Cinema of (coming) attractions : Bruce Conner's a movie and documentary display

Bruce Conner's film 'Movie' (1958) constructs an argument concerning popular media and history within and through a radical juxtaposition of images to release new and productive meanings. It also comments on the media's representation of history as violence and analyses the consequences of aggression and violence.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce in London, 1938-41

This article examines Stanley Melbourne Bruce's role as Australian high commissioner in London during the approach to the Second World War and the European War from 1939 to 1941. It argues that Bruce in this period was an influential high commissioner who strongly influenced Australian foreign policy and exercised some influence, albeit with limitations, on the British government. After 1933, Bruce had transformed the office of Australian high commissioner in London from a largely commercial position into one with real diplomatic influence. In the approach to war, Bruce tended to bolster the policy of appeasement on which the Chamberlain government was already decided and in the Phoney War his cautious arguments contributed to the delay of the Allied intervention in Norway. With the accession of Winston Churchill to the prime ministership in May 1940, Bruce lost some of the influence he had had with Neville Chamberlain and he was on the losing side of the argument inside the British Cabinet about the possibility of a negotiated peace in May–June 1940. Despite the limitations of his personal relationship with Churchill, he was nonetheless an influential voice with other British ministers and senior officials and with the US ambassador in London and key members of the Roosevelt administration. This equipped him to play an effective part in the emerging Anglo-American alliance and issues of post-war international reconstruction.

Stanley Melbourne Bruce : Australian internationalist

Australia's Prime Minister and premier diplomat in the 1930/1940s, this new biography presents him as a consistent internationalist and places him in a global context.

Isolation and phylogenetic identification of halotolerant/halophilic bacteria from the salt mines of Karak, Pakistan

Extreme environments like salt mines are inhabited by a variety of bacteria that are well-adapted to such environments. The bacterial populations provide economic benefits in terms of enzymes synthesis. The salt mines of Karak region in Pakistan are extremely saline and the microbial communities found here have not yet been explored. In the present study, 57 halotolerant/halophilic bacterial strains were isolated from the salt mines of Karak. These strains were grown in media with 0-35% NaCl concentration. The morphological and physiological characteristics of the isolated strains were studied to optimize the growth conditions and to classify the isolated bacterial strains into slightly halotolerant/halophilic, moderately halophilic and extreme halophilic. The phylogenetic analyses inferred from 16S rRNA gene sequence of the isolated strains demonstrated that the major population were closely related to species belonging to Planococcus, Jeotgalicoccus, Staphylococcus, Halobacillus, Halomonas, Brevibacterium, Gracilibacillus, Kocuria, Salinivibrio, Salinicoccus, Oceanobacillus and Bacillus genera. Results showed that the salt mines of Karak region are rich in halotolerant/halophilic bacterial population with diverse bacterial communities, which may be utilized in various industrial applications after proper screening and identification.

Book review: Stanley Melbourne Bruce: Australian Internationalist

Stanley Melbourne Bruce was at the centre of Imperial politics for more than two decades from the early 1920s until the end of the Second World War. This new biography presents Bruce as a consistent internationalist. Educated in Melbourne and Cambridge, Bruce, as a businessman, was alive to the importance of international commerce, and particularly Anglo-Australian trade. This lay at the core of his internationalism, which took the form in the 1920s of encouraging the political and economic integration of the British Empire. Bruce's punitive treatment of militant Australian trade unionists and his upholding of constitutionalism and law and order in the 1920s was part of an effort to defend one form of internationalism, commitment to the British Empire, against the competing international ideology of communism. While continuing to support a unified British Empire acting as a progressive force in world affairs, Bruce championed stronger international collaboration through the League of Nations and the United Nations and through cooperation between the Empire and the United States.