Neoliberal Fatigue: The Effects of Private Refugee Sponsorship on Canadians’ Political Consciousness

Private sponsorship has become a primary way that refugees access resettlement to Canada. Key in this program are the private Canadians who volunteer their money, time, and labor to sponsor and support refugees. Drawing on 25 interviews, this article examines the insights that these privileged citizens of the global north gain as they help refugees struggling with the marginalizing consequences of neoliberal austerity in their new hostland. While sponsors learn about the challenges facing working-class racialized newcomers (otherwise obscured to sponsors by their racial, class, and citizenship privileges), the program robs sponsors of the time and mental bandwidth to reflect on the structural nature of these challenges. Consequently, sponsors rarely understand refugees’ struggles as public troubles necessitating broader intervention, including modest policy reform. I call this cognitive outcome neoliberal fatigue. I conclude by discussing how this fatigue thwarts social change and reinforces neoliberal capitalism.

Conformational dynamics of the Beta and Kappa SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins and their complexes with ACE2 receptor revealed by cryo-EM

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Kappa and Beta variants with enhanced transmissibility and resistance to neutralizing antibodies has created new challenges for the control of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the structural nature of Kappa and Beta spike (S) proteins and their association with ACE2 is of significant importance. Here we present two cryo-EM structures for each of the Kappa and Beta spikes in the open and open-prone transition states. Compared with wild-type (WT) or G614 spikes, the two variant spikes appear more untwisted/open especially for Beta, and display a considerable population shift towards the open state as well as more pronounced conformational dynamics. Moreover, we capture four conformational states of the S-trimer/ACE2 complex for each of the two variants, revealing an enlarged conformational landscape for the Kappa and Beta S-ACE2 complexes and pronounced population shift towards the three RBDs up conformation. These results implicate that the mutations in Kappa and Beta may modify the kinetics of receptor binding and viral fusion to improve virus fitness. Combined with biochemical analysis, our structural study shows that the two variants are enabled to efficiently interact with ACE2 receptor despite their sensitive ACE2 binding surface is modified to escape recognition by some potent neutralizing MAbs. Our findings shed new light on the pathogenicity and immune evasion mechanism of the Beta and Kappa variants.

Theorizing Palimpsests

How do we connect the past with the present to address structural problems? While the pursuit of a cause-and-effect past flowing into the present contributes to the understanding of an event or object, how that past is recalled, represented, related, disconnected, suppressed, and/or obfuscated in any given present matters. This article proposes palimpsests as a critical tool for analyzing the many histories of the present. To illustrate this theoretical practice, the article offers a palimpsestic reading of a museumized object, the Nubian Temple of Dendur, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The structural nature of a history of the present comes into view only when one is able to discern multiple histories, presents, categories, and objects layered together within the palimpsest of history.

INTER-INDUSTRY COMPETITION PRESSURES: THE MODEL, MEASUREMENT AND STATISTICAL CHARACTERISTICS

This paper proposes a two-dimensional conceptual model of inter-industry competitive pressure, which is constituted of resource competition and market competition. This paper also provides the related measurement method and some basic properties based on the perspective of input–output analysis. Empirical research in the U.S. clearly shows that these pressures obey a lognormal distribution with a power-law tail, and the proportions of the two-dimensional competitive components follow a normal distribution. This analytical framework can be used to explore the structural nature, statistical characteristics and evolutionary mechanism of the regional industrial competition system and provides some decision support for industry competition policies.

Engaging the Academy

We are witnessing a global turn toward ethno-nationalism and xenophobia that raises important questions about what those who are engaged in scholarly knowledge production are doing to implicitly or explicitly perpetuate ethnocentrism. This chapter focuses on the problem of Eurocentrism, and Americentrism more specifically, in journalism and mass communication studies. Although public engagement typically focuses on sharing scholarly knowledge with audiences outside of academia, scholars need to be open and responsive to critiques of our own professional practices. This chapter first documents inequities in scholarly knowledge production between the Global North and Global South, and then offers a brief contextualization of the structural nature of these inequities. Finally, the chapter recommends specific practices journalism scholars based in the Global North can do to become better allies of their colleagues in the Global South, and highlights recent efforts to engage the academy around the issue of inequities in scholarly knowledge production.

State Violence in Brazil: Execution, Slaughter, and Disappearance in the Post-Authoritarian Era

In this chapter, the authors seek to analyse the manifestations of state violence in Brazil in the post-transition period following the 1964-1985 authoritarian regime. First, some of the possible causes of violence in the country are briefly discussed, highlighting elements of a structural nature and others related to the legacy of the authoritarian period. In a second section, the so-called May Crimes of 2006, are examined, in which execution, slaughter, and disappearance took place. A third section of the chapter examines the process of social mobilisation that occurred as a response to these crimes, particularly the strategy used by the families of victims to appeal to the Inter-American human rights system to seek justice after frustrated efforts for investigation and justice within the country.

Structural approach of Sangam Poetry

If a linguistic information is considered a literary work it means that it has a structure of its own. It is not possible to consume literature without a copy of this descriptive system. It was on this basis that the poet's approach to perceiving the internal form of life with its external forms in the language system also appeared. Every art has form and meaning. Form reflects the excellence of literature from the external system and the material internal system. Exploring such a literary structure in a structural approach becomes a necessary one. Anatomy is found only in Tamil as a new dialect. Because Thoughts such as exploring the structure of songs and defining their elements can be seen in the Tamil world before this review. The verb elements spoken in Tholkappiya porulathikaram set out to illustrate the structural nature of the poem. This seems to be close to the ‘overall’ thinking that the organizer refers to. This article explores the Sangapakal through such thinking and reveals the Thinai kotpadu found within them, as well as the structural structure of the Sangapakal, which the Sangapakal see as narrative poems.

Physical and chemical pre-treatment of waste paper to increase saccharification by Trichoderma viride cellulase

<p>Waste paper is a major component of solid waste with cellulose, a glucose biopolymer, as structural component. Cellulose is a worthy substance with renewable possibilities and if resolved into glucose it could be utilised as a feedstock for fermentation into bioproducts like bioethanol and biopharmaceuticals. The extent of saccharification is an important variable to maximise waste paper as a renewable feedstock. The structural nature of cellulose however prevents an effective bioconversion process and as a result procedures need to be developed making waste cellulose more susceptible for the hydrolytic action of cellulase. Seven different paper materials have been chemically and physically pre-treated prior to cellulase catalysed saccharification with Trichoderma viride cellulase. Non-treated brown envelope paper showed the highest relative degree of saccharification followed by Pick ’n Pay advertising paper from a local retailer and foolscap paper while newspaper resulted in the lowest degree of saccharification. When pre-treated with a combined chemical and physical procedure composed of NaOH and sonication the bioconversion of brown envelope paper showed the highest degree of degradation followed by foolscap paper and office paper. The highest percentage increase in saccharification due to pre-treatment was observed with office paper while newspaper and Woolworths advertsing showing a decrease in saccharification after pre-treatment.</p>