This year’s Bristol Radical History Festival focused on the persistent threats of racism, xenophobia and, of course, our radical collective resistance to it across Ireland and Britain, reports LYNNE WALSH

IN JANUARY this year, researchers reported in Nature Plants that they had managed to remove an object called the Golgi body in the cells of a plant.
This archaically named object is one of the strange complex things that fills the insides of plant cells. It is often described as looking like a stack of pancakes — albeit very small, transparent, and inside all the cells of any plant, or for that matter any animal too.
Advances in genetic engineering techniques mean that scientists can now investigate plant biology by immobilising, cutting out or destroying a given gene and watching what happens to plants that grow without it.

A maverick’s self-inflicted snake bites could unlock breakthrough treatments – but they also reveal deeper tensions between noble scientific curiosity and cold corporate callousness, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
Science has always been mixed up with money and power, but as a decorative facade for megayachts, it risks leaving reality behind altogether, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT

