Founding Parents Research Articles

A locus-dependent mixed inheritance in the segmental allohexaploid sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam).

Two interrelated aspects of the sweetpotato genome, its polyploid origin and inheritance type, remain uncertain. We recently proposed a segmental allohexaploid sweetpotato and thus sought to clarify its inheritance type by direct analyses of homoeolog segregations at selected single-copy loci. For such analyses, we developed a digital quantitative PCR genotyping method using one nondiscriminatory and three discriminatory probes for each selected locus to discriminate and quantify three homoeolog-differentiating variation types (homoeolog-types) in genomic DNA samples for genotype fitting and constructed a F2 population for segregation analyses. We confirmed inter-subgenomic distinctions of three identified homoeolog-types at each of five selected loci by their interspecific differentiations among 14 species in Ipomoea section batatas and genotyped the loci in 549 F2 lines, selected F1 progenies, and their founding parents. Segregation and genotype analyses revealed a locus-dependent mixed inheritance (disomic, polysomic, and intermediate types) of the homoeolog-types at 4 loci in the F2 population, displaying estimated disomic-inheritance frequencies of 0, 2.72%, 14.52%, and 36.92%, and probably in the F1 population too. There were also low-frequency non-hexaploid F1 and F2 genotypes that were probably derived from double-reduction recombination or partially unreduced gametes, and F2 genotypes of apparent aneuploids/dysploids with neopolyploid-like frequencies. Additional analyses of homoeolog-type genotypes at the 5 loci in 46 lines from various regions revealed locus-dependent selection biases, favoring genotypes having more of one homoeolog-type, i.e. more of di- or homogenized homoeolog-type composition, and one-direction ploidy trending among apparent aneuploids/dysploids. These inheritance features pointed to an evolving segmental allohexaploid sweetpotato impacted by selection biases.

The supreme court of US as an authority of Constitutional jurisdiction

Given the uniqueness of the judicial system in the United States of America and the role of the Supreme Court in shaping the country’s entire judicial system, the authors devoted an article to an analysis of the Supreme Court of the United States as the body that makes up the country’s Basic Law, the Constitution. Taking into account the specificity of one of the oldest written Constitutions of the world, it was appropriate to understand the mechanism of its creation, the powers of the body, which creates it also in the characteristics of this body, which the authors of the article have implemented. The authors analyzed a number of scientific works of both domestic and foreign scholars, the legal literature of the United States of America, the provisions of the Constitution, and fundamentally analyzed the legal system of the United States, and in this way the authors reached the correct conclusions. The history of the creation of the Supreme Court of the United States, its functions and powers were also analysed. The stages of the creation of the Constitution and the procedure for amending it were studied; the evolution of the interpretation of various provisions and of the amendments to the Constitution was studied; The role of the Court’s case law in the creation of the Constitution has been clarified; a number of constitutional precedents have been examined, particularly those that have influenced the interpretation of the V Amendment to the United States Constitution. The term «living Constitution» had been interpreted and explained, what the phenomenon was
 and what role the Supreme Court played. Sufficient attention has been paid to the individual thoughts and views of Supreme Court judges in the various periods of the institution’s existence. Special attention was also devoted to the analysis of the content of the concept of “constitutional control”, its interpretation in a broad and narrow sense. In the conclusions, the authors stress the principal aim of the founding parents, what meaning was given to the provi-sion of the Constitution, and note the impact of the Court on the State, the social system and the legal status of the individual. In particular, the authors note that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has established effective and acceptable jurisprudence for the Ukrainian judicial system, which has provided the basis for this study.

The Rise of Majorities and Emerging Existential Threats to India and China

Abstract China and India are comparable in size, complexity, and their relatively recent State-building histories. Commencing in 1947 and 1949 respectively, the relatively recent foundations of India and China highlighted a ‘unity in diversity’ message. The significance of this lay as much in ideology as in a pragmatism that was both central and relatively successful in bringing what could be argued as many civilizations into singular modern States. While the messages about diversity have always been contested in some quarters by rival ethno-nationalists, they remained significant in laying the foundations for a strong ‘national’ identity. To the majority populations, Hindu in India and Han in China this called for restraint to any triumphalism or chauvinism; to the minorities, they called for unshakeable loyalty in return for full citizenship rights. In both cases, these messages were backed by constructive affirmative action measures that, irrespective of their efficacy, served to emphasize the ‘unity in diversity’ message, sowing a degree of fealty towards the State over what may have been more prominent and compelling ethno-religious or ethno-linguistic cleavages. In recent years, however, this message has been significantly altered, as political majoritarianism has begun to oust legally or administratively determined minority protections. This article seeks to offer an assessment of the potential impact on this phenomenon on each country, arguing that it has contributed to instability, sowing seeds for the rise of opposing sub-national identities that the founding parents of each State actively sought to counter in their statecraft.

