Silver: made in Scotland

This exhibition catalogue celebrates the glittering tradition of silversmithing in Scotland over seven centuries. This lavishly illustrated book unearths the stories behind the makers, objects and owners of the most exemplary pieces of silver, past and present - from the ‘mazer’, or communal drinking cup, linked with Robert the Bruce to the unique silver teapot crafted for Billy Connolly! Hallmarks, guaranteeing the honesty of the metal and maker alike, have been used in Scotland since the sixteenth century. The 550th anniversary of Scottish hallmarking in 2008 was celebrated with the Silver: Made in Scotland exhibition in the National Museums Scotland which gathered together for the first time all the most important examples of marked Scottish silver and gold, most from our unrivalled collection. The exhibition and Silver: Made in Scotland exhibition catalogue are concerned not only with silver and gold vessels, from earliest surviving marked examples right up to pieces made today, but also with the people who made them and the people for whom they were made. Objects, historic records, paintings, illustrations and contemporary accounts were combined to create a dazzling exhibition and the Silver: Made in Scotland book distils the exhibition, making it a must for silver enthusiasts and collectors everywhere

The Scottish silversmith in the Americas

Every field of the decorative arts in colonial and early America is infused with Scottish culture - from furniture, textiles and weaponry to silver, jewellery, glass and ceramics. Making for America is a fascinating study of the transatlantic relationship between Scottish craftsmanship and the emigrant workers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who embraced a new life in America. About the conference: In October 2009 scholars from both sides of the Atlantic gathered in the Winterthur Museum in Delaware to discuss themes of commerce, craftsmanship and immigration in an age of colonial expansion - from Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Kilmarnock to Charleston, Connecticut and Philadelphia. They examined the variety of goods made, desired and needed in the new world. Many of those goods are described and illustrated here for the first time, leading to a greater understanding of the material culture of Scotland and America in the early modern world

Human Retroviruses

Retroviruses have been associated with numerous disease states in animals since the turn of the century. Until recently human retroviruses had remained elusive. With the discovery of the human T-cell leukaemia virus (HTLV-I) and the establishment of its aetiological role in the adult T-cell leukaemia-lymphoma syndrome, a variety of new approaches to the isolation of human viruses from other diseases was possible. This thesis describes studies on the host cell range of HTLV-I as well as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) isolates obtained from AIDS and AIDS related patients. Whereas the receptor for HTLV-I remains elusive, adoption of the same techniques to HIV showed that the T4 (CD4) molecule behaved as the HIV receptor. Studies are described to confirm this observation whereby the cloned TA gene was transfected into a variety of cell lines resulting in human cells being rendered infectable with HIV. Further studies show that only a part of T4 is required for infection and that this is best defined by the Leu 3a epitope. Whereas poor and variable neutralization of different HIV isolates was found, all known isolates studied so far appear to use T4 as their receptor. This has obvious implications for treatment and vaccine development in AIDS. Detailed serology of HIV both in London and Africa is described including the linking of epidemic kaposis sarcoma and slim disease with HIV infection. Original HIV isolations from slim disease, AIDS and hypogammaglobulinaemia are described in detail. An extensive search of other diseases revealed tantalizing evidence of new viruses in a lymphoma and a sarcoidosis patient and the implications for these and other diseases is discussed in depth

Inverse Magnetoresistance of Molecular Junctions

We present calculations of spin-dependent electron transport through single organic molecules bridging pairs of iron nanocontacts. We predict the magnetoresistance of these systems to switch from positive to negative with increasing applied bias for both conducting and insulating molecules. This novel inverse magnetoresistance phenomenon is robust, does not depend on the presence of impurities, and is unique to molecular and atomic nanoscale magnetic junctions. Its physical origin is identified and its relevance to experiment and to potential technological applications is discussed.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; published version Phys. Rev.

Theoretical Study of Spin-dependent Electron Transport in Atomic Fe Nanocontacts

We present theoretical predictions of spintronic transport phenomena that should be observable in ferromagnetic Fe nanocontacts bridged by chains of Fe atoms. We develop appropriate model Hamiltonians based on semi-empirical considerations and the known electronic structure of bulk Fe derived from ab initio density functional calculations. Our model is shown to provide a satisfactory description of the surface properties of Fe nano-clusters as well as bulk properties. Lippmann-Schwinger and Green's function techniques are used together with Landauer theory to predict the current, magneto-resistance, and spin polarization of the current in Fe nanocontacts bridged by atomic chains under applied bias. Unusual device characteristics are predicted including negative magneto-resistance and spin polarization of the current, as well as spin polarization of the current for anti-parallel magnetization of the Fe nanocontacts under moderate applied bias. We explore the effects that stretching the atomic chain has on the magneto-resistance and spin polarization and predict a cross-over regime in which the spin polarization of the current for parallel magnetization of the contacts switches from negative to positive. We find resonant transmission due to dangling bond formation on tip atoms as the chain is stretched through its breaking point to play an important role in spin-dependent transport in this regime. The physical mechanisms underlying the predicted phenomena are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Immature myeloid cells directly contribute to skin tumor development by recruiting IL-17-producing CD4(+) T cells

Evidence links chronic inflammation with cancer, but cellular mechanisms involved in this process remain unclear. We have demonstrated that in humans, inflammatory conditions that predispose to development of skin and colon tumors are associated with accumulation in tissues of CD33(+)S100A9(+) cells, the phenotype typical for myeloid-derived suppressor cells in cancer or immature myeloid cells (IMCs) in tumor-free hosts. To identify the direct role of these cells in tumor development, we used S100A9 transgenic mice to create the conditions for topical accumulation of these cells in the skin in the absence of infection or tissue damage. These mice demonstrated accumulation of granulocytic IMCs in the skin upon topical application of 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA), resulting in a dramatic increase in the formation of papillomas during epidermal carcinogenesis. The effect of IMCs on tumorigenesis was not associated with immune suppression, but with CCL4 (chemokine [C-C motif] ligand 4)-mediated recruitment of IL-17–producing CD4(+) T cells. This chemokine was released by activated IMCs. Elimination of CD4(+) T cells or blockade of CCL4 or IL-17 abrogated the increase in tumor formation caused by myeloid cells. Thus, this study implicates accumulation of IMCs as an initial step in facilitation of tumor formation, followed by the recruitment of CD4(+) T cells

Embryology and bony malformations of the craniovertebral junction

BACKGROUND: The embryology of the bony craniovertebral junction (CVJ) is reviewed with the purpose of explaining the genesis and unusual configurations of the numerous congenital malformations in this region. Functionally, the bony CVJ can be divided into a central pillar consisting of the basiocciput and dental pivot and a two-tiered ring revolving round the central pivot, comprising the foramen magnum rim and occipital condyles above and the atlantal ring below. Embryologically, the central pillar and the surrounding rings descend from different primordia, and accordingly, developmental anomalies at the CVJ can also be segregated into those affecting the central pillar and those affecting the surrounding rings, respectively. DISCUSSION: A logical classification of this seemingly unwieldy group of malformations is thus possible based on their ontogenetic lineage, morbid anatomy, and clinical relevance. Representative examples of the main constituents of this classification scheme are given, and their surgical treatments are selectively discussed

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

JC virus and its possible role in oncogenesis

No abstract.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/34652/1/3_ftp.pd