Papers

Papers

240 bookmarks
Custom sorting
Biodegradation of plastic polymers by fungi: a brief review - Bioresources and Bioprocessing
Biodegradation of plastic polymers by fungi: a brief review - Bioresources and Bioprocessing
Plastic polymers are non-degradable solid wastes that have become a great threat to the whole world and degradation of these plastics would take a few decades. Compared with other degradation processes, the biodegradation process is the most effective and best way for plastic degradation due to its non-polluting mechanism, eco-friendly nature, and cost-effectiveness. Biodegradation of synthetic plastics is a very slow process that also involves environmental factors and the action of wild microbial species. In this plastic biodegradation, fungi play a pivotal role, it acts on plastics by secreting some degrading enzymes, i.e., cutinase`, lipase, and proteases, lignocellulolytic enzymes, and also the presence of some pro-oxidant ions can cause effective degradation. The oxidation or hydrolysis by the enzyme creates functional groups that improve the hydrophilicity of polymers, and consequently degrade the high molecular weight polymer into low molecular weight. This leads to the degradation of plastics within a few days. Some well-known species which show effective degradation on plastics are Aspergillus nidulans, Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus glaucus, Aspergillus oryzae, Aspergillus nomius, Penicillium griseofulvum, Bjerkandera adusta, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Cladosporium cladosporioides, etc., and some other saprotrophic fungi, such as Pleurotus abalones, Pleurotus ostreatus, Agaricus bisporus and Pleurotus eryngii which also helps in degradation of plastics by growing on them. Some studies say that the degradation of plastics was more effective when photodegradation and thermo-oxidative mechanisms involved with the biodegradation simultaneously can make the degradation faster and easier. This present review gives current knowledge regarding different species of fungi that are involved in the degradation of plastics by their different enzymatic mechanisms to degrade different forms of plastic polymers.
·bioresourcesbioprocessing.springeropen.com·
Biodegradation of plastic polymers by fungi: a brief review - Bioresources and Bioprocessing
A Review of the Fungi That Degrade Plastic
A Review of the Fungi That Degrade Plastic
Plastic has become established over the world as an essential basic need for our daily life. Current global plastic production exceeds 300 million tons annually. Plastics have many characteristics such as low production costs, inertness, relatively low ...
·ncbi.nlm.nih.gov·
A Review of the Fungi That Degrade Plastic
Sisters of Conspiracy: A Feminist Analysis of Evangelical, New Age, and Qanon Movements in Contemporary American Politics.
Sisters of Conspiracy: A Feminist Analysis of Evangelical, New Age, and Qanon Movements in Contemporary American Politics.
This thesis explores the link between New Age ideology, Evangelical Christianity, Qanon and the weaponization of women's body autonomy. It delves into how these factors have brought women into the Qanon conspiracy, leading them to engage in COVID denial, anti-vax movements, spreading medical misinformation, Qanon propaganda, and right-wing beliefs. Employing qualitative data analysis, cyberethnography, and feminist analysis, the research identifies online behavior, shared values, and beliefs in wellness, spiritual, and alt-right spaces through specific hashtags. This thesis focuses on a small set of social media hashtags on Facebook and Instagram between 2016 to 2020, revealing connections and shared agendas between New Age and Conservative religious communities. Remarkably, it uncovers a partnership between the male-dominated alt-right and the female-led New Age community, united by a specific feminized metaphysical language. By highlighting this connection, the research exposes the white supremacist origins of Qanon, discouraging well-intentioned women from joining the movement.
·scholarworks.gsu.edu·
Sisters of Conspiracy: A Feminist Analysis of Evangelical, New Age, and Qanon Movements in Contemporary American Politics.
Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its Feminist Implications
Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its Feminist Implications
H. P. Blavatsky’s influential The Secret Doctrine (1888), one of the foundation texts of Theosophy, contains chapters propagating an unembarrassed Satanism. Theosophical sympathy for the Devil also extended to the name of their journal Lucifer, and discussions conducted in it. To Blavatsky, Satan is a cultural hero akin to Pro- metheus. According to her reinterpretation of the Christian myth of the Fall in Genesis 3, Satan in the shape of the serpent brings gnosis and liberates mankind. The present article situates these ideas in a wider nineteenth-century context, where some poets and socialist thinkers held similar ideas and a counter-hegemonic reading of the Fall had far-reaching feminist implications. Additionally, influences on Blavatsky from French occultism and research on Gnosticism are discussed, and the instrumental value of Satanist shock tactics is con- sidered. The article concludes that esoteric ideas cannot be viewed in isolation from politics and the world at large. Rather, they should be analyzed both as part of a religious cosmology and as having strategic polemical and didactic functions related to political debates, or, at the very least, carrying potential entailments for the latter. Keywords: Theosophy, Blavatsky, Satanism, Feminism, Socialism, Romanticism.
·journal.fi·
Blavatsky the Satanist: Luciferianism in Theosophy, and its Feminist Implications
The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social–ecological transformations
The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social–ecological transformations
Anthropogenic planetary disruptions, from climate change to biodiversity loss, are unprecedented challenges for human societies. Some societies, social groups, cultural practices, technologies and institutions are already disintegrating or disappearing ...
