It's 1864, and the Civil War is raging. But southern secession isn't the only danger threatening the Union. The U.S. has plenty of other enemies, foreign and domestic. If they got their way, this is what the formerly united states would look like – not two, but four nations jostling for space and supremacy on the land mass between the Pacific and Atlantic.
The map title reads: “Our Country as Traitors & Tyrants Would Have It; or Map of the Disunited States”. It was published in New York by H.H. Lloyd & Co. In blue, it shows a maximalist version of the Confederate States of America (CSA).
The core of the CSA was composed of seven Southern, slave-holding states who seceded following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and South Carolina. After the Civil War began in April 1861, they were joined by four more slave states, this time from the Upper South: Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. The CSA later tried but failed to expand its authority over Missouri and Kentucky, which never formally declared their secession.
The map shows all these states but one as part of the eventual CSA, with Confederate Missouri only going up to the Missouri River, which transects the state. The Confederacy also gets New Mexico, the Indian Territory (now known as Oklahoma), West Virginia (which had seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union), Maryland and Delaware – and presumably also Washington DC, now stuck deep in blue territory.
The rest of the U.S. is divided into three states. The Atlantic States (in orange) are the smallest of the four entities, and it consists of the six New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island), plus New York state, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The border between Pennsylvania and Ohio is now an international border, with the so-called Interior States (in yellow). It emerges on the southern shore of Lake Erie and runs south to an international tripoint (CSA, Atlantic States and Interior States) at Wheeling (a.k.a. Fort Henry) – lopping off the northern tip of West Viriginia's northern panhandle and granting it to the Interiors.
The Interior States comprise the area formerly known as the Northwest Territory, now covered by the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin (and part of Minnesota); and also areas up to the Rocky Mountains covered by (the rest of) Minnesota, the Dakota Territory (not yet divided into the states of North and South Dakota), Nebraska, Kansas, Montana and those parts of Idaho (1) and Colorado Territories to the east of the Rockies.
The remaining U.S. states and territories are part of the Pacific States (in red), i.e. California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona and Utah (entirely) and Idaho and Colorado (partly).
Which are the forces that threaten the Union? The map gives no explanation, but shows three figures on the map edges, and each can be considered a danger to the U.S. To the east, the snake-protected bust of John C. Calhoun, Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. The South Carolinian was a strong defender of slavery and states' rights, and was seen as one of the precursors of Southern secession. Calhoun represents the (domestic) 'Traitors' mentioned in the map's title.
A sinister Canadian lion, hungrily gazing towards the Great Lake states and crowned to facilitate identification, represents the British Empire. The Brits remained neutral during the Civil War, but certain elements within both the Confederacy and Great Britain itself pleaded for British military intervention to turn the tide in favour of the South. Could this (foreign) 'Tyrant' be eyeing the Interior States as a new Dominion for the British crown?
In Mexico meanwhile, French emperor Napoleon III is crowning Maximilian of Habsburg-Lorraine emperor of Mexico. The short-lived Second Mexican Empire was France's failed attempt to establish a subsidiary monarchy in Mexico. The U.S. refused to recognise the Empire, continuing its support for the Mexican republic under Benito Juarez. Perhaps if the Empire had survived, it would have tried to foster a Mexico-friendly rebellion in the Pacific states of the U.S.
“To our knowledge, no other map of the Civil War era depicted such an extreme vision of a secession-torn United States”, write Boston Rare Maps, which recently sold a copy of this extraordinary map for an undisclosed sum.
Strange Maps #866
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Map found here at Boston Rare Maps.
(1) The map shows Idaho Territory consisting of the current states of Idaho and Wyoming; this does not seem to have any basis in historical fact. Idaho Territory comprised the current states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming up to May 26, 1864, when Montana Territory (coterminous with the later state of Montana) was organised separately, and the part that roughly corresponds to the present state of Wyoming was transferred to Dakota Territory.
In recent years, our team at Iowa State University has found a way to make pigs an even closer stand-in for humans. We have successfully transferred components of the human immune system into pigs that lack a functional immune system. This breakthrough has the potential to accelerate medical research in many areas, including virus and vaccine research, as well as cancer and stem cell therapeutics.
Existing biomedical models
Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, is a genetic condition that causes impaired development of the immune system. People can develop SCID, as dramatized in the 1976 movie “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble." Other animals can develop SCID, too, including mice.
Researchers in the 1980s recognized that SCID mice could be implanted with human immune cells for further study. Such mice are called “humanized" mice and have been optimized over the past 30 years to study many questions relevant to human health.
Mice are the most commonly used animal in biomedical research, but results from mice often do not translate well to human responses, thanks to differences in metabolism, size and divergent cell functions compared with people.
Nonhuman primates are also used for medical research and are certainly closer stand-ins for humans. But using them for this purpose raises numerous ethical considerations. With these concerns in mind, the National Institutes of Health retired most of its chimpanzees from biomedical research in 2013.
Alternative animal models are in demand.
Swine are a viable option for medical research because of their similarities to humans. And with their widespread commercial use, pigs are met with fewer ethical dilemmas than primates. Upwards of 100 million hogs are slaughtered each year for food in the U.S.
Humanizing pigs
In 2012, groups at Iowa State University and Kansas State University, including Jack Dekkers, an expert in animal breeding and genetics, and Raymond Rowland, a specialist in animal diseases, serendipitously discovered a naturally occurring genetic mutation in pigs that caused SCID. We wondered if we could develop these pigs to create a new biomedical model.
Our group has worked for nearly a decade developing and optimizing SCID pigs for applications in biomedical research. In 2018, we achieved a twofold milestone when working with animal physiologist Jason Ross and his lab. Together we developed a more immunocompromised pig than the original SCID pig – and successfully humanized it, by transferring cultured human immune stem cells into the livers of developing piglets.
During early fetal development, immune cells develop within the liver, providing an opportunity to introduce human cells. We inject human immune stem cells into fetal pig livers using ultrasound imaging as a guide. As the pig fetus develops, the injected human immune stem cells begin to differentiate – or change into other kinds of cells – and spread through the pig's body. Once SCID piglets are born, we can detect human immune cells in their blood, liver, spleen and thymus gland. This humanization is what makes them so valuable for testing new medical treatments.
We have found that human ovarian tumors survive and grow in SCID pigs, giving us an opportunity to study ovarian cancer in a new way. Similarly, because human skin survives on SCID pigs, scientists may be able to develop new treatments for skin burns. Other research possibilities are numerous.
The ultraclean SCID pig biocontainment facility in Ames, Iowa. Adeline Boettcher, CC BY-SA
Pigs in a bubble
Since our pigs lack essential components of their immune system, they are extremely susceptible to infection and require special housing to help reduce exposure to pathogens.
SCID pigs are raised in bubble biocontainment facilities. Positive pressure rooms, which maintain a higher air pressure than the surrounding environment to keep pathogens out, are coupled with highly filtered air and water. All personnel are required to wear full personal protective equipment. We typically have anywhere from two to 15 SCID pigs and breeding animals at a given time. (Our breeding animals do not have SCID, but they are genetic carriers of the mutation, so their offspring may have SCID.)
As with any animal research, ethical considerations are always front and center. All our protocols are approved by Iowa State University's Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and are in accordance with The National Institutes of Health's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Every day, twice a day, our pigs are checked by expert caretakers who monitor their health status and provide engagement. We have veterinarians on call. If any pigs fall ill, and drug or antibiotic intervention does not improve their condition, the animals are humanely euthanized.
Our goal is to continue optimizing our humanized SCID pigs so they can be more readily available for stem cell therapy testing, as well as research in other areas, including cancer. We hope the development of the SCID pig model will pave the way for advancements in therapeutic testing, with the long-term goal of improving human patient outcomes.
Adeline Boettcher earned her research-based Ph.D. working on the SCID project in 2019.
Christopher Tuggle, Professor of Animal Science, Iowa State University and Adeline Boettcher, Technical Writer II, Iowa State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Volcano erupting lava, volcanic sky active rock night Ecuador landscape
How can modern technology help warn us of impending volcanic eruptions?
One promising answer may lie in satellite imagery. In a recent study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers used infrared data collected by NASA satellites to study the conditions near volcanoes in the months and years before they erupted.
The results revealed a pattern: Prior to eruptions, an unusually large amount of heat had been escaping through soil near volcanoes. This diffusion of subterranean heat — which is a byproduct of "large-scale thermal unrest" — could potentially represent a warning sign of future eruptions.
For the study, the researchers conducted a statistical analysis of changes in surface temperature near volcanoes, using data collected over 16.5 years by NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The results showed that eruptions tended to occur around the time when surface temperatures near the volcanoes peaked.
Eruptions were preceded by "subtle but significant long-term (years), large-scale (tens of square kilometres) increases in their radiant heat flux (up to ~1 °C in median radiant temperature)," the researchers wrote. After eruptions, surface temperatures reliably decreased, though the cool-down period took longer for bigger eruptions.
"Volcanoes can experience thermal unrest for several years before eruption," the researchers wrote. "This thermal unrest is dominated by a large-scale phenomenon operating over extensive areas of volcanic edifices, can be an early indicator of volcanic reactivation, can increase prior to different types of eruption and can be tracked through a statistical analysis of little-processed (that is, radiance or radiant temperature) satellite-based remote sensing data with high temporal resolution."
Although using satellites to monitor thermal unrest wouldn't enable scientists to make hyper-specific eruption predictions (like predicting the exact day), it could significantly improve prediction efforts. Seismologists and volcanologists currently use a range of techniques to forecast eruptions, including monitoring for gas emissions, ground deformation, and changes to nearby water channels, to name a few.
Still, none of these techniques have proven completely reliable, both because of the science and the practical barriers (e.g. funding) standing in the way of large-scale monitoring. In 2014, for example, Japan's Mount Ontake suddenly erupted, killing 63 people. It was the nation's deadliest eruption in nearly a century.
In the study, the researchers found that surface temperatures near Mount Ontake had been increasing in the two years prior to the eruption. To date, no other monitoring method has detected "well-defined" warning signs for the 2014 disaster, the researchers noted.
The researchers hope satellite-based infrared monitoring techniques, combined with existing methods, can improve prediction efforts for volcanic eruptions. Volcanic eruptions have killed about 2,000 people since 2000.
"Our findings can open new horizons to better constrain magma–hydrothermal interaction processes, especially when integrated with other datasets, allowing us to explore the thermal budget of volcanoes and anticipate eruptions that are very difficult to forecast through other geophysical/geochemical methods."
