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Carotenogenesis has been extensively studied in fruits and flower petals. Transcriptional regulation is thought to be the major factor in carotenoid accumulation in these organs. However, little is known about regulation in root organs. The root carotenoid content of carrot germplasm varies widely. The present study was conducted to investigate transcriptional regulation of carotenoid biosynthesis genes in relation to carotenoid accumulation during early carrot root development and up to 3 months after sowing. HPLC carotenoid content analysis and quantitative RT-PCR were compared to quantify the expression of eight genes encoding carotenoid biosynthesis enzymes during the development of white, yellow, orange, and red carrot roots. The genes chosen encode phytoene synthase (PSY1 and PSY2), phytoene desaturase (PDS), ζ-carotene desaturase (ZDS1 and ZDS2), lycopene ε-cyclase (LCYE), lycopene β-cyclase (LCYB1), and zeaxanthin epoxidase (ZEP). All eight genes were expressed in the white cultivar even though it did not contain carotenoids. By contrast with fruit maturation, the expression of carotenogenic genes began during the early stages of development and then progressively increased for most of these genes during root development as the total carotenoid level increased in coloured carrots. The high expression of genes encoding LCYE and ZDS noted in yellow and red cultivars, respectively, might be consistent with the accumulation of lutein and lycopene, respectively. The results showed that the accumulation of total carotenoids during development and the accumulation of major carotenoids in the red and yellow cultivars might partially be explained by the transcriptional level of genes directing the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway.

Remettre en question la mainmise machiste. Transgression et subversion du genre dans la musique et les danses latino‑américaines Cet article décrit et analyse l’espace queer que créent la transgression et la subversion des normes de genre dans cinq types de danses latino populaires, depuis la passion du tango, qui s’est développée au tournant du xx e   siècle, en passant par la mélancolie du bolero, originaire du Cuba des années trente, jusqu’aux genres de danse plus récents, la salsa qui traverse la culture latino, le timba et le reggaeton cubains, actuellement dominants sur les parquets de danse. L’article est fondé sur un long travail de terrain que l’auteur a conduit sur les scènes homosexuelles de la Havane, de Buenos‑Aires, et au sein de la diaspora latino‑américiane de Londres. Queering the Macho Grip: Transgressing and Subverting Gender in Latino Music and Dance This essay describes and investigates the queer space created by transgressing and subverting gender roles in five popular Latino music and dance genres. It moves across the Latin‑American popular music spectrum from passionate Tango, originating in the turn of the twentieth century, via melancholic Bolero originating in 1930s Cuba to the more recent dance genres – pan‑Latino Salsa, Cuban Timba, and Reggaetón which currently dominates Latino dance floors. It is based on longitudinal fieldwork the author conducted in the gay scenes of Havana, Buenos Aires, and the Latino Diaspora in London.

Determined to resuscitate its Ópera Italiana, Madrid serendipitously engaged no less a figure than Saverio Mercadante (1795-1870) to direct its inaugural season, in April 1826. As its first celebrity composer in recent memory, he spearheaded important successes that reaffirmed the institution’snecessity and enduring popularity, within weeks. Historians record Ópera Italiana’s adaptation to Spain’s theatres as an imposition of foreign ideals on autochthonous culture. However, deeper analysis of Mercadante’s Iberian sojourn uncovers a seemingly not hegemonic (not to mention less -than- opportunistic) rationale for furnishing new operas during this five-year period. His oft-stylized efforts contrast with his subsequent quest for style-maturity, betraying instead, a penchant for couleur locale and autochthonous subject matter (literary and historical). Thus, I due Figaro (Madrid, 1826) and Don Chisciotte (Cadiz, 1830), demonstrate Mercadante’s characteristic concern for audience appeal, and personal conviction to serve Spain’s theatrical interests. Within this new socio-cultural context, various elements of Spanish musical idiom are deftly employed, to further the composer’s agenda to advance taste-formation by providing innovations to conventional opera with which Spanish audiences would readily identify. Consequently, he occasionally revisited this idiom in other works to the end of his life- long career.Until now, elusive sources and sporadic interest have prevented the emergence of a cohesive account and assessment of this aspect of Mercadante’s legacy, as being of import to the development of Spain’s national romantic lyric genres. Notwithstanding ambitious and highly publicised efforts leading to the two operas’ revival in recent decades, the continuing absence of both a competent, comprehensive Mercadante biography and history of opera in Spain during this seminal period continue giving rise to much scholarly conjecture and misinterpretation of historical events. Seeking to redress some of these imbalances over several decades of individual research (of which this study forms but a part), we explore the nature of Mercadante’s continued ensuing inclination towards ‘Spanishness’ and establish its rationale. Originally a question of the composer’s professionally motivated objective in incorporating local influences into his work for Spanish audiences, the compositional aspect of skill acquired via his innovations prevails beyond his presence in Spain. An examination of the material he left for the Spanish-character operas and subsequent works, in necessarily selective but salient examples, identify their sources of inspiration. Regarding the national genre question, interpreting available press and musical sources bespeaking these works provides evidence that the contribution of Mercadante was still engaged in Spain long after his ultimate 1831 departure. Regardless of prevailing inconclusive judgments, Mercadante’s hitherto unrecognized influence deserves serious reconsideration. Bysystematically extracting the circumstances of the Iberian career segment and opus from historical obscurity into a new narrative, this study aims to facilitate their restoration to the proper context and reveal implications for further scholarship.

