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 ...
An anticipatory regime of multiplanetary life: on SpaceX, Martian colonisation and terrestrial ruin
In recent years, the aerospace engineering corporation SpaceX has been a vocal – and perhaps the foremost – contributor to the recent repopularisation of a discourse proposing the colonisation of M...
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.
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.
Ecology and the ratchet of events: Climate variability, niche dimensions, and species distributions
Climate change in the coming centuries will be characterized by interannual, decadal, and multidecadal fluctuations superimposed on anthropogenic trends. Predicting ecological and biogeographic responses to these changes constitutes an immense challenge ...
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 ...
Social tipping processes towards climate action: A conceptual framework
Societal transformations are necessary to address critical global challenges, such as mitigation of anthropogenic climate change and reaching UN susta…
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.
Is bioeconomy policy a policy field? A conceptual framework and findings on the European Union and Germany
Bioeconomy policy is often labelled a policy field or at least an emerging policy field. But is it really one? And how can one tell and what does it mean? Drawing on the scarce research on what exa...
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
Sustainable development – A ‘selling point’ of the emerging EU bioeconomy policy framework?
The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development (SD) are often used by policy-makers, stakeholders and the private sector, as a ‘selling po…
On the Circular Bioeconomy and Decoupling: Implications for Sustainable Growth
This paper explores the existing confusion around the conceptual definitions and interpretations of the term circular bioeconomy. The co-existence of …
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…
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 ...
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.
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.
Using the jet stream for sustainable airship and balloon transportation of cargo and hydrogen
The maritime shipping sector is a major contributor to CO2 emissions and this figure is expected to rise in coming decades. With the intent of reducin…
Thunderstorm asthma: a review, risks for Aotearoa New Zealand, and health emergency management considerations - PubMed
We recommend developing rapidly deployable public messaging to support the health emergency management response to future TA events, together with the instigation of routine aeroallergen monitoring.
Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation - Nature Communications
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system. Here, data-driven estimators for the time of tipping predict a potential AMOC collapse mid-century under the current emission scenario.
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…
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.
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.
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 ...
Genomic, functional, and metabolic enhancements in multidrug-resistant Enterobacter bugandensis facilitating its persistence and succession in the International Space Station - Microbiome
Background The International Space Station (ISS) stands as a testament to human achievement in space exploration. Despite its highly controlled environment, characterised by microgravity, increased CO $$_{2}$$ 2 levels, and elevated solar radiation, microorganisms occupy a unique niche. These microbial inhabitants play a significant role in influencing the health and well-being of astronauts on board. One microorganism of particular interest in our study is Enterobacter bugandensis, primarily found in clinical specimens including the human gastrointestinal tract, and also reported to possess pathogenic traits, leading to a plethora of infections. Results Distinct from their Earth counterparts, ISS E. bugandensis strains have exhibited resistance mechanisms that categorise them within the ESKAPE pathogen group, a collection of pathogens recognised for their formidable resistance to antimicrobial treatments. During the 2-year Microbial Tracking 1 mission, 13 strains of multidrug-resistant E. bugandensis were isolated from various locations within the ISS. We have carried out a comprehensive study to understand the genomic intricacies of ISS-derived E. bugandensis in comparison to terrestrial strains, with a keen focus on those associated with clinical infections. We unravel the evolutionary trajectories of pivotal genes, especially those contributing to functional adaptations and potential antimicrobial resistance. A hypothesis central to our study was that the singular nature of the stresses of the space environment, distinct from any on Earth, could be driving these genomic adaptations. Extending our investigation, we meticulously mapped the prevalence and distribution of E. bugandensis across the ISS over time. This temporal analysis provided insights into the persistence, succession, and potential patterns of colonisation of E. bugandensis in space. Furthermore, by leveraging advanced analytical techniques, including metabolic modelling, we delved into the coexisting microbial communities alongside E. bugandensis in the ISS across multiple missions and spatial locations. This exploration revealed intricate microbial interactions, offering a window into the microbial ecosystem dynamics within the ISS. Conclusions Our comprehensive analysis illuminated not only the ways these interactions sculpt microbial diversity but also the factors that might contribute to the potential dominance and succession of E. bugandensis within the ISS environment. The implications of these findings are twofold. Firstly, they shed light on microbial behaviour, adaptation, and evolution in extreme, isolated environments. Secondly, they underscore the need for robust preventive measures, ensuring the health and safety of astronauts by mitigating risks associated with potential pathogenic threats. Video Abstract
