Social reproduction and the family: contradictions of childcare and eldercare in Germany

At the heart of capitalism is a contradiction between capital’s need for value-producing labor, including the commodification of care work and care products, and capitalists’ pursuit of profit at all costs, including the value of wages and the life and wellbeing of workers. The family is entangled in this contradiction insofar as its members, and particularly its female members, are encouraged to care for their children and for their dependent parents without (adequate) compensation out of love or duty, at the same time as they are immersed in and held up to standards of autonomy and self-care. In this article, I unpack this entanglement with respect to men and women’s care for their children and for their dependent parents in Germany. I argue that family members live out a structural contradiction in the reproduction of capitalism as a personal and family conflict and assume its fallouts as their personal failures. This makes the family relationships that center on care singularly excessive and family members prone to questioning their commitment, sensibility, and competence as mothers and fathers and as daughters and sons.Peer Reviewe

A Family Matter: Responsibility and Selfishness in Spanish Households

Under the pressure of work's devaluation and the state's retrenchment, men and women in Spain manage their extended family resources in a struggle to provide for their dependents. These resources have become the main axis of inequality in Spain's financialized economy. Drawing on fieldwork in Madrid, I show that men and women understand themselves in terms of this responsibility, internalizing capitalist pressures on social reproduction as a family matter. This self-identification cuts through the solidarities that exploited waged work and gendered domestic work might generate, and it makes family one's ultimate reference point. Instead of the refusal of a responsibility that used to be socialized being a principled and political stance, then, it is dismissed as selfish.Peer Reviewe

Afterword: The middle class and the capitalist state

Peer Reviewe

Successful medical management of emphysematous gastritis with concomitant portal venous air: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>The causes of diffuse abdominal pain following pelvic surgery are numerous. We present a rare case of acute abdominal pain in a woman in the post-partum period.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 25-year-old Caucasian woman with neurofibromatosis type 1 presented to our hospital with diffuse abdominal pain immediately after a cesarean section. The patient was acutely ill and toxic with a fever of 38.8°C, a pulse of 120 beats per minute and a distended abdomen with absent bowel sounds. A computed tomography scan showed air in the wall of the stomach and portal venous system. The patient was successfully treated with intravenous antibiotics, bowel rest and total parenteral nutrition.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>It is rare for a case of emphysematous gastritis associated with portal venous air to be treated successfully without surgery. To the best of our knowledge, to date there has been no reported association of emphysematous gastritis with neurofibromatosis.</p

The value of manure - Manure as co-product in life cycle assessment

Research ArticleLivestock production is important for food security, nutrition, and landscape maintenance, but it is associated with several environmental impacts. To assess the risk and benefits arising from livestock production, transparent and robust indicators are required, such as those offered by life cycle assessment. A central question in such approaches is how environmental burden is allocated to livestock products and to manure that is re-used for agricultural production. To incentivize sustainable use of manure, it should be considered as a co-product as long as it is not disposed of, or wasted, or applied in excess of crop nutrient needs, in which case it should be treated as a waste. This paper proposes a theoretical approach to define nutrient requirements based on nutrient response curves to economic and physical optima and a pragmatic approach based on crop nutrient yield adjusted for nutrient losses to atmosphere and water. Allocation of environmental burden to manure and other livestock products is then based on the nutrient value from manure for crop production using the price of fertilizer nutrients. We illustrate and discuss the proposed method with two case studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cytokinin Regulates Compound Leaf Development in Tomato[C][W]

Leaf shape diversity relies on transient morphogenetic activity in leaf margins. This study identifies cytokinin as an important regulator of the extended morphogenetic activity that characterizes the leaf margin of compound tomato leaves

Induction of Innate Immune Response by TLR3 Agonist Protects Mice against SARS-CoV-2 Infection

SARS-CoV-2, a member of the coronavirus family, is the causative agent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, there is still an urgent need in developing an efficient therapeutic intervention. In this study, we aimed at evaluating the therapeutic effect of a single intranasal treatment of the TLR3/MDA5 synthetic agonist Poly(I:C) against a lethal dose of SARS-CoV-2 in K18-hACE2 transgenic mice. We demonstrate here that early Poly(I:C) treatment acts synergistically with SARS-CoV-2 to induce an intense, immediate and transient upregulation of innate immunity-related genes in lungs. This effect is accompanied by viral load reduction, lung and brain cytokine storms prevention and increased levels of macrophages and NK cells, resulting in 83% mice survival, concomitantly with long-term immunization. Thus, priming the lung innate immunity by Poly(I:C) or alike may provide an immediate, efficient and safe protective measure against SARS-CoV-2 infection