Critical Spheres Research Articles

Investigating Natural Polymer Nanocomposites in Relation with Eco-Friendly Potential in Environmental Contexts

Abstract: The escalating global waste crisis and precipitous decline in biodiversity have emerged as two of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. These interconnected issues pose grave threats to the delicate balance of ecosystems and the myriad species that inhabit them. This research Endeavor seeks to harmonize these critical spheres by proposing an integrated approach to waste reduction and wildlife preservation, recognizing their inextricable linkages within the intricate web of life. This research explores the synergistic potential of integrating waste reduction strategies with targeted wildlife preservation efforts. By promoting circular economies, sustainable production and consumption practices, and innovative recycling technologies, the influx of harmful pollutants into ecosystems can be mitigated, alleviating the burden on vulnerable species and habitats. Complementarily, robust conservation measures, ecosystem restoration initiatives, and the engagement of local communities can safeguard biodiversity, thereby maintaining the ecological integrity that underpins sustainable waste management.

The Role of Gender Equality on Poverty Alleviation: Case of Indonesia

The Gender Development and Empowerment Index of Indonesia, which represents the equality between genders, has consistently fallen below the global average since 1990. This concerning trend gains significance given that half of the country's population is female. Relying on only half of the population for economic and developmental progress is suboptimal. Hence, fostering empowerment for all genders emerges as a potentially more effective strategy to catalyse economic growth and alleviate poverty across the nation. This study investigates how gender equality measures affect poverty at the regional level using dynamic panel data by system-generalised method of moments (system-GMM) technique on 514 districts in Indonesia spanning from 2014 to 2020. The result indicates that the Gender Development Index, characterized by a higher average score and lower standard deviation pronounces a more positive effect on poverty alleviation in comparison to the Gender Empowerment Measure. This can be attributed to the prevailing underrepresentation and limited participation of women in critical spheres such as the economy, higher-level management, parliamentary activities, and decision-making processes. Thus, there is a need to reinforce women's inclusion into formal positions and campaign for the participation of both genders in household chores and childcare to improve gender equality. Even small increases in the opportunities available to women and some release of cultural and political constraints can lead to significant economic and social benefits.

Too Muslim to Be a Feminist and Too Feminist to Be a Muslim? Locating Lived Experiences of Feminism and Muslimness in Social Work Academe

In this paper, two authors seize space as Muslim women feminist social work educators and researchers. We challenge and hopefully silence homogenizing, essentialist and Islamophobic constructions. The first author is a hijabi, Indo-Caribbean, able-bodied cis-heterosexual Muslim feminist; the second author is a disabled, queer Muslim of South Asian heritage. We identify as racialized and firmly rooted in intersectional critical feminist perspectives. Using an autoethnographic, conversation-based approach, we share our narratives (lived experiences) in social work academe. Navigating feminisms, Muslimness, strategic essentialism and Islamophobia while engaging in a critical praxis, we attempt to bring together contradictory discourses for critical examination. We engage with the following questions: How do Muslim women fit (or not fit!) in social work academe? How do Muslim women fit (or not fit!) in critical social work feminist spheres? And what do Muslim feminist futures look like in social work academe? Our lived experiences as racialized Muslim feminists are standpoint perspectives which offer situated knowledges that disempower dominant social work discourses. Social work can no longer be reactionary and preserve the status quo; it must move forward with foresight and be an active player in dismantling inequities.

On the Domestication of Queer Within Social Work: Reflections from One Queer Social Work Instructor/Student

Queer has existed in academia since the late twentieth century and has developed into a prominent theoretical orientation and subject of academic inquiry. Although queer theory originates within critical spheres of the humanities, social work has tepidly adopted it and subsequently domesticated it. This paper considers what might be dangerous about a tamed, academic queerness. Equally, what might be exciting for social work about a combative and wholly unknowable version of queer.

Inaccuracies and biases of the Gaussian size deconvolution for extracted sources and filaments

