Review of The Encyclopedia of the Central West

The objectives of this encyclopedia, as explained by the author in the introduction, are to present the widest possible body of reference material on the Central West and also to offer a readable work, one to be dipped into for enjoyment as well as information (5). There is no disputing the breadth of the coverage, which extends geographically from North Dakota to Texas and from Nebraska to western Colorado and topically from geology to tourism. Nor can it be denied that the entries are interesting. But conceptually the choice of area is open to dispute, and a close reading of a sample of entries reveals that the accuracy of the information may be queried

Great Plains Indians

David J. Wishart’s Great Plains Indians covers thirteen thousand years of fascinating, dynamic, and often tragic history.From a hunting and gathering lifestyle to first contact with Europeans to land dispossession to claims cases, and much more, Wishart takes a wide-angle look at one of the most significant groups of people in the country. Myriad internal and external forces have profoundly shaped Indian lives on the Great Plains. Those forces—the environment, religion, tradition, guns, disease, government policy—have written their way into this history. Wishart spans the vastness of Indian time on the Great Plains, bringing the reader up to date on reservation conditions and rebounding populations in a sea of rural population decline. Great Plains Indians is a compelling introduction to Indian life on the Great Plains from thirteen thousand years ago to the present

Great Plains Indians

David J. Wishart’s Great Plains Indians covers thirteen thousand years of fascinating, dynamic, and often tragic history.From a hunting and gathering lifestyle to first contact with Europeans to land dispossession to claims cases, and much more, Wishart takes a wide-angle look at one of the most significant groups of people in the country. Myriad internal and external forces have profoundly shaped Indian lives on the Great Plains. Those forces—the environment, religion, tradition, guns, disease, government policy—have written their way into this history. Wishart spans the vastness of Indian time on the Great Plains, bringing the reader up to date on reservation conditions and rebounding populations in a sea of rural population decline. Great Plains Indians is a compelling introduction to Indian life on the Great Plains from thirteen thousand years ago to the present

Natural Areas, Regions, and Two Centuries of Environmental Change on the Great Plains

A careful reading of recent issues of the Natural Areas Journal, the publication of the Natural Areas Association, will leave you with the conclusion that humans are not a part of natural areas. When humans do appear, it is either as disturbing agents, disrupting the naturalness through, for example, the introduction of exotic plants and animals, or as managers, enhancing the naturalness through, for example, prescribed burning. This is an explicit and purposeful exclusion: We can probably all agree, wrote the editor of the journal in 2004, that \u27natural\u27 places are areas where human actions have minimally changed the communities and processes that occur there. In fact, the stated mission of the Natural Areas Association is specifically to benefit and protect natural areas by minimizing the human impact

Review of \u3ci\u3eWilliam H. Ashley: Enterprise and Politics in the Trans-Mississippi West\u3c/i\u3e By Richard M. Clokey

Richard Clokey\u27s biography of William Ashley is the product of fifteen years of research. The time was well spent; this is a thorough, perceptive, and interesting study of a man who played an important role in the early development of the American West. Perhaps more could have been made of Ashley in the existential sense, giving the reader more insight into his personality, but as a historian (and not a psychohistorian) Clokey understandably chose to emphasize the public rather than the private man. Still, Ashley emerges from his actions as a man who sought respect and admiration and,. .. projected the image as a leader of men, able, restrained, responsible, and in command (p. 52). Ashley\u27s role in the fur trade is well-known, thanks to the research of the late Dale Morgan. Clokey\u27s main achievement is to place this segment of Ashley\u27s life in the context of the years that preceded and followed it. What materializes is a depiction of Ashley as a Jacksonian Man, the type whom Richard Hofstadter described as an expectant capitalist, a hard working ambitious person for whom enterprise was a kind of religion. Ashley was born in Virginia in 1778 to a family of modest means. As a young man he moved west in two steps: first to Kentucky in 1798 and then on to the Missouri lead meaning region of St. Genevieve in 1802. There he took advantage of every opportunity to advance himself, engaging in lead mining, the gunpowder trade, and land speculation. He took risks and showed imagination in all his dealings, but he stretched his credit thin and was constantly assailed by debtors. In frontier Missouri this was no blemish to his reputation, and he was elected lieutenant governor of the state in 1820 and appointed general in the state militia in 1821. Ashley\u27s main ambitions were social and political. The economic enterprises were simply means to an end

Review of \u3ci\u3eWilliam H. Ashley: Enterprise and Politics in the Trans-Mississippi West\u3c/i\u3e By Richard M. Clokey

