Iron is the most abundant transition metal in biological systems and is required to facilitate key metabolic reactions, including DNA synthesis, oxygen transport and cellular respiration. The distribution of iron within the body is carefully regulated to prevent the generation of cytotoxic reactive oxygen species. The investigations described in this book were aimed to understand the mechanisms and diseases associated with mammalian iron metabolism. Specifically, Chapter 3 investigates the systemic iron homeostatic activity of hepcidin, the hormone of iron metabolism, while bound to the blood carrier protein, 2-macroglobulin; Chapter 4 examines the molecular mechanism(s) involved in the perturbation of cellular iron metabolism that results in mitochondrial iron-accumulation in Friedreich's ataxia; and Chapter 5 explores the molecular links between mitochondrial iron-dysregulation and the fatal cardiac defects in Friedreich's ataxia.

The Reception of Chinese Art Across Cultures is a collection of essays examining the ways in which Chinese art has been circulated, collected, exhibited and perceived in Japan, Europe and America from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first. Scholars and curators from East Asia, Europe and North America jointly present cutting-edge research on cultural integration and aesthetic hybridisation in relation to the collecting, display, making and interpretation of Chinese art and material culture. Stimulating examples within this volume emphasise the Western understanding of Chinese pictorial art, while addressing issues concerning the consumption of Chinese art and Chinese-inspired artistic productions from early times to the contemporary period; the roles of collector, curator, museum and auction house in shaping the taste, meaning and conception of art; and the art and cultural identity of the Chinese diaspora in a global context. This book espouses a multiplicity of aesthetic, philosophical, socio-cultural, economic and political perspectives, and encourages academics, students, art and museum practitioners to re-think their encounters with the objects, practices, people and institutions surrounding the study of Chinese art and culture in the past and the present.