The Influence of pH Variation on CooA Activity

CooA, a CO-sensing heme protein, acts as a transcriptional activator of CO-metabolizing proteins in bacteria such as Rhodospirillum rubrum and Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans through sequence-specific DNA binding. Previous research indicated a reduced iron center and CO gas were necessary for CooA to achieve its active conformation and bind DNA. To determine if other reaction conditions facilitate CooA activation, the role of pH on CooA function was tested. Specifically, a fluorescence anisotropy assay was employed to measure possible Fe(III) CooA DNA binding from pH 3 - 12. Interestingly, CooA was observed to bind DNA without CO at acidic conditions, with optimal binding observed at pH ~3. These results are discussed in light of the normal CO-dependent activation mechanism of CooA proteins

Ecologies of the Beachcomber in Colonial Australian Literature

Ideas of the beachcomber as part castaway, part vagabond – the ragged figure of the ex-sailor or convict searching for a better life somewhere in the islands of the Pacific – are no longer so familiar as they were during the nineteenth century. Beachcombing today is more often associated with scanning the shoreline to collect shipwrecked objects or natural specimens washed up by the sea, in rituals to do with monitoring and preserving the coastal environment instead of plundering it for trade. This article will explore the beachcomber’s changing investments in nature, looking at stories by the colonial Australian author Louis Becke and at later, non-fiction works by the writer and naturalist E J Banfield. It will suggest that Banfield’s 1907 book, Confessions of a Beachcomber, marks a self-conscious transformation of the beachcomber from tropical-island fugitive to ecological recluse

Cosmos Magazine and Colonial Femininity

This article looks at the relatively short and colourful life of Sydney’s emCosmos: An Illustrated Australian Magazine/em—one of the many ephemeral literary magazines that flourished briefly during the colonial era in Australia, and which have been largely forgotten today. From its beginning in September 1894, emCosmos/em published poetry, short fiction, book reviews, and literary criticism, aiming to offer readers something ‘that was purely Australian’ as well as providing an important venue for the writings of popular colonial authors such as Louise Mack, Edward Dyson, Ernest Favenc, and many others. This article argues the emCosmos/em magazine was deeply invested in the development of a distinctively Australian literary culture and that an important focus for accomplishing this was its exploration of metropolitan modes of colonial femininity

Literary Journals and Literary Aesthetics in Early Post-Federation Australia

The first decade after Federation saw the establishment of a significant number of new Australian literary journals and magazines, some of which defined themselves against mainstream literary interests – against the Bulletin, for example. What we see here is in fact a splintering of literary activity across a number of journals that fragments (or perhaps continues to fragment) any received sense of what constitutes a national literature. This paper looks at three of Thomas C. Lothian’s Melbourne journals - the Native Companion (January - December 1907), Trident (May 1907 – April 1909) and Heart of the Rose (December 1907 – October 1908) – and also briefly discusses Alfred Dickson and Frank Wilmot’s The Microbe, and Hal Stone and the ‘Waysider’ group’s Ye Kangaroo (1902 –1905), Ye Wayside Goose (1905 – 1906) and Red Ant (1912), also mostly Melbourne-based. The Native Companion in particular nourished an early feminine modernist aesthetic: publishing Katharine Mansfield’s first short stories, first example, and providing space for a coterie of women writers who specialised in the ‘vignette’: a narrative form that contrasted to male-centred bush nationalisms of the ‘sketch’. Like the Trident and Heart of the Rose, this journal was caught somewhere in between the influences of fin-de-siècle decadence and newly emergent European modernism; its interest in international avant-garde literary aesthetics worked to stretch modernism into the antipodes, sometimes casting it as a kind of free-floating literary effect. Heart of the Rose presented translations of Paul Verlaine and essays on Baudelaire; but it also charted local, vernacular versions of these influences, offering up delirious visions of what a trans-national, trans-historical Australian literature might be. The Microbe and Hal Stone’s journals celebrated an amateur literary status that allowed them to satirise the Bulletin’s claim on Australian literary tastes. They also turned to the ‘vignette’, and played out the influences of European symbolism and nascent modernism; but they satirised the pretentions of journals like Heart of the Rose and never invested in a representative canon of writers. Together, these little magazines present an alternative literary scene that tried to re-imagine the ideals of a national literature even as they radically distinguished themselves from the mainstream

Institutional Complexity and Individual Responses: Delineating the Boundaries of Partial Autonomy

Research highlights how coexisting institutional logics can sometimes offer opportunities for agency to enterprising actors in organizational fields. But macro- and micro-level studies using this framework diverge in their approach to understanding the consequences of institutional complexity for actor autonomy, and correspondingly in the opportunities they identify for agents to resist, reinterpret or make judicious use of institutional prescriptions. This paper seeks to bridge this gap, through a longitudinal, comparative case study of the trajectories of four ostensibly similar change initiatives in the same complex organizational field. It studies the influence of three dominant institutional logics (professional, market and corporate) in these divergent trajectories, elucidating the role of mediating influences, operating below the level of the field but above that of the actor, that worked to constrain or facilitate agency. The consequence for actors was a divergent realization of the relationship between the three logics, with very different consequences for their ability to advance their interests. Our findings offer an improved understanding of when and how institutional complexity facilitates autonomy, and suggests mediating influences at the level of the organization and the relationship it instantiates between carriers of logics, neglected by macro- and micro-level studies, that merit further attention

Whole-genome sequencing of nine esophageal adenocarcinoma cell lines.

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is highly mutated and molecularly heterogeneous. The number of cell lines available for study is limited and their genome has been only partially characterized. The availability of an accurate annotation of their mutational landscape is crucial for accurate experimental design and correct interpretation of genotype-phenotype findings. We performed high coverage, paired end whole genome sequencing on eight EAC cell lines-ESO26, ESO51, FLO-1, JH-EsoAd1, OACM5.1 C, OACP4 C, OE33, SK-GT-4-all verified against original patient material, and one esophageal high grade dysplasia cell line, CP-D. We have made available the aligned sequence data and report single nucleotide variants (SNVs), small insertions and deletions (indels), and copy number alterations, identified by comparison with the human reference genome and known single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We compare these putative mutations to mutations found in primary tissue EAC samples, to inform the use of these cell lines as a model of EAC.This work was funded by an MRC Programme Grant to R.C.F. and a Cancer Research UK grant to PAWE. The pipeline for mutation calling is funded by Cancer Research UK as part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium. G.C. is a National Institute for Health Research Lecturer as part of a NIHR professorship grant to R.C.F. AGL is supported by a Cancer Research UK programme grant (C14303/A20406) to Simon Tavaré and the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 project SOUND (Grant Agreement no. 633974)

How Do Patients with Mental Health Diagnoses Use Online Patient Portals? An Observational Analysis from the Veterans Health Administration

Online patient portals may be effective for engaging patients with mental health conditions in their own health care. This retrospective database analysis reports patient portal use among Veterans with mental health diagnoses. Unadjusted and adjusted odds of portal feature use was calculated using logistic regressions. Having experienced military sexual trauma or having an anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, or depression were associated with increased odds of portal use; bipolar, substance use, psychotic and adjustment disorders were associated with decreased odds. Future research should examine factors that influence portal use to understand diagnosis-level differences and improve engagement with such tools

Reviews

Review

Involvement in Decision Making and Satisfaction With Treatment Among Partners of Patients With Newly Diagnosed Localized Prostate Cancer

To examine partner involvement in treatment decision making for localized prostate cancer, congruence between partner involvement and patient preference, reasons for partner noninvolvement, and partner satisfaction with patient treatment