The effect of ageing on the mechanical properties of the silk of the bridge spider Larinioides cornutus (Clerck, 1757)

We are grateful to “Nanofacility Piemonte”, INRIM Institute, for the FESEM microscope facility. N.M.P. is supported by the European Research Council (ERC StG Ideas 2011 BIHSNAM n. 279985, ERC PoC 2013 KNOTOUGH n. 632277, ERC PoC 2015 SILKENE nr. 693670), by the European Commission under the Graphene Flagship (WP10 “Nanocomposites”, n. 604391)

An acetylated form of histone H2A.Z regulates chromosome architecture in Schizosaccharomyces pombe

Histone variant H2A.Z has a conserved role in genome stability, although it remains unclear how this is mediated. Here we demonstrate that the fission yeast Swr1 ATPase inserts H2A.Z (Pht1) into chromatin and Kat5 acetyltransferase (Mst1) acetylates it. Deletion or an unacetylatable mutation of Pht1 leads to genome instability, primarily caused by chromosome entanglement and breakage at anaphase. This leads to the loss of telomere-proximal markers, though telomere protection and repeat length are unaffected by the absence of Pht1. Strikingly, the chromosome entanglement in pht1Delta anaphase cells can be rescued by forcing chromosome condensation before anaphase onset. We show that the condensin complex, required for the maintenance of anaphase chromosome condensation, prematurely dissociates from chromatin in the absence of Pht1. This and other findings suggest an important role for H2A.Z in the architecture of anaphase chromosomes

Immigration

Immigration has been at the centre of social and political debate in Europe for a long time, but its role has become more and more important in the last decade. Immigration has become one of the defining policy issues of contemporary politics in Europe, for example in the case of the British vote on the Brexit referendum or the national Dutch elections. As the refugee crisis is still in progress, it will play a role for the foreseeable future. Understanding the social representations of immigrations and their evolution in the past years provides valuable data to study the relationship with ‘the other’ in European societies. In this chapter, we analyse the public discourse on immigration present in the national press of several European countries before, during, and at the end of the financial crisis (2007-2015). Combining both qualitative interpretation of texts and insights from text mining techniques applied to a large corpus of newspapers articles in Cyprus 1 , Greece, Italy, Malta, Romania and UK, we both discuss some of the national cases and present a comparative frame

The Spiral of Euroscepticism: EU News and Media Negativity

The role of public and media processes of mediation in shaping Eurosceptic attitudes and driving opposition to the EU has received relatively little attention in Euroscepticism research. In this article, we examine media coverage of the 2014 European Parliament election to analyse the role of the media in generating democratic legitimacy. By comparing Germany and the UK, we investigate the extent to which news coverage of the EU suffers from a systematic negativity bias. Negativity as a news value focuses on political failures, polemics, scandals or crisis which can undermine trust in democratic politics and its representatives. Using standardised content and frame analysis of articles, actor statements and user comments, we demonstrate how a negativity bias in EU news can be amplified by different actors – journalists, political actors, and news readers – and linked to the legitimacy of EU politics in the context of democratic elections. We argue that we can speak of a ‘spiral of Euroscepticism’ that results from a negativity bias in media coverage and reception that that then contributes to delegitimising the European integration project