Operators at the borders: the hero as change agent in border literature

This study of borders in literature investigates the ways the frontier and then the border entered the national consciousness and developed into the entities they are presently. The focus here on the border in literature is organized around the role of border heroes as they bring instability and change to the geographic border region and to more metaphoric border regions. This study not only addresses the individual border hero's role and attributes, but also focuses more generally on the border hero's role as an emblem of the struggle for change. Toward this end, I support the importance to border criticism of border agents by showing their presence and essential participation in the work of Américo Paredes, some of the earliest writing on borders and border agents

Pieri resolutions for classical groups

We generalize the constructions of Eisenbud, Fl{\o}ystad, and Weyman for equivariant minimal free resolutions over the general linear group, and we construct equivariant resolutions over the orthogonal and symplectic groups. We also conjecture and provide some partial results for the existence of an equivariant analogue of Boij-S\"oderberg decompositions for Betti tables, which were proven to exist in the non-equivariant setting by Eisenbud and Schreyer. Many examples are given.Comment: 40 pages, no figures; v2: corrections to sections 2.2, 3.1, 3.3, and some typos; v3: important corrections to sections 2.2, 2.3 and Prop. 4.9 added, plus other minor corrections; v4: added assumptions to Theorem 3.6 and updated its proof; v5: Older versions misrepresented Peter Olver's results. See "New in this version" at the end of the introduction for more detail

Muscular dystrophy-dystroglycanopathy in a family of Labrador retrievers with a LARGE1 mutation

Alpha-dystroglycan (αDG) is a highly glycosylated cell surface protein with a significant role in cell-to-extracellular matrix interactions in muscle. αDG interaction with extracellular ligands relies on the activity of the LARGE1 glycosyltransferase that synthesizes and extends the heteropolysaccharide matriglycan. Abnormalities in αDG glycosylation and formation of matriglycan are the pathogenic mechanisms for the dystroglycanopathies, a group of congenital muscular dystrophies. Muscle biopsies were evaluated from related 6-week-old Labrador retriever puppies with poor suckling, small stature compared to normal litter mates, bow-legged stance and markedly elevated creatine kinase activities. A dystrophic phenotype with marked degeneration and regeneration, multifocal mononuclear cell infiltration and endomysial fibrosis was identified on muscle cryosections. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array genotyping data on the family members identified three regions of homozygosity in 4 cases relative to 8 controls. Analysis of whole genome sequence data from one of the cases identified a stop codon mutation in the LARGE1 gene that truncates 40% of the protein. Immunofluorescent staining and western blotting demonstrated the absence of matriglycan in skeletal muscle and heart from affected dogs. Compared to control, LARGE enzyme activity was not detected. This is the first report of a dystroglycanopathy in dogs