A Novel Antigen Sensitive to Calcium Chelation That is Associated with the Tip Links and Kinocilial Links of Sensory Hair Bundles

Tip links are extracellular, cell-surface-associated filaments of unknown molecular composition that are thought to gate the mechanotransducer channel of the sensory hair cell. They disappear from the hair bundle in response to calcium chelation and lanthanum treatment and resist degradation by the protease subtilisin. A monoclonal antibody derived from a hybridoma screen identified a novel antigen associated with tip links, the tip-link antigen. The tip-link antigen is also associated with kinocilial links, subtilisin-resistant filaments that are sensitive to calcium chelation and connect the kinocilium to the tallest stereocilia of the hair bundle. Furthermore, the tip-link antigen is expressed in the retina, where it is associated with the ciliary calyx, a ring of microvilli that surrounds the outer segment of the photoreceptor. The tip-link antigen rapidly disappears from the surface of the hair bundle in response to calcium chelation. It is also subtilisin resistant, relative to the ankle-link antigen, an antigen associated with another type of hair bundle link. The tip-link antigen is lanthanum sensitive and, like tip links, reappears on the surface of the hair bundle after calcium chelation. The monoclonal antibody to the tip-link antigen immunoprecipitates two concanavalin A-reactive polypeptides with apparent molecular masses of 200 and 250 kDa from detergent extracts of the retina. These results provide the first identification of a cell surface antigen associated with tip links, indicate that tip links share properties in common with kinocilial links, and reveal a second epitope that, along with the ankle-link antigen, is common to both sensory hair bundles and the ciliary calyx of photoreceptors

Inherent Powers and the Limits of Public Health Fake News

(Excerpt) In a Vero Beach, Florida, supermarket, Susan Wiles rode her motorized cart through the produce aisle. In any year other than 2020 or 2021, this would have been a routine trip to the grocery store. But in 2020, Mrs. Wiles was missing an accessory that had become ubiquitous in society during that year: a face mask. Despite causing a commotion, Mrs. Wiles stood by her decision, claiming that the concerns about COVID-19 were overblown: “I don’t fall for this. It’s not what they say it is.” Mrs. Wiles’ statement is emblematic of the year 2020. This is not the era of truth, but of alternative facts, fake news, and disinformation. For most Americans, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) pandemic has dictated our lives for over two years. But the facts that different Americans adhere to have varied considerably. For example, in July 2020, Dr. Stella Immanuel claimed, “This virus has a cure. It is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax, . . . I know you people want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need [a] mask. There is a cure.” The “cure,” despite lacking any scientific support, was touted by President Donald J. Trump and others to counter medical recommendations for a lockdown. In other cases, individuals followed other “miracle” cures they found on the Internet, such as drinking bleach or concentrated alcohol, the latter of which led to an estimated 800 deaths and over 5,000 hospitalizations worldwide. Others, like Mrs. Wiles, believed rumors that COVID- 19 is merely an overblown hoax from which doctors and hospitals can profit. Public faith in COVID-19 vaccines is also being undermined through the widespread circulation of various fake conspiracy theories about the dangers of vaccines and government oversight

Mixing and Matching Learning Design and Learning Analytics

In the last five years, learning analytics has proved its potential in predicting academic performance based on trace data of learning activities. However, the role of pedagogical context in learning analytics has not been fully understood. To date, it has been difficult to quantify learning in a way that can be measured and compared. By coding the design of e-learning courses, this study demonstrates how learning design is being implemented on a large scale at the Open University UK, and how learning analytics could support as well as benefit from learning design. Building on our previous work, our analysis was conducted longitudinally on 23 undergraduate distance learning modules and their 40,083 students. The innovative aspect of this study is the availability of fine-grained learning design data at individual task level, which allows us to consider the connections between learning activities, and the media used to produce the activities. Using a combination of visualizations and social network analysis, our findings revealed a diversity in how learning activities were designed within and between disciplines as well as individual learning activities. By reflecting on the learning design in an explicit manner, educators are empowered to compare and contrast their design using their own institutional data

Adapting Indian Copyright: Bollywood, Indian Cultural Adaptation, and the Path to Economic Development

Bollywood and the Indian film industry have enjoyed enormous success, being among the largest movie producers in the world. Yet, despite the bright image of Indian cinema producing over a thousand movies a year and selling billions of tickets, the industry has faced controversy over the practice of copying expression, sometimes practically scene for scene, from US and other international films and adapting them into a version that reflects Indian social and cinematic customs and mores (“Indian cultural adaptation”). A long-standing practice, Indian cultural adaptation in Bollywood has only attracted the attention of Hollywood studios in the past twenty years, but under international, US, and Indian copyright law, the legality of the practice remains in an unsettled gray area. Current literature on Indian cultural adaptation remains sparse and focuses on greater enforcement by India or Hollywood studios, at least partially condemning the practice. This Article instead argues that the practice of Indian cultural adaptation at least partially aligns with other limitations on the scope of copyright, including the expression-idea distinction, fair use, and the scène à faire doctrine. Drawing on a growing trend in law and economic development literature to craft property rights on a country-by-country basis, this Article also argues that explicit legalization of limited Indian cultural adaptation would benefit India culturally and economically, ultimately assisting the Indian entertainment industry with obtaining foreign investment on more favorable terms and further develop its burgeoning talent

