“They are not the ones facing a life changing choice”: Public Attitudes to Anti-Reproductive Choice (“Pro-Life”) Protests

The presence of Pro-Life protests outside reproductive choices providers has become a source of tension in recent years in the UK (Hayes & Lowe 2015), although elsewhere in the world it has been a matter of public debate for far longer (Albert 2005; Finer & Fine 2013). Given this, it is surprising that there has been little research on the issue either in the UK or elsewhere beyond discussions of jurisprudence, political philosophy and healthcare decision making (see also Benyon-Jones 2017). This research was based on the idea that a better understanding of the impact of seeing ‘Pro-Life’ protests by wider members of the public would help inform both discussions about buffer zones and ongoing discussions about safety and impact of the increasing Americanization of British Pro-Life protests

Putative degraders of low-density polyethylene-derived compounds are ubiquitous members of plastic associated bacterial communities in the marine environment

Research articleIt remains unknown whether and to what extent marine prokaryotic communities are capable of degrading plastic in the ocean. To address this knowledge gap, we combined enrichment experiments employing low-density polyethylene (LDPE) as the sole carbon source with a comparison of bacterial communities on plastic debris in the Pacific, the North Atlantic and the northern Adriatic Sea. A total of 35 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were enriched in the LDPE-laboratory incubations after 1 year, of which 20 were present with relative abundances > 0.5% in at least one plastic sample collected from the environment. From these, OTUs classified as Cognatiyoonia, Psychrobacter, Roseovarius and Roseobacter were found in the communities of plastics collected at all oceanic sites. Additionally, OTUs classified as Roseobacter, Pseudophaeobacter, Phaeobacter, Marinovum and Cognatiyoonia, also enriched in the LDPE-laboratory incubations, were enriched on LDPE communities compared to the ones associated to glass and polypropylene in in-situ incubations in the northern Adriatic Sea after 1 month of incubation. Some of these enriched OTUs were also related to known alkane and hydrocarbon degraders. Collectively, these results demonstrate that there are prokaryotes capable of surviving with LDPE as the sole carbon source living on plastics in relatively high abundances in different water masses of the global ocean.Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austrian Sciences Fund, University of Viena, German Federal Ministry of Education and Science (BacGeoPac project (03G0248A) and IEO (RADPROF project)Versión del editor5,84

Fabrication of hydrodynamic torque converter impellers by using the selective laser sintering method

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Involvement of ABA in flower induction of Pharbitis nil

Flowering of plants is controlled by hormones among which both stimulators and inhibitors are present. The role of abscisic acid (ABA) in flower induction of the short day plant Pharbitis nil was shown in our experiments through exogenous applications and endogenous level determination of the hormone in cotyledons of seedlings grown under special light conditions. The application of ABA to cotyledons or shoot apices during the first half of a 24-h long inductive night inhibits flowering. The same compound applied towards the end of or after a 14-h long subinductive night increases the number of flower buds produced by these plants. Exposing P. nil seedlings at the beginning of a 24-h long inductive night to far red light (FR) decreases the level of endogenous abscisic acid in cotyledons and leads to flower inhibition. However, a pulse of red light (R) reversing the inhibitory effect of far red light on the flowering of P. nil increases the ABA content. The results obtained confirm previous observations that ABA may play a dual and an important role in the regulation of floral bud formation in P. nil. The flowering occurs when the level of endogenous abscisic acid is low at the beginning and is high toward the end of the inductive night