Bio-fortification of potato tubers using foliar zinc-fertiliser

Worldwide, many people are zinc (Zn)-deficient. Dietary Zn intake can be increased by producing crops with higher concentrations of Zn in their edible portions. This can be achieved by applying Zn-fertilisers to varieties with an increased ability to acquire Zn and to accumulate Zn in their edible portions. Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is an important food crop and is, therefore, a target for bio-fortification with Zn. Field trials incorporating a core collection of 23 potato genotypes, performed over 4 years (2006 – 2009), indicated significant genotypic effects on tuber Zn concentration and suggested that tuber Zn concentration was influenced by environmental effects, but also found that genotype environment (G E) interactions were not significant. Tuber Zn concentrations averaged 10.8 mg kg–1 dry matter (DM), and the ratio between the lowest and the highest varietal tuber Zn-concentration averaged 1.76. Tuber Zn concentrations could be increased by foliar Zn-fertilisation. Tuber yields of ‘Maris Piper’ were unaffected by foliar applications of < 1.08 g Zn plant–1. The relationship between tuber Zn concentration and foliar Zn application followed a saturation curve, reaching a maximum at approx. 30 mg Zn kg–1 DM at a foliar Zn application rate of 1.08 g plant–1. Despite a 40-fold increase in shoot Zn concentration compared to the unfertilised controls following foliar Zn fertilisation with 2.16 g Zn plant–1, only a doubling in tuber Zn concentration was observed. This suggests that the biofortification of tubers with Zn was restricted by the limited mobility of Zn in the phloem. A significant positive linear relationship between tuber Zn concentration and tuber N concentration supported the hypothesis of co-transport of Zn and N-compounds in the phloem.

Museum geography: exploring museums, collections and museum practice in the UK

In the UK alone there are more than 2500 museums of interest to international and home audiences. Despite their prevalence and a strong museological culture in the UK and beyond, the geographic study of museums is relatively under-developed. To date there has been no systematic overview of this field either in the UK or internationally. This review article is intended as a contribution towards an emerging ‘museum geography’. Beginning with an exploration of research on museums, collections and museum practice, the author then considers the recent ‘spatial turn’ in museum studies and discusses how geographers have variously encountered museums, collections and museum practice to date. The article then reviews the potential for the future study of museums by geographers. In so doing, the author suggests that the study of museums offers some exciting opportunities for geographical research and teaching.

Dancing in translation: Irina Brook’s mise en scène of 'Danser à Lughnasa', Jean-Marie Besset’s translation of Brian Friel’s 'Dancing at Lughnasa'

This essay contributes to debates about theatre and cross-cultural encounter through an analysis of Irina Brook’s 1999 Swiss / French co-production of Irish playwright Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, in a French translation by Jean-Marie Besset. While the translation and Brook’s mise en scène clearly identified the source text and culture as Irish, they avoided cultural stereotypes, and rendered the play accessible to francophone audiences without entirely assimilating it to a specific Swiss or French cultural context. Drawing on discourses of theatre translation, and concepts of cosmopolitanism and conviviality, the essay focuses on the potential of such textual and theatrical translation to acknowledge specific cultural traces but also to estrange the familiar perceptions and boundaries of both the source and target cultures, offering modes of interconnection across diverse cultural affiliations.

Progress in the genetics of common obesity and type 2 diabetes

The prevalence of obesity and diabetes, which are heritable traits that arise from the interactions of multiple genes and lifestyle factors, continues to rise worldwide, causing serious health problems and imposing a substantial economic burden on societies. For the past 15 years, candidate gene and genome-wide linkage studies have been the main genetic epidemiological approaches to identify genetic loci for obesity and diabetes, yet progress has been slow and success limited. The genome-wide association approach, which has become available in recent years, has dramatically changed the pace of gene discoveries. Genome-wide association is a hypothesis-generating approach that aims to identify new loci associated with the disease or trait of interest. So far, three waves of large-scale genome-wide association studies have identified 19 loci for common obesity and 18 for common type 2 diabetes. Although the combined contribution of these loci to the variation in obesity and diabetes risk is small and their predictive value is typically low, these recently identified loci are set to substantially improve our insights into the pathophysiology of obesity and diabetes. This will require integration of genetic epidemiological methods with functional genomics and proteomics. However, the use of these novel insights for genetic screening and personalised treatment lies some way off in the future.

