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Holy adolescence, Batman! Robin and the Making of American Adolescence offers the first character history and analysis of the most famous superhero sidekick, Robin. Debuting just a few months after Batman himself, Robin has been an integral part of the Dark Knight's history-and debuting just a few months prior to the word \"teenager\" first appearing in print, Robin has from the outset both reflected and reinforced particular images of American adolescence. Closely reading several characters who have \"played\" Robin over the past eighty years, Robin and the Making of American Adolescence reveals the Boy (and sometimes Girl!) Wonder as a complex figure through whom mainstream culture has addressed anxieties about adolescents in relation to sexuality, gender, and race. This book partners up comics studies and adolescent studies as a new Dynamic Duo, following Robin as he swings alongside the ever-changing American teenager and finally shining the Bat-signal on the latter half of \"Batman and-.\" 

Background Genomic imprinting, mediated by parent-of-origin-specific epigenetic silencing, adjusts the gene expression dosage in mammals. We aimed to clarify parental allelic expression in the human placenta for 396 claimed candidate imprinted genes and to assess the evidence for the proposed enrichment of imprinted expression in the placenta. The study utilized RNA-Seq-based transcriptome and genotyping data from 54 parental-placental samples representing the three trimesters of gestation, and term cases of preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and fetal growth disturbances. Results Almost half of the targeted genes ( n = 179; 45%) were either not transcribed or showed limited expression in the human placenta. After filtering for the presence of common exonic SNPs, adequacy of sequencing reads and informative families, 91 genes were retained (43 loci form Geneimprint database; 48 recently proposed genes). Only 11/91 genes (12.1%) showed confident signals of imprinting (binomial test, Bonferroni corrected P < 0.05; > 90% transcripts originating from one parental allele). The confirmed imprinted genes exhibit enriched placental expression ( PHLDA2 , H19 , IGF2 , MEST , ZFAT , PLAGL1 , AIM1 ) or are transcribed additionally only in the adrenal gland ( MEG3 , RTL1 , PEG10 , DLK1 ). Parental monoallelic expression showed extreme stability across gestation and in term pregnancy complications. A distinct group of additional 14 genes exhibited a statistically significant bias in parental allelic proportions defined as having 65–90% of reads from one parental allele (e.g., KLHDC10 , NLRP2 , RHOBTB3 , DNMT1 ). Molecular mechanisms behind biased parental expression are still to be clarified. However, 66 of 91 (72.5%) analyzed candidate imprinted genes showed no signals of deviation from biallelic expression. Conclusions As placental tissue is not included in The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, the study contributed to fill the gap in the knowledge concerning parental allelic expression. A catalog of parental allelic proportions and gene expression of analyzed loci across human gestation and in term pregnancy complications is provided as additional files. The study outcome suggested that true imprinting in the human placenta is restricted to well-characterized loci. High expression of imprinted genes during mid-pregnancy supports their critical role in developmental programming. Consistent with the data on other GTEx tissues, the number of human imprinted genes appears to be overestimated.

While free improvisation is often thought of as a forum for singular and short-lived musical encounters, long-lasting groups and collaborations that span many years are not uncommon in the world of free improvisation. By studying the case of a duo of improvisers composed of the pianist Ève Risser and the clarinetist Joris Rühl, this paper sheds light upon the creative dynamics of such a long-term collaboration by specifying how musicians negotiate between the need to construct a shared and stable collective identity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the requirements of improvisation understood as spontaneous action. [Publication abstract]

在复杂的现实环境中, 带权重的(t,n)秘密共享方案中的参与者具有不同的权重, 任意权重之和大于等于t的参与者集合可以重构出秘密, 权重和小于t的参与者集合无法获得关于秘密的任何信息, 有效地满足了应用中不同权限参与者的实际需求. 然而, 如何平衡增强方案安全性与减少计算开销之间的矛盾, 提高已有方案的灵活性一直需要解决的关键问题之一. 为了提高已有方案的安全性、降低计算开销和增加方案实用性和灵活性, 本文提出了一种带权重动态可验证多秘密共享方案. 本文所设计的方案基于中国剩余定理实现了参与者有权重的秘密共享; 方案利用单向哈希函数简单、易构造的性质, 在秘密重构的过程中对秘密份额的有效性进行了验证, 使得方案具有较高的执行效率; 方案将要共享的秘密转化为多项式的线性组合, 可以同时共享多个秘密且易于动态添加或更新秘密, 使得方案具有较好的灵活性; 同时, 本文所设计的方案可以动态添加或删除参与者, 使得方案易于控制并具有较好的实用性.