To Stamp One's Feet: Resurgence of the Artesa as an Identity Reassessment in Afro-Descendant Communities of Costa Chica, Mexico

An artesa is a large zoomorphic stamping platform in the shape of a cattle related animal (horse, bull or cow) made of one piece of parota tree wood (Enterolobyum Cyclocaroum). Until the midtwentieth century, most collective Afro-descendant celebrations in Costa Chica region (Mexico) implied a fandango de artesa, where stamping dance on an artesa –along with other musical instruments and singing– was the center of the festivity. Nevertheless, since then fandangos began to gradually fall into neglect until practically disappear. In the 1980s, through the intervention of some anthropologists, the fandango underwent into a process of resurgence. Firstly, immersed in the agenda of the institutional programme ‘Our Third Root’ -dedicated to the cultural recognition of Afro-descendants- and later on embraced by a local movement concerned with ‘Afro-Mexican’ political recognition, artesa resurgence went through substantial changes. This process brought new functions, meanings, performative formats, construction and esthetical values to this musical instrument. Based on regional field-work this paper explores artesa’s recent status as a selective cultural process where a re-interpretation and a new narrative have shaped a particular resurgence of this instrument and its contexts of appearance.

The Making of a Movement: An Intergenerational Mobilization Model of the Nonviolent Nashville Civil Rights Movement

The 1960s-era, Nashville nonviolent civil rights movement—with its iconic lunch counter sit-ins—was not only an exemplary local movement that dismantled Jim Crow in downtown public accommodations. It was by design the chief vehicle for the intergenerational mentoring and training of activists that led to a dialogical diffusion of nonviolence praxis throughout the Southern civil rights movement of this period. In this article, we empirically derive from oral-history interviews with activists and archival sources a new “intergenerational model of movement mobilization” and assess its contextual and bridge-leading sustaining factors. After reviewing the literatures on dialogical diffusion and bridge building in social movements, we describe the model and its sustaining conditions—historical, demographic, and spatial conditions—and conclude by presenting a research agenda on the sustainability and generalizability of the Nashville model.

From the global myth to local mobilization: Creation and resonance of Greta Thunberg’s frame

In 2019 the climate movement experienced an unprecedented growth in its mobilization capacity and its political and media impact. This success is closely linked to the rise of Greta Thunberg and her global impact, as well as to the organization effort of “Fridays for Future” in hundreds of local groups around the globe. This paper studies the connection between these two elements based on the movement frame analysis and its dissemination on social media. Through an analysis of the activists’ speeches and social media messages, Greta's key role in the establishment and evolution of a new frame for the climate movement can be seen. This is reinforced and legitimized with her own personal story told through the hero's journey or monomyth. Then, the inclusion and adaptation of Greta's frame in the local group of “Fridays for Future” in Barcelona based on the content analysis of its publications on Twitter and Instagram will be analyzed. The results show how, despite the reluctance regarding personified leadership, Greta's frame has a significant influence on the discourse of the local movement and on the “Fridays for Future” Barcelona’s social media followers. The analysis also provides empirical evidence of the relevance of glocal dynamics in online social movements. En 2019 el movimiento climático da un paso adelante sin precedentes en su capacidad de movilización e impacto político y mediático. El éxito del movimiento está muy vinculado tanto a la figura de Greta Thunberg y su impacto global, como a la implantación de «Fridays for Future» en centenares de ciudades de todo el mundo. Este artículo analiza la relación entre estos dos elementos a través del análisis del marco del movimiento y su diseminación en redes sociales. En concreto se muestra, a través del análisis de los discursos y mensajes en redes sociales de la activista, el papel clave de Greta en el establecimiento de un nuevo marco del movimiento climático y cómo este se refuerza y legitima con su propia historia personal contada a través del arquetípico viaje del héroe o monomito. A continuación, se analiza la incorporación y adaptación del marco Greta en las redes sociales de «Fridays for Future» Barcelona a través del análisis de contenido de sus publicaciones en Twitter e Instagram. Los resultados muestran cómo, a pesar de las reticencias a la personalización del liderazgo, existe una destacada influencia del marco global de Greta en el discurso del movimiento local y en el impacto en sus seguidores. Además, el análisis aporta evidencia empírica de la relevancia de las dinámicas glocales en los movimientos sociales en el entorno online.

