Global Breakdown Research Articles

After Neoliberalism: Economic Theory and Policy in the Polycrisis1

AbstractMainstream economic theory and policy have struggled to address (and in some cases have made worse) the multiple economic crises since 2008—global financial crash, austerity, stalled productivity, wage stagnation, rising inequality, inflation, climate and environmental breakdown. At the root of this failure is the ‘ontological individualism’ which underpins neoclassical economic theory: the belief that individual households and firms are sovereign actors. It proposes in its place a premise of ‘ontological institutionism’—the view that economic behaviour is primarily influenced by the institutional structures and rules within which it occurs. Commonplace in other social sciences, this view radically changes economic analysis and policy prescription. Based on an explicit ethical definition of policy objectives, the article offers an ‘institutionally pluralist’ view proposing different kinds of institutions for five different spheres of economic life. Arguing that economic policy should be seen as a process of institutional design (not simply making markets more efficient), it offers some illustrative policy proposals in key fields, from climate change to business investment.

A Different Perspective on the COVID-19 Pandemic: Validity of COVID-19 Testing and Protective Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (Part 2).

The causative agent for COVID-19 was identified by next-generation sequencing from samples received from several pneumonia patients. The detection of the coronavirus was done through real-time polymerase chain reaction analyses performed from plasma sample. Ribonucleic acid extracted from a patient's bronchoalveolar lavage fluid was used as a template to clone and sequence a genome from lineage B of the betacoronavirus. A polymerase chain reaction test was considered positive using cycle threshold above 34 for detected samples. Tests with thresholds so high will detect genetic leftover fragments, which pose no particular risk. No correlation between viral load and disease severity has ever been connected to a virus. On the basis of the little science centered on misleading mortality calculations and most importantly on mathematical disease modeling, generalized lockdowns were imposed on a global scale, with a considerable number of fatalities and resulting in global economic breakdown. Most studies found little to no evidence for the effectiveness of face masks in the general population, neither as personal protective equipment nor as a source control. In this review, we attempted to expose a different perspective of some aspects of the pandemic related to disease diagnosis and protective nonpharmacologic interventions. Our viewpoint raises serious questions on the validity of such restrictive measures in saving lives and warn against the application of such damaging strategies in a potential future outbreak.

Seafloor Plastic Pollution Is Not Going Anywhere

The amount of microplastics at the bottom of the Mediterranean is growing as global production increases and plastic breakdown is halted.

The broad use of the Pm8 resistance gene in wheat resulted in hypermutation of the AvrPm8 gene in the powdery mildew pathogen

BackgroundWorldwide wheat production is under constant threat by fast-evolving fungal pathogens. In the last decades, wheat breeding for disease resistance heavily relied on the introgression of chromosomal segments from related species as genetic sources of new resistance. The Pm8 resistance gene against the powdery mildew disease has been introgressed from rye into wheat as part of a large 1BL.1RS chromosomal translocation encompassing multiple disease resistance genes and yield components. Due to its high agronomic value, this translocation has seen continuous global use since the 1960s on large growth areas, even after Pm8 resistance was overcome by the powdery mildew pathogen. The long-term use of Pm8 at a global scale provided the unique opportunity to study the consequences of such extensive resistance gene application on pathogen evolution.ResultsUsing genome-wide association studies in a population of wheat mildew isolates, we identified the avirulence effector AvrPm8 specifically recognized by Pm8. Haplovariant mining in a global mildew population covering all major wheat growing areas of the world revealed 17 virulent haplotypes of the AvrPm8 gene that grouped into two functional categories. The first one comprised amino acid polymorphisms at a single position along the AvrPm8 protein, which we confirmed to be crucial for the recognition by Pm8. The second category consisted of numerous destructive mutations to the AvrPm8 open reading frame such as disruptions of the start codon, gene truncations, gene deletions, and interference with mRNA splicing. With the exception of a single, likely ancient, gain-of-virulence mutation found in mildew isolates around the world, all AvrPm8 virulence haplotypes were found in geographically restricted regions, indicating that they occurred recently as a consequence of the frequent Pm8 use.ConclusionsIn this study, we show that the broad and prolonged use of the Pm8 gene in wheat production worldwide resulted in a multitude of gain-of-virulence mechanisms affecting the AvrPm8 gene in the wheat powdery mildew pathogen. Based on our findings, we conclude that both standing genetic variation as well as locally occurring new mutations contributed to the global breakdown of the Pm8 resistance gene introgression.

Planty Design Activism: Alliances with Seeds

In cities across Australia and elsewhere, individuals and groups are experimenting with initiatives to link urban dwellers to local ecologies and strengthen the relation with and awareness of the environment. Community and street gardens, bush regeneration working bees, botanical and bird-watching expeditions in city parks and green areas are examples of this renewed interest in urban ecologies. What role can we, as design researchers, play in connecting city people to the ecologies they encounter in their everyday lives? This paper discusses a project in an urban precinct in Sydney. We made three campaigning artefacts: a library installation, seed balls made with kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra), and a map tracing a planty route around our urban university campus. Design experiences like workshops and walkshops mobilized these campaigning artefacts. This paper focuses on the seed balls to offer an example of how plants can decenter humans in the design process. We consider plants as possible allies in design activism and advance the idea of “planty design activism.” Global climate breakdown presented the plants and us with the challenge of Australia’s hottest year on record. The findings, drawn out through ethnographies and a participant survey, show that interactions with plants can amplify people’s connection to the environment and that such attachment can make the perception of climate change more present in the city.

Womxn as agents of change to transform the post-apartheid city

The built form of South Africa’s post-apartheid city perpetuates the perception that a heteronormative, protestant, white, masculine, binary norm is the societally preferred perspective. This perpetuation means that queerness, spirituality, womxnness – and all those included within this community, are pushed down by this perceived preferred type of person. This paper presents secondary data on the current social and cultural milieu that restricts womxn from being agents of change in transforming the post-apartheid city. Architecture is complicit in what drives the masculinity that manifests itself in built form. Consequently, existing and future architectural interventions within the post-apartheid city fall short in their attempts to transform the city. Anecdotally, this failure is due to the reluctance to include womxn in the architectural programme of these interventions. This lack of transformation results in the phenomenon that the subdued group at the bottom of the social hierarchy remains silent, as they are left without adequate room to act, be seen, or establish their voice. This paper theorises how this zeitgeist[1] perpetuates post-colonial capitalist industrial linear economy thinking or the masculine approach. The approach vested in profiteering from natural resources and an oppressed labour force. As a result, there may be a connection between the successful implementation of this masculine thinking approach and the global ecological breakdown, proven to be due to the human-caused climate emergency. Finally, this paper argues for a newly established agenda that will inform architectural interventions for programmes that encourage a balanced (feminine and masculine) approach as a contributing solution.
 
 [1] Zeitgeist, or spirit of the time; the spirit characteristic of an age or generation.

National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017

Human impacts on earth-system processes are overshooting several planetary boundaries, driving a crisis of ecological breakdown. This crisis is being caused in large part by global resource extraction, which has increased dramatically over the past half century. We propose a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for ecological breakdown by assessing nations' cumulative material use in excess of equitable and sustainable boundaries. For this analysis, we derived national fair shares of a sustainable resource corridor. These fair shares were then subtracted from countries' actual resource use to determine the extent to which each country has overshot its fair share over the period 1970-2017. Through this approach, each country's share of responsibility for global excess resource use was calculated. High-income nations are responsible for 74% of global excess material use, driven primarily by the USA (27%) and the EU-28 high-income countries (25%). China is responsible for 15% of global excess material use, and the rest of the Global South (ie, the low-income and middle-income countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) is responsible for only 8%. Overshoot in higher-income nations is driven disproportionately by the use of abiotic materials, whereas in lower-income nations it is driven disproportionately by the use of biomass. These results show that high-income nations are the primary drivers of global ecological breakdown and they need to urgently reduce their resource use to fair and sustainable levels. Achieving sufficient reductions will likely require high-income nations to adopt transformative post-growth and degrowth approaches. None.

Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015

Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.

Chapter 9 - Functional MRI evidence for reorganization of language networks after stroke

In this chapter, we review fMRI evidence for language reorganization in individuals with poststroke aphasia. Several studies in the current literature have utilized fMRI as a tool to understand patterns of functional reorganization in poststroke aphasia. Consistent with previous models that have been proposed to explain the trajectory of language recovery, differential patterns of language processing and language recovery have been identified across individuals with poststroke aphasia in different stages of recovery. Overall, a global network breakdown typically occurs in the early stages of aphasia recovery, followed by normalization in "traditional" left hemisphere language networks. Depending on individual characteristics, right hemisphere regions and bilateral domain-general regions may be further recruited. The main takeaway of this chapter is that poststroke aphasia recovery does not depend on individual neural regions, but rather involves a complex interaction among regions in larger networks. Many of the unresolved issues and contrastive findings in the literature warrant further research with larger groups of participants and standard protocols of fMRI implementation.

Nano-biofortification of different crops to immune against COVID-19: A review

Human health and its improvement are the main target of several studies related to medical, agricultural and industrial sciences. The human health is the primary conclusion of many studies. The improving of human health may include supplying the people with enough and safe nutrients against malnutrition to fight against multiple diseases like COVID-19. Biofortification is a process by which the edible plants can be enriched with essential nutrients for human health against malnutrition. After the great success of biofortification approach in the human struggle against malnutrition, a new biotechnological tool in enriching the crops with essential nutrients in the form of nanoparticles to supplement human diet with balanced diet is called nano-biofortification. Nano biofortification can be achieved by applying the nano particles of essential nutrients (e.g., Cu, Fe, Se and Zn) foliar or their nano-fertilizers in soils or waters. Not all essential nutrients for human nutrition can be biofortified in the nano-form using all edible plants but there are several obstacles prevent this approach. These stumbling blocks are increased due to COVID-19 and its problems including the global trade, global breakdown between countries, and global crisis of food production. The main target of this review was to evaluate the nano-biofortification process and its using against malnutrition as a new approach in the era of COVID-19. This review also opens many questions, which are needed to be answered like is nano-biofortification a promising solution against malnutrition? Is COVID-19 will increase the global crisis of malnutrition? What is the best method of applied nano-nutrients to achieve nano-biofortification? What are the challenges of nano-biofortification during and post of the COVID-19?

Reliability and importance measure analysis of networks with shared risk link groups

We consider the problem of assessing the reliability and the Birnbaum importance measure of complex networks under the shared link risk group (SRLG) failure scenario. With a view to the fact that SRLG failures can cause a global system breakdown, the reliability and the importance measure analysis is of fundamental importance to the study of critical infrastructures such as sensor and cross-layer networks, supply chains, and other complex systems that support the essential functioning of our society and economy. The mathematical complexity of the reliability and the importance measure calculation implies that one has to rely on approximation techniques, since no analytical method for solving this problem in reasonable computation time is known to exist. This study will build upon the Permutation Monte Carlo paradigm. The major advantage of the proposed solution is that it allows us to obtain reliable estimates of both the network reliability and the Birnbaum importance measure using the same algorithmic machinery. We show that the suggested algorithm is easy to implement and that the method is scalable to meet real-life network sizes.

Back to the future: Old values for a new (more equal) world

Inequality has become a defining feature of our time and concerns are growing that artificial intelligence, human-enhancement and global ecological breakdown could cause levels to spiral upwards. Although public disapproval of current inequalities is widespread, studies also show that people don’t desire equality, but prefer ‘fair’, still significant inequalities. Here, I argue these preferences are rooted in ideals of meritocracy and intuitive notions of free will; values that’ll become increasingly tenuous in a future of human enhancement, where they could legitimise mass inequalities. Maintaining an illusion of free will is often argued to be needed to disincentivise immoral behaviour, but it also creates a vicious feedback: It provides social legitimacy to substantial inequalities, which exacerbate precisely those immoral behaviours that the illusion is intended to mitigate. However, meritocratic values, and their foundational notion of individual agency, are neither natural nor inevitable – they’re mediated by social practices. To see what egalitarian practices may look like, I review the rich anthropology literature on egalitarian societies. This highlights an irony, in that the meritocratic ideals proposed by contemporary politicians as a remedy to entrenched inequalities are the same values seen as the origin of inequality in existing egalitarian societies around the world.

Bird Strike Risk Control in Meizhou Airport Based on Cascading Failure Model in Coupled Map Lattices

The fundamental way to reduce the risk of bird strike is to manage the ecological environment of the airport and its surrounding areas and affect the ecological chain of birds. Based on a comprehensive survey of animal and plant populations in Meizhou airport, an airport ecological chain network is established, and a improved cascading failure model in coupled map lattices is introduced to simulate the robustness and vulnerability of the network. It is found that airport ecological network will be collapsed around five time series one after another under the external attack. It also shows that the network will have a global breakdown under a very small external perturbation value when Solanum indicum L. and Callidium villosulum Fairmaire are deliberately attacked. The simulation results show that if the airport authorities give priority to governance these populations of animals and plants with higher in-degree, it may reduce bird strike risk. The analysis results provide a theoretical basis for airport bird strike prevention.

COVID‐19 and Historical Global Rupture in Latin America

This article contrasts two significant ruptures in globalisation. World War I in 1914 was a significant break from the Latin American export‐oriented development that was firmly connected to economic globalisation. This article uses the Argentine case study to reveal the ramifications of the post‐1914 global breakdown for the republic's internationally dependent development. It draws comparisons with the current COVID‐19 crisis as a significant departure from rapid globalisation. Both events altered the trajectory of international activity. Analysis of the 1914 rupture exposes the parallels with COVID‐19 and its potential severity for Latin America's internationally connected development.

Altered rRNA processing disrupts nuclear RNA homeostasis via competition for the poly(A)-binding protein Nab2.

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are key mediators of RNA metabolism. Whereas some RBPs exhibit narrow transcript specificity, others function broadly across both coding and non-coding RNAs. Here, in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we demonstrate that changes in RBP availability caused by disruptions to distinct cellular processes promote a common global breakdown in RNA metabolism and nuclear RNA homeostasis. Our data shows that stabilization of aberrant ribosomal RNA (rRNA) precursors in an enp1-1 mutant causes phenotypes similar to RNA exosome mutants due to nucleolar sequestration of the poly(A)-binding protein (PABP) Nab2. Decreased nuclear PABP availability is accompanied by genome-wide changes in RNA metabolism, including increased pervasive transcripts levels and snoRNA processing defects. These phenotypes are mitigated by overexpression of PABPs, inhibition of rDNA transcription, or alterations in TRAMP activity. Our results highlight the need for cells to maintain poly(A)-RNA levels in balance with PABPs and other RBPs with mutable substrate specificity across nucleoplasmic and nucleolar RNA processes.

Teaching climate complacency: mainstream economics textbooks and the need for transformation in economics education

ABSTRACT In this paper we ask, what is mainstream economics education conveying to its students? Standard mainstream economics textbooks treat the environment as a specialist issue in addition to standard concerns and based on solutions that conform to those standard concerns. When viewed as socialisation for students this is a major problem. To illustrate the problems we set out key aspects of the standard format, and draw attention to the structure and contents from two well-known textbooks. Standard textbooks convey the impression that the ‘environmental issue’ is appropriately incorporated and exhibit two complacency-creating features. First, fundamental problems (acute global ecological breakdown, biodiversity loss, climate change crisis etc), issues and urgency cannot be adequately conveyed to students within this way of framing economics. Second, specific theory and policy solutions suggest that the problem is well in hand. We illustrate using the theory of negative externalities.

Effects of potassium ferrocyanide used for desalination on lime composite performances in different curing regimes

Negative effects of salt weathering on porous building materials will increase because of the global climate breakdown. The addition of crystallization modifiers as desalination technique has attracted considerable scholarly attention. This study builds on this body of knowledge by investigating the effects of potassium ferrocyanide addition on air-lime mortar under different environmental conditions. Three experimental setups were selected with different curing regimes: i) molding, ii) between sandstones and iii) between salt-laden sandstones. TGA-DSC, ion chromatography, MIP and SEM were conducted to evaluate the effects of ferrocyanide on the whole salt content, lime carbonation and mortar microstructure. Its efficiency/durability under salt exposure and wet conditions were also tested. The decay after salt crystallization cycles was evaluated by comparing air permeability, open porosity, water vapor permeability, capillary porosity, ultrasonic pulse velocity, surface hardness and roughness of samples before and after these cycles. Results showed that adding ferrocyanide improved the mortar performance in all curing regimes and its efficiency continued after capillary water uptake and salt attack.

Is Capitalism Ending? An Institutional-Evolutionary View

:Critical political economists on the Left regard the 2008 Global Financial Crisis as a symptom of long-term structural issues threatening global capitalist reproduction. Building on that view, a number of studies have argued that global capitalism will collapse in the coming decades. The three key structural issues they identify are: (1) mass technological unemployment of middle-class workers, (2) low growth and economic stagnation in advanced economies leading to global economic breakdown, and (3) declining Western growth and consumption cannot be offset by growth in China and Asia more broadly, thus leading to a breakdown of the global system. This article challenges each of these arguments on the grounds that they are theoretically flawed and empirically ungrounded. Key issues include a failure to adequately account for the role of global capitalist variation in driving growth and innovation, and an invalid representative model of global economic evolution based on trends in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Based on theoretical considerations concerning the state’s role in generating institutional diversity, and in light of identified empirical trends concerning global growth and employment, I argue that the global political economy is in more robust condition than critics suggest.

Realising Climate Reparations: Towards a Global Climate Stabilization Fund and Resilience Fund Programme for Loss and Damage in Marginalised and Former Colonised Societies

In response to global climate breakdown and the financial and macro-economic instability that underpins the current era of the Anthropocene, climate reparations represent an important remedy for the Global South. While not a new concept, climate reparations offer an appropriate encompassing philosophical and policy apparatus for first coming to terms with the magnitude of climate breakdown associated with the fallout from the climate crisis, and second for mounting a response that applies a framework that has history and ethics at the centre. This policy paper offers analysis of the current and historical factors that give rise to the necessity of, and an action agenda for realising climate reparations, namely the interrelated effects of colonialism and the disproportionate role of former colonising powers in greenhouse gas emissions. Through an examination of the macroeconomic character and repercussions of the climate crisis, relevant data and financial needs associated with ongoing long-term loss and damage especially of formerly colonised regions and marginalised societies, the paper offers two policy solutions - a Global Climate Stabilization Fund that effectively replaces any role the current International Monetary Fund have regarding climate change governance and a Resilience financing scheme for loss and damage. Ex-colonial regions face an extremely uncertain and volatile future and because of their economic and institutional vulnerabilities, current mechanisms and policy tools have fallen far short of their needs and fail to recognise the historical condition of their colonisation as cause for growing social and economic inequities borne and aggravated by the climate crisis. In response, this paper sets out the argument for a global climate stabilisation and resilience programmes through which climate reparations can be materialised. In addition, climate stabilization requires appropriate democratic and institutional structures at the multilateral, regional and national levels. As such, the paper discusses governance arrangements and fund and programme leadership comprising civic groups and developing-country governments and organisations. At the national and regional level, central banks and regional development banks will play a critical role to localise the institutional relationships and fast-track funding disbursements in response to climate-induced events and disasters that affect livelihoods, agriculture, increased displacement, and a range of other needs and social and economic support systems. This paper thus explores and offers a starting point for a policy framework around macroeconomic effects and financial instability borne and aggravated by climate change that offers an important case for climate reparations for the Global South.

Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm

Carbon-neutral medical conferences should be the norm