“The Original Journals of ‘Kitty’ Wilmot”: manufacturing women’s travel writing in the salon of Helen Maria Williams

This article discusses the implications of a previously unknown Romantic-period manuscript by Anglo-Irish traveler Katherine Wilmot (1773–1824). A later version of Wilmot’s epistolary travelogue of 1801–03 has been valued as an artifact of British experience abroad during the Peace of Amiens for its descriptions of Napoleonic Paris. Yet the newly discovered draft reveals a deeper assimilation within and sympathy towards the radical political and literary networks Wilmot documented, as well as a budding relationship with author and salonnière Helen Maria Williams that is occluded from the later narrative. This article examines the complex choices surrounding authorship for British women abroad in the period by considering a refused invitation that Wilmot submit writing to The English Press, the publishing venture of Williams and her companion John Hurford Stone. The article details Wilmot’s evolving writing in terms of Williams’s influence, outlining how British women travel writers reshaped their experiences to meet the expectations of readers at home while also considering the impact of sedition, gendered agency, and political affinity on the production and reception of their writing

Telomerecat: A ploidy-agnostic method for estimating telomere length from whole genome sequencing data.

Telomere length is a risk factor in disease and the dynamics of telomere length are crucial to our understanding of cell replication and vitality. The proliferation of whole genome sequencing represents an unprecedented opportunity to glean new insights into telomere biology on a previously unimaginable scale. To this end, a number of approaches for estimating telomere length from whole-genome sequencing data have been proposed. Here we present Telomerecat, a novel approach to the estimation of telomere length. Previous methods have been dependent on the number of telomeres present in a cell being known, which may be problematic when analysing aneuploid cancer data and non-human samples. Telomerecat is designed to be agnostic to the number of telomeres present, making it suited for the purpose of estimating telomere length in cancer studies. Telomerecat also accounts for interstitial telomeric reads and presents a novel approach to dealing with sequencing errors. We show that Telomerecat performs well at telomere length estimation when compared to leading experimental and computational methods. Furthermore, we show that it detects expected patterns in longitudinal data, repeated measurements, and cross-species comparisons. We also apply the method to a cancer cell data, uncovering an interesting relationship with the underlying telomerase genotype

International genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new primary biliary cirrhosis risk loci and targetable pathogenic pathways.

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is a classical autoimmune liver disease for which effective immunomodulatory therapy is lacking. Here we perform meta-analyses of discovery data sets from genome-wide association studies of European subjects (n=2,764 cases and 10,475 controls) followed by validation genotyping in an independent cohort (n=3,716 cases and 4,261 controls). We discover and validate six previously unknown risk loci for PBC (Pcombined<5 × 10(-8)) and used pathway analysis to identify JAK-STAT/IL12/IL27 signalling and cytokine-cytokine pathways, for which relevant therapies exist

Publisher Correction: Telomerecat: A ploidy-agnostic method for estimating telomere length from whole genome sequencing data.

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Are local government accounts trusted? Exploring the UK Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee Verdict

This paper analyses the system of local government accounting and auditing in England and how successfully it is performing its role in supporting democratic accountability. To do this, the paper asks whether the accounts of local councils in England are trusted by those who should be using them to hold local government to account. The paper links trust in the accounts to their success both as transparency documents and as accountability documents. It argues that trust, transparency and accountability are related to each other rhizomatically, which is a relationship between concepts which does not presume a hierarchy between them. The paper examines trust in local government accounts and its relationship to transparency and accountability through analysing the evidence submitted to a UK parliamentary select committee and the committee's subsequent report and finds serious defficiencies in England's system of local government accounting and audit

Electrochemical Reduction of [Ni(Mebpy)3]2+. Elucidation of the Redox Mechanism by Cyclic Voltammetry and Steady-State Voltammetry in Low Ionic Strength Solutions.

Bipyridine complexes of Ni are used as catalysts in a variety of reductive transformations. Here, the electroreduction of [Ni(Mebpy)3]2+ (Mebpy = 4,4’-dimethyl-2,2’-bipyridine) in dimethylformamide is reported, with the aim of determining the redox mechanism and oxidation states of products formed under well-controlled electrochemical conditions. Results from cyclic voltammetry, steady-state voltammetry (SSV) and chronoamperometry demonstrate that [Ni(Mebpy)3]2+ undergoes two sequential 1e reductions at closely separated potentials (E0’1 = -1.06 ± 0.01 V and E0’2 = -1.15 ± 0.01 V vs Ag/AgCl (3.4 M KCl)). Homogeneous comproportionation to generate [Ni(Mebpy)3]+ is demonstrated in SSV experiments in low ionic strength solutions. The comproportionation rate constant is determined to be > 106 M-1s-1, consistent with rapid outer-sphere electron transfer. Consequentially, on voltammetric time scales, the 2e reduction of [Ni(Mebpy)3]2+ results in formation of [Ni(Mebpy)3]1+ as the predominant species released into bulk solution. We also demonstrate that [Ni(Mebpy)3]0 slowly loses a Mebpy ligand (~10 s-1).</p