Tourism research, for what?

While tourism scholars have struggled over decades to establish tourism as a valid academic discipline, it’s no less true that social scientists have developed a negative image of our colleagues. This in fact happens because for social imaginary leisure and tourism are naïve activities, or practices enrooted in an alienatory nature. Paradoxically, many of founding parents of sociology of tourism was embraced this belief, the advance of modernity, as well as tourism, will disorganize the social ties. In this essay review, we place the French Tradition under the critical lens of scrutiny revealing alternatives in tourism epistemology between tourism as a profit-oriented industry and as a mechanism of discipline.

Impact of pedigree depth and inclusion of historical data in the estimation of variance components and breeding values in Macrobrachium rosenbergii

Data from a Macrobrachium rosenbergii selection program were analyzed to investigate how different pedigree depths and the volume of data can affect the estimation of variance components on harvest body weight and the breeding values of candidate parents. Seven years of data and reliable pedigree information back to the founding parents were available. The harvest body weights of 81,418 prawns from 724 families were recorded. The variance components were estimated using an animal model and the restricted maximum likelihood method. The estimated breeding values of the candidate parents were calculated using best linear unbiased prediction. Additive genetic variances, common environmental variances, their standard errors and the estimated breeding values of candidate parents obtained from different pedigree depths and historical data were compared. The volume of data had a much larger impact than pedigree depth on variance component estimation and estimated breeding values of candidate parents. The additive genetic variances showed significant differences among the data sets and no obvious trend was found as more years of data were included in the analysis. The common environmental variances showed a downward trend as more years of data were included. The standard errors for additive genetic variance and common environmental variance decreased substantially when two years of data were included, and errors decreased only slightly as more data were included. The accuracy of estimated breeding values improved as more pedigree information and historical data were included in the analysis for all candidate parents. The effect of different pedigree depths and historical data were more striking for family selection than within-family selection on harvest body weight. The results are discussed in a practical context of genetic evaluation for aquatic animals. Statement of relevanceThis paper investigated how different pedigree depths and the volume of data can affect the estimation of variance components on harvest body weight and the breeding values of candidate parents using data from a Macrobrachium rosenbergii selection program. The results provide a useful reference for genetic evaluation in M. rosenbergii and other aquatic animal breeding programs.

Vera Zasulich’s Critique of Neo-Populism

Vera Zasulich’s shooting of Trepov, a governor of St Petersburg who had ordered the flogging of a political prisoner, in January 1878, catapulted her to international fame as a revolutionary heroine, a reputation that she put to good use by becoming one of the five ‘founding parents’ of Russian Marxism that created the ‘Group for the Emancipation of Labour’ in 1883. But her act of self-sacrifice also triggered, to her dismay, the institutionalisation of individual-terrorist tactics in the Russian Populist movement with the creation of the ‘People’s Will’ (Narodnaya Volya) Party in 1879. The organisation went into decline after the killing of Tsar Alexanderiiin 1881, and Populism itself was increasingly superseded by Marxism as the hegemonic force on the left with the rise of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (rsdlp). But individual-terrorist tactics reappeared with the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1902, prompting Zasulich to write an article forDie neue Zeit, the theoretical organ of German Social Democracy, in which she both condemned the Neo-Populist tendency as deleterious to the rising labour movement and supported the organisational plans for thersdlpsponsored by theIskragroup, developed at length by Lenin in his bookWhat Is to Be Done?, published in March 1902. This article provides the background to Vera Zasulich’s article ‘The Terrorist Tendency in Russia’ (December 1902), setting it against the history of the Russian revolutionary movement from 1878 to 1902.