Richard Clokey\u27s biography of William Ashley is the product of fifteen years of research. The time was well spent; this is a thorough, perceptive, and interesting study of a man who played an important role in the early development of the American West. Perhaps more could have been made of Ashley in the existential sense, giving the reader more insight into his personality, but as a historian (and not a psychohistorian) Clokey understandably chose to emphasize the public rather than the private man. Still, Ashley emerges from his actions as a man who sought respect and admiration and,. .. projected the image as a leader of men, able, restrained, responsible, and in command (p. 52). Ashley\u27s role in the fur trade is well-known, thanks to the research of the late Dale Morgan. Clokey\u27s main achievement is to place this segment of Ashley\u27s life in the context of the years that preceded and followed it. What materializes is a depiction of Ashley as a Jacksonian Man, the type whom Richard Hofstadter described as an expectant capitalist, a hard working ambitious person for whom enterprise was a kind of religion. Ashley was born in Virginia in 1778 to a family of modest means. As a young man he moved west in two steps: first to Kentucky in 1798 and then on to the Missouri lead meaning region of St. Genevieve in 1802. There he took advantage of every opportunity to advance himself, engaging in lead mining, the gunpowder trade, and land speculation. He took risks and showed imagination in all his dealings, but he stretched his credit thin and was constantly assailed by debtors. In frontier Missouri this was no blemish to his reputation, and he was elected lieutenant governor of the state in 1820 and appointed general in the state militia in 1821. Ashley\u27s main ambitions were social and political. The economic enterprises were simply means to an end

Review of \u3ci\u3eThe New Encyclopedia of the American West\u3c/i\u3e Edited by Howard R. Lamar

The Reader\u27s Encyclopedia of the American West, edited by Yale historian Howard Lamar and published by Thomas Y. Crowell Company in 1977, was a pretty good book, bringing to the American public the first comprehensive single-volume treatment of the history of the West. But that reference work has now been superseded-and dwarfed-by this new rendition, also edited by Lamar. More than 1250 pages of three-column text, 1.5 million words in all, are given over to 2400 alphabetically ordered entries written by more than three hundred scholars. Long thematic entries, on the fur trade or railroads, for example, are interspersed with shorter pieces, often on individuals. Six hundred photographs and a good number of maps augment a readable text. A bibliography at the end of most entries points the reader to additional sources; there is some cross-referencing of entries, though not enough; and there is an index, but only of the names of persons (there was no index at all in the 1977 edition). All in all, this is a handsome, informative, engaging book-well worth the asking price. It rightfully takes its place alongside the rival four-volume Encyclopedia of the American West, edited by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod (1996), as the best reference works on the West. The New Encyclopedia, like its predecessor, is ambitious in both conception and scope: in conception, because it includes the West as process, a frontier stage occurring across the entire United States, as well as the West as a place, the western half of the country; in scope, because among its entries are old favorites of western history, such as wars, politics, and gunfighters, but also more recent concerns, such as gender, ethnicity, and environment. So, for example, there is an entry on Plymouth Rock and another on the early settlement of Vermont, but only states of the West get the full treatment with coverage of their histories from early settlement through to the present. This is a logical way of dealing with the ambiguous meaning of the West, but the complexity of the arrangement, mixing temporal and spatial parameters, causes some confusion, as is evident in the entries on Physiography and Vegetation, two of the longest essays in the book. Whereas the former deals with the physiography of the entire country, the latter covers only the vegetation of the Western United States, suggesting what? That the shape of the land was more important to settlers than the availability of wood? The selection of entries and their content tell a good deal about the way scholarship on the West has developed since the 1977 version. Interpretive essays on African Americans (Negroes in the first edition), Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans have been expanded, new entries (Prostitution on the Frontier, for instance) have been added, and many more have been revised. To the editor\u27s credit, however, Frederick Jackson Turner and his Frontier Thesis are not shunned or castigated, as is the fashion in some of the New Western History. (It is hard to understand why Turner has been so lambasted for being a product of his times, when, after all, the New Western Historians, also products of their times, will surely be eventually disregarded too.) A concern with the historiography of the West, as well as its actual lived history, is apparent throughout The New Encyclopedia in the large number of entries on historians, including Walter Prescott Webb, Dale L. Morgan, Angie Debo, and, deservedly, Lamar himself

Improving the accuracy of protein secondary structure prediction using structural alignment

