Adam Badeau\u27s The Story ofthe Merrimac and the Monitor

Every American schoolboy knows the story of the historic battle between the Merrimac and the Monitor , wrote historian Bernard Brodie in his 1941 classic Sea Power in the Machine Age. General Adam Badeau played a significant part in telling American children about the battle by means ofhis article The Story ofthe Merrimac and the Monitor , published in the April 1887 issue of St. Nicholas magazine, the outstanding American juvenile periodical ofits day. The original manuscript ofthis article, reprinted here, is preserved in the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse University

How selfing and intra- and interspecific crossing influence seed set, morphology and ploidy level in Euphrasia: An experimental study of species occurring in the Alps of Switzerland

Annual alpine species rely on selfing rather than on cross-pollination for successful reproduction. However, insect visits may occasionally cause cross-pollination not only within but also between closely related species. The aim of this study was to investigate four species of Euphrasia for their efficiency in spontaneous selfing and their success in intra- and interspecific crossing. We used the seed sets that followed spontaneous selfing and artificial cross- and selfpollination to measure the breeding success. We compared the morphological characters of species and hybrids and determined their ploidy level using flow cytometry. We verified the hybridogenous origin of plants resulting from interspecific crosses using RAPD banding patterns. While spontaneous seed set was high in the two small-flowered species, seed set in the large-flowered species was small and affected by external circumstances. We obtained F1 and F2 hybrids from interspecific crosses of two diploid species and detected polyploid individuals in both generation

A Littoral Frustration: The Union Navy and the Siegeof Charleston, 1863-1865

On 7 April 1863 nine Union Ironclads in line-ahead formation, under the command of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont, stood into the harbor of Char1eston, South Carolina. Du Pont, one of the Union navy\u27s leading officers, had already won fame by capturing Port Royal, South Carolina, in November 1861. Now commanding the Union\u27s most technologically advanced ships--seven Passaic-class monitors, the broadside ironclad New Iron­sides, and the lightly armored Keokuk-he was setting his sights on the cradle of the rebellion

Intentional Omissions from the Published Civil War Diaries of Admiral John A. Dahlgren

This article explains the events surrounding the publication of the biography of John A. Dahlgren, collected and penned by his wife Marguerite. The article was researched with the aid of the John A. Dahlgren Papers at the Syracuse University Special Collection. Marguerite had motives to exalt her husband\u27s life: he had become an unpopular and controversial figure despite his accomplishments, and Marguerite was also in the process of petitioning Congress, seeking to receive royalties for her husband\u27s military inventions

Allelic configuration and polysomic inheritance of highly variable microsatellites in tetraploid gynodioecious Thymus praecox agg

Polyploidy plays a pivotal role in plant evolution. However, polyploids with polysomic inheritance have hitherto been severely underrepresented in plant population genetic studies, mainly due to a lack of appropriate molecular genetic markers. Here we report the establishment and experimental validation of six fully informative microsatellite markers in tetraploid gynodioecious Thymus praecox agg. Sequence data of 150 microsatellite alleles and their flanking regions revealed high variation, which may be characteristic for polyploids with a reticulate evolutionary history. Understanding the patterns of mutation (indels and substitutions) in microsatellite flanking-sequences was a prerequisite for the development of co-dominant markers for fragment analyses. Allelic segregation patterns among progeny arrays from ten test crosses revealed tetrasomic inheritance in T. praecox agg. No evidence of frequent double reduction was detected. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based dosage effects allowed for precise assignment of allelic configuration at all six microsatellite loci. The quantification of allele copy numbers in PCR was verified by comparisons of observed and expected gametic allele frequencies and heterozygosities in test crosses. Our study illustrates how PCR based markers can provide reliable estimates of heterozygosity and, thus, powerful tools for breeding system and population genetic analyses in polyploid organism

Review Essay—Official History, Not “Instant Analysis”

Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf Wa

The Synthesis and Antiviral Properties of 8- Amino-3- [(2 hydroxyethoxy)methyl]-1,2,4-triazolo- [4,3-a ]pyrazine

The preparation of 8-amino-3-[(2-hydroxyethoxy)methyl]-1,2,4- triazolo[4,3-a]pyrazine (IV) as an analogue of 9-[(2-hydroxyethoxy) methyl]guanine and 9-(S)-(2,3-dihydroxypropyl)adenine is described from the reaction of 3-chloro-2-hydrazinopyrazine (V) and ethyl 2-(2-acetoxyethoxy)thioacetimidate (IXg) followed by treatment with ammonia. Compound IV was found to lack antiviral properties towards herpes simplex I and II, vaccinia virus, vesicular stomatitis virus, measles, reovirus type 1, parainfluenza virus type 3, Sindbis virus, Coxsackie type B4 virus, and poliovirus type

Meta!Blast computer game: a pipeline from science to 3D art to education

Meta!Blast (http://www.metablast.org) is designed to address the challenges students often encounter in understanding cell and metabolic biology. Developed by faculty and students in biology, biochemistry, computer science, game design, pedagogy, art and story, Meta!Blast is being created using Maya (http://usa.autodesk.com/maya/) and the Unity 3D (http://unity3d.com/) game engine, for Macs and PCs in classrooms; it has also been exhibited in an immersive environment. Here, we describe the pipeline from protein structural data and holographic information to art to the threedimensional (3D) environment to the game engine, by which we provide a publicly-available interactive 3D cellular world that mimics a photosynthetic plant cell