Felix Holt and \u27A Fine Sight of Lawsuits\u27

During the festivities surrounding the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare\u27s death, much was said about his Warwickshire roots, and commentators noted, not for the first time, his use of Warwickshire dialect. The same is frequently said about George Eliot, of course. A good example occurs early in Felix Holt, in the coachman\u27s words as he takes passengers up the hill past the village of Little Treby: How many times in the year, as the coach rolled past the neglected-looking lodges which interrupted the screen of trees, and showed the river winding through a finely-timbered park, had the coachman answered the same questions, or told the same thing without being questioned! That? Oh, that was Transome Court, a place there had been a fine sight of lawsuits about. Generations back, the heir of the Transome name had bargained away the estate, and it fell to the Durfeys [ ... ]. But the Durfeys\u27 claim had been disputed over and over again; and [ ... ] the lawyers had found their luck in it. (emphasis added)\u27 \u27A fine sight\u27, in North Warwickshire parlance, means \u27a great many, or a multitude\u27. Growing up there myself, I often used to hear this as a child: \u27You\u27ll hear a sight more about it before I\u27m done with you!\u27 George Eliot\u27s recall of the language of her childhood is, as ever, spot-on

Comparative genomics using Fugu reveals insights into regulatory subfunctionalization

Fish-mammal genomic alignments were used to compare over 800 conserved non-coding elements that associate with genes that have undergone fish-specific duplication and retention, revealing a pattern of element retention and loss between paralogs indicative of subfunctionalization

Genomic features defining exonic variants that modulate splicing

A comparative analysis of SNPs and their exonic and intronic environments identifies the features predictive of splice affecting variants

Talking Heads

This transcript of the broadcast program includes interview with Wendy Suiter, discussing the collaborative project- an opera based on one of Sue Woolfe\u27s books, for which I am writing the music which will use virtual instruments created digitally from sampled found sounds

Laser-Derived, Particle Size Data from CRP-2/2A: Implications for Sequence and Seismic Stratigraphy

Gravel-free, high-resolution (1-metre spacing, 32 channel) particle size data from the CRP-2/2A drill core indicate that many of the diamictites were likely deposited from floating ice. Textural dislocations occur at most sequence boundaries and provide independent corroboration of the sequence stratigraphic interpretation. Likewise the data largely support the correlation drawn (Fielding et al., this volume) between the sequence stratigraphic cycles and the regional seismic stratigraphy (an alternative correlation to Reflector ‘f’ is also suggested). The gravel-free data appear to be reflecting predominantly regional (global?) forcing with some possible local effects, and long-term trends persisting through gravelly textural dislocations

The reception of French painting in Britain, c. 1690–c. 1740

The reception of French pictures, artists and art literature in Britain during the early eighteenth century has hitherto remained an understudied area within British art history. Modern scholarship has often characterised this period as experiencing an influx of continental influences which aided the development of British art, collecting, and patronage. However, there is the tendency to focus such a study within the latter decades of the century. This thesis combines document-based research with pictorial study in order to determine the ways that English audiences responded to the presence of French pictures, but also imitated, modified and criticised French artistic ideas and forms during the period Four chapters explore the different ways in which English travellers, collectors and patrons came to acquire, commission and learn about French painting. This will firstly be achieved through a consideration of English artists visiting Paris during this period, and associated travel literature, particularly the notebook of the painter James Thornhill. This leads to an examination of the interactions between collectors and their agents and dealers in the acquisition of French pictures on the London art market and abroad. This study also establishes the impact of French visual and literary sources on the mural paintings of Louis Laguerre and his English patrons. Lastly, this thesis considers the readership for French art literature and the contribution of English translations and treatises. Together, these topics serve to illustrate the multitude of ways in which French art and ideas became embedded within English artistic culture during this period

Bilingualism and conversational understanding in young children

The purpose of the two experiments reported here was to investigate whether bilingualism confers an advantage on children’s conversational understanding. A total of 163 children aged 3 to 6 years were given a Conversational Violations Test to determine their ability to identify responses to questions as violations of Gricean maxims of conversation (to be informative and avoid redundancy, speak the truth, and be relevant and polite). Though comparatively delayed in their L2 vocabulary, children who were bilingual in Italian and Slovenian (with Slovenian as the dominant language) generally outperformed those who were either monolingual in Italian or Slovenian. We suggest that bilingualism can be accompanied by an enhanced ability to appreciate effective communicative responses

CONDOR: a database resource of developmentally associated conserved non-coding elements

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Comparative genomics is currently one of the most popular approaches to study the regulatory architecture of vertebrate genomes. Fish-mammal genomic comparisons have proved powerful in identifying conserved non-coding elements likely to be distal <it>cis-</it>regulatory modules such as enhancers, silencers or insulators that control the expression of genes involved in the regulation of early development. The scientific community is showing increasing interest in characterizing the function, evolution and language of these sequences. Despite this, there remains little in the way of user-friendly access to a large dataset of such elements in conjunction with the analysis and the visualization tools needed to study them.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>Here we present CONDOR (COnserved Non-coDing Orthologous Regions) available at: <url>http://condor.fugu.biology.qmul.ac.uk</url>. In an interactive and intuitive way the website displays data on > 6800 non-coding elements associated with over 120 early developmental genes and conserved across vertebrates. The database regularly incorporates results of ongoing <it>in vivo </it>zebrafish enhancer assays of the CNEs carried out in-house, which currently number ~100. Included and highlighted within this set are elements derived from duplication events both at the origin of vertebrates and more recently in the teleost lineage, thus providing valuable data for studying the divergence of regulatory roles between paralogs. CONDOR therefore provides a number of tools and facilities to allow scientists to progress in their own studies on the function and evolution of developmental <it>cis</it>-regulation.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>By providing access to data with an approachable graphics interface, the CONDOR database presents a rich resource for further studies into the regulation and evolution of genes involved in early development.</p