After the Book, the Book? The Digital Writing Experiments of François Bon

While most commentators believe that the print book will survive the advent of the ebook, it is at the same time hard not to think that the fundamental technological changes ushered in by the digital revolution will fail to have profound effects on the forms of the book. Arguing that literary forms have always depended on the “material conditions of their enunciation,” the French author François Bon uses historical examples to suggest the book will undergo major, if yet unforeseen, transformations. He maintains that it is urgent for writers to experiment with the possibilities brought about by the digital revolution, lest the actual developments be decided by the commercial interests of large technology entities. In his own experiments with the form of the book in the digital environment -- in his “novel” Tumulte, which consists of daily blog posts that mix fiction, memoir, criticism, and other genres, and in a series of digital remediations of his early novel, Limite -- Bon imaginatively explores the limits of the concept of the book. Yet while these experiments are suggestive, it is less clear that they represent viable avenues for the book’s development, since their main appeal is arguably for scholars and theoreticians. Focusing on the means of organization and delivery, and the ontological ambiguities arising from the multiple versions of the same text, Bon’s experiments skirt the core power of the book: the sustained arrangement of words that has been the principle means whereby books have conveyed content and sustained intellectual culture

The Forest, The Trees, The Bark, The Pith: An Intensive Look at the Circulation Rates of Primary Texts in Ten Major Literature Areas at the University of Oregon Libraries

This poster looks at the circulation rate for literary primary texts, which constitute a unique area of collecting in academic libraries: while they do not in most cases meet immediate research needs, it is assumed that libraries ought to acquire them, for reasons including future research needs, preservation of the cultural record, and the ability of members of the intellectual community to stay current, those these remain primarily tacit. The circulation trends of contemporary literary works in ten areas of literature (English, American, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin American, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian) over the past twenty years at the University of Oregon Knight Library are presented and the circulation turnover rate (CTR), for each of these subject areas are presented. Sample graphs allow for the comparison of circulation rates and numbers of books across time, and serve as examples of the utility of such visualizations of the numbers. The key question raised by the study is what makes a good CTR for a particular region of the collection? The poster concludes by summarizing the considerations that bear on the interpretation of the CTR as an index of how the collection is “working.

The Plant Actin Cytoskeleton Responds to Signals from Microbe-Associated Molecular Patterns

Plants are constantly exposed to a large and diverse array of microbes; however, most plants are immune to the majority of potential invaders and susceptible to only a small subset of pathogens. The cytoskeleton comprises a dynamic intracellular framework that responds rapidly to biotic stresses and supports numerous fundamental cellular processes including vesicle trafficking, endocytosis and the spatial distribution of organelles and protein complexes. For years, the actin cytoskeleton has been assumed to play a role in plant innate immunity against fungi and oomycetes, based largely on static images and pharmacological studies. To date, however, there is little evidence that the host-cell actin cytoskeleton participates in responses to phytopathogenic bacteria. Here, we quantified the spatiotemporal changes in host-cell cytoskeletal architecture during the immune response to pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000. Two distinct changes to host cytoskeletal arrays were observed that correspond to distinct phases of plant-bacterial interactions i.e. the perception of microbe-associated molecular patterns (MAMPs) during pattern-triggered immunity (PTI) and perturbations by effector proteins during effector-triggered susceptibility (ETS). We demonstrate that an immediate increase in actin filament abundance is a conserved and novel component of PTI. Notably, treatment of leaves with a MAMP peptide mimic was sufficient to elicit a rapid change in actin organization in epidermal cells, and this actin response required the host-cell MAMP receptor kinase complex, including FLS2, BAK1 and BIK1. Finally, we found that actin polymerization is necessary for the increase in actin filament density and that blocking this increase with the actin-disrupting drug latrunculin B leads to enhanced susceptibility of host plants to pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria

Genome-Wide Association Study of the Modified Stumvoll Insulin Sensitivity Index Identifies BCL2 and FAM19A2 as Novel Insulin Sensitivity Loci

