Picture Of Family Research Articles

The ligninolytic peroxidases in the genus Pleurotus: divergence in activities, expression, and potential applications.

Mushrooms of the genus Pleurotus are comprised of cultivated edible ligninolytic fungi with medicinal properties and a wide array of biotechnological and environmental applications. Like other white-rot fungi (WRF), they are able to grow on a variety of lignocellulosic biomass substrates and degrade both natural and anthropogenic aromatic compounds. This is due to the presence of the non-specific oxidative enzymatic systems, which are mainly consisted of lacasses, versatile peroxidases (VPs), and short manganese peroxidases (short-MnPs). Additional, less studied, peroxidase are dye-decolorizing peroxidases (DyPs) and heme-thiolate peroxidases (HTPs). During the past two decades, substantial information has accumulated concerning the biochemistry, structure and function of the Pleurotus ligninolytic peroxidases, which are considered to play a key role in many biodegradation processes. The production of these enzymes is dependent on growth media composition, pH, and temperature as well as the growth phase of the fungus. Mn(2+) concentration differentially affects the expression of the different genes. It also severs as a preferred substrate for these preoxidases. Recently, sequencing of the Pleurotus ostreatus genome was completed, and a comprehensive picture of the ligninolytic peroxidase gene family, consisting of three VPs and six short-MnPs, has been established. Similar enzymes were also discovered and studied in other Pleurotus species. In addition, progress has been made in the development of molecular tools for targeted gene replacement, RNAi-based gene silencing and overexpression of genes of interest. These advances increase the fundamental understanding of the ligninolytic system and provide the opportunity for harnessing the unique attributes of these WRF for applied purposes.

Similarities and dissimilarities between the EU agricultural and rural development model and Romanian agriculture. Challenges and perspectives

The main aims of this study are to highlight the differences and the similarities between the European model of agricultural and rural development, and the state of play in the Romanian agricultural sector. Statistically speaking, the agricultural sector's indicators of the past two decades place Romania outside the family picture of the EU countries, with very slight resemblances, and very strong discrepancies between their economic, technical, and institutional characteristics. At present, competition-wise, farming and farmers in Romania are still strongly disfavoured in relation to their competitors in the old EU Member States. In Romania, the economic and institutional mechanisms have most often been devised to the disadvantage of agricultural production, by claiming that subsistence farming would be the sustainable way, and by channelling the added value to other sectors. An option to continue the agricultural policies of the past decades and to abandon the national support lent to agriculture would be particularly risky through its unpredictable and incalculable social and economic effects.

Practices for Parent Participation in Early Intervention/ Early Childhood Special Education

The authors examined the extent to which practices for parent participation in early intervention/ early childhood special education (EI/ECSE) programs. The role of parents in the EI/ECSE is important and supported through the literature. The changing traditional family picture in the classrooms, the importance of evolving laws and regulations and recommended practices regarding parent participation are highlighted. The conceptual framework is based on the children, parents, and practitioners’ outcomes. Strategies to promote family involveme nt provided a direct way to understand how early childhood education programs influence family participation. Practices to promote family participation are discussed. Key Words: parent participation, early intervention, early childhood special education, strategies.

Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan New England. By M. Michelle Jarrett Morris. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. xiv + 326 pp. $49.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan New England . By M. Michelle Jarrett Morris . Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 2013. xiv + 326 pp. $49.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesWhen Edmund S. Morgan published The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England in 1944, he probably did not realize what he was starting. By the 1980s, scholars in fields as diverse as historical demography, African-American history, and women's history had joined colonialists in establishing early American family history as a burgeoning area of study. M. Michelle Jarrett Morris's Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts is simply the most recent of numerous interpretations. It also ranks among the liveliest and most persuasive.If Morris focuses more than Morgan on sex and sexual sins, she is quick to acknowledge that her conclusions echo his in several respects. She too finds that the still-lingering popular view of the Puritans as killjoys, ever vigilant to ensure that no one partakes of earthly pleasures, hardly fits the picture that emerged from her research. She agrees as well that Puritan households were profoundly hierarchical but that familial relationships were characterized more by affection and concern than stern discipline. Most notably, like Morgan, she argues that her subjects were an intensely 'tribal' lot (3), fiercely loyal to their families, sometimes to the detriment of their communal mission.Under Household Government comes fully into its own as Morris tells the stories of those residents of Middlesex and Suffolk counties who came before the courts between 1660 and 1700 on charges of sexual misbehavior, rape, or infanticide--or as witnesses for or against the accused. Strikingly, she discovers that rather than prying neighbors, most court witnesses were friends and kin who could be counted on to close ranks in the face of perceived threats to a family's reputation or economic well-being. What is more, at least some of these families went beyond loyalty and protection to influence the courts unduly by means of perjury, slander, false alibis, and jury tampering. Visualizing these cases, as well as divorce petitions, as windows into the everyday dynamics of household and community life, Morris adds considerable complexity to our picture of Puritan morality and family values.Although the metaphor of the family as a little commonwealth has been analyzed before, Under Household Government speaks vividly to the relationship between the authority of fathers and masters and governmental authority. The former, Morris demonstrates, sometimes undermined the latter. In their determination to protect their own families' reputations and estates, some fathers and masters in Massachusetts failed as household heads to live up to their obligations to church and state, in particular the reform of young sinners and the stability of households. Clashes are apparent in cases where fathers (with the support of kin) subverted the truth in defending offspring charged with fornication or rape. …

Retratos de familia:estereotipo y extimidad

The family picture faces various phenomena. As owner of a tradition linked to the desire for self-representation and recognition within society, it is also the best example of an image created from a system of stereotyped representation. But what lies behind this stereotype? It is in the picture where extimity —that which is intimate, deep, but remains outside (Miller, 2010)— becomes visible. If the photograph captures appearances, the idea of extimity would give us hope of finding something deep and essential behind the surface of the photographic capture. The picture reveals what the subjects hide, as a sort of betrayal coming from trust; it requires from the observer something more than contemplation, it requires attention; ultimately, it demands time to reveal its secrets, hidden in plain sight.

What explains violated expectations of parent–child relationship in transition to parenthood?

Parent-child relationship is created already in prenatal fantasies and expectations of the child-to-be. Negative violation of these expectations after the child is born is known to be harmful for the parent-child relationship. Yet, research is scarce about the medical and psychological factors contributing to violated expectations (VE). This study models the role of parent-, delivery- and infant-related underlying mechanisms for VE. It further compares parents with assisted reproductive treatment (ART) and spontaneous conception (SC), and primi- and multiparous couples. The couples (n = 743) separately filled in questionnaires concerning their prenatal expectations (T1) and 2 months postnatal representations (T2) of intimacy and autonomy in the relationship with their child, measured with Subjective Family Picture Test. A negative or positive discrepancy indicated violated expectations. The parent-related (mental health and marital quality), delivery-related (maternal and paternal birth experience, unplanned Caesarean, and amount of analgesia) and infant-related (infant health problems, difficult infant characteristics, and parental worry) factors were assessed at T2. Results show that among mothers, the associations were mostly indirect and mediated via mental health problems. Among fathers, the associations were direct, marital problems most crucially predicting VE. ART fathers were less susceptible to VE resulting from infant-related problems than SC fathers, but more susceptible to VE resulting from delivery problems. Delivery- and infant-related factors also predicted VE differently among primi- and multiparous mothers. Considering factors that contribute to VE is important when working with couples in transition to parenthood.

Hypercalcaemia: a mixed family picture

Hypercalcaemia: a mixed family picture

Research about Family Perceptions via Pictures of Children from Problematic Families or having Divorced Parents

Abstract Children's pictures are very important materials because the pictures can allow us to understand the children better, whether they hide their feelings or hesitate to express their ideas. Pictures show where they see themselves in the environment and determine clearly the children's perception level of their environment and interests. When looking at the children's drawings, it can be seen that they express the children's inner attitudes towards the outside world with the symbols and the shared language, which allow us to understand their drawings on a subconscious level. Besides observing the symbols used in children's drawings, to get the better result, the method must be supported by written and oral expressions. Because of this reason, the aim is to determine the family perceptions and attitudes of the children, from primary school age, via pictures. The sample was composed of 105 students, ages 9-12, at a primary school in Erzurum. In the study, “analysis of the symbols used in the picture of family”, “the underlined expressions about families of children”, and “the children's observations in addition to the other people's observations” were used as the data collection tool. The data were analysed using the descriptions. Significant differences were found between the children who have a problem family and the others, in the respect of the symbols used in the pictures. The findings were discussed in the perspective of the importance of the family.

