Gene Expression: Sizing It All Up

Genomic architecture appears to be a largely unexplored component of gene expression. That architecture can be related to chromatin domains, transposable element neighborhoods, epigenetic modifications of the genome, and more. Although surely not the end of the story, we are learning that when it comes to gene expression, size is also important. We have been surprised to find that certain patterns of expression, tissue specific versus constitutive, or high expression versus low expression, are often associated with physical attributes of the gene and genome. Multiple studies have shown an inverse relationship between gene expression patterns and various physical parameters of the genome such as intron size, exon size, intron number, and size of intergenic regions. An increase in expression level and breadth often correlates with a decrease in the size of physical attributes of the gene. Three models have been proposed to explain these relationships. Contradictory results were found in several organisms when expression level and expression breadth were analyzed independently. However, when both factors were combined in a single study a novel relationship was revealed. At low levels of expression, an increase in expression breadth correlated with an increase in genic, intergenic, and intragenic sizes. Contrastingly, at high levels of expression, an increase in expression breadth inversely correlated with the size of the gene. In this article we explore the several hypotheses regarding genome physical parameters and gene expression

Justice Kavanaugh, \u3cem\u3eLorenzo v. SEC\u3c/em\u3e, and the Post-Kennedy Supreme Court

This Article analyzes a recent Supreme Court case, Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission, and explains why it provides a valuable window into the Court\u27s future now that Justice Kennedy has retired and his seat filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Lorenzo is an important case that raises fundamental interpretative questions about the reach of federal securities statutes. But most significant is its unique procedural posture: when the Supreme Court issues its decision on Lorenzo in 2019, Justice Kavanaugh will be recused while the other eight Justices rule on a lower court opinion from the D.C. Circuit in which he wrote separately in an extensive dissent. That dissent is quite remarkable. It contains a scathing assessment of securities fraud enforcement and adjudication at the SEC, the majority opinion\u27s interpretation of deceptive financial conduct under Rule 1 Ob-5, and the SEC\u27s overall role in the development of federal securities law doctrine. Judge Kavanaugh\u27s dissent also goes on to identify how the legal deficiencies specific to Lorenzo motivate his broader skepticism towards the constitutional legitimacy of the administrative and regulatory state as a whole; a view that represents his signature contribution as a federal judge. Thus, in Lorenzo, the defining judicial philosophy of the newest Supreme Court Justice is on full display. More broadly, this Article demonstrates that the deeper import of Lorenzo is not what it reveals about the views of Justice Kavanaugh. Rather, it is in the reception those views will meet from the other eight Justices on the Court. In addressing the argument set forth in the Lorenzo dissent, the current members of the Court will be confronting the positions of their newest peer and colleague. By necessity, they will also signal their openness to being persuaded by Justice Kavanaugh on the issues where he speaks with greatest authority and can be expected to act as forceful advocate for his vision of the law at the Court. Lorenzo can therefore be seen as a bellwether for Justice Kavanaugh\u27s influence as judicial entrepreneur on behalf of his trademark theory of the Constitutional separation of powers in administrative law. Most importantly, the case bears directly on the area of administrative law where the stakes are highest of all-the role that Justice Kavanaugh may play in the demise of the Chevron doctrine and the collapse of judicial deference toward the administrative state

The \u3cem\u3eLeidos\u3c/em\u3e Mixup and the Misunderstood Duty to Disclose in Securities Law

This Article concerns the recent Supreme Court case, Leidos,Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System (Leidos), and examines the broader issues that it raised for securities law. The consensus among scholars and practitioners is that Leidos presented a direct conflict among the circuit courts over a core question of securities law—when a failure to comply with the SEC’s disclosure requirements can constitute fraud under Rule 10b-5. This Article provides a much different interpretation of the case. It begins by demonstrating that the circuit split which is presumed to have brought Leidos to the Supreme Court does not in fact exist. It then shows that, rather than being riddled with disagreement, the leading judicial analysis in this area of the law instead reflects a shared set of misconceptions about how the securities regulation architecture works. By unraveling the underlying sources of the Leidos mix-up, this Article makes three contributions. First, it identifies overlooked aspects of the disclosure rules at issue in Leidos, and provides a novel analysis of how the case should have been decided. Second, it explains how errors in leading interpretations of the legal authorities implicated in Leidos carry over to other prominent portions of the regulatory framework, namely Sections 11 and 12 of the 1933 Securities Act. Third, it demonstrates that a central yet ill-defined securities doctrine—the duty to disclose—functions primarily to obscure rather than clarify the legal questions at issue in disclosure fraud claims. Taken together, these points suggest that Leidos was a more unusual case than has been appreciated, and stands at a remarkable confluence of legal and scholarly confusions, many of which implicate fundamental principles of securities law

\u3cem\u3eLeidos\u3c/em\u3e and the Roberts Court\u27s Improvident Securities Law Docket

For its October 2017 term, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a noteworthy securities law case, Leidos, Inc. v. Indiana Public Retirement System. The legal question presented in Leidos was whether a failure to comply with a regulation issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Item 303 of Regulation S-K (Item 303), can be grounds for a securities fraud claim pursuant to Rule 10b-5 and the related Section 10(b) of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Leidos teed up a significant set of issues because Item 303 concerns one of the more controversial corporate disclosures mandated by the SEC—an overview of known uncertainties facing a company’s financial future, which must be provided in the company’s “Management’s Discussion and Analysis” (MD&A). In an unusual twist to an already unusual case, the parties in Leidos announced a tentative settlement weeks before the Supreme Court was set to hear oral argument, and have successfully moved to hold the case in abeyance on the Court’s docket until the proposed settlement is ultimately rejected or approved

A Study of a Mini-drift GEM Tracking Detector

A GEM tracking detector with an extended drift region has been studied as part of an effort to develop new tracking detectors for future experiments at RHIC and for the Electron Ion Collider that is being planned for BNL or JLAB. The detector consists of a triple GEM stack with a small drift region that was operated in a mini TPC type configuration. Both the position and arrival time of the charge deposited in the drift region were measured on the readout plane which allowed the reconstruction of a short vector for the track traversing the chamber. The resulting position and angle information from the vector could then be used to improve the position resolution of the detector for larger angle tracks, which deteriorates rapidly with increasing angle for conventional GEM tracking detectors using only charge centroid information. Two types of readout planes were studied. One was a COMPASS style readout plane with 400 micron pitch XY strips and the other consisted of 2x10mm2 chevron pads. The detector was studied in test beams at Fermilab and CERN, along with additional measurements in the lab, in order to determine its position and angular resolution for incident track angles up to 45 degrees. Several algorithms were studied for reconstructing the vector using the position and timing information in order to optimize the position and angular resolution of the detector for the different readout planes. Applications for large angle tracking detectors at RHIC and EIC are also discussed.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Scienc