Writing Radically as Women With Virginia Woolf: Why?

In a short essay titled “Why,” Virginia Woolf daringly questioned the ways in which knowledge is produced, performed, and proclaimed as particular kinds of truths in institutions of power and authority, including academic writing. She subversively suggested, “The little twisted sign that comes at the end of the question has a way of making the rich writhe” and advised that such questions choose their “asking place with care”. In this article, we suggest that the “post” scholarship moment is the moment to ask new questions about the ways Woolfian inspired life-writing as a performance of self and social worlds might be engaged to trouble and open up what the “product” and performance of academic work, words, and worlds might come to be.

Memories of State Terrorism in Chile: Dark Ruins at Villa Grimaldi

In this short essay, I explore the recent reassessment of ruined sites haunted by the echoes of State terrorism across the Southern Cone of Latin America, asking what is at stake in the conservation of former detention centers and focusing on Villa Grimaldi in Chile. The site was initially transformed into a green park but has subsequently become a museum in which remains of the original buildings and artifacts from the repressive past are publicly accessible. I draw on perspectives that claim that even ruins that portray past acts of inhumanity do not necessarily need to evoke melancholic or traumatic retrospection; rather, they are sites of alternative pasts and futures. The transition from the original green park design to a more prominent use of the ruins speaks of an invitation to reassess the past, addressing marginal aspects of emblematic memories, including the political conflict that underpinned the repression.

Significados políticos y jurídicos del uso global de las criptomonedas

The global use of crypto assets is a widespread practice in 2021 among people and companies that are interested in participating in new forms of business that could be very lucrative in the medium term, in addition to representing a new monetary conception of a digital nature that is not controlled by any central bank, nor issued by any state. The purpose of this short essay is to present volume 39, number 71 of Political Issues, by developing a set of reflections on the scope and meaning of cryptocurrencies in today's world. It is concluded that, the mere idea of minting a currency in digital format of the fictitious subject Satoshi Nakamoto creator of Bitcoins, is avant-garde for all people who want to carry out exchanges of values without any centralized mediation of private or public financial institutions, through an open access anomie network made up of free and equal subjects, that can death rate the monetary control of economies by governments, while creating alternatives for Fiat currencies. Among the negative aspects are the growing use of energetic electricity that cryptos require to be able to develop their operations.

Norovirus–glycan interactions — how strong are they really?

Infection with human noroviruses requires attachment to histo blood group antigens (HBGAs) via the major capsid protein VP1 as a primary step. Several crystal structures of VP1 protruding domain dimers, so called P-dimers, complexed with different HBGAs have been solved to atomic resolution. Corresponding binding affinities have been determined for HBGAs and other glycans exploiting different biophysical techniques, with mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy being most widely used. However, reported binding affinities are inconsistent. At the extreme, for the same system MS detects binding whereas NMR spectroscopy does not, suggesting a fundamental source of error. In this short essay, we will explain the reason for the observed differences and compile reliable and reproducible binding affinities. We will then highlight how a combination of MS techniques and NMR experiments affords unique insights into the process of HBGA binding by norovirus capsid proteins.

Professional and ethical dilemmas of economists (In memoriam János Kornai, 1928–2021)

János Kornai, the most distinguished Hungarian economist passed away on 18 October 2021. This short essay, written by a long-time disciple of Kornai tries to prioritize his scientific achievements spreading over six decades. The conclusion is that Kornai's most important contribution to the principles of economics was already presented in his 1971 book, entitled Anti-equilibrium, and without this book his most respected later works and his other original concepts, like the soft budget constraint or the shortage economy, cannot be understood.

How can we measure the creative economy? The Cunningham Project

In this short essay, I discuss the challenges in measuring the creative economy and Stuart Cunningham's critical contributions to methodology and scholarship in this area, from his foundational work on the Creative Trident and his influence on the Dynamic Mapping to his ongoing conceptual contributions, as in his work on creative industries as social network markets. These contributions remain vital worldwide today, as controversies continue to rage on what sectors are a legitimate focus for industrial policy.

L’Osservatorio della Provincia autonoma di Trento

The Landscape Observatory of the Autonomous Province of Trento has been active since 2010. Over the decade, the Observatory has established new forms of landscape management, starting from the assumption that a pleasant landscape is the result of responsible individual actions and collective initiatives. The experiences presented in this short essay describe the outcomes of an activity aimed at citizens, public administrators, and professionals in the field, with the purpose of encouraging an increasing awareness through the development of operational strategies and effective technical approaches.

Religious identity cues increase vaccination intentions and trust in medical experts among American Christians

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States requires mobilizing a large majority of the mass public to vaccinate, but many Americans are hesitant or opposed to vaccination. A significant predictor of vaccine attitudes in the United States is religiosity, with more-religious individuals expressing more distrust in science and being less likely to get vaccinated. Here, we test whether explicit cues of common religious identity can help medical experts build trust and increase vaccination intentions. In a preregistered survey experiment conducted with a sample of unvaccinated American Christians (n = 1,765), we presented participants with a vaccine endorsement from a prominent medical expert (NIH Director Francis Collins) and a short essay about doctors’ and scientists’ endorsement of the vaccines. In the common religious identity condition, these materials also highlighted the religious identity of Collins and many medical experts. Unvaccinated Christians in the common identity condition expressed higher trust in medical experts, greater intentions to vaccinate, and greater intentions to promote vaccination to friends and family than those who did not see the common identity cue. These effects were moderated by religiosity, with the strongest effects observed among the most religious participants, and statistically mediated by heightened perceptions of shared values with the medical expert endorsing the vaccine. These findings demonstrate the efficacy of common identity cues for promoting vaccination in a vaccine-hesitant subpopulation. More generally, the results illustrate how trust in science can be built through the invocation of common group identities, even identities often assumed to be in tension with science.

Prometheus, Unbound

SUBMITTED FOR “SURGICAL REFLECTIONS” A short essay on the lessons “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus” still has to teach us.