Nonoverlapping Magisteria

There is no conflict between science and religion. Creationism is only a local movement, prevalent only among the few sectors of American Protestantism that read the Bible as an inerrant, literally true document. Creationism based on biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or Judaism, for neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as literal truth. The lack of conflict arises from a lack of overlap between the respective domains of professional expertise of science and religion. No conflict should exist because the magisteria of science and religion do not overlap. According to the principle of NOMA — “nonoverlapping magisteria” — science covers the empirical universe, while religion covers questions of moral meaning and ethical value. This principle was obeyed by both Pius XII and John Paul II. They both saw no conflict between Catholic faith and a theory of evolution. However, there is one important difference between their positions. Pius XII admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis, but at the same time he proclaimed that the theory of evolution had not been proven and might well be wrong. On the other hand, John Paul II stated that evolution can no longer be doubted. Now, he stated, evolution must be accepted not merely as a plausible possibility but also as an effectively proven fact. This fact is no threat to religion if one accepts the principle of NOMA. As a consequence of this principle, religion can no longer dictate the factual conclusions that belong to the magisterium of science, nor may scientists decide on moral truths.

Unmanned Powerboat Motion Terminal Control in an Environment with Moving Obstacles

The major point for consideration throughout this paper is controlling the motion of an unmanned powerboat in an obstructed environment with stationary and moving objects. It offers a procedure for the terminal control law development based on the powerboat programmed motion trajectory in a polynomial form and proposes position-trajectory-based control algorithms. A hybrid method based on virtual fields and unstable driving modes, taking into account powerboat speeds and obstacles, is used to plan motion trajectories for obstacle avoidance. There were experiments carried out to test the developed methods and algorithms meanwhile estimating the energy consumption for control, the length of the trajectory and the safety indicator for obstacle avoidance. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the method used to develop a local movement trajectory in the field with obstacles and in the hybridization of trajectory scheduling methods. This approach allows us to achieve a given safe distance when avoiding obstacles and virtually eliminate the chances of an emergency collision. The presented results can be used in systems of boats autonomous motion control and allow safe stationary and dynamic obstacles avoidance.

Voices of a generation

In this article, we look at the most recent high tide of the climate crisis attention from the perspective of the school strikers’ movement. It is based on interviews with 31 young climate activists from 23 countries around the world, made possible by the work of several colleagues in MediaClimate –network (mediaclimate.net), a group of researchers who have studied global climate media coverage/debates since 2008. The interviews followed a semi-structured guideline, prompting respondents to discuss how their activism started, their role in the local movement, the nature of movement organization and their relations to other institutions and actors (NGOs, media, politicians). This diverse sample of dialogues with activists in a wide variety of global political and cultural contexts cultures, languages and local conditions collectively produced a vast discursive material. In our analysis, we first look at the specific way science and interaction with scientists is part of the youths’ action horizon, combining this to the ways in which they relate their life experiences to climate science. Second, we will situate this specific science-activism analysis to a brief overview of the nature (or inner logic) of the school movement and the identity of the activists. Through these two empirical excursions, we harvest some lessons about communicating climate science suggested by the youth movement.

High resolution cryo EM analysis of HPV16 identifies minor structural protein L2 and describes capsid flexibility

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a significant health burden and leading cause of virus-induced cancers. HPV is epitheliotropic and its replication is tightly associated with terminal keratinocyte differentiation making production and purification of high titer virus preparations for research problematic, therefore alternative HPV production methods have been developed for virological and structural studies. In this study we use HPV16 quasivirus, composed of HPV16 L1/L2 capsid proteins with a packaged cottontail rabbit papillomavirus genome. We have achieved the first high resolution, 3.1 Å, structure of HPV16 by using a local subvolume refinement approach. The high resolution enabled us to build L1 unambiguously and identify L2 protein strands. The L2 density is incorporated adjacent to conserved L1 residues on the interior of the capsid. Further interpretation with our own software for Icosahedral Subvolume Extraction and Correlated Classification revealed flexibility, on the whole-particle level through diameter analysis and local movement with inter-capsomer analysis. Inter-capsomer expansion or contraction, governed by the connecting arms, showed no bias in the magnitude or direction of capsomer movement. We propose that papillomavirus capsids are dynamic and capsomers move as rigid bodies connected by flexible linkers. The resulting virus structure will provide a framework for continuing biochemical, genetic and biophysical research for papillomaviruses. Furthermore, our approach has allowed insight into the resolution barrier that has previously been a limitation in papillomavirus structural studies.

Scared into Action: How Partisanship and Fear are Associated with Reactions to Public Health Directives

Differences in political ideology are increasingly appearing as an impediment to successful bipartisan communication from local leadership. For example, recent empirical findings have shown that conservatives are less likely to adhere to COVID-19 health directives. This behavior is in direct contradiction to past research which indicates that conservatives are more rule abiding, prefer to avoid loss, and are more prevention-motivated than liberals. We reconcile this disconnect between recent empirical findings and past research by using insights gathered from press releases, millions of tweets, and mobility data capturing local movement in retail, grocery, workplace, parks, and transit domains during COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. We find that conservatives adhere to health directives when they express more fear of the virus. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we analyze both official and citizen communications and find that press releases from local and federal government, along with the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, lead to an increase in expressions of fear on Twitter.