Spiral jetty, thirty seven years later: the cinematic time of James Benning

This article considers cinematic time in James Benning’s film, casting a glance (2007), in relation to its subject, Robert Smithson’s 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty, and his film of the same name. The radicalism of Smithson’s thinking on time has been widely acknowledged, and his influence continues to pervade contemporary artistic practice. The relationship of Benning’s films with this legacy may appear somewhat oblique, given their apparent phenomenological rendition of ‘real time’. However, closer examination of Benning’s formal strategies reveals a more complex temporal construction, characterized by uncertain intervals that interrupt the folding of cinematic time into the flow of consciousness. Smithson’s film uses cinematic analogy to gesture towards vast reaches of geological time; Benning’s film creates a simulated timescale to evoke the short history of the earthwork itself. Smithson’s embrace of the entropic was a counter-cultural stance at the end of the1960s, but under the shadow of ecological disaster, this orientation has come to appear melancholy and romantic rather than radical. Benning’s film returns the jetty to anthropic time, but raises questions about the ways we inhabit time. His practice of working with ‘borrowed time’ is particularly suited to the cultural and historical moment of his later work.

Identification of forged Bank of England £20 banknotes using IR spectroscopy

Bank of England notes of £20 denomination have been studied using infrared spectroscopy in order to generate a method to identify forged notes. An aim of this work was to develop a non-destructive method so that a small, compact Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) instrument could be used by bank workers, police departments or others such as shop assistants to identify forged notes in a non-lab setting. The ease of use of the instrument is the key to this method, as well as the relatively low cost. The presence of a peak at 1400 cm−1 arising from νasym () from the blank paper section of a forged note proved to be a successful indicator of the note’s illegality for the notes that we studied. Moreover, differences between the spectra of forged and genuine £20 notes were observed in the ν(OH) (ca. 3500 cm−1), ν(CH) (ca. 2900 cm−1) and ν(CO) (ca. 1750 cm−1) regions of the IR spectrum recorded for the polymer film covering the holographic strip. In cases where these simple tests fail, we have shown how an infrared microscope can be used to further differentiate genuine and forged banknotes by producing infrared maps of selected areas of the note contrasting inks with background paper.

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.

The rulB gene of plasmid pWW0 is a hotspot for the site-specific insertion of integron-like elements found in the chromosomes of environmental Pseudomonas fluorescens group bacteria

The rulAB operon of Pseudomonas spp. confers fitness traits on the host and has been suggested to be a hotspot for insertion of mobile elements that carry avirulence genes. Here, for the first time, we show that rulB on plasmid pWW0 is a hotspot for the active site-specific integration of related integron-like elements (ILEs) found in six environmental pseudomonads (strains FH1–FH6). Integration into rulB on pWW0 occurred at position 6488 generating a 3 bp direct repeat. ILEs from FH1 and FH5 were 9403 bp in length and contained eight open reading frames (ORFs), while the ILE from FH4 was 16 233 bp in length and contained 16 ORFs. In all three ILEs, the first 5.1 kb (containing ORFs 1–4) were structurally conserved and contained three predicted site-specific recombinases/integrases and a tetR homologue. Downstream of these resided ORFs of the ‘variable side’ with structural and sequence similarity to those encoding survival traits on the fitness enhancing plasmid pGRT1 (ILEFH1 and ILEFH5) and the NR-II virulence region of genomic island PAGI-5 (ILEFH4). Collectively, these ILEs share features with the previously described type III protein secretion system effector ILEs and are considered important to host survival and transfer of fitness enhancing and (a)virulence genes between bacteria.

The biosurfactant viscosin produced by Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 aids spreading motility and plant growth promotion

Food security depends on enhancing production and reducing loss to pests and pathogens. A promising alternative to agrochemicals is the use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), which are commonly associated with many, if not all, plant species. However, exploiting the benefits of PGPRs requires knowledge of bacterial function and an in-depth understanding of plant-bacteria associations. Motility is important for colonization efficiency and microbial fitness in the plant environment, but the mechanisms employed by bacteria on and around plants are not well understood. We describe and investigate an atypical mode of motility in Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 that was revealed only after flagellum production was eliminated by deletion of the master regulator fleQ. Our results suggest that this ‘spidery spreading’ is a type of surface motility. Transposon mutagenesis of SBW25ΔfleQ (SBW25Q) produced mutants, defective in viscosin production, and surface spreading was also abolished. Genetic analysis indicated growth-dependency, production of viscosin, and several potential regulatory and secretory systems involved in the spidery spreading phenotype. Moreover, viscosin both increases efficiency of surface spreading over the plant root and protects germinating seedlings in soil infected with the plant pathogen Pythium. Thus, viscosin could be a useful target for biotechnological development of plant growth promotion agents.