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have found few common variants that influence fasting measures of insulin sensitivity. We hypothesized that a GWAS of an integrated assessment of fasting and dynamic measures of insulin sensitivity would detect novel common variants. We performed a GWAS of the modified Stumvoll Insulin Sensitivity Index (ISI) within the Meta-Analyses of Glucose and Insulin-Related Traits Consortium. Discovery for genetic association was performed in 16,753 individuals, and replication was attempted for the 23 most significant novel loci in 13,354 independent individuals. Association with ISI was tested in models adjusted for age, sex, and BMI and in a model analyzing the combined influence of the genotype effect adjusted for BMI and the interaction effect between the genotype and BMI on ISI (model 3). In model 3, three variants reached genome-wide significance: Rs13422522 (NYAP2; P = 8.87 × 10-11), rs12454712 (BCL2; P = 2.7 × 10-8), and rs10506418 (FAM19A2; P = 1.9 × 10-8). The association at NYAP2 was eliminated by conditioning on the known IRS1 insulin sensitivity locus; the BCL2 and FAM19A2 associations were independent of known cardiometabolic loci. In conclusion, we identified two novel loci and replicated known variants associated with insulin sensitivity. Further studies are needed to clarify the causal variant and function at the BCL2 and FAM19A2 loci

Unnatural Naturalism. Review of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, Fiction by Brian Boyd

An extended review of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, Fiction by Brian Boy

“Turning a Man’s Life Right Around”: Wallace’s Rehabilitation of Frederick Exley in IJ

36 pagesThis article demonstrates the ways in which Wallace draws upon Frederick Exley's autobiographical novel, A Fan's Notes, to create the character Don Gately, ultimately the hero of Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest. In particular, it traces how Wallace fashions Gately to serve in the role of humane Everyman a la Joyce's Leopold Bloom, with the crucial complication that, just as Joyce based Bloom on an actual novelist, Italo Svevo, so Wallace, meticulously imitating Joyce's creative process, based Gately on Exley, recycling myriad details from Exley's now largely forgotten novel in order to establish its relevance to his own work. The special aptness of A Fan's Notes for Infinite Jest is that Exley's novel treats the same themes that are central to Wallace's novel -- addiction, sports, spectatorship, manhood, heroism -- but presents them with an individualistic, macho, cynical swagger that is precisely the attitude that Wallace identifies as a pervasive postmodern pathology that needs to be corrected. In rewriting Exley, Wallace performs a kind of textual therapy on his predecessor that reverses point for point the unregenerate cynicism flaunted by Exley, thereby proffering in the portrayal of Gately a more open and sincere, and more viable, approach to the rehabilitation of the self. On another, metafictional level, Wallace’s revision of revision as rehabilitation both affirms and revises the preeminent postmodern theory of literary revisionism, Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence

James Wood's Case Against 'Hysterical Realism' and Thomas Pynchon

Postprint, from word file, 27 pp

Identification and characterization of a trans-acting factor involved in the regulation of a chalcone synthase gene in tobacco

Staiger D, Schell J. Identification and characterization of a trans-acting factor involved in the regulation of a chalcone synthase gene in tobacco. J Cell Biochem. 1989;S 13 A:M348

A Nuclear Factor Recognizing a Positive Regulatory Upstream Element of the Antirrhinum majus Chalcone Synthase Promoter

A positive regulatory element directing maximal expression of the Antirrhinum majus chalcone synthase promoter was characterized by protein-DNA-interaction studies and cis deletion analysis. The positive regulatory element consists of a 47 base pair direct repeat between positions −564 and −670 and provides three binding sites for nuclear protein factors from Nicotiana tabacum and Antirrhinum majus. Oligonucleotide competition assays revealed that the same factor(s) interact(s) with all three binding sites. Transient expression of chimeric chalcone synthase-neomycin phosphotransferase II genes in parsley protoplasts demonstrated that both halves of the 47 base pair repeat element are required for its in vivo function. A possible role of redundant binding sites for the positive regulatory function of the 47 base pair repeat element is discussed

Tobacco nuclear factor CG-1: DNA-protein crosslinking studies and copurification by differential sequence-specific affinity chromatography with a 21 kD polypeptide

Staiger D, Schell J, Palme K. Tobacco nuclear factor CG-1: DNA-protein crosslinking studies and copurification by differential sequence-specific affinity chromatography with a 21 kD polypeptide. J Cell Biochem. 1991;S 15 A:157