BACKGROUND: The accuracy of protein secondary structure prediction has steadily improved over the past 30 years. Now many secondary structure prediction methods routinely achieve an accuracy (Q3) of about 75%. We believe this accuracy could be further improved by including structure (as opposed to sequence) database comparisons as part of the prediction process. Indeed, given the large size of the Protein Data Bank (>35,000 sequences), the probability of a newly identified sequence having a structural homologue is actually quite high. RESULTS: We have developed a method that performs structure-based sequence alignments as part of the secondary structure prediction process. By mapping the structure of a known homologue (sequence ID >25%) onto the query protein's sequence, it is possible to predict at least a portion of that query protein's secondary structure. By integrating this structural alignment approach with conventional (sequence-based) secondary structure methods and then combining it with a "jury-of-experts" system to generate a consensus result, it is possible to attain very high prediction accuracy. Using a sequence-unique test set of 1644 proteins from EVA, this new method achieves an average Q3 score of 81.3%. Extensive testing indicates this is approximately 4–5% better than any other method currently available. Assessments using non sequence-unique test sets (typical of those used in proteome annotation or structural genomics) indicate that this new method can achieve a Q3 score approaching 88%. CONCLUSION: By using both sequence and structure databases and by exploiting the latest techniques in machine learning it is possible to routinely predict protein secondary structure with an accuracy well above 80%. A program and web server, called PROTEUS, that performs these secondary structure predictions is accessible at . For high throughput or batch sequence analyses, the PROTEUS programs, databases (and server) can be downloaded and run locally

Recombinant Incretin-Secreting Microbe Improves Metabolic Dysfunction in High-Fat Diet Fed Rodents

peer-reviewedThe gut hormone glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 and its analogues represent a new generation of anti-diabetic drugs, which have also demonstrated propensity to modulate host lipid metabolism. Despite this, drugs of this nature are currently limited to intramuscular administration routes due to intestinal degradation. The aim of this study was to design a recombinant microbial delivery vector for a GLP-1 analogue and assess the efficacy of the therapeutic in improving host glucose, lipid and cholesterol metabolism in diet induced obese rodents. Diet-induced obese animals received either Lactobacillus paracasei NFBC 338 transformed to express a long-acting analogue of GLP-1 or the isogenic control microbe which solely harbored the pNZ44 plasmid. Short-term GLP-1 microbe intervention in rats reduced serum low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, triglycerides and triglyceride-rich lipoprotein cholesterol substantially. Conversely, extended GLP-1 microbe intervention improved glucose-dependent insulin secretion, glucose metabolism and cholesterol metabolism, compared to the high-fat control group. Interestingly, the microbe significantly attenuated the adiposity associated with the model and altered the serum lipidome, independently of GLP-1 secretion. These data indicate that recombinant incretin-secreting microbes may offer a novel and safe means of managing cholesterol metabolism and diet induced dyslipidaemia, as well as insulin sensitivity in metabolic dysfunction

Genomic sequence and activity of KS10, a transposable phage of the Burkholderia cepacia complex

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The <it>Burkholderia cepacia </it>complex (BCC) is a versatile group of Gram negative organisms that can be found throughout the environment in sources such as soil, water, and plants. While BCC bacteria can be involved in beneficial interactions with plants, they are also considered opportunistic pathogens, specifically in patients with cystic fibrosis and chronic granulomatous disease. These organisms also exhibit resistance to many antibiotics, making conventional treatment often unsuccessful. KS10 was isolated as a prophage of <it>B. cenocepacia </it>K56-2, a clinically relevant strain of the BCC. Our objective was to sequence the genome of this phage and also determine if this prophage encoded any virulence determinants.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>KS10 is a 37,635 base pairs (bp) transposable phage of the opportunistic pathogen <it>Burkholderia cenocepacia</it>. Genome sequence analysis and annotation of this phage reveals that KS10 shows the closest sequence homology to Mu and BcepMu. KS10 was found to be a prophage in three different strains of <it>B. cenocepacia</it>, including strains K56-2, J2315, and C5424, and seven tested clinical isolates of <it>B. cenocepacia</it>, but no other BCC species. A survey of 23 strains and 20 clinical isolates of the BCC revealed that KS10 is able to form plaques on lawns of <it>B. ambifaria </it>LMG 19467, <it>B. cenocepacia </it>PC184, and <it>B. stabilis </it>LMG 18870.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>KS10 is a novel phage with a genomic organization that differs from most phages in that its capsid genes are not aligned into one module but rather separated by approximately 11 kb, giving evidence of one or more prior genetic rearrangements. There were no potential virulence factors identified in KS10, though many hypothetical proteins were identified with no known function.</p