Homeric γόον ‘bewailed’ (Ζ 500)

Human sperm protein associated with the nucleus on the X chromosome (SPANX) genes comprise a gene family with five known members (SPANX-A1, -A2, -B, -C, and -D), encoding cancer/testis-specific antigens that are potential targets for cancer immunotherapy. These highly similar paralogous genes cluster on the X chromosome at Xq27. We isolated and sequenced primate genomic clones homologous to human SPANX. Analysis of these clones and search of the human genome sequence revealed an uncharacterized group of genes, SPANX-N, which are present in all primates as well as in mouse and rat. In humans, four SPANX-N genes comprise a series of tandem duplicates at Xq27; a fifth member of this subfamily is located at Xp11. Similarly to SPANX-A/D, human SPANX-N genes are expressed in normal testis and some melanoma cell lines; testis-specific expression of SPANX is also conserved in mouse. Analysis of the taxonomic distribution of the long and short forms of the intron indicates that SPANX-N is the ancestral form, from which the SPANX-A/D subfamily evolved in the common ancestor of the hominoid lineage. Strikingly, the coding sequences of the SPANX genes evolved much faster than the intron and the 5' untranslated region. There is a strong correlation between the rates of evolution of synonymous and nonsynonymous codon positions, both of which are accelerated 2-fold or more compared to the noncoding sequences. Thus, evolution of the SPANX family appears to have involved positive selection that affected not only the protein sequence but also the synonymous sites in the coding sequence.

This paper aims to analyze and compare imperfective forms and implications in Hijazi Arabic, situated in the ongoing grammaticalization process of a progressive aspect marker across Arabic vernaculars. In Modern Standard Arabic, an eventive imperfective verb is ambiguous, as it could be given a progressive or a habitual reading. In the context of /min al-muhtamali ʔan/ “of the likely” however, it can only be given a future shifted reading. In Hijazi Arabic on the other hand, the study findings showed that eventive imperfective verbs are always ambiguous despite the context. With regard to the progressive aspect marker, it was revealed that Hijazi Arabic behaves like other dialects in that a marker has developed out of the active participle of the verb “sit” to indicate a progressive reading. Even though the newly developed marker in Hijazi Arabic does not require an animate subject and appears with verbs having seemingly conflicting meanings (e.g., “sit” used with “swim”), it has not lost its lexical meaning, and a short form has not been developed like in other dialects, such as Maltese and Iraqi Arabic.

The paper claims that in Old Church Slavonic documents imperfect forms undergo processes of transfer and congruence, their full forms being ousted by shortened forms of the imperfect. The history of imperfect forms is well reflected in the Codex Supra­sliensis on the one hand, and Savvina Kniga on the other. Classical documents and material from the Codex Assemanianus are studied insufficiently regarding shortened and full imperfect forms. The present paper intends to examine the correlation of shortened and full imperfect forms as well as to reveal the morphological peculiarities of the imperfect in the Codex Assemanianus with respect to the significance of this document in the history of Old Church Slavonic gospel translations.

The financial privacy law passed by Congress in 1999 has been the target of scathing criticism. Financial institutions have complained about the high costs of the billions of notices sent to consumers, apparently to widespread consumer indifference. On the other side, privacy advocates have condemned the law as woefully weak. This article disagrees with the criticisms. Part I describes the main provisions of Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, showing a better match with basic privacy principles than many have realized. Part II explores the history of how GLB became law, placing the enactment into the context of a historic peak of privacy policy activity in the late 1990s. This history draws on my dual perspective, as an academic who has written extensively about financial and other privacy issues, and as the Clinton Administration's Chief Counselor for Privacy during the period. Part III looks at the most hotly contested issue in the privacy debate, the rules for sharing personal information with affiliated entities and third parties. GLB establishes a basic rule that information can flow freely within a financial institution and to its affiliates. Customer choice - an opt out ability to prevent sharing - applies for transfers to non-affiliated companies. The article argues that an to that principle of customer choice, the joint marketing exception should be repealed. It then explores the knotty issue of how to handle data sharing in today's vast financial conglomerates, suggesting possible statutory modifications. Part IV looks at the much-maligned notices that financial institutions have sent out in compliance with GLB. The critics have accurately complained about the legalistic and detailed language in the current notices. The critics have largely overlooked, however, important benefits from these notices. Publication of the notices and the new legal obligation to comply with them have forced financial institutions to engage in considerable self-scrutiny of their data handling practices. Many firms have hired a Chief Privacy Officer or made other institutional changes. The current notices, even in their imperfect form, have reduced the risk of egregious privacy practices. And improved notices, with a plain-language short form on top, would enhance accountability while also communicating far more clearly with ordinary customers. In short, there are surprising merits of the GLB privacy provisions. Considerably more was accomplished in the Act than observers would have predicted in the spring of 1999 or than critics have recognized to date. Important flaws do exist, but specific and achievable changes in the statute and implementing regulation can go far toward reducing the magnitude of those flaws.

The PIN and ACO gene families present interesting questions about the evolution of plant physiology, including testing hypotheses about the ecological drivers of their diversification and whether unrelated genes have been recruited for similar functions. The PIN-formed proteins contribute to the polar transport of auxin, a hormone which regulates plant growth and development. PIN loci are categorized into groups according to their protein length and structure, as well as subcellular localization. An interesting question with PIN genes is the nature of the ancestral form and location. ACOs are members of a superfamily of oxygenases and oxidases that catalyze the last step of ethylene synthesis, which regulates many aspects of the plant life cycle. We used publicly available PIN and ACO sequences to conduct phylogenetic analyses. Third codon positions of these genes in monocots have a high GC content, which could be historical but is more likely due to a mutational bias. Thus, we developed methods to extract phylogenetic information from nucleotide sequences while avoiding this convergent feature. One method consisted in using only A-T transformations, and another used only the first and second codon positions for serine, which can only take A or T and G or C, respectively. We also conducted tree-searches for both gene families using unaligned amino acid sequences and dynamic homology. PIN genes appear to have diversified earlier than ACOs, with monocot and dicot copies more mixed in the phylogeny. However, gymnosperm PINs appear to be derived and not closely related to those from primitive plants. We find strong support for a long PIN gene ancestor with short forms subsequently evolving one or more times. ACO genes appear to have diversified mostly since the dicot-monocot split, as most genes cluster into a small number of monocot and dicot clades when the tree is rooted by genes from mosses. Gymnosperm ACOs were recovered as closely related and derived.