1,418 research outputs found
Nick Salvato, Obstruction
No full textNick Salvato, Obstruction Durham: Duke UP, 2016. Pp263. ISBN 978-0-8223-6098-8 Theodora D. Patrona The Oxford dictionary online defines obstruction, as “a thing that impedes or prevents passage or progress; an obstacle or blockage.” Nick Salvato’s eponymous book, multilayered and thought-provoking, is an original study of five phenomena that while they ‘torment’ scholars and impede inquiry, for the author “they may, if properly directed, be conducive to critical work and valuable, more broad..
Importance of MAP Kinases during Protoperithecial Morphogenesis in Neurospora crassa
No full textIn order to produce multicellular structures filamentous fungi combine various morphogenetic programs that are fundamentally different from those used by plants and animals. The perithecium, the female sexual fruitbody of Neurospora crassa, differentiates from the vegetative mycelium in distinct morphological stages, and represents one of the more complex multicellular structures produced by fungi. In this study we defined the stages of protoperithecial morphogenesis in the N. crassa wild type in greater detail than has previously been described; compared protoperithecial morphogenesis in gene-deletion mutants of all nine mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases conserved in N. crassa; confirmed that all three MAP kinase cascades are required for sexual development; and showed that the three different cascades each have distinctly different functions during this process. However, only MAP kinases equivalent to the budding yeast pheromone response and cell wall integrity pathways, but not the osmoregulatory pathway, were essential for vegetative cell fusion. Evidence was obtained for MAP kinase signaling cascades performing roles in extracellular matrix deposition, hyphal adhesion, and envelopment during the construction of fertilizable protoperithecia.</p
Commencement 2022 Presentation of Honorary Degrees | Nick Cave, Cheryl D. Miller
No full textPresident Crystal Williams awards honorary degrees to acclaimed artist/educator Nick Cave and keynote speaker Cheryl D. Miller .
Artist/educator Nick Cave works in a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. His much-lauded Soundsuits, sculptural forms based on the scale of his body, were created in response to the police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and serve as a visual embodiment of both brutality and empowerment.
Throughout his practice, Cave has created spaces of memorial by combining found historical objects with contemporary dialogues on gun violence, death and catastrophic loss. His work reminds us that while there may be despair, there remains space for hope and renewal. From dismembered body parts stem delicate metal flowers, affirming the potential for new growth.
Cave encourages a profound and compassionate analysis of violence and its effects as the path towards an ultimate metamorphosis. His works ask how we may reposition ourselves to recognize societal issues such as global warming, racism and gun violence, come together on a global scale, instigate change and—ultimately—heal.
Graphic designer, educator and author Cheryl D. Miller aims to end the marginalization of BIPOC designers through her civil rights activism, industry exposé trade writing, rigorous research and archival vision. A nationally recognized advocate for equity and inclusion in graphic design and founder of the NYC social impact design firm Cheryl D. Miller Design, Inc., she currently serves as distinguished senior lecturer in design at the University of Texas–Austin (where she was the 2021 E.W. Doty fellow) and adjunct professor at Howard University.
In 2021 Miller was an AIGA Medalist “Expanding Access,” a Cooper Hewitt “Design Visionary” awardee and an Honorary IBM Design Scholar. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Vermont College of Fine Arts and the President’s Global Advisory Board of Maryland Institute College of Art.
Miller earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Maryland Institute College of Art, an MS in Communications Design from Pratt Institute, an MDiv from Union Theological Seminary and an honorary degree in Humane Letters from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her essays appear in PRINT and Communication Arts, and her D&I-related professional research is archived in the Cheryl D. Miller Collection at Stanford University
Polarisome Meets Spitzenkö̈rper: Microscopy, Genetics, and Genomics Converge
No full textThe impact of filamentous fungi on human welfare has never been greater. Fungi are acknowledged as the most economically devastating plant pathogens (1) and are attaining increasing notoriety for their ability to cause life-threatening infections in humans (57, 71), and fungal products sustain a billion dollar manufacturing industry (70). The tools available to study filamentous fungi are more sophisticated than ever and include the complete annotated genome sequences of multiple filamentous fungi (12), resources being made available through various functional genomics projects, and advanced bioimaging methods, including high-resolution live-cell imaging (20, 32) and electron tomography (19, 50). The increasing impact of filamentous fungi, along with the rediscovery of pseudohyphal growth in yeast (22), has focused attention on the molecular mechanisms underlying hyphal morphogenesis. Attempts to understand hyphal morphogenesis have historically followed two different lines of investigation. Microscopists have defined, with increasing detail, the subcellular organization of the hyphal tip. This led to the description of the Spitzenkö̈rper, an apical cluster of vesicles, cytoskeletal elements, and other proteins, which plays a crucial role in hyphal extension (4). Geneticists have identified gene products required for hyphal morphogenesis by characterizing morphological mutants (51, 52). Initial studies in the laboratories of Beadle, Tatum, and colleagues attempted to link morphogenesis to specific biochemical pathways. More recent screens have identified a multitude of signaling and cytoskeletal functions required for hyphal extension (62, 72). In the past few years, comparative genomics efforts have allowed fungal biologists interested in hyphal morphogenesis to exploit the wealth of knowledge about polarized growth in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Many informative homologies between filamentous fungi and yeast have been uncovered. Notably, this includes several components of a multiprotein complex termed the polarisome (28), which regulates microfilament formation at polarized growth sites in yeast (61). Perhaps more importantly, several gene products involved in hyphal morphogenesis have been shown to have no homologue outside of the filamentous fungi. This emphasizes the potential novelty of the mechanisms underlying hyphal morphogenesis. In this review, we summarize past efforts to understand hyphal morphogenesis and pose a series of questions designed to focus future efforts in this area
