War, Railroads, and the West: The Lost Story of J.R. Scupham

The Scupham family currently spread across Indiana and Illinois is fairly well established and confident in its past. From the earliest familial records – dating only to the Civil War – a lone figure emerged: William C. Scupham, private in the Union Army, 1st Illinois Light Artillery. However, in looking through the regimental roll for the 1st Illinois, one finds, somewhat shockingly, another soldier with the same last name: John R. or J.R. Scupham. William’s story is well known – his stay at Andersonville prison is well documented – but who was this shadowy J.R.? Even more compelling is that his name was scrawled across the entire country. From Chicago to Missouri and Vicksburg to California, J.R. flashes out from military rolls, court cases, land holdings, and newspaper clippings. The rediscovery of John R. Scupham tells a story that could have only have happened in the exciting, tumultuous decades of the late 19th-century. It is a story of immigration, war, railroads, mining, and the American West; a truly American story that helps one to understand how individual men and women were able to shape this country by their own remarkable actions

Life after suicide: psychotherapists and practitioners speak about their experiences of working with suicidal clients and the impact it has on them when their client dies

Suicide is a significant problem in Britain. The Office for National Statistics (2016) states that in 2014 that there were 6,122 suicides and considerably more who attempted to end their life. For practitioners working alongside suicidal clients it can have a major effect on them if their client dies. The first phase of this research project used an online survey which covered a broad range of questions in relation to the impact of working with suicidal clients. The responses were analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. In the second phase of the research project, sixteen participants were interviewed using a narrative approach in order to hear at first-hand their experiences of working with suicidal clients. The transcripts were analysed using both narrative and thematic analysis. The findings highlighted how overwhelmed practitioners felt at the time of their client’s death expressing shock, sadness, anger, guilt and helplessness. In addition the findings revealed that years later practitioners were still marked by the experience stating “You don’t forget”, “Thinking about it produces a feeling of horror” and “It creates anxiety and apprehension when I encounter similar patients”. The findings identified that practitioners faced challenges with decision making, transference and countertransference and risk assessment. They were unprepared for the emotional impact following the suicide of their client and the need for intentional self-care. It was also recognised that practitioners required support at a personal and professional level and that training needed to be fit for purpose. Analysis from a mixed methods pluralistic perspective would suggest that there is not a single answer to aiding practitioners when their client dies. The recommendation is made that practitioners would be best supported if the issue of client suicide is recognised as a shared responsibility, between employers, professional bodies, training providers, supervisors and practitioners, and working together to maintain standards of care, support and training. This will aid and prepare practitioners for working with suicidal clients, and should their client die by suicide, practitioners will have a greater degree of support to enable them to negotiate the practical, emotional and professional challenges in the days, months and years which follow

An Army for the Revolution, a Revolution for the Army: The French Revolutionary Army, 1792-1797

There is a common myth about the average French soldier at the time of the French Revolution that presents him as a reckless, heroic citizen-soldier, swept to victory by the power of revolutionary fervor. This myth obscures some important realities of French military life. The French military was often characterized not by fantastic victories, but rather by an early incompetence. Indeed, this inability threatened to destroy France on many occasions. This essay attempts to reconcile the myth and reality by exploring what motivated common Frenchmen to fight and win wars. Demographic, political, tactical, and organizational analysis of the French Revolutionary Army reveals how the military was a transitional organization caught between the monarchic model and the nascent democratic ideology. The military saw a growth in its wider “Frenchness” as men from all of France volunteered. Many of the operations of the army were carried out with the French conception of democracy and national identity in mind. At the same time, the older influences anchored the army, enabling the revolutionary spirit to survive. One finds an army struggling to reconcile its old monarchical roots in organization, equipment, manpower, and even battlefield tactics with the new revolutionary French identity

