Global Reparations within Capitalism:Aspirations and Tensions in Contemporary Movements for Reparatory Justice

The idea of global reparations has received increasing attention in recent years, not only with respect to legacies of slavery and colonialism, but also to interrelated issues such as climate change, debt crisis, or ongoing financial transfers from the Global South to the Global North. This article, which introduces and sets the Debate for the 2024 Forum issue on the political economy of 21st century global reparations, offers a critical perspective on contemporary global reparations agendas, including their macroeconomic and development implications for the Global South. It highlights the contentious, unresolved questions about how reparations movements should interact with the highly unequal structures of global capitalism. To what degree should they seek large redistributive gains within these structures, or else aim for more revolutionary standpoints which reject these structures? If the former, would this compromise any hope for reparations to be truly transformative and able to address the challenges presented by global white supremacy? The hope of reparations movements is to make progressive gains that could become the catalyst for more transformative changes on a global scale. At the same time, sympathetic critics question whether reparations are feasible or should be a primary focus of advocacy for achieving racial and climate justice on national as well as global levels. In outlining these points of debate, the article also considers the questions of how to make global reparations work for recipients, and how to finance them. It concludes by elaborating on the challenge of moving towards a more developmentalist emphasis of ‘systemic reparations’.</p

Irreducible Multiplets of Three-Quark Operators on the Lattice: Controlling Mixing under Renormalization

High luminosity accelerators have greatly increased the interest in semi-exclusive and exclusive reactions involving nucleons. The relevant theoretical information is contained in the nucleon wavefunction and can be parametrized by moments of the nucleon distribution amplitudes, which in turn are linked to matrix elements of three-quark operators. These can be calculated from first principles in lattice QCD. However, on the lattice the problems of operator mixing under renormalization are rather involved. In a systematic approach we investigate this issue in depth. Using the spinorial symmetry group of the hypercubic lattice we derive irreducibly transforming three-quark operators, which allow us to control the mixing pattern.Comment: 13 page

Too Big to Manage: US Megabanks’ Competition by Innovation and the Microfoundations of Financialization

Disagreements over the systemic implications—the future—of financialization can be traced in part to the absence of sustained attention to the role of banking firms in driving this secular shift forward. That is, the financialization literature lacks an adequate microfoundation. Accounting for the drivers of financialization processes solely at the macro level overlooks the problems of how these processes came about and whether they are sustainable. This paper addresses this explanatory gap, arguing that a key independent microeconomic driver of increasing financialization did exist: the incessant efforts by money-centre banks in the USA to break out of Depression-era restrictions on their size, activities, and markets. These banks’ growth strategies in turbulent times led to an institutional (meso) shift—the rise of a megabank-centred shadow banking system—that now shapes global financial architecture even while operating in ways that are unsustainable. In short, too-big-to-manage megabanks are at the heart of the fragility and instability of the economy today

Putting a “C60 Ball” and Chain to Chlorin e6 Improves Its Cellular Uptake and Photodynamic Performances

Chlorin e6 (Ce6) and fullerene (C60) are among the most used photosensitizers (PSs) for photodynamic therapy (PDT). Through the combination of the chemical and photophysical properties of Ce6 and C60, in principle, we can obtain an “ideal” photosensitizer that is able to bypass the limitations of the two molecules alone, i.e., the low cellular uptake of Ce6 and the scarce solubility and absorption in the red region of the C60. Here, we synthesized and characterized a Ce6–C60 dyad. The UV-Vis spectrum of the dyad showed the typical absorption bands of both fullerene and Ce6, while a quenching of Ce6 fluorescence was observed. This behavior is typical in the formation of a fullerene–antenna system and is due to the intramolecular energy, or electron transfer from the antenna (Ce6) to the fullerene. Consequently, the Ce6–C60 dyad showed an enhancement in the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Flow cytometry measurements demonstrated how the uptake of the Ce6 was strongly improved by the conjugation with C60. The Ce6–C60 dyad exhibited in A431 cancer cells low dark toxicity and a higher PDT efficacy than Ce6 alone, due to the enhancement of the uptake and the improvement of ROS generation

Editorial work and the peer review economy of STS journals

Merit, Expertise and Measuremen

Nucleon distribution amplitudes from lattice QCD

We calculate low moments of the leading-twist and next-to-leading twist nucleon distribution amplitudes on the lattice using two flavors of clover fermions. The results are presented in the MSbar scheme at a scale of 2 GeV and can be immediately applied in phenomenological studies. We find that the deviation of the leading-twist nucleon distribution amplitude from its asymptotic form is less pronounced than sometimes claimed in the literature.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. RevTeX style. Normalization for \lambda_i corrected. Discussion of the results extended. To be published in PR

Designing Ultraflexible Perovskite X-Ray Detectors through Interface Engineering

X-ray detectors play a pivotal role in development and advancement of humankind, from far-reaching impact in medicine to furthering the ability to observe distant objects in outer space. While other electronics show the ability to adapt to flexible and lightweight formats, state-of-the-art X-ray detectors rely on materials requiring bulky and fragile configurations, severely limiting their applications. Lead halide perovskites is one of the most rapidly advancing novel materials with success in the field of semiconductor devices. Here, an ultraflexible, lightweight, and highly conformable passively operated thin film perovskite X-ray detector with a sensitivity as high as 9.3 ± 0.5&nbsp;µC Gy−1 cm−2 at 0&nbsp;V and a remarkably low limit of detection of 0.58 ± 0.05&nbsp;μGy s−1 is presented. Various electron and hole transporting layers accessing their individual impact on the detector performance are evaluated. Moreover, it is shown that this ultrathin form-factor allows for fabrication of devices detecting X-rays equivalently from front and back side