Comparative genomic analysis of the R2R3 MYB secondary cell wall regulators of Arabidopsis, poplar, rice, maize, and switchgrass

BackgroundR2R3 MYB proteins constitute one of the largest plant transcription factor clades and regulate diverse plant-specific processes. Several R2R3 MYB proteins act as regulators of secondary cell wall (SCW) biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana (At), a dicotyledenous plant. Relatively few studies have examined SCW R2R3 MYB function in grasses, which may have diverged from dicots in terms of SCW regulatory mechanisms, as they have in cell wall composition and patterning. Understanding cell wall regulation is especially important for improving lignocellulosic bioenergy crops, such as switchgrass.ResultsHere, we describe the results of applying phylogenic, OrthoMCL, and sequence identity analyses to classify the R2R3 MYB family proteins from the annotated proteomes of Arabidposis, poplar, rice, maize and the initial genome (v0.0) and translated transcriptome of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). We find that the R2R3 MYB proteins of the five species fall into 48 subgroups, including three dicot-specific, six grass-specific, and two panicoid grass-expanded subgroups. We observe four classes of phylogenetic relationships within the subgroups of known SCW-regulating MYB proteins between Arabidopsis and rice, ranging from likely one-to-one orthology (for AtMYB26, AtMYB103, AtMYB69) to no homologs identifiable (for AtMYB75). Microarray data for putative switchgrass SCW MYBs indicate that many maintain similar expression patterns with the Arabidopsis SCW regulators. However, some of the switchgrass-expanded candidate SCW MYBs exhibit differences in gene expression patterns among paralogs, consistent with subfunctionalization. Furthermore, some switchgrass representatives of grass-expanded clades have gene expression patterns consistent with regulating SCW development.ConclusionsOur analysis suggests that no single comparative genomics tool is able to provide a complete picture of the R2R3 MYB protein family without leaving ambiguities, and establishing likely false-negative and -positive relationships, but that used together a relatively clear view emerges. Generally, we find that most R2R3 MYBs that regulate SCW in Arabidopsis are likely conserved in the grasses. This comparative analysis of the R2R3 MYB family will facilitate transfer of understanding of regulatory mechanisms among species and enable control of SCW biosynthesis in switchgrass toward improving its biomass quality.

Genome-wide identification and analysis of membrane-bound O-acyltransferase (MBOAT) gene family in plants

Membrane bound O-acyl transferase (MBOAT) family is composed of gene members encoding a variety of acyltransferase enzymes, which play important roles in plant acyl lipid metabolism. Here, we present the first genome-enabled identification and analysis of MBOAT gene models in plants. In total, we identified 136 plant MBOAT sequences from 14 plant species with complete genomes. Phylogenetic relationship analyses suggested the plant MBOAT gene models fell into four major groups, two of which likely encode enzymes of diacylglycerol acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1) and lysophospholipid acyltransferase (LPLAT), respectively, with one-three copies of paralogs present in each of the most plant species. A group of gene sequences, which are homologous to Saccharomyces cerevisiae glycerol uptake proteins (GUP), was identified in plants; copy numbers were conserved, with only one copy represented in each of the most plant species; analyses showed that residues essential for acyltransferases were more prone to be conserved than vertebrate orthologs. Among four groups, one was inferred to emerge in land plants and experience a rapid expansion in genomes of angiosperms, which suggested their important roles in adaptation of plants in lands. Sequence and phylogeny analyses indicated that genes in all four groups encode enzymes with acyltransferases. Comprehensive sequence identification of MBOAT family members and investigation into classification provide a complete picture of the MBOAT gene family in plants, and could shed light into enzymatic functions of different MBOAT genes in plants.