A vogue for coloratura dance arias began in the 1850s. This emerging genre combined melismatic singing with two hugely popular social dance genres: the bolero and the waltz. Scholars have observed an association between these social dances and a certain euphoric feminine sensuality, but the connection between this youthful ebullience in dance and virtuosic female vocality has been largely ignored. Dancing was notorious in the nineteenth century because of its dangerously arousing and vertiginous effects. As dances increased in speed and difficulty, so too did the singing of sopranos in midcentury Paris. In exploring relationships between dance, femininity, and singing, this article situates coloratura dance arias in the Paris of Napoléon III's Second Empire, a city sometimes condemned for its decadent materialism or dismissed because of its political impotence, in spite of its cultural, architectural, and technological importance. I argue for a connection between coloratura and the female body in precisely the era when the venerable singing style became the almost exclusive domain of the female singer and, simultaneously, reached its apogee in a Paris devoted to all the joy and glamour it could afford. Specific performers such as Marie Cabel and Caroline Carvalho were key to the success and even creation of these dance arias. These sopranos were certainly objectified in a problematic manner, but they were also “envoiced” (Carolyn Abbate's term) as wielders of a compelling musical power: coloratura. In providing virtuosic and luxurious expressions of femininity, these coloratura dance arias established a new sense of female vocality in the aural imagination of the Second Empire.

• The changes in endopolygalactu ronase (endo-PG) levels and endo-PG expression in nonmelting flesh (NMF) and melting flesh (MF) peach fruits (Prunus persica) during softening were studied. The endo-PG gene was analysed to identify polymorphisms exploitable for early marker-assisted selection (MAS) of flesh texture. • The role of endo-PG in softening was assessed by western and northern blotting and by biochemical analyses. Polymorphisms in the endo-PG gene were revealed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and sequencing. • An endo-PG protein was detected in both NMF and MF fruits. The levels of this endo-PG protein were higher and increased with softening in MF fruits, but remained lower and were constant in NMF fruits. The different levels of endo-PG appeared to be caused by the differential expression of an endo-PG gene, whose open-reading frame (ORF) showed five single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in NMF 'Oro A' compared with MF 'Bolero'. One of these SNPs allowed us to determine the allelic configuration at the melting flesh (M) locus and also seemed to be exploitable for early MAS in other NMF/MF phenotypes. • The NMF phenotype does not seem to be caused by a large deletion of the endo-PG gene.

This year marks the sixty-fifth anniversary of the D-Day invasion, when Allied forces crossed the English Channel and established beachheads along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast in northern France. Troops overcame stiff resistance and systematically moved inland, liberating Northern Europe and forcing the surrender of Germany and the end of World War II in that part of the world. The D-Day invasion took place on June 6, 1944, but its planning began more than two years earlier. This case studies the strategic planning that led up to the invasion. The Operations Division of the War Department General Staff, formerly known as the War Plans Division, was the principal staff agency of the U.S. Army high command during World War II. The story focuses on the Operations Division's role in formulating a strategic plan for ending the war as well as Operation BOLERO—the American military troop buildup in Great Britain that preceded the cross-channel invasion. By reprinting this case from the original U.S. Army historical record, PAR pays tribute to the brave men and women who planned and executed this bold maneuver, many of whom paid the ultimate price to achieve victory and restore freedom. Popularized as the \"Greatest Generation,\" they were ordinary people who answered the call of public service with extraordinary bravery and sacrifice. Members of the modern-day public administration community proudly stand on their shoulders. This chapter-length excerpt is taken from Ray S. Cline, Washington Command Post: The Operations Division (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1951), chapter IX, \"Case History: Drafting the BOLERO Plan,\" pp. 143-63.

This article historicizes a network of authors that coalesced around a post-surrealist aesthetic before World War II. These anarchists were destined to be overshadowed by the war, by hostile predecessors who wrote them out of history, and by progenitors who assumed the mantle of the Beats or Angry Young Men. Yet they sustained their vision from the 1940s to the 60s, and challenged the statist politics of the high modernists and Auden Generation. Anarchism was in tune with the literary interests of the 1960s, though it proved difficult for potential allies to recognize a kindred spirit.

The desire to construct and define a sense of national identity has often been regarded as something of an ‘obsession’ in Cuban political and cultural discourse. Throughout the Revolution, rock music has consistently played some part in the making of a Cuban soundscape. Yet rock has often been seen as something of a threat to an ‘autochthonous’ construction of Cuban culture, and has often been denied legitimacy as part of the Cuban soundworld. Despite the rather liminal position it occupied throughout the revolutionary period, rock music in contemporary Cuba is as ‘obsessed’ with constructing, defining and reflecting a sense of Cubanness as more ‘recognisably Cuban’ musical forms. In this paper I explore some of the negotiations and conflicts in the music of the controversial rock band, Porno Para Ricardo: negotiations between traditional musics, the state and rock music in the perennial quest to define Cubanía.