Water Music: Metaphor and Marriage in George Eliot’s Middlemarch

In George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, she examines the foibles and follies, the trials and tribulations of a rural community facing the uncertainties of a rapidly industrializing Britain. Provincial, however, is hardly the word that one should use to describe the romantic relationships that Eliot creates in her novel. Even less dull and dreary are the metaphoric images that Eliot’s narrator uses to describe, expand, and judge the connections between the two main couples in Middlemarch: William Ladislaw and Dorothea Brooke as well as Tertius Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy. When we explore the metaphors of Middlemarch, we can see the narrator’s deft grasp of entwining the abstract and the real. This paper examines how Middlemarch’s narrator uses similar images and metaphors of water and music to describe the development and depth of Middlemarch’s dissimilar romantic relationships. The metaphors in Middlemarch work on two levels: upon the characters and upon the reader. A discussion of the critical theory of metaphor, informed by Paul Ricoeur, explains how characters and readers use imagination to unite disparate objects in order to create truth. The perception of the individual warps this imaginative function, causing a disconnection between the truth of the object and its metaphoric representation. In Middlemarch, these flawed perceptions are the basis of the narrator’s criticism of the characters and their romantic relationships in the novel. However, the same criticism of perception can also be placed upon the reader. The reader’s task, I argue, is to interpret how Middlemarch’s narrator is using similar metaphors to portray two very dissimilar relationships. It is only after we recognize and consciously address the problems of our own perception as readers that we can grasp Middlemarch’s vision of a true egalitarian marriage

Sensational Bodies: Semiotics and Embodiment in the Works of Wilkie Collins

This project uses the semiotic theories of nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce to read embodiment in the sensation fiction works of Wilkie Collins. I argue that a Peircean semiotic reading offers critics a unique advantage to read and discuss how embodiment and environment affect both characters within the novel and the readers outside the novel. Using The Woman in White, my thesis explores how embodiment shapes the plot of the novel, and imbues characters with detective skills. I also discuss the fraught serialization of Armadale in Britain and America, and I examine how alterations in the illustrations reshape the readers’ sense of embodiment in terms of race and gender. My project then turns toward a discussion of how a semiotic analysis of sensation fiction can create new ways of reading and valuing other popular fiction and affective genres

Succession of the turkey gastrointestinal bacterial microbiome related to weight gain

Because of concerns related to the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture, antibiotic-free alternatives are greatly needed to prevent disease and promote animal growth. One of the current challenges facing commercial turkey production in Minnesota is difficulty obtaining flock average weights typical of the industry standard, and this condition has been coined “Light Turkey Syndrome” or LTS. This condition has been identified in Minnesota turkey flocks for at least five years, and it has been observed that average flock body weights never approach their genetic potential. However, a single causative agent responsible for these weight reductions has not been identified despite numerous efforts to do so. The purpose of this study was to identify the bacterial community composition within the small intestines of heavy and light turkey flocks using 16S rRNA sequencing, and to identify possible correlations between microbiome and average flock weight. This study also sought to define the temporal succession of bacteria occurring in the turkey ileum. Based upon 2.7 million sequences across nine different turkey flocks, dominant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were identified and compared between the flocks studied. OTUs that were associated with heavier weight flocks included those with similarity to Candidatus division Arthromitus and Clostridium bartlettii, while these flocks had decreased counts of several Lactobacillus species compared to lighter weight flocks. The core bacterial microbiome succession in commercial turkeys was also defined. Several defining markers of microbiome succession were identified, including the presence or abundance of Candidatus division Arthromitus, Lactobacillus aviarius, Lactobacillus ingluviei, Lactobacillus salivarius, and Clostridium bartlettii. Overall, the succession of the ileum bacterial microbiome in commercial turkeys proceeds in a predictable manner. Efforts to prevent disease and promote growth in the absence of antibiotics could involve target dominant bacteria identified in the turkey ileum that are associated with increased weight gain

A Crypt-Specific Core Microbiota Resides in the Mouse Colon

In an attempt to explore the microbial content of functionally critical niches of the mouse gastrointestinal tract, we targeted molecular microbial diagnostics of the crypts that contain the intestinal stem cells, which account for epithelial regeneration. As current evidence indicates, the gut microbiota affects epithelial regeneration; bacteria that are likely to primarily participate in this essential step of the gut, microbiota cross talk, have been identified. We show in this article that only the cecal and colonic crypts harbor resident microbiota in the mouse and that regardless of the line and breeding origin of these mice, this bacterial population is unexpectedly dominated by aerobic genera. Interestingly, this microbiota resembles the restricted microbiota found in the midgut of invertebrates; thus, the presence of our so-called “crypt-specific core microbiota” (CSCM) in the mouse colon potentially reflects a coevolutionary process under selective conditions that can now be addressed. We suggest that CSCM could play both a protective and a homeostatic role within the colon. This article is setting the bases for such studies, particularly by providing a bona fide—and essentially cultivable—crypt microbiota of reference

