Apico-basal polarity determinants encoded by crumbs genes affect ciliary shaft protein composition, IFT movement dynamics, and cilia length

One of the most obvious manifestations of polarity in epithelia is the subdivision of the cell surface by cell junctions into apical and basolateral domains. crumbs genes are among key regulators of this form of polarity. Loss of crumbs function disrupts the apical cell junction belt and crumbs overexpression expands the apical membrane size. Crumbs proteins contain a single transmembrane domain and localize to cell junction area at the apical surface of epithelia. In some tissues, they are also found in cilia. To test their role in ciliogenesis, we investigated mutant phenotypes of zebrafish crumbs genes. In zebrafish, mutations of three crumbs genes, oko meduzy/crb2a, crb3a, and crb2b, affect cilia length in a subset of tissues. In oko meduzy (ome), this is accompanied by accumulation of other Crumbs proteins in the ciliary compartment. Moreover, intraflagellar transport (IFT) particle components accumulate in the ciliary shaft of ome;crb3a double mutants. Consistent with the above, Crb3 knockdown in mammalian cells affects the dynamics of IFT particle movement. These findings reveal crumbs-dependent mechanisms that regulate the localization of ciliary proteins, including Crumbs proteins themselves, and show that crumbs genes modulate intraflagellar transport and cilia elongation

Fictional and Fragmented Truths in Korean Adoptee Life Writing

This article explores the ways that life writing allows transnational, transracial Asian adoptee authors to navigate their complex experiences of truth and authenticity. It also addresses the transformations adoptee authors make to the memoir genre in order to accommodate the particularities of their experiences. I analyze Jane Jeong Trenka’s foundational Asian adoption memoir, The Language of Blood, and Kim Sunée’s lesser-known text, Trail of Crumbs, paying attention to the ways that the authors’ hybridized and deliberately constructionist approaches to genre parallel some of the identity issues that are brought out in their respective books. I explore the significance of the scrapbook form in The Language of Blood and the recipe book structure in Trail of Crumbs, arguing that Trenka and Sunée create hybridized life narratives because, like many transnational, transracial Asian adoptee life writers (and subjects), their identities are so inescapably predicated on assemblage. I argue that these authors reconsider some of the customary structures, styles, and themes found in traditional memoirs, and in so doing they participate in the postmodern project of de-essentializing truth claims that is crucial to their negotiations of their identities as Korean adoptees

Soil aggregation – a matter of proper management

Soil crumbs are important to soil functions. These include plant growth, and the growth of fungi and bacteria forming agents for binding and bonding of new crumbs. We have studied how commercial organic and conventional farming affect this interaction. A diverse crop rotation, including grass, and animal manure resulted in stable crumbs with a high content of biological binding and bonding agents. A cash crop rotation with the addition of only synthetic fertilizers resulted in small, stable aggregates – more like clods - with clay as binding agent. Such a soil will provide poor conditions for preparing seedbeds, because prolonged rain makes it soft and muddy while drought makes it hard as brick

Cooking for Ohio Families

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Roots and earthworms under grass, clover and a grass-clover mixture

White clover has a lower root biomass and a higher abundance of earthworms than grass. This might have an impact on the ecosystem services soil structure maintenance and water regulation when white clover is introduced in a grass-clover mixture. We investigated the root biomass, the abundance of earthworms and a selection of soil physical parameters in white clover, grass-clover, and grass with and without inorganic N fertilizer. The treatment with clover-only had a lower root biomass, a lower C/N-ratio of the roots, a higher abundance of earthworms, a higher number of earthworm burrows, a lower penetration resistance at the 20-30 cm soil layer and a lower proportion of crumbs in the soil, than the other treatments. This confirms the literature that pure clover stimulates the ecosystem services of water regulation, but is less conducive to soil structure maintenance. However, the grass-clover mixture did not differ significantly from the grass treatments, but differed from pure clover in a higher percentage of soil crumbs. We infer that, when clover is introduced in grassland to reduce the reliance on inorganic fertilizer, the mixture of grass and clover maintains the positive impact of grass roots on soil structure but only may show a positive effect of clover - only on water regulation with a higher clover percentage in the dry matter than in our experiment

Covariance-Adaptive Slice Sampling

We describe two slice sampling methods for taking multivariate steps using the crumb framework. These methods use the gradients at rejected proposals to adapt to the local curvature of the log-density surface, a technique that can produce much better proposals when parameters are highly correlated. We evaluate our methods on four distributions and compare their performance to that of a non-adaptive slice sampling method and a Metropolis method. The adaptive methods perform favorably on low-dimensional target distributions with highly-correlated parameters

What Have We Learned since October 1979?

My good friend Ben Bernanke is always a hard act to follow. When I drafted these remarks, I was concerned that Ben would take all the best points and cover them extremely well, leaving only some crumbs for Ben McCallum and me to pick up. But his decision to concentrate on one issue central bank credibility leaves me plenty to talk about.