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Slow Peace: Three Lessons from Grassroots Peacebuilders in Colombia
No full textAs I traversed the everyday landscapes of campesino peacebuilding, I began to realize that the call to “slowness” does not negate the pressing needs that animate the collective struggle for peace in Colombia. There is, in fact, a fierce urgency in the campesino call to slow down, take notice, and tend territorial relations of care in the wake of violence. Grassroots peacebuilders do not limit their understanding of time to speed (acceleration and deceleration) or duration (short and long-term frameworks). Instead, slowness is understood as a mode of attention and practice of presence. Slow peace offers a relational framework that locates peacebuilding as a multigenerational, multispecies, and permanent process to cultivate a more just and livable world
Latinx Revolutionary Horizons: Form and Futurity in the Americas
No full textIn Latinx Revolutionary Horizons, Renee Hudson theorizes a liberatory latinidad that is not yet here and conceptualizes a hemispheric project in which contemporary Latinx authors return to earlier moments of revolution. Rather than viewing Latinx as solely a category of identification, she argues for an expansive, historicized sense of the term that illuminates its political potential.Claiming the “x” in Latinx as marking the suspension and tension between how Latin American descended people identify and the future politics the “x” points us toward, Hudson contends that latinidad can signal a politics grounded in shared struggles and histories rather than merely a mode of identification. In this way, Latinx Revolutionary Horizons reads against current calls for cancelling latinidad based on its presumed anti-Black and anti-Indigenous framework. Instead, she examines the not-yet-here of latinidad to investigate the connection between the revolutionary history of the Americas and the creation of new genres in the hemisphere, from conversion narratives and dictator novels to neoslave narratives and testimonios.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/english_books/1042/thumbnail.jp
3D Stochastic Simulation of Rockfall Mechanism and Mitigation in the Batseri Zone
No full textOn 25 July 2021, a deadly rockfall at Batseri (Himachal Pradesh), India, killed 9 tourists and completely destroyed a crucial Bailey Bridge. The present study primarily focuses into the geomorphological and engineering geological attributes of the Batseri Rockfall dynamics. Extreme weathering phenomenon, adversely orientated joints, and abnormally high precipitation in the valley might have evoked the doomed incident. The work combines field study, structural analysis, and 3D stochastic assessment to ascertain the triggers, and trajectory of the rockfall. Runout distance, bounce height, kinetic energy, and velocity of the falling blocks with varying geometry and sizes have also been calculated. The results have been used to test the efficiency of rockfall barriers with different configurations and combinations to safeguard the affected strategically important road. These results can aid in mitigating the rockfall damage, effectively and economically. The simulation of potential blocks destroying the Bailey Bridge forms an important section of this research, and will assist in identification of suitable locations for new bridge instalment at Baspa River. Moreover, this work is perhaps the first of its kind to undertake the rigid body stochastic analysis for understanding the rockfall mechanism in such a large scale. The results discussed in the paper will be of use to understand similar events across the Himalayan terrains and develop policy for hazard mitigation
Multi-Sensor Data Fusion and GIS-DRASTIC Integration for Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment with Rainfall Consideration
Get PDFIn many areas of the world, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, groundwater is the primary source of fresh water, and it supplies around one-third of the world\u27s fresh water. Agriculture is the primary economic sector on the coast in the southern district (Nowshera). More food productivity is required due to the expanding population and diminishing agricultural lands, which increases the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers in farming. The current study was conducted in northwestern parts of Pakistan to evaluate the impacts of the frequent use of pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural fields. Nine hydrogeological parameters were considered, and the GIS-based DRASTIC index was used to generate the final groundwater vulnerability map. The index map (ranging from 220 to 1980) was further classified into five classes based on index vulnerability: very low (220–345), low (346–670), moderate (671–730), high (731–1239), and very high (1240–1980). Nitrate and TDS, the two reliable and recognized scientific water quality measurements, have been used to validate the model. By regulating and controlling anthropogenic and agricultural pollution, the danger of contamination can be decreased. This research will aid in understanding the possible dangers and risks related to the usage of pesticides in agriculture and other industries. Furthermore, it will help identify the specific pesticides causing the contamination, assess the extent and severity of the contamination, and develop strategies to protect public health and the environment
Review of \u3cem\u3eLa Roumanie et la Shoah: Destruction et survie des Juifs et des Roms sous le régime Antonescu, 1940-1944\u3c/em\u3e, by Radu Ioanid
