TheHippo/Yap pathway is awell-conserved signaling cascade that regulates cell proliferation and differentiation to control organsize and stem/progenitor cell behavior. Following airway injury, Yap was dynamically regulated in regenerating airway epithelial cells. To determine the role of Hippo signaling in the lung, the mammalian Hippo kinases,Mst1 and Mst2,were deleted in epithelial cells of …

JMJD3 (KDM6B) is an H3K27me3 demethylase and counteracts polycomb-mediated transcription repression. However, the function of JMJD3 in vivo is not well understood. Here we show that JMJD3 is highly expressed in cells of the chondrocyte lineage, especially in prehypertrophic and hypertrophic chondrocytes, during endochondral ossification. Homozygous deletion of Jmjd3 results in severely decrea…

Embryo implantation is a crucial step in mammalian reproduction. However, little is known regarding the physiological roles of microRNAs in the regulation of embryo implantation. Here we show that a minimum uterine expression of miR-181 is essential for the onset of embryo implantation. Both transient and prolonged transgenic expression of miR-181 led to impaired implantation, which can be r…

X chromosome inactivation is a mechanism that modulates the expression of X-linked genes in eutherian females (XX). Ohno proposed that to achieve a proper balance between X-linked and autosomal genes, those on the active X should also undergo a 2-fold upregulation. Although some support for Ohno’s hypothesis has been provided through the years, recent genomic studies testing this hypothesis…

New Zealand straddles the boundary between the Australian and Pacific Plate. Cenozoic relative plate motion has resulted in a complex pattern of faulting and block rotation in a zone of continental lithosphere up to 250 km wide. I investigate the implications of the short-term kinematics for the strength of the deforming lithosphere. I use a compilation of seismic reflection/refraction studies …

Media mogul and art collector William Randolph Hearst was once described by Joseph Duveen as ‘the great accumulator’. Hearst’s holdings were indeed vast, catholic, and surprisingly personal, but it would be incorrect to assume they were largely inferior in quality (an impression encouraged by Orson Welles’s thinly veiled portrait of Hearst in Citizen Kane): he bought art nearly all his …

Between 1900 and 1912 the American banker John Pierpont Morgan amassed an unparalleled collection of works of art and in the process greatly contributed to the globalization of the art world. The article analyses Morgan’s strategies as well as his ties with the network of dealers, curators, and experts that transformed the market and the reception for old European art at the turn of the twen…

The downward continuation of the observed geomagnetic field from the Earth’s surface to the core–mantle boundary (CMB) is complicated due to induction and diffusion processes in the electrically conducting Earth mantle, which modify the amplitudes and morphology of the geomagnetic field. Various methods have been developed to solve this problem, for example, the perturbation approach by Be…

This article examines the discovery, promotion, and display of the Lit de Justice d’Argentelles, a striking ensemble of medieval woodcarvings said to constitute a dais and throne canopy for the judicial bench of a nobleman, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Once a celebrated piece of secular furniture of the Middle Ages, it was revealed over time to be an assemblage of disparate, if aut…

In an era steeped in the Gothic Revival, no image encapsulates the romance and the material culture of the Middle Ages more than the ‘knight in shining armour’. The suit of armour invokes the chivalric world of medieval Europe in a very direct way with its associated imagery of tournaments, prowess in battle, protection of the weak by the strong, and courtesy towards women. For American col…