Analysis of red pigments from the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük in Turkey and Sheikh-e Abad in Iran

Samples containing red pigment have been collected from two different archaeological sites dating to the Neolithic (Çatalhöyük in Turkey and Sheikh-e Abad in Iran) and have been analysed by a range of techniques. Sub-samples were examined by IR spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, whilst thin sections were studied using optical polarising microscopy, synchrotron based IR microscopy and environmental scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray analysis. Thin layers of red paint in a wall painting from Çatalhöyük were found to contain ochre (hematite and clay) as well as an unexpected component, grains of red and colourless obsidian, which have not been identified in any previous studies of the wall paintings at Çatalhöyük. These small grains of obsidian may have improved the reflective properties of the paint and made the artwork more vivid in the darkness of the buildings. Analysis of a roughly shaped ball of red sediment found on a possible working surface at Sheikh-e Abad revealed that the cause of the red colouring was the mineral hematite, which was probably from a source of terra rossa sediment in the local area. The results of this work suggest it is unlikely that this had been altered by the Neolithic people through mixing with other minerals.

'Hey little rich boy, take a good look at me': punk, class and British oi!

This article looks at the controversial music genre Oi! in relation to youth cultural identity in late 1970s and early 1980s Britain. By examining the six compilation albums released to promote Oi! as a distinct strand of punk, it seeks to challenge prevailing dismissals of the genre as inherently racist or bound to the politics of the far right. Rather, Oi! – like punk more generally – was a contested cultural form. It was, moreover, centred primarily on questions of class and locality. To this end, Oi! sought to realize the working-class rebellion of punk’s early aesthetic; to give substance to its street-level pretentions and offer a genuine ‘song from the streets’.

Analysis of wall plasters and natural sediments from the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) by a range of analytical techniques

Wall plaster sequences from the Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük have been analysed and compared to three types of natural sediment found in the vicinity of the site, using a range of analytical techniques. Block samples containing the plaster sequences were removed from the walls of several different buildings on the East Mound. Sub-samples were examined by IR spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence to determine the overall mineralogical and elemental composition, whilst thin sections were studied using optical polarising microscopy, IR Microscopy and Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis. The results of this study have shown that there are two types of wall plaster found in the sequences and that the sediments used to produce these were obtained from at least two distinct sources. In particular, the presence of clay, calcite and magnesian calcite in the foundation plasters suggested that these were prepared predominantly from a marl source. On the other hand, the finishing plasters were found to contain dolomite with a small amount of clay and no calcite, revealing that softlime was used in their preparation. Whilst marl is located directly below and around Çatalhöyük, the nearest source of softlime is 6.5 km away, an indication that the latter was important to the Neolithic people, possibly due to the whiter colour (5Y 8/1) of this sediment. Furthermore, the same two plaster types were found on each wall of Building 49, the main building studied in this research, and in all five buildings investigated, suggesting that the use of these sources was an established practice for the inhabitants of several different households across the site.

Parenting difficulties and postnatal depression: implications for primary healthcare assessment and intervention

Postnatal depression (PND) is associated with impairments in the mother–child relationship, and these impairments are themselves associated with adverse child outcomes. Thus, compared to the children of non-depressed mothers, children of mothers with PND are more likely to be insecurely attached, and to have externalising behaviour problems and poor cognitive development. Each of these three child outcomes is predicted by a particular pattern of difficulty in parenting: insecure attachment is related to maternal insensitivity, particularly in relation to infant distress and emotional vulnerability; externalising problems are particularly common in the context of hostile parenting; and poor cognitive development is related to parental difficulties in noticing infant signs of interest and supporting their engagement with the environment. This article sets out procedures for how parenting could be assessed in ways that are sensitive to the domain-specific associations between parenting and child outcome, while remaining sensitive to the child's developmental stage. This set of assessments requires field testing.

Intertextuality, authenticity, and gonzo selves in Anya Ulinich’s 'Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel'

This article traces the intertextual relationships between Anya Ulinich’s graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud’s short story ‘The Magic Barrel’ and a number of works by Philip Roth. Through these relationships and her construction of a number of variations on what Miriam Libicki has called a ‘gonzo self’ Ulinich explores the tensions between life and art, fact and fiction, and autobiography and the novel, mediating the aesthetic imperatives of what Roth has called the ‘written world’ and the ethical obligations of the ‘unwritten world’ in order to arrive at an authentic sense of herself as an artist and writer.