\u27What They Seek for is in Themselves\u27: Quaker Language and Thought in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Literature

This paper argues that Quakerism was an important influence on a number of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American writers. Looking at the work of, amongst others, Charles Brockden Brown, Robert Montgomery Bird, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Greenleaf Whittier, it demonstrates that both the stereotyped depiction of Quakers and the use of Quaker ideas, such as the inward light in literature of the period, helped writers tackle some of the paradoxes of democracy in a young nation. The perceived mystery of Quaker individualism is used in these texts first to dramatize anxiety over the formation of American \u27character\u27 as either fundamentally unique and unknowable or representative of the whole nation, and secondly for more constructive ends in order to create a language able to express unity in diversity

Using competition assays to quantitatively model cooperative binding by transcription factors and other ligands.

BACKGROUND: The affinities of DNA binding proteins for target sites can be used to model the regulation of gene expression. These proteins can bind to DNA cooperatively, strongly impacting their affinity and specificity. However, current methods for measuring cooperativity do not provide the means to accurately predict binding behavior over a wide range of concentrations. METHODS: We use standard computational and mathematical methods, and develop novel methods as described in Results. RESULTS: We explore some complexities of cooperative binding, and develop an improved method for relating in vitro measurements to in vivo function, based on ternary complex formation. We derive expressions for the equilibria among the various complexes, and explore the limitations of binding experiments that model the system using a single parameter. We describe how to use single-ligand binding and ternary complex formation in tandem to determine parameters that have thermodynamic relevance. We develop an improved method for finding both single-ligand dissociation constants and concentrations simultaneously. We show how the cooperativity factor can be found when only one of the single-ligand dissociation constants can be measured. CONCLUSIONS: The methods that we develop constitute an optimized approach to accurately model cooperative binding. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE: The expressions and methods we develop for modeling and analyzing DNA binding and cooperativity are applicable to most cases where multiple ligands bind to distinct sites on a common substrate. The parameters determined using these methods can be fed into models of higher-order cooperativity to increase their predictive power

Synthetic stellar populations: single stellar populations, stellar interior models and primordial proto-galaxies

We present a new set of stellar interior and synthesis models for predicting the integrated emission from stellar populations in star clusters and galaxies of arbitrary age and metallicity. This work differs from existing spectral synthesis codes in a number of important ways, namely (1) the incorporation of new stellar evolutionary tracks, with sufficient resolution in mass to sample rapid stages of stellar evolution; (2) a physically consistent treatment of evolution in the HR diagram, including the approach to the main sequence and the effects of mass loss on the giant and horizontal-branch phases. Unlike several existing models, ours yield consistent ages when used to date a coeval stellar population from a wide range of spectral features and colour indexes. We rigorously discuss degeneracies in the age-metallicity plane and show that inclusion of spectral features blueward of 4500 AA, suffices to break any remaining degeneracy and that with moderate S/N spectra (10 per 20AA, resolution element) age and metallicity are not degenerate. We also study sources of systematic errors in deriving the age of a single stellar population and conclude that they are not larger than 10-15%. We illustrate the use of single stellar populations by predicting the colors of primordial proto-galaxies and show that one can first find them and then deduce the form of the IMF for the early generation of stars in the universe. Finally, we provide accurate analytic fitting formulas for ultra fast computation of colors of single stellar populations. The models can be found at http://www.physics.upenn.edu/~rauljComment: MNRAS in pres

FINANCIAL PROSPECTS, BUSINESS ORGANIZATION, AND MANAGEMENT: FARM BUSINESS CHALLENGES

Farm Management,

Jonathan Lethem's Genre Evolutions

The ideas I expound here proceed from an initial, rather broad observation that all of Jonathan Lethem's novels subvert established fictional genres in some way. For example, The Fortress of Solitudedisrupts a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age narrative with elements of fantasy and comic book super-heroics. As She Climbed Across the Table is billed as a "campus comedy," yet allows science fiction to infiltrate its witty satire on academic life. Girl in Landscape is a western set in space. Now, it can of course be argued that any genre is necessarily an unstable category, a somewhat volatile mixture of repeated, conventional elements and the variations that provide an individual text with a sense of identity. Scholars such as Margaret Cohen, in "Traveling Genre," have argued just this, and I take it as axiomatic throughout

A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth Century South in Comparative Perspectives

Many souths Slim volume asserts broad comparative methodology in study of region Social anthropology has but one method; it is the comparative method; it is impossible pronounced Evans-Pritchard, the Oxford anthropologist. His point is that perfect comparisons are impossible, yet...

Transforming Perspectives Through Service-Learning Participation: A Case Study of the College Counts Program

A case study has been conducted on the College Counts program, a well-integrated service-learning program, to examine the experiential learning of 10 former participants. It was the objective of this investigation to view the learning of 10 college students, through the lens of transformational learning, as they reflect on their experiences as participants in the College Counts program. Transformational learning theory was used as a lens to determine if high school students have the ability to engage in transformative learning. Students reported in their own voices transformative learning in one or more of the following forms: increased cultural inclusiveness, commitment to social justice, and/or shift in personal perspective and choices. Results of the study suggested that Mezirow’s transformational learning theory should be expanded to include secondary students