Commodification and ‘the commons’: the politics of privatising public water in Greece and Portugal during the Eurozone Crisis

In response to the Eurozone crisis, austerity and restructuring has been imposed on the European Union’s (EU) peripheral member states in order to receive financial bailout loans. In addition to cuts in funding of essential public services, cuts in public sector employment and further liberalisation of labour markets, this has also included pressure towards the privatisation of state assets. And yet, workers have not simply accepted these restructuring pressures. They have organised and fought back against austerity and enforced privatisation. Based on a historical materialist perspective and following a strategy of incorporated comparison, in this paper we will comparatively assess the struggles against enforced water privatisation in Greece and Portugal set against the background of the structuring conditions surrounding the Eurozone crisis

Negative impact of female sex on outcomes from repetitive mild traumatic brain injury in hTau mice is age dependent: a Chronic Effects of Neurotrauma Consortium study

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious public health concern which strikes someone every 15 s on average in the US. Even mild TBI, which comprise as many as 75% of all TBI cases, carries long term consequences. The effects of age and sex on long term outcome from TBI is not fully understood, but due to the increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases after TBI it is important to understand how these factors influence the outcome from TBI. This study examined the neurobehavioral and neuropathological effects of age and sex on the outcome 15 days following repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (r-mTBI) in mice transgenic for human tau (hTau). These mice express the six human isoforms of tau but do not express endogenous murine tau and they develop tau pathology and memory impairment in an age-dependent manner. After 5 mild impacts, aged female mice showed motor impairments that were absent in aged male mice, as well as younger animals. Conversely, aged female sham mice outperformed all other groups of aged mice in a Barnes maze spatial memory test. Pathologically, increases in IBA-1 and GFAP staining typically seen in this model of r-mTBI showed the expected increases with both injury and age, but phosphorylated tau stained with CP13 in the hippocampus (reduced in female sham mice compared to males) and PHF1 in the cortex (reduced in female TBI mice compared to male TBI mice) showed the only histological signs of sex-dependent differences in these mice

Organics in comet 67P – a first comparative analysis of mass spectra from ROSINA–DFMS, COSAC and Ptolemy

The ESA Rosetta spacecraft followed comet 67P at a close distance for more than 2 yr. In addition, it deployed the lander Philae on to the surface of the comet. The (surface) composition of the comet is of great interest to understand the origin and evolution of comets. By combining measurements made on the comet itself and in the coma, we probe the nature of this surface material and compare it to remote sensing observations. We compare data from the double focusing mass spectrometer (DFMS) of the ROSINA experiment on ESA's Rosetta mission and previously published data from the two mass spectrometers COSAC (COmetary Sampling And Composition) and Ptolemy on the lander. The mass spectra of all three instruments show very similar patterns of mainly CHO-bearing molecules that sublimate at temperatures of 275 K. The DFMS data also show a great variety of CH-, CHN-, CHS-, CHO2- and CHNO-bearing saturated and unsaturated species. Methyl isocyanate, propanal and glycol aldehyde suggested by the earlier analysis of the measured COSAC spectrum could not be confirmed. The presence of polyoxymethylene in the Ptolemy spectrum was found to be unlikely. However, the signature of the aromatic compound toluene was identified in DFMS and Ptolemy data. Comparison with remote sensing instruments confirms the complex nature of the organics on the surface of 67P, which is much more diverse than anticipated

Effect of strain rate on tensile mechanical properties of high-purity niobium single crystals for SRF applications

An investigation of the mechanical properties of high-purity niobium single crystals is presented. Specimens were cut with different crystallographic orientations from a large grain niobium disk and uniaxial tensile tests were conducted at strain rates between 10-4 and 103 s-1. The logarithmic strain rate sensitivity for crystals oriented close to the center of a tensile axis inverse pole figure (IPF) is ~0.14 for all strain rates. The strain at failure (ranging from 0.4 to 0.9) is very sensitive to crystal orientation and maximal at ~10-2 s-1 for crystals oriented close to the center of an IPF. The high anisotropy observed at quasi-static strain rates decreased with increasing strain rate. The activation of multiple slip systems in the dynamic tests could account for this reduction in anisotropy. A transition from strain hardening to softening in the plastic domain was observed at strain rates greater than approximately 6 × 10-2 s-1 for crystals oriented close to the center of a tensile axis IPF. Shear bands were observed in specimens with orientations having similarly high Schmid factors on both {110} and {112} slip families, and they are correlated with reduced ductility. Crystal rotations at fracture are compared for the different orientations using scanning electron microscopy images and EBSD orientation maps. A rotation toward the terminal stable [101] orientation was measured for the majority of specimens (with tensile axes more than ~17° from the [001] direction) at strain rates between 1.28 × 10-2 and 1000 s-1.The authors would like to acknowledge the work of CERN's Materials, Metrology and Non-Destructive Testing (EN-MME-MM) section for granting access to their equipment for specimen preparation and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analyses. The authors would also like to thank Mr. Larry Vladic of Elite Motion LLC for lending us the high-speed camera during the high strain rate tests performed ASU. This Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) receives funding from the European Union's H2020 Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 764879. T.R. Bieler, D. Kang, E. Pai Kulyadi, P. Eisenlohr, C. Kale, and K.N. Solanki acknowledge support from DOE/OHEP grant DE-SC0009962

Malnutrition and disability: unexplored opportunities for collaboration.