Play and playfulness in early childhood education and care

This article is a modified version of a previous paper Singer, E. (2013). and playfulness, basic features of early childhood education. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21, 172-184. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1350293X.2013.789198?journalCode=recr20#.VZ0Mal_tlJAIntroductionThe founding parents of early childhood education, such as Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori, and Lev Vygotsky, focused the active playing and learning child (Singer, 1993). and learning go hand in hand in young children. Formal aimed at instruction and the transmission of knowledge are seen as teacher-centered. Play curricula were, and are, seen as child-centered and developmentally appropriate for young children. Many developmental studies have demonstrated the educational benefits of play (Walsh, Sproule, McGuinness, Trew,& Ingram, 2010). Neuropsychological studies have given new scientific arguments for the belief that play and learning are closely related in young children (Panksepp, 2012). During play, intense positive emotions, actions, and sensory experiences go hand in hand. experiences have a major impact learning. But play in which play is used as an educational tool can have drawbacks. According to Sutton-Smith (1997), the belief in play as an educational tool has become so dominant that we tend to forget the playing child. Children's ideas of play generally center on having fun, being outdoors, being with friends, choosing freely (p. 49). But teachers tend to behave too teacherly and misuse children's play to attain their own educational goals, thus spoiling children's fun (Pramling Samuelsson & Asblond Carlsson, 2008). In this article I rethink the importance of play from the perspective of children and the perspective of teachers. I argue that play and playfulness are a resource of shared pleasure and creativity for teachers and young children. The playfulness of teachers helps to prevent young children from becoming overburdened with strict rules and group discipline.What is play?In Homo Ludens the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1938/1955) analyzes the phenomenon of play in human cultures. His play theory is still acknowledged as a ground-breaking study for modern theories about play. He writes: First and foremost, all play is a voluntary activity. ...Child and animal play because they enjoy playing, and therein precisely lies their freedom (p. 8). The basic motive for play is the experience of pleasure that it affords. Huizinga gives the example of two puppies involved in play-fighting. keep to the rule that you shall not bite, or not bite hard, your brother's ear. They pretend to get angry. And what is most important -- in all these doings they plainly experience tremendous fun and enjoyment (Huizinga, 1955, p. 1). Humans also play for pleasure. These experiences can be captured only in qualitative descriptions of feelings like excitement, tension, release, uncertainty, togetherness, surprise, risk, balance. Children do not play for some educational benefit that is more valuable than play. For instance, 3-year olds do not jump up and down to practice motor skills but because jumping up and down is fun.The play-world: rhythms, repetition, roles, and rulesPlay presumes an intense relationship with the immediate social and physical environment. Children play with a friend or an adult, and they play with objects. In relation to other people and the surrounding environment, the playing child creates a play-world that is different from the ordinary world. The child and play partner create a shared play-world by using rhythms, rules, and roles. Detailed analyses of parent-infant interactions, for instance, show how a shared play-world is created. The infant and parent communicate by imitating each other, through eye contact, by taking turns, and by repeating, varying, and improvising sounds and gestures (DeZutter, 2007; Trevarthen, 2011). …

Transcriptome sequencing of different narrow-leafed lupin tissue types provides a comprehensive uni-gene assembly and extensive gene-based molecular markers.

Narrow-leafed lupin (NLL; Lupinus angustifolius L.) is an important grain legume crop that is valuable for sustainable farming and is becoming recognized as a human health food. NLL breeding is directed at improving grain production, disease resistance, drought tolerance and health benefits. However, genetic and genomic studies have been hindered by a lack of extensive genomic resources for the species. Here, the generation, de novo assembly and annotation of transcriptome datasets derived from five different NLL tissue types of the reference accession cv. Tanjil are described. The Tanjil transcriptome was compared to transcriptomes of an early domesticated cv. Unicrop, a wild accession P27255, as well as accession 83A:476, together being the founding parents of two recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations. In silico predictions for transcriptome-derived gene-based length and SNP polymorphic markers were conducted and corroborated using a survey assembly sequence for NLL cv. Tanjil. This yielded extensive indel and SNP polymorphic markers for the two RIL populations. A total of 335 transcriptome-derived markers and 66 BAC-end sequence-derived markers were evaluated, and 275 polymorphic markers were selected to genotype the reference NLL 83A:476 × P27255 RIL population. This significantly improved the completeness, marker density and quality of the reference NLL genetic map.