Father and I

Father (K. C. Yang (楊克純), 1896–1973) was a high school teacher in Anqing (安慶) in 1922 when I was born in Hefei (合肥). Anqing was then also called Huaining (懷寧). Father gave me the name Chen Ning, of which Chen was the name of my generation in our family, and Ning was derived from Huaining. Before I was one year old Father won an Anhui (安徽) Provincial Fellowship for studying in the USA. We had a family picture (Fig. 1) taken in the courtyard outside our bedroom a few days before he left home. Father had on the traditional robe and coat, standing stiff and erect. He had probably up to that point never worn a western suit. Two years later he sent a picture (Fig. 2) to Mother from the University of Chicago, in which his attire and bearing had both entered the twentieth century. Father was a handsome man. The exuberance and optimism of his youth were clearly captured in this photograph.

Why do we need male contraceptives?

A recent article published in Bloomberg Businessweek1 has painted a grim picture of family planning practices in India by coercing women into sterilization. In the village of Sonhoula, 33 women, many of them poor, were forced into sterilization because each woman received either $10 or a modest increase in welfare benefits from local officials. These women accepted the offer out of desperation without receiving counseling on alternative birth control methods (Fig. 1). What is more striking is that the $10 accepted by these women is equivalent to 1 wk wages for a poor family, sufficient to feed at least three children. In the clinic, a medical assistant pricked each woman’s finger to test for anemia using the same needle. A surgeon then cut and tied each woman’s fallopian tubes with a rusted scalpel on a makeshift operating table (elevated from the floor with bricks and covered with a blood-stained sheet) in a 3 min operation. The scalpel was then washed with warm water and re-used for another patient. Women were then laid shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor in a separate room for recovery, with nurses walking around and offering painkillers. When the anesthetic ran out, the surgeon substituted a weaker drug, but since these women were not completely unconscious during the procedure, this medical practice is dangerous.

Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas by Karen Dubinsky, and: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972 by Karen A. Balcom (review)

Reviewed by: Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas by Karen Dubinsky, and: The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972 by Karen A. Balcom Alice Hearst Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas. By Karen Dubinsky. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 204 pp. $20.00 paper. The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between the United States and Canada 1930–1972.By Karen A. Balcom. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 448 pp. $35.00 paper. In recent years, scholars have looked not only at how “family” is redefined by child adoption, but at how the practice shapes and is shaped by public concerns extending beyond the domestic sphere. Two new books examine how the movement of children within and across national borders has become a project in state building itself. In Babies without Borders, Karen Dubinsky argues that concerns about the transfer of children reveal deeply rooted anxieties about nationhood. As she notes, debates about adoption tend to be framed in terms of either kidnap or rescue. Dubinsky, however, demonstrates the limits of that framing: “Kidnap and rescue speak to certain truths but they are incomplete, partial and abstract. . . The intense emotional attachments between and adults and children in our world are too complicated to fit into simple binaries . . . Ultimately, the . . . problem [with these narratives] is that they . . . simply bear too heavy a cultural burden” (pp. 20–21). The first of the three contexts in which she explores this “cultural burdening” is Cuba. On the heels of the Cuban revolution, many Cubans believed rumors that the revolutionary government planned to “nationalize” children—rumors fueled largely by stories broadcast on CIA-funded Radio Swan. Scores of parents sent their children to the United States in the early years of Castro’s reign—via Operation Peter Pan—hoping to “save” them from a communist [End Page 185] future. Starkly opposing narratives emerged on either side of the Straits of Florida: what Cubans saw as wholesale kidnapping, Americans saw as a noble sacrifice by parents protecting their children. Dubinsky then places that story in dialogue with the drama of Elian Gonzalez, whose return to his Cuban father after his mother drowned while crossing from Havana to Miami drew international attention in 2000. The public debate around Elian echoed the dispute over Operation Peter Pan: while Elian’s father was clearly entitled to custody of his son, in Cuba, the story was cast as imperialist kidnap, while sixty miles away, Cuban Americans decried “abandoning” Elian to Castro’s evil clutches. In both cases, the stories were far more complex than those suggested by the kidnap/ rescue narratives that emerged, as these “national” children became symbolic of the countries themselves. Dubinsky then examines the limits of rescue/kidnap discourses in transracial (or “hybrid”) adoption disputes, comparing the adoptions of black and biracial children in Montreal to those of Aboriginal and Metis children in western Canada. In the late 1950s, Montreal’s Open Door Society championed transracial adoption; “the ‘we adopted a Negro’ narrative,” according to Dubinsky, “became a quintessential feel-good story of the times,” not incidentally allowing Canada to position itself as a land of “racial tolerance and liberalism” by comparison to the United States (pp. 66–67). Adopting parents saw themselves as rescuing children, but ambiguity infused the practice: biracial rather than black children were favored for adoption, and black communities in Canada were ambivalent about the project. Moreover, the project supported—indeed, redeemed—the white women who surrendered infants while largely ignoring the needs of black women. Aboriginal children on the other hand, experienced “the ragged edges of adoption” (p. 88). First Nations people saw the disappearance of children as part of an ongoing project in annihilation, while adopters framed their actions as a rescue project freighted with risk: “Individual horror stories, of Native kids ‘gone wrong,’ abused, addicted and ‘acting out’ circulat[ed] widely,” leading to dismal adoption failures (p. 79). As Dubinsky explains, however, narratives of “cultural genocide or humanitarian rescue” blot out a more complicated picture of both needy children and families and ill-prepared adoptive families (p...

Developmental and Environmental Regulation of Aquaporin Gene Expression across Populus Species: Divergence or Redundancy?

Aquaporins (AQPs) are membrane channels belonging to the major intrinsic proteins family and are known for their ability to facilitate water movement. While in Populus trichocarpa, AQP proteins form a large family encompassing fifty-five genes, most of the experimental work focused on a few genes or subfamilies. The current work was undertaken to develop a comprehensive picture of the whole AQP gene family in Populus species by delineating gene expression domain and distinguishing responsiveness to developmental and environmental cues. Since duplication events amplified the poplar AQP family, we addressed the question of expression redundancy between gene duplicates. On these purposes, we carried a meta-analysis of all publicly available Affymetrix experiments. Our in-silico strategy controlled for previously identified biases in cross-species transcriptomics, a necessary step for any comparative transcriptomics based on multispecies design chips. Three poplar AQPs were not supported by any expression data, even in a large collection of situations (abiotic and biotic constraints, temporal oscillations and mutants). The expression of 11 AQPs was never or poorly regulated whatever the wideness of their expression domain and their expression level. Our work highlighted that PtTIP1;4 was the most responsive gene of the AQP family. A high functional divergence between gene duplicates was detected across species and in response to tested cues, except for the root-expressed PtTIP2;3/PtTIP2;4 pair exhibiting 80% convergent responses. Our meta-analysis assessed key features of aquaporin expression which had remained hidden in single experiments, such as expression wideness, response specificity and genotype and environment interactions. By consolidating expression profiles using independent experimental series, we showed that the large expansion of AQP family in poplar was accompanied with a strong divergence of gene expression, even if some cases of functional redundancy could be suspected.

ART in the Genetics Classroom

The first time I saw Julie Delpy perform was around 1992 in the movie Voyager . In the film, Delpy played a young and enchanting woman, Sabeth, who fell in love on a cruise with the middle-aged, science-minded civil engineer Mr. Faber, played by Sam Shepard. Faber later proposed to Sabeth and traveled with her to meet her mother, Hannah. He realized he could not marry Sabeth because he and she were biologically related. In the end, Sabeth died, leaving Hannah and Faber with saddened hearts. The film was shot wonderfully; Delpy’s astonishing beauty and fantastic performance captured my full attention. But I was disheartened by how a lack of communication within a relationship could result in personal tragedy. The plot of Voyager took place in the late 1950s; back then, there was no in vitro fertilization or sperm banks. Faber and Sabeth were biologically related because Hannah and Faber had once been lovers but had parted 21 years earlier, when she conceived his child. …

My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece (review)

Reviewed by: My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Deborah Stevenson Pitcher, Annabel . My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece. Little, 2012. 211p. ISBN 978-0-316-17690-3 $17.99 Ad Gr. 5-7. It's been five years since Jamie's older sister, Rose, was killed in a London terrorist attack, and Rose's loss has been the center of the family ever since. After Jamie's mother leaves the family, Jamie, his father, and Jasmine—Rose's surviving twin—move north (their newly xenophobic father is intent on "getting away from the Muslims"); there ten-year-old Jamie wishes fervently that his father would stop drinking and that his incommunicado mother would at least reach out to her son. He does manage [End Page 109] to make a good friend, though: his sparky, imaginative classmate, Sunya, who's as much as an outsider as he is—and who is a devout Muslim. Pitcher draws a vivid picture of Jamie's family, where Rose is more important than anyone actually alive (Jamie's mother even makes him redo a school essay so that it's about Rose) and the surviving children struggle to be noticed. Sunya is a magnetic character, well supplied with the kind of nerve that Jamie lacks, and there are hints that this is a relationship that may actually lead toward early romance. The book complicates the story's resolution with several layers of contrivance, though, between the death of Jamie's beloved cat, Jamie and Jasmine's participation in a television talent show, his parents' sudden turnaround, and the kids' quick forgiveness for their years of abandonment, betraying the emotional honesty of the beginning. Readers willing to overlook that reductive conclusion will find Jamie's predicament moving, however, and they'll support his friendship with Sunya as he tries to find his own way. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Evolution of the Cdk-activator Speedy/RINGO in vertebrates.

Successful completion of the cell cycle relies on the precise activation and inactivation of cyclin-dependent kinases (Cdks) whose activity is mainly regulated by binding to cyclins. Recently, a new family of Cdk regulators termed Speedy/RINGO has been discovered, which can bind and activate Cdks but shares no apparent amino acid sequence homology with cyclins. All Speedy proteins share a conserved domain of approximately 140 amino acids called "Speedy Box", which is essential for Cdk binding. Speedy/RINGO proteins display an important role in oocyte maturation in Xenopus. Interestingly, a common feature of all Speedy genes is their predominant expression in testis suggesting that meiotic functions may be the most important physiological feature of Speedy genes. Speedy homologs have been reported in mammals and can be traced back to the most primitive clade of chordates (Ciona intestinalis). Here, we investigated the evolution of the Speedy genes and have identified a number of new Speedy/RINGO proteins. Through extensive analysis of numerous species, we discovered diverse evolutionary histories: the number of Speedy genes varies considerably among species, with evidence of substantial gains and losses. Despite the interspecies variation, Speedy is conserved among most species examined. Our results provide a complete picture of the Speedy gene family and its evolution.

The End of Domesticity: Alienation from the Family in Dickens, Eliot, and James (review)

Reviewed by: The End of Domesticity: Alienation from the Family in Dickens, Eliot, and James Susan Honeyman Charles Hatten. The End of Domesticity: Alienation from the Family in Dickens, Eliot, and James. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2010. 316 pp. $67.50 (hardcover). Charles Hatten's The End of Domesticity: Alienation from the Family in Dickens, Eliot, and James will be a welcome contribution for readers interested in the development of and modern retreat from domestic narratives. In it Hatten explores a genealogy of emergent modernism within Victorian literature … examining one of modernism's defining themes as the problematic relation between the sexes caused by gender roles, a theme often expressed through the rejection of domestic idealization as a literary mode and its replacement by the representation of the family as a matrix of individual alienation. (257) In the attempt to trace this genealogy in domestic narratives, illustrating the genre and movements involved, this book will satisfy readers—Hatten provides an insightful reading of well-chosen texts to indicate the extent to which an increasing alienation from the family (as traditionally defined) resulted with the individualism and identity-commodification of industrialization. The argument suffers, however, from a lack of engaging recent gender theory, especially in the development of the equally important premise that alienation resulted from changing gender roles. Through his first two chapters, Hatten argues that, in order to establish himself as a mainstream author within an industrializing society, and yet to distance himself from women readers associated with the genre, Charles Dickens developed and popularized a revised familial ideology and technique that allowed for social [End Page 97] criticism to be deflected into a seemingly private (domestic) sphere. In an analysis of Dombey and Sons and Barnaby Rudge, with occasional asides on The Christmas Carol (which this reader greatly appreciated as especially resonant evidence), Hatten shows a process whereby, As Dickens's desire for high literary status comes in tension with the critical disesteem that female-centered sentimental novels fell into, and as he became aware of the limitations of domesticity as a realistic picture of families and as a tool for critiquing bourgeois society, his novels become increasingly conflicted in their affirmations of happy familial closures and ever more distanced from an idealized view of domesticity. (85) In chapter 3, which I enjoyed as one of the more interesting interpretations offered in the book, Hatten describes how Eliot, reacting particularly against Dickens, but ultimately against the rigidities of the domestic mode generally, writes in The Mill on the Floss (1860) British fiction's first great novel that radically subverts orthodox and gender ideology in a fully developed realist mode. This novel subtly questions the oversimplification and caricatures of the entire domestic genre. (35) Though I disagree with Hatten's choice in applying "radical" to Eliot, he provides a clear close reading to demonstrate his view. The next chapter provides analysis of Daniel Deronda in a closer investigation of marital alienation as well as individual isolation from community, demonstrating "the problem of the power of the marketplace to coerce and dehumanize individuals and social relationships" (36). These previous chapters set up a concrete critical context for reading Henry James, especially The Wings of the Dove, in chapter 5, highlighting the particularly antifamilial, antifeminist agenda James used in his modernization of domestic realism. Here I found interesting but somewhat problematic Hatten's return to the theme of "symbolic prostitution," which had initially been discussed with Dickens: "The image of the prostitute was thus available in the culture to express increasing fin de siècle anxieties about the reifications that were salient in a modern industrial society and the profound tensions everywhere visible over class and gender inequalities" (238). It is worth remarking that this trivializing use of prostitution as metaphor (especially for such aesthetic commodity-relations as a writer's to the public/market) is taken up by the two antifeminists of the writers that Hatten has chosen to cover—reflecting their own financial, if not gendered, privilege to make such a concrete degradation abstract. Perhaps Hatten identifies too closely with these authors when he later uses the term "spiritual prostitution" (256), although he does eventually qualify that "neither...

