The Railroad Background of the Florida Senatorial Election of 1851

The national schism concerning the state of the Union following the Mexican War affected the character and intensity of political debate on the Florida scene no less than it did that of other areas throughout the nation. In Congress, Jefferson Davis and other eminent defenders of the Southern position gained the ardent support of Florida’s Democratic senior Senator, David L. Yulee. In his advocacy of the principle of the concurrent majority, as applied to the bicameral nature of the national legislature, Yulee was dealt a devastating blow by Webster and Clay. By late July of 1850, the proponents of the “Omnibus Bill” were still hopeful, and remained so until Maryland’s James A. Pearce suddenly allowed Yulee’s parliamentary maneuvers to divide the bill. The “ultras” had won a temporary victory, though the final compromise could not be averted.” In the final tabulation, Yulee was joined by his Whig colleagues from Florida, Senator Jackson Morton and Representative Edward C. Cabell, in opposing the California and District of Columbia slave-trade bills and approving the extension of slavery in the new Territories. Morton and Yulee also joined hands in support of the fugitive slave bill, with Cabell absent or not voting in the House

Wear Resistant Fused Filament Extrusion Head

Aspects of devices in which plastic is extruded for a three dimensional printer. Novel designs for components of a high performance fused filament extrusion head are disclosed within, a novel “heat-break” and wear resistant “feed tube”. The feed tube serves as a path for filament as it is fed from the cold end into the hot end. The heat-break rigidly connects the cold end to the hot end while providing resistance to the flow of heat

A Massachusetts Mechanic in Florida and Mexico, 1847

The growing tension between the United States and Mexico during the early part of 1846 found Florida singularly unenthusiastic for war. For one thing, she had only achieved statehood the year before. Then, too, she still felt the adverse impact not only of the 1837-43 depression, but also - more important - the devastation of the Seminole War. Despite these feelings, when Congress actually declared war on May 13, 1846, there was general support for the cause throughout the state. Ultimately, five Florida companies were called into service and three saw action in Mexico

A Massachusetts Traveller on the Florida Frontier

The following passage is an excerpt from the travel diary of W. T. Allen. Leaving his home in Leominster, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1852, Allen enjoyed a forty-nine day tour of the Eastern portion of the United States. He journeyed by rail and boat to New York City and then by boat to Savannah, Georgia, and Florida. His stay in Florida lasted sixteen days, from March 21st to April 6th, and the account of his experiences on the Florida frontier comprises about fifteen of the fifty-five pages of his diary. After leaving Florida, Allen travelled to Savannah, Macon, Montgomery, Mobile, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Niagara, Albany, New York and Boston, returning to Leominster on April 29th, 1852

An orthologue of bacteroides fragilis NanH is the principal sialidase in tannerella forsythia

Sialidase activity is a putative virulence factor of the anaerobic periodontal pathogen Tannerella forsythia, but it is uncertain which genes encode this activity. Characterization of a putative sialidase, SiaHI, by others, indicated that this protein alone may not be responsible for all of the sialidase activity. We describe a second sialidase in T. forsythia (TF0035), an orthologue of Bacteroides fragilis NanH, and its expression in Escherichia coli. Sialidase activity of the expressed NanH was confirmed by using 2′-(4-methylumbelliferyl)-α-d-N-acetylneuraminic acid as a substrate. Biochemical characterization of the recombinant T. forsythia NanH indicated that it was active over a broad pH range, with optimum activity at pH 5.5. This enzyme has high affinity for 2′-(4-methylumbelliferyl)-α-d-N-acetylneuraminic acid (Km of 32.9 ± 10.3 μM) and rapidly releases 4-methylumbelliferone (Vmax of 170.8 ± 11.8 nmol of 4-methylumbelliferone min−1 mg of protein−1). E. coli lysates containing recombinant T. forsythia NanH cleave sialic acid from a range of substrates, with a preference for α2-3 glycosidic linkages. The genes adjacent to nanH encode proteins apparently involved in the metabolism of sialic acid, indicating that the NanH sialidase is likely to be involved in nutrient acquisition

From gratitude to service: engagement, influence and impact

Report detailing the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues' impact, influence and reach. This report features figures and infographics for the different areas of the Centre’s work to date. Since launching in May 2012, the Jubilee Centre has conducted rigorous research into how character and virtues impact on individuals and society. During this time, the Centre has engaged with the British public in a range of different ways and has sought to make a significant difference to how character and virtues are perceived. This new report, From Gratitude to Service, demonstrates the influence the Centre has achieved on the ground in a short period of time and the wide variety of channels through which the Centre has promoted and applied its research evidence. The report explores all aspects of the Centre’s work including research, influence and engagement with policy, partnerships and international collaborations, its work with schools and the community

Latent protein trees

Unbiased, label-free proteomics is becoming a powerful technique for measuring protein expression in almost any biological sample. The output of these measurements after preprocessing is a collection of features and their associated intensities for each sample. Subsets of features within the data are from the same peptide, subsets of peptides are from the same protein, and subsets of proteins are in the same biological pathways, therefore, there is the potential for very complex and informative correlational structure inherent in these data. Recent attempts to utilize this data often focus on the identification of single features that are associated with a particular phenotype that is relevant to the experiment. However, to date, there have been no published approaches that directly model what we know to be multiple different levels of correlation structure. Here we present a hierarchical Bayesian model which is specifically designed to model such correlation structure in unbiased, label-free proteomics. This model utilizes partial identification information from peptide sequencing and database lookup as well as the observed correlation in the data to appropriately compress features into latent proteins and to estimate their correlation structure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the model using artificial/benchmark data and in the context of a series of proteomics measurements of blood plasma from a collection of volunteers who were infected with two different strains of viral influenza.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AOAS639 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Transcriptional profiling of colicin-induced cell death of Escherichia coli MG1655 identifies potential mechanisms by which bacteriocins promote bacterial diversity

We report the transcriptional response of Escherichia coli MG1655 to damage induced by colicins E3 and E9, bacteriocins that kill cells through inactivation of the ribosome and degradation of chromosomal DNA, respectively. Colicin E9 strongly induced the LexA-regulated SOS response, while colicin E3 elicited a broad response that included the induction of cold shock genes, symptomatic of translational arrest. Colicin E3 also increased the transcription of cryptic prophage genes and other laterally acquired mobile elements. The transcriptional responses to both these toxins suggest mechanisms that may promote genetic diversity in E. coli populations, pointing to a more general role for colicins in adaptive bacterial physiology than has hitherto been realized