Eco-refuges as Anarchist’s Promised Land or the End of Dialectical Anarchism

Since the early Medieval Time people contested theological legitimation and rational discursive discours on authority as well as retreated to refuges to escape from any secular or ecclesiastical authority. Modern attempts formulated rational legitimation of authority in several ways: pragmatic authority by Monteigne, Bodin and Hobbes, or the contract authority of Locke and Rousseou. However, Enlightened Anarchism, first formulated in 1793 by the English philosopher William Godwin fulminated against all rational restrictions of human freedom and self-determination. However, we do not analyze anarchism by the ‘what’ and the ‘why’, but by looking for the best actual approach of Anarchist’s ‘Promised Land’. Furthermore, we follow the footsteps of Thoreau’s Walden Pond experiment considered as a place of salvation and prototype of 19th century romantic’s extreme individualism towards Leopold’s ethics of the land. Indeed, Thoreau’s and later Muir’s concepts of refuges are tightly connected to territorial and temporal bio-regional constraints and imply an internally organized public area based on mutualism and Hannah Arendt’s agape. From these ideas of refuges, Aldo Leopold formulated his Land-ethics that claimed integrity and autonomy of the ‘Land’. His foundation is a prototype of the eco-centric free space version of eco-anarchism as formulated by Bookchin. In order to formulate a philosophical foundation of eco-anarchism we reject Newtonian homogeneous space-temporal conception, preceding the whole Modern discours about authority and state. On the contrary, we adopt the pluralistic Leibnizian space-time from which thinking-humans do not dissociate themselves, but participate as part of the rational infrastructure of eco-refuges. In eco-refuges, citizen belong to the civil society that stays in equilibrium with the landscape and all forms of biological life. Space is the boundary condition of human activity and determines how borders, environmental organization and institutes are sustained. Space has its proper essence of sustainability, unity and integrity. The individual feelings of security are embedded in a timelike tradition and evolution of the free space, while individual particular conceptions of space and time integrate into the social processes of identification with the refuge. Therefore, the creation of eco-refuges transforms the actual world of national authorities into a world of anarchistic democratic eco-regional homelands

Allostatic load and preterm birth

Preterm birth is a universal health problem that is one of the largest unmet medical needs contributing to the global burden of disease. Adding to its complexity is that there are no means to predict who is at risk when pregnancy begins or when women will actually deliver. Until these problems are addressed, there will be no interventions to reduce the risk because those who should be treated will not be known. Considerable evidence now exists that chronic life, generational or accumulated stress is a risk factor for preterm delivery in animal models and in women. This wear and tear on the body and mind is called allostatic load. This review explores the evidence that chronic stress contributes to preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes in animal and human studies. It explores how allostatic load can be used to, firstly, model stress and preterm birth in animal models and, secondly, how it can be used to develop a predictive model to assess relative risk among women in early pregnancy. Once care providers know who is in the highest risk group, interventions can be developed and applied to mitigate their risk

Differences in life expectancy between four Western countries and their Caribbean dependencies, 1980–2014

BackgroundIn the Caribbean, life expectancy in politically independent territories has increasingly diverged from that of territories that remained affiliated to their former colonizers. Because these affiliated territories differ in degree of political independence, they are not all governed in the same way. We assessed whether differences in life expectancy trends between Caribbean dependencies and their Western administrators were related to their degree of political independence, and which causes of death contributed to divergence or convergence in life expectancy.MethodsAnalysis of age-standardized death rates and decomposition of life expectancy differences between France, the Netherlands, UK, USA and their Caribbean dependencies by age and cause-of-death during the period 1980–2014.ResultsLife expectancy differences between Western countries and their dependencies have generally increased for men and narrowed for women, but trends have been much more favorable in the French- than in the Dutch-administered territories. The strongest contributions to widening gaps in life expectancy between Western countries and their dependencies were from mortality from cardiovascular diseases (ischemic heart disease) and external causes (homicide and traffic accidents).ConclusionDependencies with a stronger political affiliation to a Western country experienced more favorable life expectancy developments than dependencies that had more autonomy during the 1980–2014 period. The underlying mortality differences with Western countries are largely comparable among Caribbean territories but differ in magnitude, most notably for cardiovascular disease and external causes. This suggests that increases in a territory’s political autonomy impairs the diffusion of new knowledge and techniques, and/or reduces government’s effectiveness in implementing policies

Hierarchical Temporal Representation in Linear Reservoir Computing

Recently, studies on deep Reservoir Computing (RC) highlighted the role of layering in deep recurrent neural networks (RNNs). In this paper, the use of linear recurrent units allows us to bring more evidence on the intrinsic hierarchical temporal representation in deep RNNs through frequency analysis applied to the state signals. The potentiality of our approach is assessed on the class of Multiple Superimposed Oscillator tasks. Furthermore, our investigation provides useful insights to open a discussion on the main aspects that characterize the deep learning framework in the temporal domain.Comment: This is a pre-print of the paper submitted to the 27th Italian Workshop on Neural Networks, WIRN 201

Climate, people, fire and vegetation: new insights into vegetation dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean since the 1st century AD

Anatolia forms a bridge between Europe, Africa and Asia and is influenced by all three continents in terms of climate, vegetation and human civilisation. Unfortunately, well-dated palynological records focussing on the period from the end of the classical Roman period until subrecent times are rare for Anatolia and completely absent for southwest Turkey, resulting in a lacuna in knowledge concerning the interactions of climatic change, human impact, and environmental change in this important region. Two well-dated palaeoecological records from the Western Taurus Mountains, Turkey, provide a first relatively detailed record of vegetation dynamics from late Roman times until the present in SW Turkey. Combining pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, charcoal, sedimentological, archaeological data, and newly developed multivariate numerical analyses allows for the disentangling of climatic and anthropogenic influences on vegetation change. Results show changes in both the regional pollen signal as well as local soil sediment characteristics match shifts in regional climatic conditions. Both climatic as well as anthropogenic change had a strong influence on vegetation dynamics and land use. A moist environmental trend during the late-3rd century caused an increase in marshes and wetlands in the moister valley floors, limiting possibilities for intensive crop cultivation at such locations. A mid-7th century shift to pastoralism coincided with a climatic deterioration as well as the start of Arab incursions into the region, the former driving the way in which the vegetation developed afterwards. Resurgence in agriculture was observed in the study during the mid-10th century AD, coinciding with the Medieval Climate Anomaly. An abrupt mid-12th century decrease in agriculture is linked to socio-political change, rather than the onset of the Little Ice Age. Similarly, gradual deforestation occurring from the 16th century onwards has been linked to changes in land use during Ottoman times. The pollen data reveal that a fast rise in <i>Pinus</i> pollen after the end of the Beyşehir Occupation Phase need not always occur. The notion of high <i>Pinus</i> pollen percentages indicating an open landscape incapable of countering the influx of pine pollen is also deemed unrealistic. While multiple fires occurred in the region through time, extended fire periods, as had occurred during the Bronze Age and Beyşehir Occupation Phase, did not occur, and no signs of local fire activity were observed. Fires were never a major influence on vegetation dynamics. While no complete overview of post-BO Phase fire events can be presented, the available data indicates that fires in the vicinity of Gravgaz may have been linked to anthropogenic activity in the wider surroundings of the marsh. Fires in the vicinity of Bereket appeared to be linked to increased abundance of pine forests. There was no link with specifically wet or dry environmental conditions at either site. While this study reveals much new information concerning the impact of climate change and human occupation on the environment, more studies from SW Turkey are required in order to properly quantify the range of the observed phenomena and the magnitude of their impacts