A simple Gaussian size deconvolution method is routinely used to remove the blur of observed images caused by insufficient angular resolutions of existing telescopes, thereby to estimate the physical sizes of extracted sources and filaments. To ensure that the physical conclusions derived from observations are correct, it is necessary to know the inaccuracies and biases of the size deconvolution method, which is expected to work when the structures, as well as the telescope beams, have Gaussian shapes. This study employed model images of the spherical and cylindrical objects with Gaussian and power-law shapes, representing the dense cores and filaments observed in star-forming regions. The images were convolved to a wide range of angular resolutions to probe various degrees of resolvedness of the model objects. Simplified shapes of the flat, convex, and concave backgrounds were added to the model images, then planar backgrounds across the footprints of the structures are subtracted and sizes of the sources and filaments were measured and deconvolved. When background subtraction happens to be inaccurate, the observed structures acquire profoundly non-Gaussian profiles. The deconvolved half maximum sizes can be strongly under- or overestimated, by factors of up to ~20 when the structures are unresolved or partially resolved. For resolved structures, the errors are generally within a factor of ~2; although, the deconvolved sizes can be overestimated by factors of up to ~6 for some power-law models. The results show that Gaussian size deconvolution cannot be applied to unresolved structures, whereas it can only be applied to the Gaussian-like structures, including the critical Bonnor-Ebert spheres, when they are at least partially resolved. The deconvolution method must be considered inapplicable for the power-law sources and filaments with shallow profiles. This work also reveals subtle properties of convolution for structures of different geometry. When convolved with different kernels, spherical objects and cylindrical filaments with identical profiles obtain different widths and shapes. In principle, a physical filament, imaged by the telescope with a non-Gaussian point-spread function, could appear substantially shallower than the structure is in reality, even when it is resolved.

Putting philosophy to work: developing the conceptual architecture of research projects

ABSTRACT Research necessarily entails the close interrelation of concepts and arguments, including solutions to a range of meta-questions, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Despite this, few detailed accounts currently exist that support researchers to develop their complex conceptual architectures, especially in critical realist spheres. Indeed, many published accounts often omit much of this ‘messiness’ that sits behind, yet is foundational to, research projects. Those accounts that do seek to portray how/why researchers have made decisions (e.g. about connections between research philosophy, methodology, methods, theory and empirical evidence) tend to focus on one set of meta-questions, or occasionally on the relationships between two sets, at a time. Therefore, this paper presents a flexible framework – supported by specific examples from studies – that we hope will be useful in supporting researchers from all traditions, but especially critical realists, to carefully think through and develop more holistic connections in their conceptual architecture.

Startups and Lean Startup approach in building innovative companies creating unique market values – theoretical considerations

The article explicates the Lean Startup methodology, a popular framework for constructing nascent and pioneering startup enterprises. Since its inception, this methodology has garnered recognition from academic scholars and business practitioners. Its precepts, grounded in Agile Project Management and the Customer Development philosophy, are ideally suited for implementing innovative projects to introduce product, technological, or organizational innovations into the market. Many of them are focused on creating solutions to support innovation in the green sectors of the economy. Many of them are focused on creating solutions to support innovation in the green sectors of the economy - in particular, those related to the ICT industry. In addition, the importance of technologies created by startups in terms of positive environmental impact has been reflected in scientific works worldwide. They have a powerful impact on the building and dynamic development of green economies manifested in various aspects of society. The significance of startups for advancing economies across the globe has been acknowledged for many years, as they exert a substantial influence on critical economic spheres, including the labor market, technological advancement, and the progress of every industry in which innovative solutions are employed. Despite the challenges, startup entrepreneurs can act as powerful change agents, reducing inefficiencies, creating jobs, and boosting economic development. Through these activities, startups stimulate the sustainable growth of economies. The Lean Startup methodology allows testing the created value before introducing it to the market. Thanks to the application of Customer Development guidelines where, through an iterative process of creating innovation, it is tested by a panel of potential customers. Successively created value is supplemented with additional elements that potential users constantly verify. In this way, the value delivered to the market is ideally suited to the requirements and expectations of its buyers. The article also reviews the literature on startups regarding their impact on the Sustainable Development (SD) of enterprises and entire economies. The most important concepts were presented, and an attempt was made to define the concept initially. The last part of the article systematically presents the limitations and directions of further research and startups and the possibilities of using Lean Startup.

Assessing Digital Maturity of State Finance Control Bodies

In order to work out the optimum approach to designing methodology for assessing digital maturity of state finance control (SFC) bodied in the Donetsk Republic the authors researched current approaches and identified their advantages and drawbacks. The article provides the concept of assessing digital maturity of SFC bodies in the Donetsk Republic in the form of the integral model, whose key components are stages of digital maturity, lines of digital transformation and steps of their implementation. Algorithm of integral index was formalized. The proposed methodological approach gives an opportunity to modify the number of particular indices depending on available statistic base; to apply both external and internal sources for calculations; to take into account context factors that could provide appraisal adaptation and regard to risks and susceptibility of SFC bodies to changing conditions; to identify critical spheres; to research evolution of the development of priority lines in digital transformation; to study index dynamics and to take into consideration the degree of importance stages in conducting digital transformation in managerial cycle.

Critical bridge spheres for links with arbitrarily many bridges

We show that for every integer \(b\ge 3\) and every integer k with \(1\le k\le b\), there exists an alternating k-component link in a b-bridge position with respect to a critical bridge sphere. In fact, for each b, we construct an infinite family of links whose bridge spheres are critical.

