Mel Gibson. Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood. Leuven: Leuven UP, 2015.

Review of Mel Gibson. Remembered Reading. Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood. Leuven: Leuven UP, 2015

European Union Location Framework Blueprint (4.0)

Location data is fundamental to digital public services and the wider economy, delivering value in combination with other data, and supporting innovation through ‘location intelligence’. In this context, there is a need for interoperability supporting these services across Europe, and an important role for both government-authorised core location data and sector-specific location data. The European Union Location Framework (EULF) project, which was part of the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) programme took action to tackle these challenges. The EULF vision is to create and promote a coherent European framework of guidance and actions to foster cross-sector and cross-border interoperability and use of location information in digital public services, building on national SDIs and INSPIRE , and resulting in more effective services, savings in time and money, and contributions to increased growth. The EULF Blueprint is a guidance framework for a wide audience to implement the EULF vision. It is based on an extensive EU survey and consultation with stakeholders and therefore embodies a wide range of views and experience. The EULF Blueprint has been updated periodically to keep pace with developments. This updated version (v4) has been produced by the European Location Interoperability Solutions for e-Government (ELISE) project, which is part of the ISA2 programme. The document has six main readers: Policy Maker; Digital Public Service Owner, Manager or Implementer; ICT Manager or Developer; Data Manager or Data Scientist; INSPIRE Data Publisher; and Private Sector Product and Service Entrepreneur / Developer. Readers can also use the Blueprint’s role-based approach to explore the document. The blueprint has five focus areas covering Policy and strategy alignment, digital government integration, standardisation and reuse, return on investment and governance, partnerships and capabilities. For each focus area, the ‘current state’ assessment and ‘vision’ are outlined. The key points for progressing from the current state to the vision are then expanded into a series of 19 recommendations, each describing the rationale and expected benefits (why?), a checklist of associated actions (how?), potential problem areas in implementing the recommendation (challenges), a variety of best practices across Europe where this has been done successfully, cross-references to related recommendations in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF), and further reading related to the recommendation.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

Nucleosome accessibility governed by the dimer/tetramer interface

Nucleosomes are multi-component macromolecular assemblies which present a formidable obstacle to enzymatic activities that require access to the DNA, e.g. DNA and RNA polymerases. The mechanism and pathway(s) by which nucleosomes disassemble to allow DNA access are not well understood. Here we present evidence from single molecule FRET experiments for a previously uncharacterized intermediate structural state before H2A–H2B dimer release, which is characterized by an increased distance between H2B and the nucleosomal dyad. This suggests that the first step in nucleosome disassembly is the opening of the (H3–H4)2 tetramer/(H2A–H2B) dimer interface, followed by H2A–H2B dimer release from the DNA and, lastly, (H3–H4)2 tetramer removal. We estimate that the open intermediate state is populated at 0.2–3% under physiological conditions. This finding could have significant in vivo implications for factor-mediated histone removal and exchange, as well as for regulating DNA accessibility to the transcription and replication machinery

Effect of promoter architecture on the cell-to-cell variability in gene expression

According to recent experimental evidence, the architecture of a promoter, defined as the number, strength and regulatory role of the operators that control the promoter, plays a major role in determining the level of cell-to-cell variability in gene expression. These quantitative experiments call for a corresponding modeling effort that addresses the question of how changes in promoter architecture affect noise in gene expression in a systematic rather than case-by-case fashion. In this article, we make such a systematic investigation, based on a simple microscopic model of gene regulation that incorporates stochastic effects. In particular, we show how operator strength and operator multiplicity affect this variability. We examine different modes of transcription factor binding to complex promoters (cooperative, independent, simultaneous) and how each of these affects the level of variability in transcription product from cell-to-cell. We propose that direct comparison between in vivo single-cell experiments and theoretical predictions for the moments of the probability distribution of mRNA number per cell can discriminate between different kinetic models of gene regulation.Comment: 35 pages, 6 figures, Submitte

Single-molecule multiparameter fluorescence spectroscopy reveals directional MutS binding to mismatched bases in DNA

Mismatch repair (MMR) corrects replication errors such as mismatched bases and loops in DNA. The evolutionarily conserved dimeric MMR protein MutS recognizes mismatches by stacking a phenylalanine of one subunit against one base of the mismatched pair. In all crystal structures of G:T mismatch-bound MutS, phenylalanine is stacked against thymine. To explore whether these structures reflect directional mismatch recognition by MutS, we monitored the orientation of Escherichia coli MutS binding to mismatches by FRET and anisotropy with steady state, pre-steady state and single-molecule multiparameter fluorescence measurements in a solution. The results confirm that specifically bound MutS bends DNA at the mismatch. We found additional MutS–mismatch complexes with distinct conformations that may have functional relevance in MMR. The analysis of individual binding events reveal significant bias in MutS orientation on asymmetric mismatches (G:T versus T:G, A:C versus C:A), but not on symmetric mismatches (G:G). When MutS is blocked from binding a mismatch in the preferred orientation by positioning asymmetric mismatches near the ends of linear DNA substrates, its ability to authorize subsequent steps of MMR, such as MutH endonuclease activation, is almost abolished. These findings shed light on prerequisites for MutS interactions with other MMR proteins for repairing the appropriate DNA strand

Nucleosomes in gene regulation: theoretical approaches

This work reviews current theoretical approaches of biophysics and bioinformatics for the description of nucleosome arrangements in chromatin and transcription factor binding to nucleosomal organized DNA. The role of nucleosomes in gene regulation is discussed from molecular-mechanistic and biological point of view. In addition to classical problems of this field, actual questions of epigenetic regulation are discussed. The authors selected for discussion what seem to be the most interesting concepts and hypotheses. Mathematical approaches are described in a simplified language to attract attention to the most important directions of this field

Sénescence des animaux et vieillissement cellulaire

SCOPUS: ed.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

'Plaidoyer pour le graphiste' Arts et métiers graphiques and the French Typographer as an Artist and Craftsman

This article studies the conception of the typographer in the French graphic design magazine Arts et métiers graphiques, published in the interwar period. For the magazine’s editors, the designer was both an artist and a trained craftsman who was dedicated enough to face the particular challenges posed by typography. Moreover, the fruit of his work merited legal protection through copyrights. All of this points to a conception of the designer as a self-determined individual with a particular style. This view may be typical of the French conception of modern typography in that period. It is one that stands in contrast to the logic of often anonymous, collective design propagated in the New Typography of the Central-European avant-gardes. Moreover, in addition to individual creative endeavours, the French conception favoured a design practice that reconciled innovation and tradition, and artistry and craftsmanship

Lucien Vakaet, an avian embryologist.

SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Research and the teaching of developmental biology in Belgium.

SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe