Guidelines for the Use and Interpretation of Assays for Monitoring Autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

Dramatists, Playing Companies, and Repertories. Introduction: The Repertory-Based Approach

This essay situates the Issues in Review section as a whole in relation to the growing field of repertory studies. It attempts to outline why critics and theatre historians have come to see a repertory-based approach as representing a productive way of thinking about early modern drama, and makes reference to recent developments in this area. Finally, it suggests that the essays that follow can be seen as responding to specific tensions and problems within the methodology of repertory studies

New Approaches to Thomas Heywood. Introduction: Entire Hands and Main Fingers

The ten-volume edition of The Collected Works of Thomas Heywood, forthcoming from Oxford University Press from 2015 to 2022, will attempt to place Heywood’s plays, poetry, and prose back where they belong: at the centre of the study of early modern English literature, drama, and theatre history. Especially as an actor, playwright, reviser, editor, and historical chronicler, Heywood had the longest and widest-ranging career of his contemporaries and thus can reveal how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors and theatrical and literary audiences came to see the practice and production of drama

Early Modern Women Theatre Makers. Introduction: Attending to Early Modern Women as Theatre Makers

This essay introduces the playwrights under consideration and looks forward to the four essays in this section examining the work of early modern women theatre makers. The introduction ends with a census of early modern women’s plays in modern performance

Theatre and Neighbourhood in Early Modern London; Introduction: Exploring Neighbourhoods

This essay summarizes scholarship about the neighbourhoods and parishes surrounding London’s early modern theatres, and in the process introduces three essays for the Early Theatre Issues in Review ‘Theatre and Neighbourhood in Early Modern London’

Beaumont’s Lives

This essay explores the ‘lives’ of Francis Beaumont at the point of the four hundredth anniversary of his death, through elegies by John Earle and Thomas Pestell and hitherto unknown and newly interpreted biographical information that sheds fresh light on the relationship between his life and works. Focusing in particular on his plays The Scornful Lady and The Woman Hater, it argues that Beaumont and his regular collaborator, John Fletcher, mix (auto)biographical allusions with satire and fantasy. This analysis offers new perspectives on the ways in which their imaginations were sparked by their lived experience

New threats to human security in the Anthropocene: Demanding greater solidarity

We are faced with a development paradox. Even though people are on average living longer, healthier and wealthier lives, these advances have not succeeded in increasing people¿s sense of security. This holds true for countries all around the world and was taking hold even before the uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has increased this uncertainty. It has imperiled every dimension of our wellbeing and amplified a sense of fear across the globe. This, in tandem with rising geopolitical tensions, growing inequalities, democratic backsliding and devastating climate change-related weather events, threatens to reverse decades of development gains, throw progress on the Sustainable Development Goals even further off track, and delay the urgent need for a greener, more inclusive and just transition. Against this backdrop, I welcome the Special Report on New threats to human security in the Anthropocene: Demanding greater solidarity, produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The report explains this paradox, highlighting the strong association between declining levels of trust and increased feelings of insecurity. It suggests that during the Anthropocene¿a term proposed to describe the era in which humans have become central drivers of planetary change, radically altering the earth¿s biosphere¿people have good reason to feel insecure. Multiple threats from COVID-19, digital technology, climate change, and biodiversity loss, have become more prominent or taken new forms in recent years. In short, humankind is making the world an increasingly insecure and precarious place. The report links these new threats with the disconnect between people and planet, arguing that they¿like the Anthropocene itself¿are deeply entwined with increasing planetary pressure. The contribution of this report is to update the concept of human security to reflect this new reality. This implies moving beyond considering the security of individuals and communities, to also consider the interdependence among people, and between people and planet, as reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In doing so, the report offers a way forward to tackle today¿s interconnected threats. First, by pursuing human security strategies that affirm the importance of solidarity, since we are all vulnerable to the unprecedented process of planetary change we are experiencing during the Anthropocene. And second, by treating people not as helpless patients, but agents of change and action capable of shaping their own futures and course correcting. The findings in the report echo some of the key themes in my report on Our Common Agenda, including the importance of investing in prevention and resilience, the protection of our planet, and rebuilding equity and trust at a global scale through solidarity and a renewed social contract. The United Nations offers a natural platform to advance these core objectives with the involvement of all relevant stakeholders. This report offers valuable insights and analyses, and I commend it to a wide global audience as we strive to advance Our Common Agenda and to use the concept of human security as a tool to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.peer-reviewe