Control of Denticle Diversity in the Drosophila Embryo

Screening for mutations that affect the epidermal cuticle pattern has been used as a powerful approach to identify genes involved in developmental decisions and signaling pathways (Luschnig et al., 2004; Mayer and Nusslein-Volhard, 1988; Nusslein- Volhard and Wieschaus, 1980). Some years ago, it became clear that the finer details of cuticle pattern, specifically the column-specific differences in denticle shape and hook orientation, occurred as a result of differential activation of the signaling pathways that pattern the epidermis (Alexandre et al., 1999). Since that time, no downstream targets have been identified that selectively affect denticle shape or hooking, and the mechanism(s) involved have remained elusive. Here, we show that the transcription factor stripe integrates signaling information and positional cues to specify multiple aspects of this column-specific denticle pattern, including denticle density and anterior hook orientation. Further, we show that stripe governs hook orientation, in part, via up-regulation of the spectraplakin shot, which functions both cell autonomously and cell non-autonomously to specify denticle hook orientation via interaction with the microtubule cytoskeleton. Thus, the stripe-shot circuit has the potential to link the un-patterned blastoderm to a fully patterned ventral cuticle. It appears that the non-autonomous stripe-shot circuit culminates in the localization of Shot protein across the boundaries where denticle hooks reverse. As spectraplakins can stabilize, localize and bundle microtubule arrays, as well as create specialized membrane domains via membrane protein clustering (Leung et al., 1999; Roper et al., 2002; Sanchez-Soriano, 2009), a likely hypothesis is that Shot organizes a specialized microtubule array or other cytoskeletal complex at these interfaces

Evaluation of high school reading motivational programs

Purposes of this study were to identify 1) what were some of the reading incentive or reading motivational programs used in grades 9-12 throughout the country; 2) and which programs were deemed successful by library media specialists and on what basis. In order to achieve this goal, high school library media specialists throughout the country were surveyed via LM_Net listserv to see what reading incentive programs they were using, if any at all, and if they determined the programs were successful, how they measured the success of the programs. There were a total of 21 respondents. Results demonstrated that there were few programs in place; most were believed to be successful; and methods for implementation, and program evaluation for success were very diverse. Results also indicated that there was a relationship between measured success rates and media specialists\u27 role in identified program

Simulation studies related to the particle identification by the forward and backward RICH detectors at Electron Ion Collider

The Electron-Ion collider (EIC) will be the ultimate facility to study the dynamics played by the colored quarks and gluons to the emergence of the global phenomenology of the nucleons and nuclei as described by Quantum Chromodynamics. The physics programs will greatly rely on efficient particle identification (PID) in both the forward and the backward regions. The forward and the backward RICHes of the EIC have to be able to cover wide acceptance and momentum ranges; in the forward region a dual radiator RICH (dRICH) is foreseen and in the backward region a proximity-focusing RICH can be foreseen to be employed. The geometry and the performance studies of the dRICH have been performed as prescribed in the EIC Yellow Report using the ATHENA software framework. This part of our work reports the effort following the call for EIC detector proposal the studies related to the forward and the backward RICHes performance. In the forward region, dRICH performance showed a pion-kaon separation from around 1 GeV/c to 50 GeV/c at a three sigma level; the proximity focusing RICH (pfRICH) foreseen for the backward region can reach three sigma separation up to 3 GeV/c for e/$\pi$ and up to 10 GeV/c for $\pi$/K mass hypothesis.Comment: 4 pages, 8 figure

The Social Transformation of Coffee Houses: The Emergence of Chain Establishments and the Private Nature of Usage

Ray Oldenburg (1989) developed the concept of third places as environments that offer friendship and a sense of community. However, the idealized image of the coffee house may need revision. In recent decades coffee houses have transformed from small-scale businesses to corporate-owned franchises, and with the advent of personal electronic devices many people now use them to work rather than to socialize. Using unobtrusive observation data from three independently-owned and three chain-based coffee houses in the Boston area, this research examines the ways in which modern coffee houses live up to or defy Oldenburg’s social expectations of a third place. Two key findings reveal that: 1) people increasingly use coffee houses as both a social sphere and a private zone to work, read, and use electronic devices; and 2) chain coffee houses, though often criticized for their sanitized lack of character, may better meet customers’ new third place needs by providing a wider variety of amenities (e.g., types of seating, food, and media) and free services that are in high demand (e.g., Wi-Fi)

The Social Transformation of Coffee Houses: The Emergence of Chain Establishments and the Private Nature of Usage

Ray Oldenburg (1989) developed the concept of third places as environments that offer friendship and a sense of community. However, the idealized image of the coffee house may need revision. In recent decades coffee houses have transformed from small-scale businesses to corporate-owned franchises, and with the advent of personal electronic devices many people now use them to work rather than to socialize. Using unobtrusive observation data from three independently-owned and three chain-based coffee houses in the Boston area, this research examines the ways in which modern coffee houses live up to or defy Oldenburg’s social expectations of a third place. Two key findings reveal that: 1) people increasingly use coffee houses as both a social sphere and a private zone to work, read, and use electronic devices; and 2) chain coffee houses, though often criticized for their sanitized lack of character, may better meet customers’ new third place needs by providing a wider variety of amenities (e.g., types of seating, food, and media) and free services that are in high demand (e.g., Wi-Fi)

