New advances in radiation biology.

Current understanding of risk associated with low-dose radiation exposure has for many years been embedded in the linear-no-threshold (LNT) approach, based on simple extrapolation from the Japanese atomic bomb survivors. Radiation biology research has supported the LNT approach although much of this has been limited to relatively high-dose studies. Recently, with new advances for studying effects of low-dose exposure in experimental models and advances in molecular and cellular biology, a range of new effects of biological responses to radiation has been observed. These include genomic instability, adaptive responses and bystander effects. Most have one feature in common in that they are observed at low doses and suggest significant non-linear responses. These new observations pose a significant challenge to our understanding of low-dose exposure and require further study to elucidate mechanisms and determine their relevance.

Protest practice and (tree) cultures of conflict: understanding the spaces of ‘tree maiming’ in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England

Developing understandings of protest and cultures of resistance has been a central theme of the 'new' cultural geography of the 1990s and 2000s. But whilst geographers of the here and now have been highly sensitive to the importance of acts of protest which occur outside of the context of broader social movements, geographers concerned with past protests have tended to focus overwhelmingly upon either understanding the development of social movements or highly specific place-based studies. Through a focus upon the hitherto ignored practice of 'tree maiming', this paper demonstrates not only the value of examining specific protest practices in helping to better understand the complexity of conflict, but also how in periods of acute socio-economic change the evolving relationship between humans and the non-human – in this case trees – is a central discourse to the protest practices of the poor. Such attacks often involved complex cultural understandings about the ways in which trees should – and should not – be socially enrolled.

Megalithic Cultures in Britain and their relationship to Western Europe.:Meeting on Megalithic Culture. Comparing Prehistoric ruins of the East and Europe,

H. Kanaseki, Editor. 2003, UNESCO-Cultural Heritage Protection Office: Horen-Cho, Nara.