·ncbi.nlm.nih.gov·
The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social–ecological transformations
People devalue generative AI’s competence but not its advice in addressing societal and personal challenges - Communications Psychology
People devalue generative AI’s competence but not its advice in addressing societal and personal challenges - Communications Psychology
When people receive advice written by large language models, they downrate the competence of the source when they know the source isn’t human. Their preference to receive advice by large language models increases with positive experience.
·nature.com·
People devalue generative AI’s competence but not its advice in addressing societal and personal challenges - Communications Psychology
From elite folk science to the policy legend of the circular economy
From elite folk science to the policy legend of the circular economy
This paper explores the implications of the widespread success of the term circular economy in the institutional and public debate. The concept of cir…
The concept of circular economy in itself implies a logical contradiction: on the one hand, the concept acknowledges the dependence of the economy on biophysical flows; on the other hand, the proposed solution—a business model guaranteeing a full decoupling of the economy from natural resources—seemingly ignores that biophysical processes are subject to thermodynamic constraints.
The success of economics as an ‘elite folk science’ is explained by the need of the establishment to ignore uncomfortable knowledge that would destabilize existing institutions.
socially constructed ignorance in which folk tales are used to depoliticize the sustainability debate and to colonize the future
mplausible socio-technical imaginaries
·sciencedirect.com·
From elite folk science to the policy legend of the circular economy
The Hijacking of the Bioeconomy
The Hijacking of the Bioeconomy
Georgescu-Roegen used the term bioeconomy to refer to a radical ecological perspective on economics he developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent yea…
·sciencedirect.com·
The Hijacking of the Bioeconomy
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led ...
·science.org·
Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades
Reflections on the popularity of the circular bioeconomy concept: the ontological crisis of sustainability science - Sustainability Science
Reflections on the popularity of the circular bioeconomy concept: the ontological crisis of sustainability science - Sustainability Science
I argue that the popularity of the circular bioeconomy concept in policy-making is symptomatic of a profound crisis in sustainability science, which is generated by the adoption of an obsolete scientific paradigm, i.e., obsolete ontologies used to describe our interaction with the external world. The result is a systemic lack of quality control on the science–policy interface. The growing awareness of a pending collapse of our life support systems and the rapidly changing world order would require society to rediscuss its identity. However, current mechanisms of control of the quality of the scientific input used for governance do not allow us to do so. The problem is how to detect and change obsolete scientific paradigms referring to sustainability science. I conclude that a swift move to a new scientific paradigm would require a more reflexive science and a more reflexive society.
·link.springer.com·
Reflections on the popularity of the circular bioeconomy concept: the ontological crisis of sustainability science - Sustainability Science
The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray - Volume 46
An influential line of thinking in behavioral science, to which the two authors have long subscribed, is that many of society's most pressing problems can be addressed cheaply and effectively at the level of the individual, without modifying the system in which the individual operates. We now believe this was a mistake, along with, we suspect, many colleagues in both the academic and policy communities. Results from such interventions have been disappointingly modest. But more importantly, they have guided many (though by no means all) behavioral scientists to frame policy problems in individual, not systemic, terms: To adopt what we call the “i-frame,” rather than the “s-frame.” The difference may be more consequential than i-frame advocates have realized, by deflecting attention and support away from s-frame policies. Indeed, highlighting the i-frame is a long-established objective of corporate opponents of concerted systemic action such as regulation and taxation. We illustrate our argument briefly for six policy problems, and in depth with the examples of climate change, obesity, retirement savings, and pollution from plastic waste. We argue that the most important way in which behavioral scientists can contribute to public policy is by employing their skills to develop and implement value-creating system-level change.
·cambridge.org·
The i-frame and the s-frame: How focusing on individual-level solutions has led behavioral public policy astray | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Capitalist catastrophism and eco-apartheid
Capitalist catastrophism and eco-apartheid
In September 2020 Deutsche Bank published a report entitled “The Age of Disorder.” Fronted dramatically by the image of a volcano and volley of lightn…
·sciencedirect.com·
Capitalist catastrophism and eco-apartheid
The Placebo Effect: Advances from Different Methodological Approaches
The Placebo Effect: Advances from Different Methodological Approaches
There is accumulating evidence from different methodological approaches that the placebo effect is a neurobiological phenomenon. Behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging results have largely contributed to accepting the placebo response as real. A major aspect of recent and future advances in placebo research is to demonstrate linkages between behavior, brain, and bodily responses. This article provides an overview of the processes involved in the formation of placebo responses by combining research findings from behavioral, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging methods. The integration of these different methodological approaches is a key objective, motivating our scientific pursuits toward a placebo research that can inform and guide important future scientific knowledge.
·jneurosci.org·
The Placebo Effect: Advances from Different Methodological Approaches
Screen Media Use and Mental Health of Children and Adolescents
Screen Media Use and Mental Health of Children and Adolescents
This secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial investigates the effects of a 2-week leisure-time screen media reduction intervention on the mental health of children and adolescents.
·jamanetwork.com·
Screen Media Use and Mental Health of Children and Adolescents
Psychological burden of food allergy
Psychological burden of food allergy
One fifth of the population report adverse reactions to food. Reasons for these symptoms are heterogeneous, varying from food allergy, food intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome to somatoform or other mental disorders. Literature reveals a large discrepancy ...
·ncbi.nlm.nih.gov·
Psychological burden of food allergy