Within its walls are Scotland’s treasures, priceless objects from the distant past that tell the nation’s story and shine a light on the ancient world, from the Lewis Chessmen to Roman relics, Egyptian mummies and Viking hoards. Now, the historic riches held by the National Museum of Scotland are to be boosted by a new ‘Covid collection’ which curators hope will include supermarket signs warning of toilet roll shortages and posters urging tourists to stay away from beauty spots. Even if most people living through the Covid-19 crisis may prefer to forget it, the idea is to give future generations the opportunity to see how it has shaped and changed our lives.
The concept of mammalian clones, even humans, was not new at the time of Dolly’s birth. Among mammals, naturally occurring genetic clones, or individuals genetically identical to one another, had long been recognized in the form of monozygotic (identical) twins. Unlike Dolly, however, such clones are derived from a single zygote, or fertilized egg, and thus they are clones of one another, rather than clones of another individual. Moreover, clones had been generated previously in the laboratory, but only from embryonic cells that were either undifferentiated or only partially differentiated. In animals, the production of clones from fully differentiated (adult) cells (e.g., skin or muscle cells) had been carried out successfully only in lower species, such as frogs.
Felix Chaudhary
The Ratu Finau canoe
exhibit at the Fiji Museum,
Suva. Picture: SUPPLIED
In a bid to mark Fiji’s 50th anniversary, the Fiji Museum is looking at developing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with major museums in the United Kingdom.
The agreement, should it go ahead, would be a document for knowledge exchange about historic iTaukei artefacts held in the UK.
A joint press statement from the British High Commission and Fiji Museum read an important first milestone to completing the MoU had been reached.
“With the assistance of Professor Steven Hooper of the University of East Anglia in the UK, the Fiji Museum has received offers of collaboration from the directors of the British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology and the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford,” the statement read.