and external iliac arteries were removed by abdominal aortic embolectomy in two cats within hours after the onset of posterior paralysis. Death resulted in one case from cardiac complications and in the other by euthanasia at the later date because of probably recurrent aortic embolism. In the other three cases, multiple sections of the aorta with the embolus in situ were examined, but no microscopic changes in the aortic wall were noted. Surgical removal of an aortic embolus is technically and economically feasible and is considered the treatment of choice when treatment is requested within hours after the onset of clinical signs. Although embolectomy can yield a good immediate result; the long range justification for such therapy requires further evaluation, since recurrent embolization may develop

HIF and c-Myc: Sibling Rivals for Control of Cancer Cell Metabolism and Proliferation

O2 deprivation (hypoxia) and cellular proliferation engage opposite cellular pathways, yet often coexist during tumor growth. The ability of cells to grow during hypoxia results in part from crosstalk between hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) and the proto-oncogene c-Myc. Acting alone, HIF and c-Myc partially regulate complex adaptations undertaken by tumor cells growing in low O2. However, acting in concert these transcription factors reprogram metabolism, protein synthesis, and cell cycle progression, to “fine tune” adaptive responses to hypoxic environments

Fan-shaped loader for making a loosely felted mat of aligned wood flakes

Apparatus for forming an elongated continuous mat of elongated wood flakes mixed with a binder and adapted to be compressed to form a densified composite wood product for continuously depositing wood flakes on that supporting surface and for aligning the elongated wood flakes being deposited in mutually parallel relation and in alignment with the direction of movement of the supporting surface. A hopper for containing wood flakes deposits wood flakes into the upper end of a fan-shaped flake loader comprised of a plurality of channels positioned in side-by-side relation and sloping downwardly from the hopper to a supporting surface. The channels are generally V-shaped in cross-section and converge toward their lower ends such that the wood flakes deposited in the upper ends of the channels become aligned in mutually parallel relation as the flakes slide down the channels and are deposited on the supporting surface.https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/patents/1106/thumbnail.jp