Age structure, dispersion and diet of a population of stoats (Mustela erminea) in southern Fiordland during the decline phase of the beechmast cycle

The dispersion, age structure and diet of stoats (Mustela erminea) in beech forest in the Borland and Grebe Valleys, Fiordland National Park, were examined during December and January 2000/01, 20 months after a heavy seed-fall in 1999. Thirty trap stations were set along a 38-km transect through almost continuous beech forest, at least 1 km apart. Mice were very scarce (nights, C/100TN) along two standard index lines placed at either end of the transect, compared with November 1999 (>60/100TN), but mice were detected (from footprints in stoat tunnels) along an 8 km central section of the transect (stations 14-22). Live trapping with one trap per station (total 317.5 trap nights) in December 2000 caught 2 female and 23 male stoats, of which 10 (including both females) were radio collared. The minimum range lengths of the two females along the transect represented by the trap line were 2.2 and 6.0 km; those of eight radio-tracked males averaged 2.9 ± 1.7 km. Stations 14-22 tended to be visited more often, by more marked individual stoats, than the other 21 stations. Fenn trapping at the same 30 sites, but with multiple traps per station (1333.5 trap nights), in late January 2001 collected carcasses of 35 males and 28 females (including 12 of the marked live-trapped ones). Another two marked males were recovered dead. The stoat population showed no sign of chronic nutritional stress (average fat reserve index = 2.8 on a scale of 1-4 where 4 = highest fat content); and only one of 63 guts analysed was empty. Nevertheless, all 76 stoats handled were adults with 1-3 cementum annuli in their teeth, showing that reproduction had failed that season. Prey categories recorded in descending frequency of occurrence were birds, carabid beetle (ground beetle), weta, possum, rat, and mouse. The frequencies of occurrence of mice and birds in the diet of these stoats (10% and 48%, respectively) were quite different from those in stoats collected in Pig Creek, a tributary of the Borland River (87%, 5%), 12 months previously when mice were still abundant. Five of the six stoat guts containing mice were collected within 1 km of stations 14-22

Organizational guidance for the care of patients with head-and-neck cancer in Ontario.

Background: At the request of the Head and Neck Cancers Advisory Committee of Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario), a working group and expert panel of clinicians with expertise in the management of head-and-neck cancer developed the present guideline. The purpose of the guideline is to provide advice about the organization and delivery of health care services for adult patients with head-and-neck cancer. Methods: This document updates the recommendations published in the Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) 2009 organizational guideline Results: To ensure that all patients have access to the highest standard of care available in Ontario, the guideline establishes the minimum requirements to maintain a head-and-neck disease site program. Recommendations are made about the membership of core and extended provider teams, minimum skill sets and experience of practitioners, cancer centre-specific and practitioner-specific volumes, multidisciplinary care requirements, and unique infrastructure demands. Conclusions: The recommendations contained in this document offer guidance for clinicians and institutions providing care for patients with head-and-neck cancer in Ontario, and for policymakers and other stakeholders involved in the delivery of health care services for head-and-neck cancer

Representational similarity precedes category selectivity in the developing ventral visual pathway

© 2019 Many studies have investigated the development of face-, scene-, and body-selective regions in the ventral visual pathway. This work has primarily focused on comparing the size and univariate selectivity of these neural regions in children versus adults. In contrast, very few studies have investigated the developmental trajectory of more distributed activation patterns within and across neural regions. Here, we scanned both children (ages 5–7) and adults to test the hypothesis that distributed representational patterns arise before category selectivity (for faces, bodies, or scenes) in the ventral pathway. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found mature representational patterns in several ventral pathway regions (e.g., FFA, PPA, etc.), even in children who showed no hint of univariate selectivity. These results suggest that representational patterns emerge first in each region, perhaps forming a scaffold upon which univariate category selectivity can subsequently develop. More generally, our findings demonstrate an important dissociation between category selectivity and distributed response patterns, and raise questions about the relative roles of each in development and adult cognition

Observation of Beam Spin Asymmetries in the Process ep → e\u27π⁺π⁻ X with CLAS 12

The observation of beam spin asymmetries in two-pion production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering off an unpolarized proton target is reported. The data presented here were taken in the fall of 2018 with the CLAS12 spectrometer using a 10.6 GeV longitudinally spin-polarized electron beam delivered by CEBAF at JLab. The measured asymmetries provide the first opportunity to extract the parton distribution function e(x), which provides information about the interaction between gluons and quarks, in a collinear framework that offers cleaner access than previous measurements. The asymmetries also constitute the first ever signal sensitive to the helicity-dependent two-pion fragmentation function G⊥1. A clear sign change is observed around the ρ mass that appears in model calculations and is indicative of the dependence of the produced pions on the helicity of the fragmenting quark