Serologic Evidence of Frequent Human Infection with WU and KI Polyomaviruses

WU and KI polyomavirus infections are widespread

TP53 and MDM2 single nucleotide polymorphisms influence survival in non-del(5q) myelodysplastic syndromes

Abstract:P53 is a key regulator of many cellular processes and is negatively regulated by the human homolog of murine double minute-2 (MDM2) E3 ubiquitin ligase. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of either gene alone, and in combination, are linked to cancer susceptibility, disease progression, and therapy response. We analyzed the interaction of TP53 R72P and MDM2 SNP309 SNPs in relationship to outcome in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Sanger sequencing was performed on DNA isolated from 208 MDS cases. Utilizing a novel functional SNP scoring system ranging from +2 to -2 based on predicted p53 activity, we found statistically significant differences in overall survival (OS) (p = 0.02) and progression-free survival (PFS) (p = 0.02) in non-del(5q) MDS patients with low functional scores. In univariate analysis, only IPSS and the functional SNP score predicted OS and PFS in non-del(5q) patients. In multivariate analysis, the functional SNP score was independent of IPSS for OS and PFS. These data underscore the importance of TP53 R72P and MDM2 SNP309 SNPs in MDS, and provide a novel scoring system independent of IPSS that is predictive for disease outcome

OpenET : filling a critical data gap in water management for the western United States.

The lack of consistent, accurate information on evapotranspiration (ET) and consumptive use of water by irrigated agriculture is one of the most important data gaps for water managers in the western United States (U.S.) and other arid agricultural regions globally. The ability to easily access information on ET is central to improving water budgets across the West, advancing the use of data-driven irrigation management strategies, and expanding incentive-driven conservation programs. Recent advances in remote sensing of ET have led to the development of multiple approaches for field-scale ET mapping that have been used for local and regional water resource management applications by U.S. state and federal agencies. The OpenET project is a community-driven effort that is building upon these advances to develop an operational system for generating and distributing ET data at a field scale using an ensemble of six well-established satellite-based approaches for mapping ET. Key objectives of OpenET include: Increasing access to remotely sensed ET data through a web-based data explorer and data services; supporting the use of ET data for a range of water resource management applications; and development of use cases and training resources for agricultural producers and water resource managers. Here we describe the OpenET framework, including the models used in the ensemble, the satellite, meteorological, and ancillary data inputs to the system, and the OpenET data visualization and access tools. We also summarize an extensive intercomparison and accuracy assessment conducted using ground measurements of ET from 139 flux tower sites instrumented with open path eddy covariance systems. Results calculated for 24 cropland sites from Phase I of the intercomparison and accuracy assessment demonstrate strong agreement between the satellite-driven ET models and the flux tower ET data. For the six models that have been evaluated to date (ALEXI/DisALEXI, eeMETRIC, geeSEBAL, PT-JPL, SIMS, and SSEBop) and the ensemble mean, the weighted average mean absolute error (MAE) values across all sites range from 13.6 to 21.6 mm/month at a monthly timestep, and 0.74 to 1.07 mm/day at a daily timestep. At seasonal time scales, for all but one of the models the weighted mean total ET is within ±8% of both the ensemble mean and the weighted mean total ET calculated from the flux tower data. Overall, the ensemble mean performs as well as any individual model across nearly all accuracy statistics for croplands, though some individual models may perform better for specific sites and regions. We conclude with three brief use cases to illustrate current applications and benefits of increased access to ET data, and discuss key lessons learned from the development of OpenET

Conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort : the social history of English as a language of politics

The growth of England from Norman-Angevin colony to imperial power began with the social development of a national community that conducted its arguments in English. In this sense vernacularization was the constituting process of English history. This article connects the history of language to constitutional history, and affirms recent calls for an approach that transcends conventional boundaries between late medieval and early modern periods, and between intellectual, cultural, social, demographic, economic, political and constitutional histories. Vernacularization is seen as a movement from below. It is linked in various ways to traditions and customs of resistance and rebellion that are seen as having shaped the history of England from the thirteenth century to 1649

The specter of the commonalty : class struggle and the commonweal in England before the Atlantic world

The early historical usages of three words had great resonance in the constitutional histories of the English-speaking world. "Commons" and "commonalty," used to denote a constitutional class—the Third Estate, laboriaris, "those who work"—are now archaic, but they were central to political and constitutional discourse in precolonial England. Their emergence was part of a discourse of the commonweal that gave prominence to the constitutional and (later) economic roles of the commonalty. The provenance of commonweal as a term of political and constitutional discourse is linked to a tradition of popular resistance and rebellion that emerged from 1381 to 1450. A popular provenance for this keyword of English vernacular politics is of interest, since it offers a significant exception to the clerical authority model that has dominated the study of political discourse.2 It places popular voices and words above, or alongside, educated and classical (Renaissance) accounts of the formation of the constitutional cultures of early modern England and prerevolutionary America and suggests the existence of causal links between actual social struggles and the development of languages of politics. Comparing contemporary paradigms of popular rebellion with modern studies suggests that Karl Marx's theory of class struggle under "primitive accumulation" was foreshadowed in the responses of Sir Thomas Smith and the two Richard Hakluyts to an existing tradition of popular unrest and rebellion. How, they asked, could a problem (the emergence of a mobile and discontented proletarii and their leaders) become an advantage and benefit to the commonwealth of England? Their answer was to conquer foreign markets and create new ones by establishing plantations. The tradition of popular rebellion and the shifting class divide between the commonalty and its rulers were central ingredients in the politics and social development of precolonial England

Marxism

200

Only the poor will be saved : a theology for the artisans of Elizabethan England

Popular Christianity has always been influenced, above all, by the life of Jesus, as celebrated in popular festivals like Christmas and Easter.1 In its simplest sense, ‘Christianity’ is embodied in Jesus: the baby born in a stable; the simple carpenter; the uncompromising miracle worker who sprang from and spent his life among the labouring poor, insisted that his followers give away all they had, and who was crucified by the bishops and archbishops of Judaism with the permission of a vacillating imperial state official. Jesus, of course, comes in many forms in the Christian sources—from the illiterate peasant-artisan envisaged by a series of recent scholars of the historical Jesus, to the king of kings favoured by Constantine and succeeding religious establishments. But it has always been the life of Jesus, not the theology of Paul or the fine disputes of all the doctrinal acrobats who followed him, that captured the imagination of the millions of people Bob Scribner called ‘the simple folk’.2 Let me be clear that my concern here is not with what, in the light of Scripture and/or tradition or any combination of the two, can in fact be shown to be or to have been the case. My interest is in what the author of the text I am to discuss, Philip Jones, said and wrote was the case, whom he said it to, and in what historical context