Mary Elizabeth Frayser Papers - Accession 17 - M4 (4-14)

The Mary Elizabeth Frayser Papers consist of correspondence, related records, and newspaper and magazine clippings. Most of the correspondence is between Estellene Walker and Mary Frayser concerning the work of the State Library Board and the movement for better libraries in South Carolina.

Dorothy Perry Thompson Papers - Accession 1352

Dr. Dorothy Perry Thompson was a Winthrop professor of English and an accomplished poet and writer. As well as teaching in the English Department, Dr. Thompson also coordinated the African American Studies program which she helped found. The Dorothy Perry Thompson Papers consists of her poems and writings, drafts, research, notes, contract agreements, awards and certificates, speaking engagement flyers and records, thank you letters, and promotion and tenure records.

Frances Anderson Gilmer Papers - Accession 247 - M104 (133-134)

The Frances Anderson Gilmer Papers consists of electrostatic photocopies of the following: genealogical records; biographical sketches; Records relating to the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) and Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR); copy of the “The Revolutionary Soldiers of Catholic Presbyterian Church of Chester County, South Carolina" by Mary Wylie Strange; Diary of S. T. Anderson: Confederate Prisoner of War 1864-1865 by Margaret Anderson Harden (1908). Lt. Samuel Thompson of Anderson (1838-1894) was a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War in Co. D 1st South Carolina Cavalry. The genealogical records relate to the following families: Anderson, Wylie. McCalla, McKown, Yeamans, Moore (i.e., Governor James Moore) and Adair.

Mary Eva Hite Papers - Accession 187

The Mary Eva Hite Papers consists of correspondence, speeches, newspaper clippings, family history data, photographs, awards, scrapbooks, and other records relating to Mary Eva Hite’s career as an educator and prominent South Carolina public servant. The photograph file provides a visual record of South Carolina elementary school life in the first half of the twentieth century. Correspondence relates to Dr. Hite’s many career activities, including her 1970 correspondence highlighting her work promoting the welfare of senior citizens. The speeches focus on her work with the aged, her travels abroad, and acceptances for awards presented to her by educational and civic organizations. Newspaper clippings provide information concerning awards presented to Dr. Hite and chronicle the advances in education made by the state of South Carolina. Scrapbooks relate to college friends and Dr. Hite’s work with Delta Kappa Gamma. There are also records relating to teacher retirement in South Carolina.

Mary Elizabeth Massey Papers - Accession 20

The Mary Elizabeth Massey Papers consist of Dr. Massey’s professional and organizational files and includes biographical data, correspondence, lecture and teaching materials, rough notes and unpublished drafts of Dr. Massey’s journal articles and books, speeches, research notes and photo and typescript copies of historical manuscripts from other repositories. Most of the material pertains to Dr. Massey’s publishing efforts, her work as a Winthrop faculty member and scholar and her involvement with professional organizations, especially the Southern Historical Association and the Civil War Centennial Commission. While there is material extending from Dr. Massey’s student days at Hendrix College (a 1937 graduate), most of the substantive material extends from 1953-1973.

A Data-Analytic Strategy for Protein-Biomarker Discovery: Profiling of High-Dimensional Proteomic Data for Cancer Detection

