Researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology have found that plants adapt to heat stress via a specific memory mechanism. The JUMONJI family of proteins can control small heat shock genes, allowing plants to become heat tolerant for better adaptation to future heat stress. This research is applicable to a broad range of scientific fields and understanding this mechanism could contribute to maintaining the food supply under global warming conditions.
An inter-university research group has succeeded in constructing the gene expression network behind the vascular development process in plants. They achieved this by performing bioinformatics analysis using the VISUAL tissue culture platform, which generates vascular stem cells from leaf cells. In this network, they also discovered a new BES/BZR transcription factor, BEH3, and illuminated its role in vascular cell maintenance.
With this year marking a decade since the Great East Japan Earthquake, Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito in Ibaraki Prefecture presents Artists and the Disaster: Imagining in the 10th Year. The museum, which suffered earthquake damage and served temporarily as an evacuation center, displays the work of seven artists/art groups. Their work includes but goes beyond documentation, having expanded with time to encompass creative responses and imaginings of the future.
The first room presents a white curtain with a timeline of disaster-related events since the earthquake up through this year. Also exhibited are works by Haruka Komori + Natsumi Seo, a duo that has spent years in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures documenting people’s lives and experiences. Seo’s texts recounting stories and her sketches portraying the changing landscapes are displayed in vitrines around the room, while videos by Komori showing reconstruction developments are mounted on the wall. The juxtaposition of
Fukushima nuclear disaster: An artist s view 10 years later
Japanese artist and filmmaker Hikaru Fujii told DW about the importance of embedding the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in public memory.
Ten years ago, the Japanese prefecture witnessed an earthquake and tsunami that triggered an accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant, causing a nuclear disaster whose effects were only preceded by those in Chernobyl in 1986.
In its aftermath, artist and filmmaker Hikaru Fujii documented the political and ecological crisis that resulted from the collapse of the nuclear plant. Fuji, who believes that artistic production implies a close relationship between history and society, created the project Les nucléaires et les choses in 2019, in which he reconstructed the history of the affected places, focusing on the consequences of the disaster and discussing the memory of the catastrophe.