Maintenance of Genetic Diversity in Natural Spawning of Captively-Reared Endangered Sockeye Salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka

Captive propagation of Pacific salmon is routine, but few captive breeding programs have been conducted to successfully re-establish extirpated wild populations. A captive breeding program for endangered Sakinaw Lake sockeye salmon was established from 84 adults between 2002 and 2005, just prior to extirpation of the wild population. After several years of absence, sockeye salmon released from captivity returned to spawn in Sakinaw Lake in 2010 and in all years thereafter. Freshwater survival rates of released hatchery fry and naturally produced progeny of reintroduced sockeye salmon have not limited abundance of the reintroduced population. In contrast, marine survival rates for Sakinaw sockeye salmon have been <1%, a level that precludes population restoration in the absence of supplementation. Genetic diversity commensurate with the number of parental founders has been maintained in captivity. The 517 adult second-generation captive fish that spawned in Sakinaw Lake in 2011 produced a smolt emigration of almost 28,000 juvenile fish with an effective population size of 132. Allelic richness and gene diversity levels in the smolts were similar to those observed in captivity. This indicates genetic contributions from all or most founding parents have been retained both in captivity and in the nascent reintroduced natural population.

IDEAS in AGORA: The Philosophy of the Empires, Fear and Sense of Exemplarity

Abstract Why do the United States reserve the right to be called “America” by conferring the “Americas” to the whole continent?, is that a clear sign of discrimination or supremacy or both? Ideologically, America refers to the United States of “America” excluding other regions such as Latin America, central or South America. This leads some scholars to explain convincingly that, beyond this subtle grammatical difference, the Anglo-ethnocentrism in the United States has been drawn to make their citizens believe they are unique, outstanding, and special. Basically, this belief allowed not only to fight against the political enemies in Europe or in any other geographical point, but also to control the incipient worker union leaderships. What merits further attention, anyway, is the sentiment of exemplarity instilled by the founding parents of this nation. Fear was historically a mechanism of control employed by US governments at different stages in several ways. Our intention is not only to review how the fear disciplined by the claims of work-force, but also explain why the sentiment of exemplarity and fear are inextricably intertwined.

Johan Thiessen and Margaretha Alt and the Birth of Pentecostalism in Indonesia

The focus of this paper is on the contribution of Dutch Pentecostal missionaries to the rise of Pentecostalism in Indonesia, then called the Dutch East Indies. The Pentecostal and Charismatic movements have become a major stream within Christianity in Indonesia. Up to now no comprehensive and analytical study of the history of these movements has been published. A number of these groups have occasionally issued uncritical descriptions of their denominational history, with little theological and historical analysis. The attention the Pentecostals and Charismatics have received in the more academic works on Christianity in Indonesia is not in proportion to their significance. In all of these publications little credit is given to the role the early Dutch Pentecostal movement played. This paper will present two founding parents: Johan Thiessen and Margaretha Alt.

The practice of sociology

This article seeks to provide a brief introduction to the sociological looking glass by focusing on some of sociology’s founding parents and offering ideas for continued engagement with economics.

Characterisation of a novel paralog of scavenger receptor class B member I (SCARB1) in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

BackgroundRed flesh colour is a unique trait found in some salmonid genera. Carotenoid pigments are not synthesized de novo in the fish, but are provided by dietary uptake. A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the cellular uptake and deposition of carotenoids could potentially be used to improve the low muscle deposition rate that is typically found in farmed Atlantic salmon. In addition, from an evolutionary point of view, the establishment and maintenance of this trait is still poorly understood. It has been demonstrated in several species that scavenger receptor class B, member 1 (SCARB1) is involved in intestinal absorption of carotenoids, which makes this gene a possible source of genetic variation in salmonid flesh pigmentation.ResultsIn this study, a novel paralog of SCARB1 (SCARB1-2) was detected through screening for genetic variation in Atlantic salmon SCARB1. Full length SCARB1-2 encodes a protein with 89% identity to Atlantic salmon SCARB1, except for the C-terminal cytoplasmic tail that shows only 12% identity. The most prominent site of SCARB1 mRNA expression was in the mid gut, while a five-fold lower level was detected in Atlantic salmon skeletal muscle and liver. The SCARB1-2 mRNA was equally expressed in liver, muscle and mid gut, and at a lower level than SCARB1 mRNA. A total of seven different SCARB1-2 alleles comprising repetitive enhancer of zeste motifs (EZH2) were identified in the founding parents of a resource Atlantic salmon population. We mapped the SCARB1-2 paralog to a region on Atlantic salmon chromosome 1, containing a putative QTL for flesh colour. Addition of the SCARB1-2 marker increased the significance of this QTL, however the large confidence interval surrounding the QTL precludes confirmation of SCARB1-2 as a causative gene underlying variation in this trait.ConclusionWe have characterised a novel paralog of SCARB1 (SCARB1-2), have mapped it to Atlantic salmon chromosome 1 and have described its expression in various tissues. Mapping with SCARB1-2 alleles added further evidence for a QTL affecting flesh colour on this chromosome, however further studies are needed to confirm a functional role for this gene in flesh colour pigmentation.

The mixed mating system of the sea palm kelp Postelsia palmaeformis: few costs to selfing.

Naturally isolated populations have conflicting selection pressures for successful reproduction and inbreeding avoidance. These species with limited seasonal reproductive opportunities may use selfing as a means of reproductive assurance. We quantified the frequency of selfing and the fitness consequences for inbred versus outcrossed progeny of an annual kelp, the sea palm (Postelsia palmaeformis). Using experimentally established populations and microsatellite markers to assess the extent of selfing in progeny from six founding parents, we found the frequency of selfing was higher than expected in every population, and few fitness costs were detected in selfed offspring. Despite a decline in heterozygosity of 30 per cent in the first generation of selfing, self-fertilization did not affect individual size or reproduction, and correlated only with a marginally significant decline in survival. Our results suggest both that purging of deleterious recessive alleles may have already occurred and that selfing may be key to reproductive assurance in this species with limited dispersal. Postelsia has an alteration of a free-living diploid and haploid stage, where the haploid stage may provide increased efficiency for purging the genetic load. This life history is shared by many seaweeds and may thus be an important component of mating system evolution in the sea.

Sally Hemings, Founding Mother

Sally Hemings, Founding Mother Martha Hodes (bio) Clarence E. Walker . Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009. xii + 128 pp. Notes and index. $22.95. The genetic evidence linking Sally Hemings' son Eston to Thomas Jefferson forever changed the landscape of Jefferson scholarship, and yet more than ten years on, the debates have hardly vaporized. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns Monticello, embraced Jefferson's paternity of Hemings' children in 2000, but a minority opinion stubbornly stuck by Jefferson's single cloaked denial and the denials of descendants claiming that "historical accuracy should never be overwhelmed by political correctness." The next year, the Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society (founded shortly after the Thomas Jefferson Foundation concurred with the DNA-based conclusions) sponsored a commission that refuted the scientific evidence, and published The Jefferson-Hemings Myth: An American Travesty, an essay collection of considerable convolution and belligerence. In 2002, the Monticello Association (the organization open to all lineal descendants of Jefferson) voted to bar descendants of Sally Hemings from membership.1 Political correctness, indeed. In Thomas C. Holt's assertion that "the powerful will always have the upper hand in defining and enforcing 'correctness,'" we find a better invocation of that phrase, and in Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Clarence E. Walker likewise inverts the accusation leveled by the minority dissenters, instead recognizing political correctness as a weapon of dismissal against any "decentering of white Americans as the central agents of American history" (p. 93).2 The problem of Sally Hemings in American history comes intertwined with the problems of slavery and freedom; race and racism; and race, sex, and love. Walker takes up all of these challenges, ultimately offering a revised story of national origins: the United States, he contends, was a "mixed-race" nation from the start, "in which Jefferson and Hemings, as a mixed-race couple, rather than George and Martha Washington, should be considered the founding parents" (p. 2). Revising the founding myth is no longer an original enterprise of course, and like others, Walker wants to place slavery [End Page 437] squarely into the master narrative. But more than that, Walker wants to place sex between people of European descent and people of African descent at the heart of the republic's creation. Easily a one-sitting read, Mongrel Nation is divided into two chapters, "Sexuality" and "Character and History, or 'Chloroform in Print'" (the last phrase taken from Mark Twain's Roughing It, invoked to mean "an anesthetic designed to blot out the place of race, slavery, and sex in Jefferson's world and, more broadly, in the national myth" [p. 92]). Reading the book from start to finish feels a bit like listening to an erudite—if sometimes irreverent and slightly rambling—soliloquy, a kind of "My Dinner with Clarence Walker."3 At one point, inside a couple of pages, we hear about passing and Philip Roth, then about W. E. B. Du Bois, then Hayden White and De Tocqueville, all as a lead-up to a point about "the hegemony of whiteness" in Jeffersonian America (p. 38). Statements that might be book-defining arguments are sprinkled throughout, often without sustained discussion, much as in a breathless monologue by a thoroughly engaging colleague. To begin with, Walker wants us to understand Hemings and Jefferson in a transnational context. Why, he asks, should the United States be exempt from the acknowledgement that colonial settler societies were "racially creolized" from the start? Walker's answer lies in the "deification of Jefferson" and the anxiety of some white Americans "about interracial sex and its role in the creation of the American people" (p. 2). It occurred to me here that even the Jefferson apologist John Chester Miller noted—more than thirty years ago—that there was "nothing inherently implausible" in the Hemings affair, since it was "not uncommon for slaveowners to make slave women their concubines." (Sally Hemings herself was the daughter of Jefferson's father-in-law and the enslaved Elizabeth Hemings, making her the half-sister of Jefferson's wife.) Unlike Walker, though, Miller also fumed that if Jefferson did...

Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (review)

Reviewed by: Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Wilma King Mongrel Nation: The America Begotten by Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. By Clarence E. Walker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2009. "I want to posit in this book a new myth of origin of the United States," writes the author Clarence E. Walker, who suggests that "at the moment of its creation the nation was not a white racial space but a mixed race one" (2). Rather than positioning George and Martha Washington as "founding parents" of the United States, the author suggests that Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings replace them. Walker makes his case for the "new myth" in Mongrel Nation, a slim two-part volume containing the essays "Sexuality," and "Character and History, or 'Chloroform in Print.'" Walker acknowledges that his proposition will disturb some readers. Nevertheless, he focuses sharply on the Jefferson-Hemings nexus to answer questions about national identity, racial provenance, and who owns history. An 1802 story in the Richmond Recorder by James Thompson Callender claimed that Jefferson had fathered children with Hemings. "Interracial sex was normative," says Walker (27) yet such a charge against Jefferson, president of the United States, was "news." Besides, he had published disparaging remarks about people of African descent, especially women, in Query XIV of his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), causing Jefferson's defenders to believe he would never become intimate with a black woman. As a result, the "news" prompted members of Jefferson's family, his admirers, and some historians to vigorously dispute Callender's charge. Jefferson's defenders remain vigilant, and their attitude is, in Walker's view, "representative of a congenital racial tension in American society" (2). [End Page 175] A brief review of the scholarship about Jefferson and Hemings spanning nearly fifty years calls attention to the continuous debate in which Annette Gordon-Reed's Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997) and the 1998 DNA evidence linking Jefferson to a Hemings offspring are integral. Given the body of existing literature, one must ask what will Mongrel Nation contribute? Briefly, Mongrel Nation takes the thirty-eight-year-long Jefferson-Hemings relationship out of the "closet" and places it within a global context. The United States was part of a larger colonial settler society or plantation complex in which creolization, primarily by exploiting enslaved women, occurred. It is against this historical backdrop that Walker asks, why did intimacy between blacks and whites create angst in the United States? In actuality, it is not solely the intimacy but the resulting "mongrel nation" that has been disturbing. Whiteness, rather than an impossible mixture thereof, defined and was the criteria for American citizenship. Children resulting from white-black relationships prompted fractionized calculations or mathematical blood analyses that relegated non-whites to an outsider status in the "racial state." Mixtures threatened the creation of a "pure" republic. Within this context, Jefferson's ideas about colonizing blacks outside the United States are understandable. Writing or theorizing about people of African descent was one thing, but living with or loving them was another matter. How was that possible? Was it ambivalence about blacks that created a racial and sexual amnesia? Did that amnesia create a canonical master narrative of the United States distinguished by "unblemished whiteness?" The answer may be found in Walker's alternative readings and discussions of who Americans are as a nation. Had another Virginia planter, for example George Wythe or John Wayles rather than the esteemed Thomas Jefferson, been accused of intimacy with an enslaved woman would the results have been the same? Obviously, the answer is no, but answers to more edgy questions give pause. For example, do readers know with certainty that Sally Hemings was phenotypically black? How did she identify herself? There is no extant description of her skin color, hair texture, or facial features to determine that they were clearly Caucasoid or Negroid. Even so, one must ask if she and her half-sister, Martha Wayles, Thomas Jefferson's wife, bore a striking resemblance. Could Jefferson, a forty-one-year-old widower, have subjected Sally's identity to the mathematics of blood as he once...

