Bacteria serve up a tasty solution to the global plastic problem

Rattling around on a cold, damp Edinburgh street, a plastic water bottle is a stark reminder of one of the greatest environmental crises facing our planet. In little under 100 years a growing tsunami of plastic waste has contaminated not just our streets but nearly every corner of the natural world – from Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. But this plastic bottle provided the inspiration that could yet turn the tide. Diverted from landfill to the laboratory the bottle soon grabbed the attention of the world’s media by undergoing a remarkable transformation from plastic into vanillin – the main component of vanilla and one of the most in-demand spices in the world. This seemingly impossible act of alchemy was made possible by harnessing the metabolic power of bacteria. Its success has enormous implications. Not only could it meet our insatiable appetite for this rare flavouring, but it could radically change the way we tackle another addiction – the endless stream of single-use and disposable plastics that have become part of everyday life. Yet this only scratches the surface of the potential of this approach. By coaxing microbes to behave as eco-friendly factories that produce useful materials, we could tackle many other global challenges.

The Livre d'Airs et de Simphonies Meslés de Quelques Fragmens d’Opéra 1697 of Pierre Gillier: An Edition and Study

<p>The Livre d’Airs et de Simphonies meslés de quelques fragmens d’Opéra de la Composition de P. Gillier (Book of Airs and Instrumental Pieces mixed with some operatic fragments composed by Pierre Gillier) was published in Paris in 1697. Its contents are dedicated to the twenty-three year-old Philippe duc de Chartres (son of Philippe I duc d’Orléans, only brother of Louis XIV). Of the life of Pierre Gillier (1665- died after 1713), we know only that he possessed an haute-contre voice, and was employed as a chamber musician in the households of Philippe I duc d’Orléans and of his son, Philippe II. The Parisian courts of the Dauphin, and of Philippe I supported the secular arts that Louis XIV (self-exiled at Versailles), had rejected. There was an insatiable appetite for amateur music making in late seventeenthcentury France, notably in the broader societal context of airs: the salons. Composers generally wrote individual airs (of the serious and drinking types), complete operas, or theatre works. In such a context, Gillier’s publication is unique: his declared aim was to assemble a collection of serious songs linked together tonally in suites with instrumental pieces by means of their keys, for chamber music performance. As a precursor to the arrival in France of the multi-movement sonata and cantata, Gillier’s grouping together of instrumental and vocal movements to make larger musical entities has exceptional interest. His procedure has close links with theatrical practice. The thesis includes a critical edition of Gillier's complete collection made from the copy preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France as F-Pn/ Rés. Vm7 305. The edition is prefaced by a study of performance practices in vocal and instrumental music in late seventeenth-century France.</p>

The Livre d'Airs et de Simphonies Meslés de Quelques Fragmens d’Opéra 1697 of Pierre Gillier: An Edition and Study

<p>The Livre d’Airs et de Simphonies meslés de quelques fragmens d’Opéra de la Composition de P. Gillier (Book of Airs and Instrumental Pieces mixed with some operatic fragments composed by Pierre Gillier) was published in Paris in 1697. Its contents are dedicated to the twenty-three year-old Philippe duc de Chartres (son of Philippe I duc d’Orléans, only brother of Louis XIV). Of the life of Pierre Gillier (1665- died after 1713), we know only that he possessed an haute-contre voice, and was employed as a chamber musician in the households of Philippe I duc d’Orléans and of his son, Philippe II. The Parisian courts of the Dauphin, and of Philippe I supported the secular arts that Louis XIV (self-exiled at Versailles), had rejected. There was an insatiable appetite for amateur music making in late seventeenthcentury France, notably in the broader societal context of airs: the salons. Composers generally wrote individual airs (of the serious and drinking types), complete operas, or theatre works. In such a context, Gillier’s publication is unique: his declared aim was to assemble a collection of serious songs linked together tonally in suites with instrumental pieces by means of their keys, for chamber music performance. As a precursor to the arrival in France of the multi-movement sonata and cantata, Gillier’s grouping together of instrumental and vocal movements to make larger musical entities has exceptional interest. His procedure has close links with theatrical practice. The thesis includes a critical edition of Gillier's complete collection made from the copy preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France as F-Pn/ Rés. Vm7 305. The edition is prefaced by a study of performance practices in vocal and instrumental music in late seventeenth-century France.</p>

A Different Story in the Anthropocene: Brazil’s Post-Colonial Quest for Oil (1930–1975)*

This article aims to identify new historical causes for the making of the Anthropocene (the rise of humans to a geological force) by addressing Brazil’s transformation into an oil producer and an oil-dependent country between 1930 and 1975. This example allows an escape from the essentialist explanation of the Anthropocene as the result of humans’ insatiable appetite for consumption, commonly rooted in an analysis of Western industrial society, and to focus instead on the notion of freedom in a former colony. Indeed, in the context of nation-building and modernization debates, petroleum appeared to many Brazilians as an opportunity to emancipate the country from its peripheral role as global raw material provider. The rise of petroleum gave a post-colonial sense to the nation-founding myth of Brazil’s exceptional nature, which served as romantic background for a movement towards resource sovereignty embedded into a global anti-imperialist context. In Brazil specifically, oil production became an opportunity for a process of ecological transformation that promised to rid the country of colonial landscapes of exploitation, and even appeared as a solution for stopping the unsustainable destruction of tropical forests. Ultimately, these petro-ideals of emancipation, by positively linking nature and the nation, also hindered fully detecting the scope of the pollution problems that oil was generating. As argued in the article’s conclusion, this example should rekindle the discussion about the unintended link between freedom and geological change in the analysis of Anthropocene causalities.

Introducing Life to “the Young, the Ignorant, and the Idle”: Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe as Popular Novelists

The remarkable commercial success of the novels of Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood in the first few decades of the eighteenth century testifies to a series of cultural phenomena that merit close critical attention. For instance, setting the overwhelming popularity of both writers during their lifetimes in contrast with the scant—though steadily growing—critical recognition accorded to Haywood in our time provides a succinct and vivid illustration of the vagaries of the literary canon. As can be guessed, the snakes and ladders in Defoe and Haywood’s game of fame had mostly to do with their gender, as well as with the genre of their most celebrated productions. Ironically, however, for good or evil, their contemporaries tended to put both writers together in the same basket. While professional critics belittled their talents in public—and perhaps envied them in private—the reading public seemed to have an insatiable appetite for their fictions. In short, Haywood and Defoe were fully-fledged popular novelists, with all the positive and negative connotations attached to this label. A key to gauging their place in the history of the novel lies, then, in the type of readers for whom they vied. This article reviews some of the correspondences between Haywood and Defoe—emphasizing their equality in terms of cultural relevance in their own time—with a view to complicate conventional assessments of Defoe as a star novelist and Haywood as a minor writer of amatory fiction, and to encourage reflection about literary practices then and now.

Christianity as the Sixth Aspirational ‘C’

Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world, whose citizens have an insatiable appetite for economic mobility. Many Singaporeans have become highly attracted to emerging Christian groups which marry basic Christian beliefs, such as the worship of Christ, with wealth accumulation. Known as megachurches, these groups preach a liturgy known as ‘prosperity gospel’ which equates wealth with worship. Though digital ethnography and content analysis of webpages and social media platforms, this chapter investigates two prominent megachurches in Singapore and their founding pastors: New Creation Church with Pastor Joseph Prince and City Harvest Church with Pastor Kong Hee. The results of such analyses reveal that wealth and material accumulation have become the foundations of Singaporean Christianity.