100 Must-Read American Novels Discover Your Next Great Read...
No full textWhich 100 titles represent the finest American literature ever produced? Let this book be your guide - from 19th century classic: Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter, to the 1920s generation: Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Faulkner, to the major writers of today: Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen and Donna Tartt.Cover -- CONTENTS -- ABOUTTHISBOOK -- INTRODUCTION -- A-ZOFENTRIES -- THEMATICENTRIES -- Altered States (Drink and Drugs) -- Short Stories -- Down These Mean Streets (The American Detective) -- The American Civil War -- Future Americas and Alternative Americas -- Small Town America -- The Jewish Experience -- The West -- New York through the Decades -- Up from Slavery (African-American fiction) -- Deep South -- Hooray for Hollywood? -- INDEX -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- ZWhich 100 titles represent the finest American literature ever produced? Let this book be your guide - from 19th century classic: Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter, to the 1920s generation: Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and Faulkner, to the major writers of today: Toni Morrison, Jonathan Franzen and Donna Tartt.Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, YYYY. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries
Book review: Contemporary Scottish plays, edited by Trish Reid
No full textBook review: Contemporary Scottish plays, edited by Trish Reid. London:
Bloomsbury, 2014; ISBN: 9781472574435 (£17.99)Publisher PD
De novo assembly of a 40 Mb eukaryotic genome from short sequence reads: Sordaria macrospora, a model organism for fungal morphogenesis
No full textFilamentous fungi are of great importance in ecology, agriculture, medicine, and biotechnology. Thus, it is not surprising that genomes for more than 100 filamentous fungi have been sequenced, most of them by Sanger sequencing. While next-generation sequencing techniques have revolutionized genome resequencing, e.g. for strain comparisons, genetic mapping, or transcriptome and ChIP analyses, de novo assembly of eukaryotic genomes still presents significant hurdles, because of their large size and stretches of repetitive sequences. Filamentous fungi contain few repetitive regions in their 30–90 Mb genomes and thus are suitable candidates to test de novo genome assembly from short sequence reads. Here, we present a high-quality draft sequence of the Sordaria macrospora genome that was obtained by a combination of Illumina/Solexa and Roche/454 sequencing. Paired-end Solexa sequencing of genomic DNA to 85-fold coverage and an additional 10-fold coverage by single-end 454 sequencing resulted in ~4 Gb of DNA sequence. Reads were assembled to a 40 Mb draft version (N50 of 117 kb) with the Velvet assembler. Comparative analysis with Neurospora genomes increased the N50 to 498 kb. The S. macrospora genome contains even fewer repeat regions than its closest sequenced relative, Neurospora crassa. Comparison with genomes of other fungi showed that S. macrospora, a model organism for morphogenesis and meiosis, harbors duplications of several genes involved in self/nonself-recognition. Furthermore, S. macrospora contains more polyketide biosynthesis genes than N. crassa. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that some of these genes may have been acquired by horizontal gene transfer from a distantly related ascomycete group. Our study shows that, for typical filamentous fungi, de novo assembly of genomes from short sequence reads alone is feasible, that a mixture of Solexa and 454 sequencing substantially improves the assembly, and that the resulting data can be used for comparative studies to address basic questions of fungal biology
Sequence effects in categorization of simple perceptual stimuli
No full textCategorization research typically assumes that the cognitive system has access to a (more or less noisy) representation of the absolute magnitudes of the properties of stimuli and that this information is used in reaching a categorization decision. However, research on identification of simple perceptual stimuli suggests that people have very poor representations of absolute magnitude information and that judgments about absolute magnitude are strongly influenced by preceding material. The experiments presented here investigate such sequence effects in categorization tasks. Strong sequence effects were found. Classification of a borderline stimulus was more accurate when preceded by a distant member of the opposite category than by a distant member of the same category. It is argued that this category contrast effect cannot be accounted for by extant exemplar or decision-bound models of categorization. The effect suggests the use of relative magnitude information in categorization. A memory and contrast model illustrates how relative magnitude information may be used in categorization
Globalising care? Town twinning in Britain since 1945
No full textTown twinning describes the establishment and practice, by various groups and to various ends, of relatively formal and long-term relationships between settlements usually located in different nation-states. Twin towns are sometimes called sister cities. This paper draws on a study of town twinning that focused on the involvement of British localities since the end of the Second World War and analysed data collected by the Local Government Association (for England and Wales), materials archived in the National Archives at Kew, London and various local record offices, and transcripts of interviews with representatives of relevant local, national, and international organisations. The paper makes three main contributions. Firstly, it provides a brief history of town twinning involving British localities. Secondly, it develops from this historical narrative an original conceptualisation of town twinning, arguing that it should be approached less as a coherent movement and more as a device, a repertoire, and a model. Thirdly, it argues that town twinning has often been used as a device for extending care across space – and that much can be learned from its history for contemporary geographies of care. Town twinning participants have approached the problem of care-at-a-distance as both an ontological problem and a practical problem. Some have focused more than others on the role of distanciated causal relationships in the generation of needs in distant places. Some are currently encountering another problem as they attempt to globalise care: the problem of care-in-a-hurry
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