Get PDFA review of La Roumanie et la Shoah: Destruction et survie des Juifs et des Roms sous le régime Antonescu, 1940-1944, by Radu Ioanid
Role of Protein Kinase A and A Kinase Anchoring Proteins in Buffering and Compartmentation of cAMP Signalling in Human Airway Smooth Muscle Cells
No full textBackground and Purpose
In human airway smooth muscle (hASM) cells, not all receptors stimulating cAMP production elicit the same effects. This can only be explained if cAMP movement throughout the cell is restricted, yet the mechanisms involved are not fully understood. Phosphodiesterases (PDEs) contribute to compartmentation of many cAMP responses, but PDE activity alone is predicted to be insufficient if cAMP is otherwise freely diffusible. We tested the hypothesis that buffering of cAMP by protein kinase A (PKA) associated with A kinase anchoring proteins (AKAPs) slows cAMP diffusion and that this contributes to receptor-mediated, compartmentalized responses. Experimental Approach
Raster image correlation spectroscopy (RICS) was used to measure intracellular cAMP diffusion coefficients and evaluate the contribution of PKA–AKAP interactions. Western blotting and immunocytochemistry were used to identify the AKAPs involved. RNA interference was used to down-regulate AKAP expression and determine its effects on cAMP diffusion. Compartmentalized cAMP responses were measured using fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) based biosensors. Key Results
Cyclic AMP movement was significantly slower than that of free-diffusion in hASM cells, and disrupting PKA–AKAP interactions significantly increased the diffusion coefficient. PKA associated with the outer mitochondrial membrane appears to play a prominent role in this effect. Consistent with this idea, knocking down expression of D-AKAP2, the primary mitochondrial AKAP, increased cAMP diffusion and disrupted compartmentation of receptor-mediated responses. Conclusion and Implications
Our results confirm that AKAP-anchored PKA contributes to the buffering of cAMP and is consequential in the compartmentation of cAMP responses in hASM cells
Biphasic Burrowing in Atlantic Hagfish (\u3cem\u3eMyxine limosa\u3c/em\u3e)
No full textMyxine limosa is a burrowing species of hagfish that occurs in the western North Atlantic in areas with muddy substrate and at depths generally greater than 100 meters. Burrowing of M. limosa has been observed from submersibles, but little is known about the behavior of these animals within the substrate or the biomechanical mechanisms involved. Here, we investigated burrowing in M. limosa by observing individuals as they burrowed through transparent gelatin. A photoelastic setup using crossed polarizers allowed us to visualize stress development in the gelatin as the hagfish moved through it. We found that M. limosa created U-shaped burrows in gelatin using a stereotyped, two-phase burrowing behavior. In the first (‘thrash’) phase, hagfish drove their head and their anterior body into the substrate using vigorous sinusoidal swimming movements, with their head moving side-to-side. In the second (‘wriggle’) phase, swimming movements ceased, with propulsion coming exclusively from the anterior, submerged portion of body. The wriggle phase involved side-to-side head movements and movements of the submerged part of the body that resembled the internal concertina strategy used by caecilians and uropeltid snakes. The entire burrowing process took on average 7.6 min to complete and ended with the hagfish\u27s head protruding from the substrate and the rest of its body generally concealed. Understanding the burrowing activities of hagfishes could lead to improved understanding of sediment turnover in marine benthic habitats, new insights into the reproductive behavior of hagfishes, or even inspiration for the design of burrowing robots
What Does ‘(Non)-absoluteness of Observed Events’ Mean?
Get PDFRecently there have emerged an assortment of theorems relating to the ‘absoluteness of emerged events,’ and these results have sometimes been used to argue that quantum mechanics may involve some kind of metaphysically radical non-absoluteness, such as relationalism or perspectivalism. However, in our view a close examination of these theorems fails to convincingly support such possibilities. In this paper we argue that the Wigner’s friend paradox, the theorem of Bong et al and the theorem of Lawrence et al are all best understood as demonstrating that if quantum mechanics is universal, and if certain auxiliary assumptions hold, then the world inevitably includes various forms of ‘disaccord,’ but this need not be interpreted in a metaphysically radical way; meanwhile, the theorem of Ormrod and Barrett is best understood either as an argument for an interpretation allowing multiple outcomes per observer, such as the Everett approach, or as a proof that quantum mechanics cannot be universal in the sense relevant for this theorem. We also argue that these theorems taken together suggest interesting possibilities for a different kind of relational approach in which interaction states are relativized whilst observed events are absolute, and we show that although something like ‘retrocausality’ might be needed to make such an approach work, this would be a very special kind of retrocausality which would evade a number of common objections against retrocausality. We conclude that the non-absoluteness theorems may have a significant role to play in helping converge towards an acceptable solution to the measurement problem