Keeping the Barbarians at the Gates: The Promise of the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions for Developing Countries

The illicit trade in cultural property is a global phenomenon, powered by criminal networks and smuggling trains that sacrifice local culture for the black market of the art world. Headlines featuring the Islamic State’s lucrative exchange in stolen cultural property, among other incidents, have raised the profile of the illicit cultural property trade on the global stage. Developing countries, as the most prominent source countries of cultural property, are particularly at risk. Existing scholarship has searched for a solution to this crisis, suggesting a new international treaty to protect cultural property or recommending the utilization of adjacent legal fields. However, these solutions overlook the ready benefits of two existing international treaties on cultural property, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (“UNESCO”) and United Nations International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (“UNIDROIT”) Conventions. While the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions do not provide an absolute solution to the illicit cultural property trade, they are accessible and underutilized options that are particularly calibrated to assist developing countries. Increased ratification of the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions would grant source country States Parties the enforcement benefits of the import regulations and domestic court systems of market country States Parties, and the strength of the Conventions would rise as the number of signatories increases. The costs imposed on developing country signatories are deliberately low to aid them in protection and recovery. Furthermore, the adoption of these two Conventions does not constrain States Parties from contemplating and implementing additional mechanisms to further protect cultural property. The UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions thus offer ready, underutilized options for developing countries to better protect their cultural property

Culture and Fair Use

The intersections of race and copyright have been underexamined in legal scholarship, despite repeated calls for further scrutiny. The scholarship has so far focused primarily on identifying where copyright has fallen short in protecting the creative works of artists of color. This Article, instead, hopes to offer one viable solution for creating more inclusivity of different cultures in copyright: the approval of cultural adaptations under fair use. Cultural adaptations—the transformation of preexisting works to reflect the cultural and social mores and norms of a different group—would appear at first glance to be prohibited as derivative works, which, under the Copyright Act, can only be created by copyright owners. A culture-centered approach to fair use, however, offers the possibility of permitting at least certain cultural adaptations. While this question would be one of first impression for courts, cultural adaptations can—and should—be understood to constitute fair use. Cultural adaptations comment on and transform the original work by recontextualizing it for different cultural markets. In addition, permitting cultural adaptations advances the goal of copyright and the public policy goal of diversity in expression and representation by fostering the creation of more works, and especially more works for and by minority artists

Synchronizing Copyright and Technology: A New Paradigm for Sync Rights

Embedded in a copyright owner’s musical work or sound recording is the synchronization, or sync right, the exclusive right to use music in sync, or in timed-relation, with audiovisual works. Considerations about sync rights, one of the least discussed aspects of music copyright, have come to the fore as the world has increasingly moved from the real world to the virtual. The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred thousands of activities and events to go online. With many of these involving music, the shift to the virtual world has raised new questions about the extent of sync rights

Stereociliary Myosin-1c Receptors Are Sensitive to Calcium Chelation and Absent from Cadherin 23 Mutant Mice

The identities of some of the constituents of the hair-cell transduction apparatus have been elucidated only recently. The molecular motor myosin-1c (Myo1c) functions in adaptation of the hair-cell response to sustained mechanical stimuli and is therefore an integral part of the transduction complex. Recent data indicate that Myo1c interacts in vitro with two other molecules proposed to be important for transduction: cadherin 23 (Cdh23), a candidate for the stereociliary tip link, and phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2), which is abundant in the membranes of hair-cell stereocilia. It is not known, however, whether these interactions occur in hair cells. Using an in situ binding assay on saccular hair cells, we demonstrated previously that Myo1c interacts with molecules at stereociliary tips, the site of transduction, through sequences contained within its calmodulin (CaM)-binding neck domain, which can bind up to four CaM molecules. In the current study, we identify the second CaM-binding IQ domain as a region of Myo1c that mediates CaM-sensitive binding to stereociliary tips and to PIP2 immobilized on a solid support. Binding of Myo1c to stereociliary tips of cochlear and vestibular hair cells is disrupted by treatments that break tip links. In addition, Myo1c does not bind to stereocilia from mice whose hair cells lack Cdh23 protein despite the presence of PIP2 in the stereociliary membranes. Collectively, our data suggest that Myo1c and Cdh23 interact at the tips of hair-cell stereocilia and that this interaction is modulated by CaM