Engaging in the ‘multi-territorial site of the political’: Political practices of Latin American landless movements in the struggle for food sovereignty

In both the global north and south the claim for food sovereignty (FS) has become a powerful antithesis to the globalized economy of food. Drawing on scientific debates around the spatial and political dimensions of FS, we will focus in this contribution on how this emerging claim materializes in practice and space. Therefore, we will analyze in an exemplary manner political practices of the Brazilian and Bolivian Landless Movements, which adopted the idea of FS as a guideline for their political action. Our results reveal that these groups do not only fight for FS in the form of ‘typical’ representational and overt political actions such as land occupations, the blocking of roads and manifestations. Rather, we will show that the Landless Movements also express their claims quite subtly, in surprising but yet very powerful ways through multifarious, spatially effective and meaningfully interconnected social practices, which reveal their political character only upon second glance. In order to conceptualize our observations and to recognize the political momentum of these practices, we draw on insights from social theory and political theory and identify three constitutive principles that enable us to make political practices in their ‘worldliness’ distinguishable and recognizable. Building on this conceptualization, we will further propose the approach of the ‘multi-territorial site of the political’ as an analytical tool to investigate the complex geographies of social movements, in particular but not exclusively, in the context of FS in Latin America

Adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference

Bayesian inference usually requires running potentially costly inference procedures separately for every new observation. In contrast, the idea of amortized Bayesian inference is to initially invest computational cost in training an inference network on simulated data, which can subsequently be used to rapidly perform inference (i.e., to return estimates of posterior distributions) for new observations. This approach has been applied to many real-world models in the sciences and engineering, but it is unclear how robust the approach is to adversarial perturbations in the observed data. Here, we study the adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference, focusing on simulation-based estimation of multi-dimensional posterior distributions. We show that almost unrecognizable, targeted perturbations of the observations can lead to drastic changes in the predicted posterior and highly unrealistic posterior predictive samples, across several benchmark tasks and a real-world example from neuroscience. We propose a computationally efficient regularization scheme based on penalizing the Fisher information of the conditional density estimator, and show how it improves the adversarial robustness of amortized Bayesian inference

Association of Lymphatic Abnormalities with Early Complications after Fontan Operation.

BACKGROUND  Increased central venous pressure is inherent in Fontan circulation but not strongly related to Fontan complication. Abnormalities of the lymphatic circulation may play a crucial role in early Fontan complications. METHODS  This was a retrospective, single-center study of patients undergoing Fontan operation from 2008 to 2015. The primary outcome was significant early Fontan complication defined as secondary in-hospital treatment due to peripheral edema, ascites, pleural effusions, protein-losing enteropathy, or plastic bronchitis. All patients received T2-weighted magnetic resonance images to assess abdominal and thoracic lymphatic perfusion pattern 6 months after Fontan completion with respect to localization, distribution, and extension of lymphatic perfusion pattern (type 1-4) and with application of an area score (0-12 points). RESULTS  Nine out of 42 patients developed early Fontan complication. Patients with complication had longer chest tube drainage (mean 28 [interquartile range [IQR]: 13-60] vs. 13 [IQR: 2-22] days, p = 0.01) and more often obstructions in the Fontan circuit 6 months after surgery (56 vs. 15%, p = 0.02). Twelve patients showed little or no abnormalities of lymphatic perfusion (lymphatic perfusion pattern type 1). Most frequently magnetic resonance imaging showed lymphatic congestion in the supraclavicular region (24/42 patients). Paramesenteric lymphatic congestion was observed in eight patients. Patients with early Fontan complications presented with higher lymphatic area score (6 [min-max: 2-10] vs. 2 [min-max: 0-8]), p = 0.001) and greater distribution and extension of thoracic lymphatic congestion (type 3-4: n = 5/9 vs. n = 1/33, p = 0.001). CONCLUSION  Early Fontan complication is related to hemodynamic factors such as circuit obstruction and to the occurrence and extent of lymphatic congestion

Late growth stages and post-growth diffusion in organic epitaxy: PTCDA on Ag(111)

The late growth stages and the post-growth diffusion of crystalline organic thin films have been investigated for 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) on Ag(111), a model system in organic epitaxy. In situ x-ray measurements at the anti-Bragg point during the growth show intensity oscillations followed by a time-independent intensity which is independent of the growth temperature. At T > 350 K, the intensity increases after growth up to a temperature-dependent saturation value due to a post-growth diffusion process. The time-independent intensity and the subsequent intensity recovery have been reproduced by models based on the morphology change as a function of the growth temperature. The morphology found after the post-growth diffusion processes has been studied by specular rod measurements.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Surface Scienc

Düngewirkung organischer Nebenprodukte aus der Insektenzucht der Schwarzen Soldatenfliege (Hermetia illucens)

Untersucht wurde die Düngewirkung von organischen Nebenprodukten aus der Insektenzucht mit unterschiedlichen Eigenschaften zu Staudenbasilikum. Eine hoher Frischmasseertrag wurde nach Düngung von Insektenfraß aufgrund eines günstigen Verhältnis von N-P-K im Düngemittel festgestellt

A choice of persistent identifier schemes for the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo)

Persistent identifiers (PID) to identify digital representations of physical specimens in natural science collections (i.e., digital specimens) unambiguously and uniquely on the Internet are one of the mechanisms for digitally transforming collections-based science. Digital Specimen PIDs contribute to building and maintaining long-term community trust in the accuracy and authenticity of the scientific data to be managed and presented by the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) research infrastructure planned in Europe to commence implementation in 2024. Not only are such PIDs valid over the very long timescales common in the heritage sector but they can also transcend changes in underlying technologies of their implementation. They are part of the mechanism for widening access to natural science collections. DiSSCo technical experts previously selected the Handle System as the choice to meet core PID requirements. Using a two-step approach, this options appraisal captures, characterises and analyses different alternative Handle-based PID schemes and the possible operational modes of use. In a first step a weighting and ranking the options has been applied followed by a structured qualitative assessment of social and technical compliance across several assessment dimensions: levels of scalability, community trust, persistence, governance, appropriateness of the scheme and suitability for future global adoption. The results are discussed in relation to branding, community perceptions and global context to determine a preferred PID scheme for DiSSCo that also has potential for adoption and acceptance globally. DiSSCo will adopt a ‘driven-by DOI’ persistent identifier (PID) scheme customised with natural sciences community characteristics. Establishing a new Registration Agency in collaboration with the International DOI Foundation is a practical way forward to support the FAIR (findable, accessible interoperable, reusable) data architecture of DiSSCo research infrastructure. This approach is compatible with the policies of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and is aligned to existing practices across the global community of natural science collections