Gene regulatory elements are central drivers of phenotypic variation and thus of critical importance towards understanding the genetics of complex traits. The Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes consortium was formed to collaboratively annotate the functional elements in animal genomes, starting with domesticated animals. Here we present an expansive collection of datasets from eight diverse tissues in three important agricultural species: chicken (Gallus gallus), pig (Sus scrofa), and cattle (Bos taurus). Comparative analysis of these datasets and those from the human and mouse Encyclopedia of DNA Elements projects reveal that a core set of regulatory elements are functionally conserved independent of divergence between species, and that tissue-specific transcription factor occupancy at regulatory elements and their predicted target genes are also conserved. These datasets represent a unique opportunity for the emerging field of comparative epigenomics, as well as the agricultural research community, including species that are globally important food resources.

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Feminist political theory is a sprawling theoretical field that intertwines sociological and philosophical perspectives and applies them to the study of campaigns, policy, voting, and the general structure of what Americans call politics. In Western democratic republics, the concept of participation has been hotly debated, specifically with regard to voting. Applying the critical lens of an intersectional feminist perspective introduces questions about the participation of different genders, races, classes, and cultural groups in political action, voting, and running for office. Before equal representation can be attained (if that is, indeed, desirable), it is important to understand how our politics are constructed. Feminism in the field of political communication is almost as old as the discipline itself. In this paper, the researchers explore a specific mixed-gender race in Texas, using the underlying assumptions of feminist political theory as a lens to examine how the race was rhetorically constructed in the media. By mixing methodologies and multiple analyses, both content-related and critical, these stories of mixed-gender campaigns may illuminate how gender is constructed in political races by the media and elucidate the potential constraints imposed on candidates seeking office.Battleground Texas was a grassroots organization that raised money and supported the Democratic candidate for governor in 2014, Wendy Davis. Davis had previously made headlines with a filibuster worthy of statewide attention in the Texas Senate during the debate about an antiabortion bill. The last woman to win the governorship in Texas was Ann Richards, a Republican, in 1990. Some thought that the Democratic Party might take a governorship in Texas (a known and established Republican stronghold) with a candidate like Davis. Her recent popularity indicated that she might have support and that her opponent, Greg Abbott, could be challenged. In fact, most predicted that Davis would not win but would make the race a close contest and therefore strengthen the Democratic Party in Texas. Ultimately, Abbott and Davis began the race on equal footing, as he was Attorney General of Texas and she a now-recognizable state senator. Both had experience and a sense of incumbency. Expectations dictated that Abbott would win, but at the same time the expectations for Davis closing the gap in the race were high. In the end, Davis not only lost the race but did so by more than 20 points (Root 2014), which was a number too great to pose any indication of a strong Democratic Party propensity for success in Texas. Money for Davis's campaign poured in from outside states (Brown 2014) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and while such an influx can Waters et al.: Battleground Texas Journal of Feminist Scholarship 14 (Spring 2018)sometimes shift a campaign's course, in this case it mattered more where the money came from (i.e., from outside Texas). Ultimately, the prevailing expectations of an Abbott governorship and a Democratic defeat were fulf...

Are the naive usability judgments of blind consumers more accurate than those of consumers without such impairments? Forty-one legally blind participants evaluated three user-product interfaces for three different products.The interface designs varied in terms of stimulus-response (s-r) compatibility and were associated with empirically-determined differences in accuracy, learnability, or response speed. Compared to the naive judgments collected by Payne (1995) from sighted participants, blind judges were reliably more accurate in their predictions of the relative performance efficiency of the various designs.We speculate that the superior judgments of blind participants may be due to their use of haptic and auditory evaluation strategies.In a follow-up study, normally-sighted participants were asked to evaluate the same products using either visual or nonvisual strategies. Judgments were most accurate, and similar to that of blind judges, when sighted judges performed the task nonvisually.