Comparison of DNA extraction kits for PCR-DGGE analysis of human intestinal microbial communities from fecal specimens

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The influence of diet on intestinal microflora has been investigated mainly using conventional microbiological approaches. Although these studies have advanced knowledge on human intestinal microflora, it is imperative that new methods are applied to facilitate scientific progress. Culture-independent molecular fingerprinting method of Polymerase Chain Reaction and Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE) has been used to study microbial communities in a variety of environmental samples. However, these protocols must be optimized prior to their application in order to enhance the quality and accuracy of downstream analyses. In this study, the relative efficacy of four commercial DNA extraction kits (Mobio Ultra Clean^®Fecal DNA Isolation Kit, M; QIAamp^®DNA Stool Mini Kit, Q; FastDNA^®SPIN Kit, FSp; FastDNA^®SPIN Kit for Soil, FSo) were evaluated. Further, PCR-DGGE technique was also assessed for its feasibility in detecting differences in human intestinal bacterial fingerprint profiles.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>Total DNA was extracted from varying weights of human fecal specimens using four different kits, followed by PCR amplification of bacterial 16S rRNA genes, and DGGE separation of the amplicons.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Regardless of kit, maximum DNA yield was obtained using 10 to 50 mg (wet wt) of fecal specimens and similar DGGE profiles were obtained. However, kits FSp and FSo extracted significantly larger amounts of DNA per g dry fecal specimens and produced more bands on their DGGE profiles than kits M and Q due to their use of bead-containing lysing matrix and vigorous shaking step. DGGE of 16S rRNA gene PCR products was suitable for capturing the profiles of human intestinal microbial community and enabled rapid comparative assessment of inter- and intra-subject differences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We conclude that extraction kits that incorporated bead-containing lysing matrix and vigorous shaking produced high quality DNA from human fecal specimens (10 to 50 mg, wet wt) that can be resolved as bacterial community fingerprints using PCR-DGGE technique. Subsequently, PCR-DGGE technique can be applied for studying variations in human intestinal microbial communities.</p

Characterization of the Oral Fungal Microbiome (Mycobiome) in Healthy Individuals

The oral microbiome–organisms residing in the oral cavity and their collective genome–are critical components of health and disease. The fungal component of the oral microbiota has not been characterized. In this study, we used a novel multitag pyrosequencing approach to characterize fungi present in the oral cavity of 20 healthy individuals, using the pan-fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) primers. Our results revealed the “basal” oral mycobiome profile of the enrolled individuals, and showed that across all the samples studied, the oral cavity contained 74 culturable and 11 non-culturable fungal genera. Among these genera, 39 were present in only one person, 16 genera were present in two participants, and 5 genera were present in three people, while 15 genera (including non-culturable organisms) were present in ≥4 (20%) participants. Candida species were the most frequent (isolated from 75% of participants), followed by Cladosporium (65%), Aureobasidium, Saccharomycetales (50% for both), Aspergillus (35%), Fusarium (30%), and Cryptococcus (20%). Four of these predominant genera are known to be pathogenic in humans. The low-abundance genera may represent environmental fungi present in the oral cavity and could simply be spores inhaled from the air or material ingested with food. Among the culturable genera, 61 were represented by one species each, while 13 genera comprised between 2 and 6 different species; the total number of species identified were 101. The number of species in the oral cavity of each individual ranged between 9 and 23. Principal component (PCO) analysis of the obtained data set followed by sample clustering and UniFrac analysis revealed that White males and Asian males clustered differently from each other, whereas both Asian and White females clustered together. This is the first study that identified the “basal mycobiome” of healthy individuals, and provides the basis for a detailed characterization of the oral mycobiome in health and disease