‘My room is the kitchen’: lived experience of home-making, home-unmaking and emerging housing strategies of disadvantaged urban youth in austerity Ireland

ABSTRACT The current Irish housing crisis shows that the 2008 financial crash lingers on in everyday lives and spaces. As especially poorer populations became increasingly excluded from affordable housing under austerity, it is increasingly felt as a ‘personal crisis’. This paper explores the impacts of austerity on home-(un)making to reveal home as a place where austerity becomes ‘lived’ and ‘felt’. Building on interviews with young people aged 18 to 25 in Cork and Dublin, it focusses on a group eager but unable to leave their parental home. Their experiences illustrate the immediate home-unmaking of austerity and the role of past memories and anticipated futures in home-unmaking under austerity. As future expectations and home-making strategies are adjusted to the austerity context, these reconfigure the facets and spheres through which crisis and austerity are experienced. The becoming-everyday of the financial crisis affects the places and spaces of everyday life, creating an all-encompassing ‘slow crisis’ that alters domestic routines and materialities, creates new forms of living together, and presents new strategies for housing and home-making. Housing and home are critical spheres through which austerity and recession become embedded in the everyday lives of disadvantaged urban youth and shape contemporary life courses in the city-after-austerity.

Rethinking the genre: urban biographies as means of creating critical public spheres

AbstractIn this article, I rethink the genre of urban biographies and argue that it can be given new potency when remodelled to become a means of reinvigorating the critical public. In the first part, I reflect upon some of the recent biographies of cities in the Czech Republic. In the second part, I discuss promising strategies, drawn from a sample of innovative urban biographies. In the final part, I outline the guiding principles of an adapted model for urban biographies. I propose that the cities must be repoliticized and recentred in the biographies, which entails adopting a political concept of the city, a deconstructive approach, utilization of the urban presence and a more urban-sensitive treatment of time.

Reconfiguring Economic Democracy: Generating New Forms of Collective Agency, Individual Economic Freedom and Public Participation

We seek to advance debate and thinking about economic democracy. While recognising the importance of existing approaches focused upon collective bargaining and workplace organisation, we articulate a perspective that emphasises the importance of individual economic rights, capabilities and freedoms at a time when established norms and protections at work are in retreat in many parts of the world. We outline a framework where both individual rights to self-government of one’s own labour, as well as the right of all citizens to participate in economic decision-making, are emphasised. The framework identifies a set of underlying principles, prerequisites, critical spheres for intervention, progressive institutional arrangements, and policies in pursuit of an expanded agenda around economic democracy. In this way, economic democracy potentially empowers individuals and creates the basis for generating new and sustainable alliances that challenge elite dominance in contemporary capitalism.

An infinite family of links with critical bridge spheres

A closed, orientable, splitting surface in an oriented $3$-manifold is a topologically minimal surface of index $n$ if its associated disk complex is $(n-2)$-connected but not $(n-1)$-connected. A critical surface is a topologically minimal surface of index $2$. In this paper, we use an equivalent combinatorial definition of critical surfaces to construct the first known critical bridge spheres for nontrivial links.

Instituição e engajamento: Vilanova Artigas no Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil

O exercício de traçar o percurso biográfico de João Batista Vilanova Artigas entremeado às Instituições em que atua ao longo de sua história profissional foi realizado apenas parcialmente pela historiografia dedicada ao arquiteto, que se focou majoritariamente na compreensão das esferas projetual e crítica de sua prática. Este artigo se concentra na atuação do arquiteto no departamento paulista do Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil, buscando entender a relevância de tal inserção institucional para a compreensão de sua trajetória profissional.

SYNERGISTIC EFFECTS OF INFORMATION AND CYBERNETIC INTERACTION IN CIVIL AVIATION

Scientific research on information and cybernetic influence on citizens, society and the whole state is a hot topic of many famous worldwide scientific publications. These studies have become particularly relevant in critical spheres from the viewpoint of security. Civil aviation is one of the most critical spheres. Information and cybernetic actions in civil aviation have been studied separately to date. Known approaches did not allow considering the synergistic effects of information and cybernetic interaction. This factor has adversely affected preventive and countermeasures for minimizing the effects of information and cybernetic threats to aviation subjects. Taking this into account, in the paper, the essence of synergistic effects of information and cybernetic interaction on civil aviation are presented. Also, the methodology for the early detection, assessment and prediction of these effects was developed. The analysis revealed that the study of synergistic effects in civil aviation is an effective controller of nonlinear processes, which can occur as the result of information and cybernetic interaction.