With recent advances in mass spectrometry techniques, it is now possible to investigate proteins over a wide range of molecular weights in small biological specimens. This advance has generated data-analytic challenges in proteomics, similar to those created by microarray technologies in genetics, namely, discovery of "signature" protein profiles specific to each pathologic state (e.g., normal vs. cancer) or differential profiles between experimental conditions (e.g., treated by a drug of interest vs. untreated) from high-dimensional data. We propose a data analytic strategy for discovering protein biomarkers based on such high-dimensional mass-spectrometry data. A real biomarker-discovery project on prostate cancer is taken as a concrete example throughout the paper: the project aims to identify proteins in serum that distinguish cancer, benign hyperplasia, and normal states of prostate using the Surface Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization (SELDI) technology, a recently developed mass spectrometry technique. Our data analytic strategy takes properties of the SELDI mass-spectrometer into account: the SELDI output of a specimen contains about 48,000 (x, y) points where x is the protein mass divided by the number of charges introduced by ionization and y is the protein intensity of the corresponding mass per charge value, x, in that specimen. Given high coefficients of variation and other characteristics of protein intensity measures (y values), we reduce the measures of protein intensities to a set of binary variables that indicate peaks in the y-axis direction in the nearest neighborhoods of each mass per charge point in the x-axis direction. We then account for a shifting (measurement error) problem of the x-axis in SELDI output. After these pre-analysis processing of data, we combine the binary predictors to generate classification rules for cancer, benign hyperplasia, and normal states of prostate. Our approach is to apply the boosting algorithm to select binary predictors and construct a summary classifier. We empirically evaluate sensitivity and specificity of the resulting summary classifiers with a test dataset that is independent from the training dataset used to construct the summary classifiers. The proposed method performed nearly perfectly in distinguishing cancer and benign hyperplasia from normal. In the classification of cancer vs. benign hyperplasia, however, an appreciable proportion of the benign specimens were classified incorrectly as cancer. We discuss practical issues associated with our proposed approach to the analysis of SELDI output and its application in cancer biomarker discovery.

Fasting plasma glucose predicts survival and angiographic progression in high-risk postmenopausal women with coronary artery disease

BACKGROUND: We studied the association of baseline fasting plasma glucose (FPG) levels with survival and coronary artery disease (CAD) progression among postmenopausal women without unstable angina. METHODS: Women were recruited from seven centers in the Women's Angiographic Vitamin and Estrogen Trial (WAVE) (n = 423). Event follow-up was available for 400 women (65.1 +/- 8.5 years, 66% white, 92% hypertensive, 19% smokers, 67% hypercholesterolemic). Thirty-eight percent of the women had diabetes or FPG > 125 mg/dL, and 21% had a fasting glucose 100-125 mg/dL. Follow-up angiography was performed in 304 women. Cox regression was used to model survival from a composite outcome of death or myocardial infarction (D/MI, 26 events; median follow-up 2.4 years). Angiographic progression was analyzed quantitatively using linear regression accounting for baseline minimum lumen diameter (MLD), follow-up time, and intrasubject correlations using generalized estimating equations. Regression analyses were adjusted for follow-up time, baseline age, treatment assignment, and Framingham risk (excluding diabetes). RESULTS: Women with impaired fasting glucose/diabetes mellitus (IFG/DM) had a relative risk (RR) of D/MI of 4.2 ( p = 0.009). In all women, each 10 mg/dL increase in FPG was associated with an 11% increase ( p < 0.001) in the hazard of D/MI. Each 10 mg/dL increase in FPG was associated with a 6.8 mum decrease in MLD over the follow-up period ( p = 0.005). CONCLUSIONS: Higher FPG is associated with increased risk of D/MI and greater narrowing of the coronary lumen in women with CAD. Aggressive monitoring of glucose levels may be beneficial for secondary CAD prevention.

Did John really promise Mary to leave?

This paper contrasts finite and non-finite complement constructions containing the matrix verb promise. Using data from the British National Corpus, I show that when no explicit mention is made of the promissee the non-finite form of complement is overwhelmingly preferred to its finite counterparts. The exact opposite is the case when the promissee is mentioned between the matrix verb and the complement clause. In addition, the promiser in the x promise y to infinitive construction is almost always pronominal. I suggest that these two facts, the dispreference for the to infinitive form of complement when the promissee is mentioned and the pronominal encoding of the promiser in such cases, are both related to the very rarity of this form of construction in English. Data is adduced showing that another rare construction, the so-called possessive -ing construction, also occurs with a disproportionate number of pronominal subjects. It is suggested that the preference for pronominal subjects in these constructions may be related to a wish to reduce the overall processing complexity of the predications in question.