Tissue culture propagation alters plant-microbe interactions in tobacco rhizosphere

We have compared properties of roots from different lines (genotypes) of tobacco raised either in tissue culture or grown from seed. The different lines included unmodified plants and plants modified to express reduced activity of the enzyme cinnamoyl-CoA reductase, which has a pivotal role in lignin biosynthesis. The size and structure of the rhizosphere microbial community, characterized by adenosine triphosphate and phospholipid fatty acid analyses, were related to root chemistry (specifically the soluble carbohydrate concentration) and decomposition rate of the roots. The root material from unmodified plants decomposed faster following tissue culture compared with seed culture, and the faster decomposing material had significantly higher soluble carbohydrate concentrations. These observations are linked to the larger microbial biomass and greater diversity of the rhizosphere communities of tissue culture propagated plants.

Women and writing c1340-c1650; the domestication of print culture

The transition from medieval manuscript to early printed book is currently a mmajor topic of academic interest, but has received little attention in relation to women's involvement. The essays in this volume both add female names to the list of those authors who created English Literature, and examine women's responses to older texts. Taking its cue from the advances made by recent work on manuscript culture and book history, this volume also includes studies of material evidence. These reveal women's participation in the making of books, and also the traces they left behind when handling individual volumes. Finally, studies of women's roles in relation to apparently ephemeral texts, such as letters, pamphlets and almanacs, challenge traditional divisions between public and private spheres and between manuscript and print.

Method of plant tissue culture and regeneration

Plants may be regenerated from stomatal cells or protoplasts of such cells. Prior to regeneration the cells or protoplasts may be genetically transformed by the introduction of hereditary material most preferably by a DNA construct which is free of genes which specify resistance to antibiotics. The regeneration step may include callus formation on a hormone-free medium. The method is particularly suitable for sugar beet.

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman

The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy 'B movie' style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman's plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article's particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman's plays, and how this conditions the plays' narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman's plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer's relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices.

White youth: the Far Right, Punk and British youth culture

‘White Youth’ recovers and explains the relationship between far-right organisations and British youth culture in the period between 1977 and 1987. In particular, it concentrates on the cultural spaces opened up by punk and the attempts made by the National Front and British Movement to claim them as conduits for racist and/or ultra-nationalist politics. The article is built on an empirical basis, using archival material and a historical methodology chosen to develop a history ‘from below’ that takes due consideration of the socio-economic and political forces that inform its wider context. Its focus is designed to map shifting cultural and political influences across the far right, assessing the extent to which extremist organisations proved able to adopt or utilise youth cultural practice as a means of recruitment and communication. Today the British far right is in political and organisational disarray. Nonetheless, residues tied to the cultural initiatives devised in the 1970s–80s remain, be they stylistic, nostalgic or points of connection forged to connect a transnational music scene.

War and culture studies in 2016. Putting 'translation' into the transnational?

The first issue of the 'Journal of War and Culture Studies' in 2008 mapped out the academic space which the discipline sought to occupy. Nearly a decade later, the location of war, traditionally within the nation-state, is being challenged in ways which arguably affect the analytical spaces of War and Culture Studies. The article argues for an overt engagement with a reconceptualization of the location of war as broader in both spatial and temporal terms than the nation-state. Within this framing, it identifies local 'contact zones' which are multi-vocal translational spaces, and calls for an incorporation of 'translation' into our analyses of war: translating identities, including associations of the material as well as of subjective identities, and espousing a conscious interdisciplinarity which might lead us to focus more on the performative than the representational. Putting 'translation' into the 'transnational' marks the spaces of War and culture studies as multilingual, making accessible the cultural products and cultural analyses of a much broader range of sources and reflections. The article calls for the discipline of Translation Studies to become a leading contributor to War and Culture Studies in the years to come.