Novel project on total plasma based treatment of waste

An experimental plasmachemical reactor has been started at IPP Prague for the innovative and environmerntally friendly total plasma treatment of waste streams, biomass and low grade fuels, with a view to their sustainable energetic and chemical valorisation and to a reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases. Existing incineration and biological waste elimination processes cannot always fulfil the objectives of sustainable development, i.e. maximum recovery of energy and materials from the waste streams in an environmentally friendly manner. Moreover, these processes often generate residues which are concentrates of hazardous material and need to be landfilled. Plasmas offer an alternative and superior solution for the treatment of waste streams. Plasma torches have the unique capability of increasing the energy of the process gas compared with conventional combustion equipment. They therefore offer several distinct advantages over traditional methods where the energy content of the waste is used as the heat source. Since the process energy is provided by direct heat transfer from an electric arc, gases of widely varying chemical composition may be used; use of electrical energy also reduces the gas flow needs and on-site off-gas production, and offers control over the chemistry. The very high heat conditions in a plasma reactor trigger a dual, simultaneous reaction process: organic materials are converted into synthesis gas (syngas) without formation of toxic products such as dioxins and furans, while inorganic materials are converted into a non-leaching, vitrified, inert slag which has industrial applications. The quality of the syngas can be controlled by non-thermal plasmas, using new generations of gas cleaning corona plasma technologies. A plasmachemical experimental reactor has been commissioned in Prague in August-September 2004, using the novel IPP-CAS hybrid gas-water stabilized torch (160 kW).В ІФП в Празі був запущений експериментальний плазмохімічний реактор з використанням найновіших екологічно чистих технологій для повної плазмової обробки відходів, біомаси та низькосортного палива з урахуванням збереження їх енергетичної і хімічної цінності і зниження викидів парникових газів. Існуючі процеси знищення відходів засобом спалювання та біологічної обробки не завжди забезпечують максимальне відновлення енергії і матеріалів з відходів без завдання шкоди навколишньому середовищу. Крім того, ці процеси часто призводять до створення залишків, що містять небезпечні речовини і підлягають похованню. Плазмові технології пропонують альтернативне и краще рішення задачі переробки рідких відходів. Порівняно зі звичайним обладнанням для спалювання, плазмові факели мають унікальну здібність підвищувати енергію газу, що виділяється під час переробки. Тому вони дають деякі явні переваги над традиційними методами, де енергозміст відходів використовується як джерело тепла. Оскільки процес виділення енергії забезпечується прямим передаванням тепла від електричної дуги, можливе використання газів різноманітного хімічного складу. Використання електричної енергії дозволяє зменшити витрати газу та його супровідне виділення і здійснити хімічний контроль. Сильний нагрів в плазмовому реакторі ініціює два одночасних процеса - перетворення органічних речовин у синтетичний газ (сингаз) без створення токсичних продуктів, таких як діоксини та фурани, а неорганічних речовин – у невилужений склоподібний інертний шлак, що має промислове застосування. Якість сингазу можна контролювати за допомогою нетеплової плазмы за новими плазмовими технологіями очищення газів з вживанням плазмової корони. Плазмохімічний експериментальний реактор з використанням нового гібридного газоводяного стабілізованого факела IPP-CAS (160 квт) прийнятий в експлуатацію в Празі в серпні-вересні 2004 р.В ИФП в Праге запущен экспериментальный плазмохимический реактор с использованием новейших экологически чистых технологий для полной плазменной обработки отходов, биомассы и низкосортного топлива с учётом сохранения их энергетической и химической ценности и снижения выбросов парниковых газов. Существующие процессы уничтожения отходов путём сжигания и биологической обработки не всегда обеспечивают максимальное восстановление энергии и материалов из отходов без ущерба для окружающей среды. Кроме того, эти процессы часто приводят к образованию остатков, содержащих опасные вещества и подлежащих захоронению. Плазменные технологии предлагают альтернативное и лучшее решение задачи переработки отходов. По сравнению с обычным оборудованием для сжигания плазменные факелы обладают уникальной способностью повышать энергию газа, выделяющегося при переработке. Поэтому они дают некоторые явные преимущества над традиционными методами, в которых энергия, содержащаяся в отходах, используется как источник тепла. Так как процесс выделения энергии обеспечивается прямой передачей тепла от электрической дуги, можно использовать газы разнообразного химического состава. Использование электрической энергии позволяет уменьшить потребление газа и его сопутствующее выделение и осуществить химический контроль. Сильный нагрев в плазменном реакторе запускает два одновременных процесса - превращение органических веществ в синтетический газ (сингаз) без образования токсических продуктов, таких как диоксины и фураны, а неорганических веществ – в невыщелоченный стекловидный инертный шлак, имеющий промышленное применение. Качество сингаза можно контролировать с помощью нетепловой плазмы по новым плазменным технологиям очистки газов с использованием плазменной короны. Плазмохимический экспериментальный реактор с использованием нового гибридного газоводяного стабилизированного факела IPP-CAS (160 кВт) принят в эксплуатацию в Праге в августе-сентябре 2004 г

Reorganization of the nuclear lamina and cytoskeleton in adipogenesis

A thorough understanding of fat cell biology is necessary to counter the epidemic of obesity. Although molecular pathways governing adipogenesis are well delineated, the structure of the nuclear lamina and nuclear-cytoskeleton junction in this process are not. The identification of the ‘linker of nucleus and cytoskeleton’ (LINC) complex made us consider a role for the nuclear lamina in adipose conversion. We herein focused on the structure of the nuclear lamina and its coupling to the vimentin network, which forms a cage-like structure surrounding individual lipid droplets in mature adipocytes. Analysis of a mouse and human model system for fat cell differentiation showed fragmentation of the nuclear lamina and subsequent loss of lamins A, C, B1 and emerin at the nuclear rim, which coincides with reorganization of the nesprin-3/plectin/vimentin complex into a network lining lipid droplets. Upon 18 days of fat cell differentiation, the fraction of adipocytes expressing lamins A, C and B1 at the nuclear rim increased, though overall lamin A/C protein levels were low. Lamin B2 remained at the nuclear rim throughout fat cell differentiation. Light and electron microscopy of a subcutaneous adipose tissue specimen showed striking indentations of the nucleus by lipid droplets, suggestive for an increased plasticity of the nucleus due to profound reorganization of the cellular infrastructure. This dynamic reorganization of the nuclear lamina in adipogenesis is an important finding that may open up new venues for research in and treatment of obesity and nuclear lamina-associated lipodystrophy