The Ideal and the Real: Southern Plantation Women of the Civil War

Southern plantation women experienced a shift in identity over the course of the Civil War. Through the diaries of Catherine Edmondston and Eliza Fain, historians note the discrepancy between the ideal and real roles women had while the men were off fighting. Unique perspectives and hidden voices in their writings offer valuable insight into the life of plantation women and the hybrid identity they gained despite the Confederate loss

Concerted reductive coupling of an alkyl chloride at Pt(IV)

Oxidation of a doubly cyclometallated platinum(II) complex results in two isomeric platinum(IV) complexes. Whereas the trans isomer is robust, being manipulable in air at room temperature, the cis isomer decomposes at −20 °C and above. Reductive coupling of an alkyl chloride at the cis isomer gives a new species which can be reoxidised. The independence of this coupling on additional halide rules out the reverse of an SN2 reaction, leaving a concerted process as the only sensible reaction pathway

How the Franks Became Frankish: The Power of Law Codes and the Creation of a People

During the fifth century, many Germanic peoples in Roman service assumed control over vast swathes of the Western Empire. Among these peoples were the Franks, who lend their name to the modern European nation of France. Thus, a question arises regarding how this came to be: how did illiterate tribes from Germania create a culture of their own that supplanted the Romans? Through an analysis of Frankish legal texts like the Lex Salica and the Capitularies of Charlemagne, this paper argues that the Franks forged their own identity by first formalizing their Germanic customs in the early sixth century and then by imposing more sweeping laws in the eighth and ninth centuries that portrayed them as champions of Christianity. Ultimately, through the use of these institutions, the Franks instilled in themselves and their neighbors the idea of what it meant to be Frankish and established arguably the greatest successor state in the western Roman provinces

Restoring the public service ideal: Creating a climate for public service

The purpose of this study is to explore whether public service motivation can be considered a work-unit or organizational-level construct. I posit that a climate of public service motivation can be created by: 1) leaders who model the ideals of public service, 2) agency employees seeing the meaningfulness of their work; and 3) when employees perceive that the agency has a good external reputation. Further, this study examines whether public service motivation, at either the group or individual level, will mediate meaningfulness and perceived external image to important outcomes that impact employee retention, namely organizational commitment and organizational identification. I will test this theory by sampling employees from a large state agency and nonprofit behavioral health organization

Study report recommendations for the next generation Range Safety System (RSS) Integrated Receiver/Decoder (IRD)

The Integrated Receiver/Decoder (IRD) currently used on the Space Shuttle was designed in the 1980 and prior time frame. Over the past 12 years, several parts have become obsolete or difficult to obtain. As directed by the Marshall Space Flight Center, a primary objective is to investigate updating the IRD design using the latest technology subsystems. To take advantage of experience with the current designs, an analysis of failures and a review of discrepancy reports, material review board actions, scrap, etc. are given. A recommended new design designated as the Advanced Receiver/Decoder (ARD) is presented. This design uses the latest technology components to simplify circuits, improve performance, reduce size and cost, and improve reliability. A self-test command is recommended that can improve and simplify operational procedures. Here, the new design is contrasted with the old. Possible simplification of the total Range Safety System is discussed, as is a single-step crypto technique that can improve and simplify operational procedures

Susan M. Crosby and Glenn H. Ecker in a Joint Senior Voice Recital

This is the program for the joint senior voice recital of soprano Susan M. Crosby and tenor Glenn H. Ecker. SuElla Beard and Ron Davis accompanied the performance on piano. The recital took place in Mitchell Hall on November 11, 1974

