From Zombie to Martyr: The Short Military Service of Private Hector Sylvestre

This article outlines the brief military service of Private Hector Sylvestre, a young Franco-Ontarien paratrooper executed by the SS. His career began as a conscript in the Active Army, serving nine months prior to enlisting in the Canadian Active Service Force. From this point forward he made a series of fateful decisions, which ultimately led to his death as a member of the French Resistance. His path from Zombie to “martyr” is unique for a Canadian soldier during the Second World War

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Militia and Defence Headquarters Personnel File Series, 1903 to 1938

In the late 1940s, the Department of National Defence enthusiastically embraced microfilming technology, undertaking a massive project to microfilm several million files covering the period 1885 to 1948. This article describes the authors’ research to trace one particular microfilm job covering Military Personnel Files managed by the Department of Militia and Defence. The authors have unearthed a large cache of unexplored records, comprising tens of thousands of military personnel files, the majority of which deal with military service during the Great War

MERMoTT - A multimedia based tool supporting the teaching of entity - relationship modelling within a framework of Structured Systems Analysis.

MERMoTT, Multimedia Entity - relationship modelling Tutor and Tool, is a Microsoft Windows based Computer Aided Learning (CAL) package aimed at the support of first year undergraduates in their study of Structured Analysis techniques, specifically Entity-relationship modelling. The package grew from a final year undergraduate project proposed by the author as a reaction to his needs as a first year lecturer in Systems Analysis. The paper seeks to show the development of MERMoTT as a possible solution to the problems which can arise from the teaching of abstract graphical notations such as these. The paper outlines the difficulties faced by educators in the field of Systems Analysis and how the package, which is based around the CORE approach, seeks to overcome these

Gas chromatography/ion mobility spectrometry as a hyphenated technique for improved explosives detection and analysis

Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) is currently being successfully applied to the problem of on-line trace detection of plastic and other explosives in airports and other facilities. The methods of sample retrieval primarily consist of batch sampling for particulate residue on a filter card for introduction into the IMS. The sample is desorbed into the IMS using air as the carrier and negative ions of the explosives are detected, some as an adduct with a reagent ion such as Cl(-). Based on studies and tests conducted by different airport authorities, this method seems to work well for low vapor pressure explosives such as RDX and PETN, as well as TNT that are highly adsorptive and can be found in nanogram quantities on contaminated surfaces. Recently, the changing terrorist threat and the adoption of new marking agents for plastic explosives has meant that the sample introduction and analysis capabilities of the IMS must be enhanced in order to keep up with other detector developments. The IMS has sufficient analytical resolution for a few threat compounds but the IMS Plasmogram becomes increasingly more difficult to interpret when the sample mixture gets more complex

Youth Employment Patterns in Segmented Labor Markets in the U.S. and Europe

This paper investigates interindustry patterns of youth employment in the United States and six Western European economies. Statistical analysis is conducted on an institutional model that relates youth employment share to two main aspects of national pay structures: the degree of labor-market segmentation (indicated by pay dispersion for adult employees of the same sex) and the importance of wage for age rules (indicated by youth relative pay). Both the degree of segmentation and relative wage levels prove influential, though there are interestingly US/EEC differences.Labor Markets; Segmented Labor Markets

Galen and Wellbeing: Whole Person Care

n/a - commentar

Synthesis and evaluation of designed PKC modulators for enhanced cancer immunotherapy.

Bryostatin 1 is a marine natural product under investigation for HIV/AIDS eradication, the treatment of neurological disorders, and enhanced CAR T/NK cell immunotherapy. Despite its promising activity, bryostatin 1 is neither evolved nor optimized for the treatment of human disease. Here we report the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of several close-in analogs of bryostatin 1. Using a function-oriented synthesis approach, we synthesize a series of bryostatin analogs designed to maintain affinity for bryostatin's target protein kinase C (PKC) while enabling exploration of their divergent biological functions. Our late-stage diversification strategy provides efficient access to a library of bryostatin analogs, which per our design retain affinity for PKC but exhibit variable PKC translocation kinetics. We further demonstrate that select analogs potently increase cell surface expression of CD22, a promising CAR T cell target for the treatment of leukemias, highlighting the clinical potential of bryostatin analogs for enhancing targeted immunotherapies

How significant to plant N nutrition is the direct consumption of soil microbes by roots?

The high degree to which plant roots compete with soil microbes for organic forms of nitrogen (N) is becoming increasingly apparent. This has culminated in the finding that plants may consume soil microbes as a source of N, but the functional significance of this process remains unknown. We used 15N- and 14C-labelled cultures of soil bacteria to measure rates of acquisition of microbes by sterile wheat roots and plants growing in soil. We compared these rates with acquisition of 15N delivered as nitrate, amino acid monomer (l-alanine) and short peptide (l-tetraalanine), and the rate of decomposition of [14C] microbes by indigenous soil microbiota. Acquisition of microbe 15N by both sterile roots and roots growing in soil was one to two orders of magnitude slower than acquisition of all other forms of 15N. Decomposition of microbes was fast enough to account for all 15N recovered, but approximately equal recovery of microbe 14C suggests that microbes entered roots intact. Uptake of soil microbes by wheat (Triticum aestivum) roots appears to take place in soil. If wheat is typical, the importance of this process to terrestrial N cycling is probably minor in comparison with fluxes of other forms of soil inorganic and organic N