Impact of depth of pedigree and inclusion of historical data on the estimation of additive variance and breeding values in a sugarcane breeding program

Sugarcane breeders in Australia combine data across four selection programs to obtain estimates of breeding value for parents. When these data are combined with full pedigree information back to founding parents, computing limitations mean it is not possible to obtain information on all parents. Family data from one sugarcane selection program were analysed using two different genetic models to investigate how different depths of pedigree and amount of data affect the reliability of estimating breeding value of sugarcane parents. These were the parental and animal models. Additive variance components and breeding values estimated from different amounts of information were compared for both models. The accuracy of estimating additive variance components and breeding values improved as more pedigree information and historical data were included in analyses. However, adding years of data had a much larger effect on the estimation of variance components of the population, and breeding values of the parents. To accurately estimate breeding values of all sugarcane parents, a minimum of three generations of pedigree and 5 years of historical data were required, while more information (four generations of pedigree and 7 years of historical data) was required when identifying top parents to be selected for future cross pollination.

Conflict in Independent Catholic Schools

Independent Catholic schools are a growing phenomenon in the Catholic Church in America. This article provides a contextualized account of the phenomenon by examining via a field observation the experience of two independent Catholic schools in two different dioceses. These schools were founded in conflict and beset by continued conflict to the point of splitting; first from the diocese, then again with themselves. An environment of religious conflict motivated laity to open their own schools to socialize their children into a traditional notion of the Catholic faith. In both independent schools examined, conflict about governance, between founding parents and new stakeholders who joined the schools, led to each of the schools splitting; thus, the two became four. Each of the new breakaway schools was structured and governed much like the original schools, albeit with some increased openness to parental input. Second generation breakaway splits further complicated the relationship between these schools and their dioceses. While the limited sample prohibits highly generalizable data, the account suggests some preliminary conclusions about trends witnessed in the experience of these schools and suggests lines for further inquiry in this relatively unexamined phenomenon.

Black scholars on the line: race, social science, and American thought in the twentieth century

Scholars on the Line: Race, Social Science, and American Thought in the Twentieth Century explores the development of American social science by highlighting the contributions of those scholars who were both students and objects of a segregated society. The book asks how segregation has influenced, and continues to influence, the development of American social thought and social science scholarship. Jonathan Scott Holloway and Ben Keppel present the work of thirty-one black social scientists whose work was published between the rise of the Tuskegee model of higher education and the end of the Black Power Era. Even though they had to fashion their careers outside of their respective fields' mainstream, the intellectuals featured here produced scholarship that helped define the contours of the social sciences as they evolved over the course of the twentieth century. Theirs was the work of pioneers, now for the first time gathered in one anthology. After a comprehensive introduction and survey of the selections to follow, Holloway and Keppel present the founding parents of African American social science, including excerpts from Alexander Crummell, Anna Julia Cooper, and others. They then examine contributions from the first real generation of professionally trained black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois. The interactions between cultural production and social scientific knowledge are examined through the work of various scholars, including Alain Locke and Zora Neale Hurston. The volume then explores the scholarship produced by the leading progressive social scientists of the day on issues of race and class and examines social scientific scholarship that put African American struggles in an international context. The book concludes by presenting the scholarship of, among others, Hylan Lewis, Joyce Ladner, and William Julius Wilson, which most effectively highlights the complex state of raced social science thought during the age of desegregation in academia.

Estimation of DNA sequence diversity in bovine cytokine genes.

DNA sequence variation provides the fundamental material for improving livestock through selection. In cattle, single nucleotide polymorphisms and small insertions/deletions (collectively referred to here as SNPs) have been identified in cytokine genes and scored in a reference population to determine linkage map positions. The aim of the present study was twofold: first, to estimate the SNP frequency in a reference population of beef cattle, and second, to determine cytokine haplotypes in a group of sires from commercial populations. Forty-five SNP markers in DNA segments from nine cytokine gene loci were analyzed in 26 reference parents. Comparison of all 52 haploid genomes at each PCR amplicon locus revealed an average of one SNP per 143 bp of sequence, whereas comparison of any two chromosomes identified heterozygous sites, on average, every 443 bp. The combination of these 45 SNP genotypes was sufficient to uniquely identify each of the 26 animals. The average number of haplotype alleles (4.4) per PCR amplicon (688 bp) and the percentage heterozygosity among founding parents (50%) were similar to those for microsatellite markers in the same population. For 49 sires from seven common breeds of beef cattle, SNP genotypes (1,225 total) were obtained by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) at three amplicon loci. All three of the amplicon haplotypes were correctly deduced for each sire without the use of parent or progeny genotypes. The latter allows a wide range of genetic studies in commercial populations of cattle where genotypic information from relatives may not be available.