Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the liberal political subject and the settler state

Modern citizenship, with its exclusions and disaggregated freedoms, has a distinct genealogy in the state-formation of settler societies. Ethnic tensions and indigenous rights-claiming in many Anglophone states are frequently traced to their beginnings as settler societies. This is not only a legacy of the rights-claiming discourses of settlers, traced in individual national histories. It owes much to the formal body of literature that justified settler states not primarily as the embodiment of a nation but for the government of transnational populations. Using the writings of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his contemporaries, this article examines the settler as a problem in British liberal thought. Wakefield’s unease about the settler as a political subject drew together three contemporary discourses, the critique of American society, post-Malthus thinking on poverty and the systematic colonization movement. For Wakefield, settler societies could only prosper through central planning, surveillance and land price fixing, leading to class formation

Design of a device to remove lunar dust from space suits for the proposed lunar base

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to begin construction of a lunar base soon after the turn of the century. During the Apollo missions, lunar dust proved to be a problem because the dust adhered to all exposed material surfaces. Since lunar dust will be a problem during the establishment and operation of this base, the need exists for a device to remove the dust from space suits before the astronauts enter clean environments. The physical properties of lunar dust were characterized and energy methods for removing the dust were identified. Eight alternate designs were developed to remove the dust. The final design uses a brush and gas jet to remove the dust. The brush bristles are made from Kevlar fibers and the gas jet uses pressurized carbon dioxide from a portable tank. A throttling valve allows variable gas flow. Also, the tank is insulated with Kapton and electrically heated to prevent condensation of the carbon dioxide when the tank is exposed to the cold (- 240 F) lunar night

“No longer Merchants, but Sovereigns of a vast Empire”: the writings of Sir John Malcolm and British India, 1810 to 1833

This thesis analyses the works of Sir John Malcolm (1769-1833) as key texts in the intellectual history of the formation of British India. It is concerned less with Malcolm's widely acknowledged role as a leading East India Company administrator and more with the unparalleled range of influential books that he wrote on imperial and Asian topics between 1810 and his death in 1833. Through the publication of nine major works, numerous pamphlets and articles and a few volumes of poetry, Malcolm established his reputation as an authority in three major areas. Firstly, the Sketch of the Political History of India (1811) and the posthumously published Life of Robert Lord Clive (1836) remained major sources on the history of the founding of the British empire in India for much of the nineteenth century. Through these histories, he wove the anxieties of the Company's solider-diplomats of the early nineteenth into the narrative of the Company's rise as an imperial power. With the History of the Sikhs (1810) and, to a far greater extent, the History of Persia (1815), Malcolm sealed his reputation as a path-finding orientalist making an early contribution to European knowledge of India's north-west frontier. Lastly, Malcolm's Memoir of Central India (1823), which analysed the history of the region from the rise of the Marathas to the British conquest in 1818, is one of the most sophisticated and politically significant examples of British efforts to construct an Indian past that accounted for British imperial control in the present. This study's detailed examination of his works provides an invaluable insight into how British imperial mentalities in the period before 1857 were shaped by the interplay between trends and events in India and Britain on the one hand and the competing historiographical and political traditions current among British imperial administrators on the other. It demonstrates that British thinking on India was far from unified and was often characterised less by a desire to formulate an ideology for rule – even if this was its eventual effect – and more by bitter divisions between imperial administrators. Malcolm's need to counter the arguments of his opponents among the Court of Directors in the decade after Governor General Wellesley's departure in 1806 and his resistance to more radical commentators on India like James Mill in the 1820s, shaped his writing. Malcolm's influence and the range of topics he wrote about make him an ideologue of empire and a pioneer of British orientalism and the historiography of British India. Malcolm's body of works is the most comprehensive and prominent example of how the British responded intellectually to their empire in India in the generation after the Trial of Warren Hastings and before the first Anglo-Afghan war

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in a Patient with a Family History of Huntington Disease: Genetic Counseling Challenges

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Huntington disease (HD) are generally considered to be distinct and easily differentiated neurologic conditions. However, there are case reports of the co‐occurrence of ALS with HD. We present a 57‐year‐old male with a clinical diagnosis of sporadic ALS in the context of a family history of HD. This case adds to the limited literature regarding individuals with a family history of HD who present with features of ALS. There were several genetic counseling challenges in counseling this patient including the diagnostic consideration of two fatal conditions, complex risk information, the personal and familial implications, and the patient’s inability to communicate verbally or through writing due to disease progression. DNA banking effectively preserved the right of our patient and his wife not to learn his HD genetic status during a stressful time of disease progression while providing the option for family members to learn this information in the future if desired. We present lessons learned and considerations for other clinical genetics professionals who are presented with similar challenging issues.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147074/1/jgc40725.pd

Banner News

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/banner_news/1130/thumbnail.jp

The Organic Crystallizing Agent 2-Methyl-2,4-pentanediol Reduces DNA Curvature by Means of Structural Changes in A-tracts

Contemporary predictive models for sequence-dependent DNA structure provide a good estimation of overall DNA curvature in most cases. However, the two current models differ fundamentally in their view of the origin of DNA curvature. An earlier model that associates DNA bending primarily, although not exclusively, with stretches of adenines (A-tracts) is based on results of comparative gel retardation, cyclization kinetics, hydroxyl radical cutting, and other solution measurements. It represents an intersection of wedge and junction models. More recently, a non-A-tract bending model has been proposed, built on structural results from x-ray crystallography and molecular modeling. In this view, A-tracts are proposed to be straight and rigid, whereas mixed sequence DNA is bent. Because a key premise of the non-A-tract bending model is the crystallographic observation that A-tracts are straight, we have examined the effect in solution of 2-methyl-2,4-pentanediol (MPD), an organic solvent used in crystal preparation for crystallographic DNA structure determinations. Using cyclization analysis, DNase I cutting, chemical probing, and electron microscopy on DNA oligomers with and without A-tracts, we show that the presence of MPD in solution dramatically affects A-tracts and that the effect is specific to these sequence elements. Combined with the previous observation that MPD affects gel mobility of curved sequences with A-tracts, our findings support the bent A-tract model and call for caution in the interpretation of crystallographic results on DNA structure as these are presently obtained