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This experiment was carried out to provide a comprehensive insight into the protein activities involved in dormancy establishment in seeds of common cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium), an annual plant with two dimorphic seeds contained in one casing known as a burr. These consist of a smaller dormant seed and a larger non‐dormant seed. The proteome profile was compared between developing dormant and non‐dormant seeds of Xanthium strumarium at five consecutive stages including three, 10, 20, 30, and 45 days after burr emergence (stages 1 to 5). We identified 6524 proteins in total, and approximately 3.6% of these were differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) between the two seed types. Both seed types showed fundamental changes in developmental programs during the examined stages. More than 38% of all DAPs were observed at the first stage, supporting the importance of the early developmental stage in seed fate determination. The detected DAPs at stage 1 were mainly associated with the cell division phase, which showed a delay in the dormant seeds. Over‐representation of proteins responsible for cell wall biosynthesis, cytokinesis, and seed development were detected for non‐dormant seeds at the first stage, while dormancy‐associated proteins showed less abundance. Stage 3 was the critical stage for switching processes toward seed maturation and abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. Interestingly, higher abundance proteins in the mature non‐dormant seed were mainly involved in the facilitation of seed germination. Taken together, the temporal pattern of the accumulated proteins in developing dormant seeds demonstrated a delay in the initiation of active cell division, enriched response to ABA, and defects in seed maturation. Moreover, stored proteins in the mature dormant seed delay germination but not dormancy induction. Finally, our results suggest that dormancy may be established at a stage of seed development earlier than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Georg Simmel depicts money as an evolving entity that will continue to evolve to a state of 'perfect money' disconnected from any external guarantor of value. This article examines some of the different approaches to substantial value underpinning money, suggesting that they represent different types of fictional underwriting. Money is then contrasted with cryptocurrency, suggesting that their respective value is not only derived from different fictions but from different standards of value as major and minor currency. This analysis suggests that far from evolving into a fully abstract and functional instrument for creating stable social relationships, the divergence in currencies and currency fictions is a force for overturning such 'expedient' stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents the findings of a pedagogical case study examining a framework for developing innovative theory in postgraduate marketing education. The article describes a theory-building framework introduced to a postgraduate marketing course in order to enable students to examine, collaboratively and critically, a number of apparent paradoxes within contemporary commercial promotion and consumer behaviour. The article examines the pedagogical context for the framework, invoking the recently published account of Mark Fisher's 'exit' pedagogy. The article focuses on the example of a case study of student-led theory development, tracing a series of stages to examine and explain promotional practices. Features such as critical reasoning, deliberation, synthesis and consensus building are exhibited through the stages of theory building. The approach ultimately contributes to developing an innovative approach to teaching theory through a framework that empowers theory development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Next-generation sequencing demands high-quality nucleic acid, yet isolating DNA and RNA is often challenging, particularly from plant tissues. Despite advances in developing various kits and reagents, these products are tailored to isolation of nucleic acid from model plant tissues. Here we introduce a universal lysis buffer to separate nucleic acid from various plant species, including recalcitrant plants, to facilitate molecular analyses, such as quantitative PCR (qPCR), transcriptomics, and whole-genome sequencing (WGS). The protocol is a modification of the original CTAB methods, which leads to nucleic acid isolation from many plant species, including monocots and eudicots. The lysis buffer consists of hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), sodium chloride (NaCl), Tris base, ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and β-mercaptoethanol (βME). The modified CTAB method enables the isolation of nucleic acid from small amounts of plant tissues (e.g., 15–100 mg) in a timely manner, which is well-suited for a large number of samples and also when adequate sample collection is a limiting factor. The protocol isolates not only DNA from various plant species but also RNA. This makes it highly effective for molecular analyses compared to previously described CTAB methods optimised for DNA isolation. The appropriate concentration of the components enables high-quality DNA and RNA isolation from plant tissues simultaneously. Additionally, this protocol is compatible with commercially available columns. For DNA and RNA to be qualified for next-generation sequencing platforms, the protocol is supplemented with columns to purify either DNA or RNA from the same tissue to meet high standards for sequencing analyses. This protocol provides an ideal approach to overcome potential obstacles in isolating high-quality DNA or RNA from a wide range of plant species for downstream molecular analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the UKIP Breaking Point advertisement, which appeared prominently during the Brexit referendum campaign and used a documentary photograph of Syrian refugees, implying that they were migrating to Britain. We chart the assemblage through which the transformation of the image occurred: starting as Jeffrey Mitchell's documentary photograph, charting news of the journey of a group of refugees, but becoming appropriated as an advertising image and ultimately an expression of political notoriety. The controversy generated by the advertisement serves as an example of advertising's meaning becoming a source of unpredictable contestation as different interests clash to define the image's 'real' meaning. Rather than take advertising as a managed process, with meaning directly encoded and carefully crafted by producers, a cultural politics of advertising perceives advertisements as comprised of raw material whose meanings are ambiguous, negotiable and politically charged. Through this lens, advertising images are contextualized by a process of production and consumption, partly shaped by the producers of the advertisement, but also largely mediated by responses of the wider public, creative fields from where the original image was produced, and by unforeseen factors, such as when texts become overtaken by events and appropriated by intermediaries. Breaking Point, in other words, presents a perfect example to illustrate that advertising is not merely a passive channel that represents but is instead an assemblage able to shape engagement and (coercively) infer meanings and draw distorted patterns from different social worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]