A Type of Preservation: Modern Recreations of Typeface at Genesee Country Village & Museum and the Cary Graphics Art Collection

Historical objects that serve educational and interpretive purposes face frequent use and can easily be damaged, particularly when those objects are designed to be disposed of following high usage. Conserving these artifacts through both digital and physical reproductions enables museum staff, scholars, and the general public to tell a more complete history of the objects and of material culture. To demonstrate the necessity of preserving functional artifacts, this thesis examined historic wooden typefaces used for document printing to answer the following question: do digital and physical reproductions of wood type fonts allow for preservation of the original fonts while maintaining an authentic, participatory experience for visitors? By working with the collection of typefaces at Genesee Country Village & Museum in Mumford, New York and the Cary Graphic Art Collection at Rochester Institute of Technology, I recreated damaged types with methods tested by scholars of printing history to demonstrate the value of physical and digital reproductions. I also showed how such efforts enable museums and other collecting institutions to view type as both an art form and a means of production. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion on the use of facsimiles in the museum space for exhibition and educational purposes and the conversations surrounding authenticity in museums

Connexins in colorectal cancer pathogenesis.

International audience: The connexins constitute a family of integral membrane proteins that form channels between adjacent cells. These channels are assembled in plasma membrane domains known as gap junctions and enable cells to directly exchange ions and small molecules. Intercellular communication via gap junctions plays important roles in regulating cell growth and differentiation and in maintaining tissue homeostasis. This type of cell communication is often impaired during cancer development, and several members of the connexin protein family have been shown to act as tumor suppressors. Emerging evidence suggests that the connexin protein family has important roles in colorectal cancer development. In the normal colonic epithelial tissue, three connexin isoforms, connexin 26 (Cx26), Cx32 and Cx43, have been shown to be expressed at the protein level. Colorectal cancer development is associated with loss of connexin expression or relocalization of connexins from the plasma membrane to intracellular compartments. Downregulation of connexins in colorectal carcinomas at the transcriptional level involves cancer-specific promoter hypermethylation. Recent studies suggest that Cx43 may constrain growth of colon cancer cells by interfering with the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. There is also increasing evidence that the connexins may have potential as prognostic markers in colorectal cancer. This review discusses the role of connexins in colorectal cancer pathogenesis, as well as their potential as prognostic markers and targets in the prevention and treatment of the disease

The Human Face as a Dynamic Tool for Social Communication

As a highly social species, humans frequently exchange social information to support almost all facets of life. One of the richest and most powerful tools in social communication is the face, from which observers can quickly and easily make a number of inferences — about identity, gender, sex, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical health, attractiveness, emotional state, personality traits, pain or physical pleasure, deception, and even social status. With the advent of the digital economy, increasing globalization and cultural integration, understanding precisely which face information supports social communication and which produces misunderstanding is central to the evolving needs of modern society (for example, in the design of socially interactive digital avatars and companion robots). Doing so is challenging, however, because the face can be thought of as comprising a high-dimensional, dynamic information space, and this impacts cognitive science and neuroimaging, and their broader applications in the digital economy. New opportunities to address this challenge are arising from the development of new methods and technologies, coupled with the emergence of a modern scientific culture that embraces cross-disciplinary approaches. Here, we briefly review one such approach that combines state-of-the-art computer graphics, psychophysics and vision science, cultural psychology and social cognition, and highlight the main knowledge advances it has generated. In the light of current developments, we provide a vision of the future directions in the field of human facial communication within and across cultures