Conditional and inducible transgene expression in mice through the combinatorial use of Cre-mediated recombination and tetracycline induction

Here we describe a triple transgenic mouse system, which combines the tissue specificity of any Cre-transgenic line with the inducibility of the reverse tetracycline transactivator (rtTA)/tetracycline-responsive element (tet-O)-driven transgenes. To ensure reliable rtTA expression in a broad range of cell types, we have targeted the rtTA transgene into the ROSA26 locus. The rtTA expression, however, is conditional to a Cre recombinase-mediated excision of a STOP region from the ROSA26 locus. We demonstrate the utility of this technology through the inducible expression of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) during embryonic development and postnatally in adult mice. Our results of adult induction recapitulate several different hepatic and immune cell pathological phenotypes associated with increased systemic VEGF-A protein levels. This system will be useful for studying genes in which temporal control of expression is necessary for the discovery of the full spectrum of functions. The presented approach abrogates the need to generate tissue-specific rtTA transgenes for tissues where well-characterized Cre lines already exist

‘None of Us Sets Out To Hurt People’: The Ethical Geographer and Geography Curricula in Higher Education

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Geography in Higher Education on 22nd January 2008, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03098260701731462This paper examines ethics in learning and teaching geography in higher education. It proposes a pathway towards curriculum and pedagogy that better incorporates ethics in university geography education. By focusing on the central but problematic relationships between (i) teaching and learning on the one hand and research on the other, and (ii) ethics and geography curricula, the authors’ reflections illustrate how ethics may be better recognized within those curricula. They discuss issues affecting teaching and learning about ethics in geography, and through identification of a range of examples identify ways to enhance the integration of ethical issues into university geography curricula

Report from the “What is Open?” Workgroup

The scholarly community’s current definition of “open” captures only some of the attributes of openness that exist across different publishing models and content types. Open is not an end in itself, but a means for achieving the most effective dissemination of scholarship and research. We suggest that the different attributes of open exist along a broad spectrum and propose an alternative way of describing and evaluating openness based on four attributes: discoverable, accessible, reusable, and transparent. These four attributes of openness, taken together, form the draft “DART Framework for Open Access.” This framework can be applied to both research artifacts as well as research processes. We welcome input from the broader scholarly community about this framework

Shifting perspectives on coastal impacts and adaptation

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports reflect evolving attitudes in adapting to sea-level rise by taking a systems approach and recognizing that multiple responses exist to achieve a less hazardous coast.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Funny walking : the rise, fall and rise of the Anglo-American comic eccentric dancer

This article will attempt to reposition comic eccentric dance as a metamorphic form that still, surprisingly, exists, and is to be found with reasonable ubiquity, in renewed incarna-tions within twenty first century media. Tracing the origins of comic eccentric dance through examples of earlier comedy performance, and drawing from Bergson’s comic theory of body misalliance, this article will dis-cuss this particularly ludic fusion of music and comedy. Further changes to the form affected by modernist preoccupations during the new Jazz Age at the turn of the twentieth century will be suggested. Finally, ways in which the formulation lives on in twenty-first century in-carnations in the comedy work of, for instance, Jimmy Fallon and Ricky Gervase, and in popular television shows such as Strictly Come Dancing (BBC 2004 - ) and Britain’s Got Talent (ITV 2006 - ) will be posited