Jean Gerson, chancellor of the university of Paris and influential theologian at the council of Constance, was known for his constant fight against curiosity. Instead of getting lost in futile speculation, theologians were admonished by him to take the utility of their research and teaching into account, a utility which, according to Gerson, manifested itself in its fruitful and edifying effect. He promoted this program or stylus, as he called it, as chancellor of the Parisian university in his many attempts (...) to reform the curriculum, and he gave a practical demonstration of it to an international audience when opposing Jerome of Prague at Constance. But to what extent was this style received in the academic culture of the 15th century? This paper traces the impact of Gerson’s stylus in a few Sentences commentaries, starting with contemporaries of Gerson such as Lambertus de Monte and Nicholas of Dinkelsbuhl, and moving on to later examples at the turn of the 16th century and John Mair in particular. It be... (shrink)

This report recounts the activities in the last year of the SIEPM Project on commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. A major step was taken in generating a digital workspace for the Project that will facilitate international co-operation as well as provide the collected data to a scholarly public. Two meetings of the members of the Project took place in Basel and Paris, and there were changes in the organization of the team.

This is an artist's book on illness and dying. Elisabeth Zahnd, artist and photographer, had to experience and bear the fatal illness and death of her child, who was diagnosed of an incurable brain tumour at the age of five. Zahnd soon started not only t.

Changes in the shape and structural organization of the cell nucleus occur during many fundamental processes including development, differentiation and aging. In many of these processes, the cell responds to physical forces by altering gene expression within the nucleus. How the nucleus itself senses and responds to such mechanical cues is not well understood. In addition to these external forces, epigenetic modifications of chromatin structure inside the nucleus could also alter its physical properties. To achieve a better understanding, we need (...) to elucidate the relationship between nuclear structure and material properties. Recently, new approaches have been developed to systematically investigate nuclear mechanical properties. These experiments provide important new insights into the disease mechanism of a growing class of tissue‐specific disorders termed ‘nuclear envelopathies’. Here we review our current understanding of what determines the shape and mechanical properties of the cell nucleus. BioEssays 30:226–236, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Together with microtubules and actin microfilaments, ∼11 nm wide intermediate filaments (IFs) constitute the integrated, dynamic filament network present in the cytoplasm of metazoan cells. This network is critically involved in division, motility and other cellular processes. While the structures of microtubules and microfilaments are known in atomic detail, IF architecture is presently much less understood. The elementary ‘building block’ of IFs is a highly elongated, rod‐like dimer based on an α‐helical coiled‐coil structure. Assembly of cytoplasmic IF proteins, such as (...) vimentin, begins with a lateral association of dimers into tetramers and gradually into the so‐called unit‐length filaments (ULFs). Subsequently ULFs start to anneal longitudinally, ultimately yielding mature IFs after a compaction step. For nuclear lamins, however, assembly starts with a head‐to‐tail association of dimers. Recently, X‐ray crystallographic data were obtained for several fragments of the vimentin dimer. Based on the dimer structure, molecular models of the tetramer and the entire filament are now a possibility. BioEssays 25:243–251, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)