There is increasing international interest in the links between malnutrition and disability: both are major global public health problems, both are key human rights concerns, and both are currently prominent within the global health agenda. In this review, interactions between the two fields are explored and it is argued that strengthening links would lead to important mutual benefits and synergies. At numerous points throughout the life-cycle, malnutrition can cause or contribute to an individual's physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health disability. By working more closely together, these problems can be transformed into opportunities: nutrition services and programmes for children and adults can act as entry points to address and, in some cases, avoid or mitigate disability; disability programmes can improve nutrition for the children and adults they serve. For this to happen, however, political commitment and resources are needed, as are better data

Malnutrition and disability: unexplored opportunities for collaboration

There is increasing international interest in the links between malnutrition and disability: both are major global public health problems, both are key human rights concerns, and both are currently prominent within the global health agenda. In this review, interactions between the two fields are explored and it is argued that strengthening links would lead to important mutual benefits and synergies. At numerous points throughout the life-cycle, malnutrition can cause or contribute to an individual's physical, sensory, intellectual or mental health disability. By working more closely together, these problems can be transformed into opportunities: nutrition services and programmes for children and adults can act as entry points to address and, in some cases, avoid or mitigate disability; disability programmes can improve nutrition for the children and adults they serve. For this to happen, however, political commitment and resources are needed, as are better data

The <i>Castalia</i> mission to Main Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

We describe Castalia, a proposed mission to rendezvous with a Main Belt Comet (MBC), 133P/Elst-Pizarro. MBCs are a recently discovered population of apparently icy bodies within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which may represent the remnants of the population which supplied the early Earth with water. Castalia will perform the first exploration of this population by characterising 133P in detail, solving the puzzle of the MBC’s activity, and making the first in situ measurements of water in the asteroid belt. In many ways a successor to ESA’s highly successful Rosetta mission, Castalia will allow direct comparison between very different classes of comet, including measuring critical isotope ratios, plasma and dust properties. It will also feature the first radar system to visit a minor body, mapping the ice in the interior. Castalia was proposed, in slightly different versions, to the ESA M4 and M5 calls within the Cosmic Vision programme. We describe the science motivation for the mission, the measurements required to achieve the scientific goals, and the proposed instrument payload and spacecraft to achieve these

Evolution of water production of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: An empirical model and a multi-instrument study

We examine the evolution of the water production of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko during the Rosetta mission (2014 June–2016 May) based on in situ and remote sensing measurements made by Rosetta instruments, Earth-based telescopes and through the development of an empirical coma model. The derivation of the empirical model is described and the model is then applied to detrend spacecraft position effects from the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) data. The inter-comparison of the instrument data sets shows a high level of consistency and provides insights into the water and dust production. We examine different phases of the orbit, including the early mission (beyond 3.5 au) where the ROSINA water production does not show the expected increase with decreasing heliocentric distance. A second important phase is the period around the inbound equinox, where the peak water production makes a dramatic transition from northern to southern latitudes. During this transition, the water distribution is complex, but is driven by rotation and active areas in the north and south. Finally, we consider the perihelion period, where there may be evidence of time dependence in the water production rate. The peak water production, as measured by ROSINA, occurs 18–22 d after perihelion at 3.5 ± 0.5 × 1028 water molecules s-1. We show that the water production is highly correlated with ground-based dust measurements, possibly indicating that several dust parameters are constant during the observed period. Using estimates of the dust/gas ratio, we use our measured water production rate to calculate a uniform surface loss of 2–4 m during the current perihelion passage

EU aggregate demand as a way out of crisis? Engaging the post-Keynesian critique

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Post-Keynesians have delivered an important advance in providing explanations of the Eurozone Crisis, not the least in demonstrating how the formation of the European integration project lacked the means to manage effectively the macroeconomic imbalances between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ spaces across the region. Through a critical engagement with such descriptions, this article argues that to account more adequately for the formation of the asymmetrical and crisis-ridden forms of development across the Eurozone, it is necessary to focus on the uneven and combined development of Europe’s ‘peripheral’ spaces and their integration into an expanded free trade regime since the 1980s. It is through a focus on the structuring condition of uneven and combined development shaped by capitalist social relations of production and attendant class struggles that we can better locate the origins of the present crisis