Does gene dosage really matter?

Mechanisms to compensate for dosage differences of genes on sex chromosomes are widespread in animals and have been thought to be critical for viability. However, in birds, compensation is inefficient, implying that for many genes dosage compensation is not critical, and for some genes, dosage differences have even been selected for

Are homologies in vertebrate sex determination due to shared ancestry or to limited options?

The bewildering array of different sex-determination systems in vertebrates is built on a common set of genes and chromosomes

Toward Common Content: An Analysis of Online College and University Collecting Policies

Collecting policies have been advocated as tools to help archivists build stronger collections. The model proposed by Faye Phillips in 1984 is the most detailed framework for collecting policies in the archival literature. This paper presents the results of a pilot study of the collecting policies of college and university archives available online to investigate whether a consensus has been reached about the content of these documents. Future studies of this kind for other types of archives could facilitate the identification, refinement, and dissemination of professional best practice and standards for collecting policies

Between the Literary and the Visual: Inter-Artistic Approaches to African-American Art History

A stubborn truism vexes African-American art history: the canon of black American literature is viewed as more established and robust than that of black American visual arts. This misconception has more to do with conventional disciplinary divisions, than it does with either the quantity or quality of black visual expression. Segregating the literary from the visual --and assigning these to English and Art History departments, respectively--has obscured the originally inter-artistic nature of much black cultural expression as well as the terms of its early reception and critique. African-American artists have repeatedly worked in black literary contexts--from Aaron Douglas\u27s illustrations for Alain Locke\u27s The New Negro to Glenn Ligon\u27s painted excerpts from Ralph Ellison and Richard Pryor. At the same time, many (nonblack) literary critics have been enthusiastic interpreters of black visual arts. Theater critic and novelist Carl Van Vechten promoted the painters of the Harlem Renaissance; Sidney Hirsch, one of Vanderbilt University\u27s influential literary modernists, discovered black folk sculptor William Edmondson; and French poststructuralist Roland Barthes famously used a photograph by James Van Der Zee to explain his concept of the photographic punctum. This panel seeks papers that take stock of this prodigious overlap between the literary and the visual arts. Participants are invited to address how literature and literary criticism may productively inform African-American art history, to recount the specific historical circumstances that compel this approach, and to consider broadly how attention to inter-artistic histories might helpfully reform both approaches to and canons of black cultural expression

Independent Evolution of Transcriptional Inactivation on Sex Chromosomes in Birds and Mammals

X chromosome inactivation in eutherian mammals has been thought to be tightly controlled, as expected from a mechanism that compensates for the different dosage of X-borne genes in XX females and XY males. However, many X genes escape inactivation in humans, inactivation of the X in marsupials is partial, and the unrelated sex chromosomes of monotreme mammals have incomplete and gene-specific inactivation of X-linked genes. The bird ZW sex chromosome system represents a third independently evolved amniote sex chromosome system with dosage compensation, albeit partial and gene-specific, via an unknown mechanism (i.e. upregulation of the single Z in females, down regulation of one or both Zs in males, or a combination). We used RNA-fluorescent in situ hybridization (RNA-FISH) to demonstrate, on individual fibroblast cells, inactivation of 11 genes on the chicken Z and 28 genes on the X chromosomes of platypus. Each gene displayed a reproducible frequency of 1Z/1X-active and 2Z/2X-active cells in the homogametic sex. Our results indicate that the probability of inactivation is controlled on a gene-by-gene basis (or small domains) on the chicken Z and platypus X chromosomes. This regulatory mechanism must have been exapted independently to the non-homologous sex chromosomes in birds and mammals in response to an over-expressed Z or X in the homogametic sex, highlighting the universal importance that (at least partial) silencing plays in the evolution on amniote dosage compensation and, therefore, the differentiation of sex chromosomes.This project was supported by an Australian Research Fellowship to PDW (DP0987091) and an Australian Research Council discovery project grant to PDW, JED and JAMG (DP1094868) (http://www.arc.gov.au/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Police surveillance of cell phone location data: Supreme Court versus public opinion

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. As technology evolves, courts must examine Fourth Amendment concerns implicated by the introduction of new and enhanced police surveillance techniques. Recent Supreme Court cases have demonstrated a trend towards reconsidering the mechanical application of traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine to define the scope of constitutional protections for modern technological devices and personal data. The current research examined whether public opinion regarding privacy rights in electronic communications is in accordance with these Supreme Court rulings. Results suggest that cell phone location data is perceived as more private and deserving of protections than other types of location data, but the privacy of other types of information recorded on cell phones is valued even more than location data. These results have implications for the police and courts considering how the Fourth Amendment will apply to smart phone technologies