Active Industrial Citizenship of Domestic Workers: Lessons Learned from Unionising Attempts in Israel and the United Kingdom

In this Article we offer a new conceptualization of industrial citizenship, which is sensitive to gender and migration status. Our conceptualization builds on the theoretical distinction between active and passive citizenship and the analyses of active industrial citizenship. We suggest that active industrial citizenship should be detached from the old and influential tradition of trade unionism that is connected with the public/private divide. Our proposed conceptualization leads to attaching value to activities related to ethics of care and to the pursuit of legal status, which should be seen as forms of activism. The discussion focuses on organizing domestic workers. We argue that this new conceptualization of active industrial citizenship leads to the recognition of domestic workers as active industrial citizens, rather than passive victims of abuse. It also transforms the way we view organizational forms within the labor market, making it possible to appreciate on an equal basis membership in trade unions and participation in NGOs and other civil society organizations, thereby building cooperation as well as taking part in other aspects of public life. We ground our argument on theoretical literature as well as a qualitative study and a series of interviews with key trade union and NGO actors with expertise in organizing and supporting domestic workers in Israel and the United Kingdom

The replacement histone H2A.Z in a hyperacetylated form is a feature of active genes in the chicken

The replacement histone H2A.Z is variously reported as being linked to gene expression and preventing the spread of heterochromatin in yeast, or concentrated at heterochromatin in mammals. To resolve this apparent dichotomy, affinity-purified antibodies against the N-terminal region of H2A.Z, in both a triacetylatedandnon- acetylatedstate, areusedin native chromatin immmuno-precipitation experiments with mononucleosomes from three chicken cell types. The hyperacetylated species concentrates at the 50 end of active genes, both tissue specific and housekeeping but is absent from inactive genes, while the unacetylated form is absent from both active and inactive genes. A concentration of H2A.Z is also found at insulators under circumstances implying a link to barrier activity but not to enhancer blocking. Although acetylated H2A.Z is widespread throughout the interphase genome, at mitosis its acetylation is erased, the unmodified form remaining. Thus, although H2A.Z may operate as an epigenetic marker for active genes, its N-terminal acetylation does not

The replacement histone H2A.Z in a hyperacetylated form is a feature of active genes in the chicken

The replacement histone H2A.Z is variously reported as being linked to gene expression and preventing the spread of heterochromatin in yeast, or concentrated at heterochromatin in mammals. To resolve this apparent dichotomy, affinity-purified antibodies against the N-terminal region of H2A.Z, in both a triacetylatedandnon- acetylatedstate, areusedin native chromatin immmuno-precipitation experiments with mononucleosomes from three chicken cell types. The hyperacetylated species concentrates at the 50 end of active genes, both tissue specific and housekeeping but is absent from inactive genes, while the unacetylated form is absent from both active and inactive genes. A concentration of H2A.Z is also found at insulators under circumstances implying a link to barrier activity but not to enhancer blocking. Although acetylated H2A.Z is widespread throughout the interphase genome, at mitosis its acetylation is erased, the unmodified form remaining. Thus, although H2A.Z may operate as an epigenetic marker for active genes, its N-terminal acetylation does not

Prox1 Regulates the Notch1-Mediated Inhibition of Neurogenesis

During development of the spinal cord, Prox1 controls the balance between proliferation and differentiation of neural progenitor cells via suppression of Notch1 gene expression

Modern Slavery, Unfree Labour and the Labour Market: The Social Dynamics of Legal Characterization

Treating the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act as its focus, this article examines what the legal characterization of labour unfreedom reveals about the underlying conception of the labour market that informs contemporary approaches to labour law in the United Kingdom. It discusses how unfree labour is conceptualized within two key literatures – Marxist-inspired political economy and liberal approaches to modern slavery – and their underlying assumptions of the labour market and how it operates. As an alternative to these depictions of the labour market, it proposes a legal institutionalist or constitutive account. It develops an approach to legal characterization and jurisdiction that is attentive to modes of governing and the role of political and legal differentiation both in producing labour exploitation and unfree labour and in developing strategies for its elimination. It argues that the problem with the modern slavery approach to unfree labour is that it tends to displace labour law as the principal remedy to the problem of labour abuse and exploitation, while simultaneously reinforcing the idea that flexible labour markets of the type that prevails in the United Kingdom are realms of labour freedom

Investigations on fire gilding

Fire gilding is a historic technique for the application of golden layers on a number of different base materials utilizing a gold amalgam. This technique leaves a significant amount of Hg in the golden layer, giving archeometrists a reliable indicator to identify fire gildings. Recent findings on presumably fire gilded objects have shown in several cases significantly lower Hg content than previously studied objects. This prompted a synchrotron based X ray fluorescence investigation into the Hg distribution along the material gilding interface, as well as a series of measurements regarding the Hg content development in fire gilded samples during artificial aging. This work presents findings on laboratory prepared fire gildings, indicating an Hg enrichment at the interface of fire gilded silver samples. Notably, such an enrichment is missing in fire gilded copper samples. Further, it is confirmed that fire gilded layers typically do not undercut an Hg bulk content of 5 . In this light, it seems improbable that ancient samples that contain lt;5 Hg are fire gilded. The results presented in this study might lead to a non destructive method to identify the Hg enrichment at the interface. This might be obtained by a combination of different non destructive measurements and might also work unambiguously in samples in which the gold top layer is altere

Genomic analysis reveals a novel nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-kappaB)-binding site in Alu-repetitive elements

The transcription factor NF-kappaB is a critical regulator of immune responses. To determine how NF-kappaB builds transcriptional control networks, we need to obtain a topographic map of the factor bound to the genome and correlate it with global gene expression. We used a ChIP cloning technique and identified novel NF-kappaB target genes in response to virus infection. We discovered that most of the NF-kappaB-bound genomic sites deviate from the consensus and are located away from conventional promoter regions. Remarkably, we identified a novel abundant NF-kappaB-binding site residing in specialized Alu-repetitive elements having the potential for long range transcription regulation, thus suggesting that in addition to its known role, NF-kappaB has a primate-specific function and a role in human evolution. By combining these data with global gene expression profiling of virus-infected cells, we found that most of the sites bound by NF-kappaB in the human genome do not correlate with changes in gene expression of the nearby genes and they do not appear to function in the context of synthetic promoters. These results demonstrate that repetitive elements interspersed in the human genome function as common target sites for transcription factors and may play an important role in expanding the repertoire of binding sites to engage new genes into regulatory networks