An experts’ dialogue: child safety for the online world

The Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) is meeting today, 17 June, in London. The Council, which now consists of over 200 member organisations, was set up in 2008 and our Sonia Livingstone has been involved in it since the beginning. To give you some insight into the considerations and dilemmas the Council will be dealing with, LSE’s Svenja Ottovordemgentschenfelde has reconstructed a discussion Sonia had with two other members of the UKCCIS Board, John Carr and Vicki Shotbolt about whether age specific rules should apply to online ‘places’

Genetic Transformation of Orchid Dendrobium Sonia-17 Using the Biolistic Method

The ever-changing tastes and preferences of orchid consumers initiated the need to create new and better varieties. Progress in molecular biology has allowed genetically well defined characteristics to be added to the gene pools, thereby increasing the potential for genetic improvement. However, such effort at creating a custom-made flower has yet to be realised in orchids. The present study aims at developing a genetic transformation system for the introduction of specific foreign genes into orchid. Protocorm-like-bodies (PLBs) of orchid hybrid, Dendrobium Sonia-17, were established to be suitable target tissues for the introduction of foreign genes using the biolistic method. They were easily micropropagated in vitro that provided plenty of materials to work with and were a reliable source of potentially regenerabIe tissues. The effect of blasting on the growth of the PLBs was evaluated by subjecting the PLBs to bombardment with uncoated gold microparticles. One month following bombardment, fresh weights gained by the PLBs were recorded. The results showed that bombarded PLBs had higher weight increments compared to non-bombarded treatments, indicating that subsequent lethal responses by the PLBs on antibiotic selections were mainly due to the selection pressure and not as a result of injuries inflicted during the bombardment

Induction of in vitro flowering in the orchid Dendrobium Sonia 17.

In this study, Dendrobium Sonia 17 plantlets were used to induce in vitro flowering. Infloresce nces were induced and rooting was inhibited in the half-strength Murashige and Skoog medium containing 20μ MN6-benzyladenine (BA). The medium with high P and low N contents was effective to in duce inflorescences while the medium with low P and high N contents was only effective to promote forming of shoots. In addition, the induced in vitro inflorescences were able to multiply and maintain without exhibiting a distinctive vegetative phase. Different morphologies of in vitro flowers such as incomplete flower structures, abnormal and unresupinated in vitro flowers were observed

Selection of co-transformed Dendrobium Sonia 17 using hygromycin and green fluorescent protein

Dendrobium Sonia 17 calluses were used for co-transformation study using particle bombardment. The bombarded transformed callus tissues were selected using half-strength MS medium containing 25 mg dm−3 hygromycin. Expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP) was observed in the callus and protocorm-like body (PLBs) tissues survived on the selection medium. The presence of green fluorescence protein (sgfp), hygromycin-B-phosphotransferase (hptII) and β-glucuronidase (uidA) genes in the transformed tissues were verified using PCR, Southern blot and dot blot analyses. Based on the results from PCR and expression of sgfp and uidA genes in the calluses and PLBs survived from hygromycin selection, we reported the co-transformation of sgfp, hptII and uidA genes into Dendrobium Sonia 17. GFP-expressing tissues were also observed in the regenerated transformed plantlets

Double time : Facing the future in migration’s past

Interpretations of Italian films about migration tend to refer to the historical experience of emigration or of colonialism as the historical coordinates through which these films are best understood. This article looks at four recent films featuring migrants in prominent roles that appear to elide such an interpretive framework. While the past and its intrusive effects do feature strongly in these films, it is difficult to produce a predictable linear and causal narrative that would link past, present, and future in predictable ways. Stylistically, the four films also represent a notable move away from the realist political agenda and aesthetic that has tended to dominate Italian film production on the topic of migration. This article argues that their adoption of the features that recall those of film noir (in its Italian manifestation) suggests a new range of thematic and social concerns that refer as much to possible futures as well as known pasts. There is a particular focus on the topic of bodily reproduction which is no longer limited to the sphere of the sexual. The opportunities offered by technology for the body to reproduce in new ways alters the parameters of how the nation might be imagined.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Designed to fail : a biopolitics of British Citizenship.

Tracing a route through the recent 'ugly history' of British citizenship, this article advances two central claims. Firstly, British citizenship has been designed to fail specific groups and populations. Failure, it argues, is a design principle of British citizenship, in the most active and violent sense of the verb to design: to mark out, to indicate, to designate. Secondly, British citizenship is a biopolitics - a field of techniques and practices (legal, social, moral) through which populations are controlled and fashioned. This article begins with the 1981 Nationality Act and the violent conflicts between the police and black communities in Brixton that accompanied the passage of the Act through the British parliament. Employing Michel Foucault's concept of state racism, it argues that the 1981 Nationality Act marked a pivotal moment in the design of British citizenship and has operated as the template for a glut of subsequent nationality legislation that has shaped who can achieve citizenship. The central argument is that the existence of populations of failed citizens within Britain is not an accident of flawed design, but is foundational to British citizenship. For many 'national minorities' the lived realities of biopolitical citizenship stand in stark contradistinction to contemporary governmental accounts of citizenship that stress community cohesion, political participation, social responsibility, rights and pride in shared national belonging

Bodily relations and reciprocity in the art of Sonia Khurana

This article explores the significance of the ‘somatic’ and ‘ontological turn’ in locating the radical politics articulated in the contemporary performance, installation, video and digital art practices of New Delhi-based artist, Sonia Khurana (b. 1968). Since the late 1990s Khurana has fashioned a range of artworks that require new sorts of reciprocal and embodied relations with their viewers. While this line of art practice suggests the need for a primarily philosophical mode of inquiry into an art of the body, such affective relations need to be historicised also in relation to a discursive field of ‘difference’ and public expectations about the artist’s ethnic, gendered and national identity. Thus, this intimate, visceral and emotional field of inter- and intra-action is a novel contribution to recent transdisciplinary perspectives on the gendered, social and sentient body, that in turn prompts a wider debate on the ethics of cultural commentary and art historiography

Recent developments in nuclear structure theory: an outlook on the muonic atom program

The discovery of the proton-radius puzzle and the subsequent deuteron-radius puzzle is fueling an on-going debate on possible explanations for the difference in the observed radii obtained from muonic atoms and from electron-nucleus systems. Atomic nuclei have a complex internal structure that must be taken into account when analyzing experimental spectroscopic results. Ab initio nuclear structure theory provided the so far most precise estimates of important corrections to the Lamb shift in muonic atoms and is well poised to also investigate nuclear structure corrections to the hyperfine splitting in muonic atoms. Independently on whether the puzzle is due to beyond-the-standard-model physics or not, nuclear structure corrections are a necessary theoretical input to any experimental extraction of electric and magnetic radii from precise muonic atom measurements. Here, we review the status of the calculations performed by the TRIUMF-Hebrew University group, focusing on the deuteron, and discuss preliminary results on magnetic sum rules calculated with two-body currents at next-to-leading order. Two-body currents will be an important ingredient in future calculations of nuclear structure corrections to the hyperfine splitting in muonic atoms.Comment: 10 pages, accepted proceedings of the "55th International Winter Meeting on Nuclear Physics", 23-27 January 2017, to appear on Po