Merengue, vudú y nación: el panteón rayano de Marcio Veloz Maggiolo

This article analyses the role of merengue and voodoo in El hombre del acordeón (2003) by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo. I argue that the representation of music and religion serves to problematize traditional accounts of Dominican culture. Special attention is paid to the patriarchal and authoritative components of official Dominican culture in the Trujillo era (1930-61), particularly the massacre of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin near the border between the two countries in 1937. Another critical aspect examined in this article is the rayano subject (the inhabitant of the border or “raya”) as representative of the cultural intermingling between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which is studied through the notions of “paradigm” (Agamben) and “quasi-object” (Latour). The rayano is fundamental for the diegesis as it is deeply connected to the critical spheres of merengue and voodoo in El hombre del acordeón. The article concludes with a careful examination of those elements in the narrative that seem to contradict the subversive intent of Veloz Maggiolo’s novelistic project through the repetition of patterns of patriarchal authoritarianism.

ON THE INTERNAL DYNAMICS OF STARLESS CORES: STABILITY OF STARLESS CORES WITH INTERNAL MOTIONS AND COLLAPSE DYNAMICS

In order to understand the collapse dynamics of observed low-mass starless cores, we revise the conventional stability condition of hydrostatic Bonnor-Ebert spheres to take internal motions into account. Because observed starless cores resemble Bonnor-Ebert density structures, the stability and dynamics of the starless cores are frequently analyzed by comparing to the conventional stability condition of a hydrostatic Bonnor-Ebert sphere. However, starless cores are not hydrostatic but have observed internal motions. In this study, we take gaseous spheres with a homologous internal velocity field and derive stability conditions of the spheres utilizing a virial analysis. We propose two limiting models of spontaneous gravitational collapse: the collapse of critical Bonnor-Ebert spheres and uniform density spheres. The collapse of these two limiting models are intended to provide the lower and the upper limits, respectively, of the infall speeds for a given density structure. The results of our study suggest that the stability condition sensitively depends on internal motions. A homologous inward motion with a transonic speed can reduce the critical size compared to the static Bonnor-Ebert sphere by more than a factor of two. As an application of the two limiting models of spontaneous gravitational collapse, we compare the density structures and infall speeds of the observed starless cores L63, L1544, L1689B, and L694-2 to the two limiting models. L1689B and L694-2 seem to have been perturbed to result in faster infall motions than for spontaneous gravitational collapse.

The Legacy of Extraction

The Legacy of Extraction

On the stability of non-isothermal Bonnor-Ebert spheres

Aims: We aim to derive a stability condition for non-isothermal Bonnor-Ebert spheres and compare the physical properties of critical non-isothermal and isothermal gas spheres. These configurations can serve as models for prestellar cores before gravitational collapse. Methods: A stability condition for non-isothermal spheres is derived by constructing an expression for the derivative of boundary pressure with respect to core volume. The temperature distribution is determined by means of radiative transfer calculations. Based on the stability analysis, we derive the physical parameters of critical cores for the mass range 0.1 - 5.0 M_sun. In addition, the properties of roughly Jupiter-mass cores are briefly examined. Results: At the low-mass end the critical non-isothermal sphere has lower central density and a slightly larger physical radius than the corresponding isothermal sphere (i.e. one with the same mass and average temperature). The temperature decrease towards the core centre becomes steeper towards smaller masses as the central density becomes higher. The slope depends on the adopted dust model. We find that the critical dimensionless radius increases above the isothermal value xi_0 = 6.45 for very low-mass cores (< 0.2 M_sun). However, in the mass-range studied here the changes are within 5% from the isothermal value. Conclusions: The density structures of non-isothermal and isothermal Bonnor-Ebert spheres for a given mass are fairly similar. However, the present models predict clear differences in the average temperatures for the same physical radius. Especially for low-mass cores, the temperature gradient probably has implications on the chemistry and the observed line emission. We also find that hydrostatic Jupiter-mass cores with radii less than 100 AU would have very high boundary pressures compared with typical pressures in the interstellar space.

Fighting for the Future

This article compares the massive and widespread student protests in Europe and the Middle East with the relatively weak forms of protests emanating from students in the United States. Through consideration of the different formative cultures in Europe and the Middle East and the protesters’ use of the new media technologies, the article argues that the formative culture for dissent and critical education in the United States has been weakened and depoliticized, while neoliberal economic conditions and disciplinary apparatuses have amplified such conditions. Increased privatization, the closing down of critical public spheres, and the endless commodification of all aspects of social life have created a generation of students in the United States reared on the view that politics is irrelevant. In contrast, the message heard by students all over the world, especially in Europe, is that casino capitalism and totalitarian societies can no longer make a claim on the future of young people and increasingly are failing, either through making false promises or using threats and coercion to contain the hopes of young people. Rather than asking why U.S. students do not engage in massive protests, the crucial question raised by this article is when will they look beyond the norms, discourses, and rewards of the neoliberal society they have inherited from their elders?