PRUNE1: a disease-causing gene for secondary microcephaly

In their Letter to the Editor, Karakaya et al. (2017) present an interesting case report describing the clinical course involving secondary microcephaly of a 3-year-old Turkish boy found to be homozygous for a frameshift mutation in PRUNE1 identified through whole exome sequencing. The child presented with congenital hypotonia, contractures and global developmental delay with respiratory insufficiency and seizures developing in the first year of life. The authors note that the affected child’s head circumference plotted on the 75th centile at birth, and that by 38 months of age he had developed microcephaly. Neuroimaging at 14 months revealed cerebral and cerebellar atrophy consistent with other patients described with Prune syndrome (Karaca et al., 2015; Costain et al., 2017; Zollo et al., 2017). Although the child had abnormal neurology from birth, there was a period of early developmental regression. Peripheral spasticity in the lower extremities and optic atrophy were not documented until 38 months. In addition to the PRUNE1 variant, Karakaya et al. also identified a second homozygous variant in the CCDC14 gene in the Turkish child’s whole exome sequencing data that, while listed to have an allele count of 108 in the current Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) release, is notably absent in homozygous fashion (Lek et al., 2016). CCDC14 is known to be expressed in human brain, reported to negatively regulate centriole duplication and interact with proteins previously associated with primary microcephaly (Firat-Karalar et al., 2014). Thus, while it seems likely that the homozygous PRUNE1 variant is primarily responsible for the clinical presentation in the Turkish child, it is impossible to determine whether there may be any phenotypical contribution from this additional homozygous sequence variant. Recently, Costain et al. (2017) described a homozygous consensus splice site variant in PRUNE1 (c.521-2A4G; NM_021222.1) in a 2-year-old Oji-Cre male who presented with congenital hypotonia and talipes, whose head circumference was large at birth ( +3 standard deviations), but by 2 years and 2 months plotted on the 50th centile, with a weight and height on the 95th and 75th centiles, respectively. However, it should be noted that the child’s father is macrocephalic ( +4 standard deviations), the published clinical photographs at 2 years 5 months of age illustrate bitemporal narrowing, a sloping forehead and large ears, consistent with a developing microcephaly, and neuroimaging revealed cortical and cerebellar atrophy. He developed respiratory insufficiency shortly after birth, and infantile spasms in the first year of life (Costain et al., 2017). It remains to be determined how the phenotypical outcomes stemming from proposed loss-of-function mutations defined by Karakaya et al. and Costain et al., relate to missense mutations published by Karaca et al. and also Zollo et al., which are likely to involve at least partial gain-of-function outcomes in PRUNE1 activity. However, as more cases are investigated and published, the phenotype associated with autosomal recessive Prune neurodevelopmental disorder, and the functional outcomes of PRUNE1 mutation, are becoming clearer. It is now apparent that while some patients have a small head at birth and others a head circumference in the normal range, the key component of the microcephaly is that it is progressive, and associated with characteristic neuroimaging findings with a thin or hypoplastic corpus callosum and cortical and cerebellar atrophy developing in early childhood. Although all patients with Prune syndrome described to date are neurologically impaired from birth, there also appears to be a neurodegenerative component with progression of the disorder. In our manuscript, we described clinical overlap of Prune syndrome with the neurodegenerative condition associated with homozygous mutations in TBCD (Zollo et al., 2017). TBCD encodes one of the five tubulin-specific chaperones that are required for a/b-tubulin de novo heterodimer formation and the disorder is characterized by developmental regression, seizures, optic atrophy and secondary microcephaly, cortical atrophy with delayed myelination, cerebellar atrophy and thinned corpus callosum (Edvardson et al., 2016; Flex et al., 2016; Miyake et al., 2016; Pode-Shakked et al., 2017). The neurodegenerative phenotype documented in the Turkish child by Karakaya et al. further demonstrates the similarities with the TBCD disorder and Prune syndrome, and confirms optic atrophy to be a feature of Prune syndrome. Interestingly, it is also becoming clear that respiratory insufficiency is a common feature of Prune syndrome, having been documented by Karakaya et al. and in the Oji-Cre child, as well as the youngest affected Omani child described in our manuscript

Effects of weightlessness on tissue proliferation

The repair of bone marrow stroma following mechanical injury was studied to obtain baseline data for a proposed space experiment regarding the effect of weightlessness on marrow stroma and other proliferating cell systems