Disturbing Fine Memories? An empirical study of young people's camphone family pictures

Being one of the most ritualised and coded images we have, the family photo has maintained its status and privilege as the visual, self-acclaimed collective family heirloom throughout the decades. In spite of the fact that new family forms have challenged the conventional nuclear family structure and function, the family picture has predominantly remained the same: smiling children, parents, uncles and aunts at unmistakably happy moments. Today, all Norwegian teenagers have their own camera telephone, which facilitates a multiplicity of ways that family narratives can be maintained, expanded and perpetuated. Parents are no longer the sole editors and custodians of the family's visual memories. As young people demand a place as historiographers and intervene in the mediation of family memories and ideologies, the practice of the presentation of the family, its social function and significance are undergoing changes. Based on analysis of in-depth interviews with twenty-three Norwegian teenagers and a sample of their camphone family pictures, this article examines how camphone family pictures make possible new articulations of the family, articulations that perhaps are more in accordance with the changes that already are underway in the functions of families. In terms of these phenomena the article discusses how new technologies of the self affect conventions and understandings of the family and how “new” and plural family pictures, filed in each individual's private digital archives, affect the coming family narratives.

Zn- and Cu-thioneins: a functional classification for metallothioneins?

This report intends to provide the reader with a deeper insight in the chemical, and extensively biological, characteristics of the metallothionein (MT) system. We have devoted nearly 20years to the study of MTs and this has allowed us to form what we believe is a more complete picture of this peculiar family of metalloproteins. At the beginning of the 1990s, the landscape of this field was quite different from the overall picture we have now. Many researchers have contributed to the readjustment of this part of scientific knowledge. In our case, we implemented a unified method for obtaining MTs, for characterizing their metal-binding features, and for applying a unified research rationale. All this has helped to enlarge the initial picture that was mainly dominated by mammalian MT1/MT2 and yeast Cup1, by introducing approximately 20 new MTs. It has also allowed some characteristics to be clarified and examined in more detail, such as the cooperativity or the coexistence of multiple species in the metal-substitution reactions, the availability of Ag(I) or Cd(II) for use as respective probes for the Cu(I) and Zn(II) binding sites, the participation of chloride or sulfide ligands in the metal coordination spheres, and the feasibility of using in vitro data as representative of in vivo scenarios. Overall, the results yield enough data to consider new criteria for a proposal of classification of MTs based on MT metal-binding features, which complements the previous classifications, and that can shed light on the still controversial physiological functions of this peculiar superfamily of metalloproteins.