“Corona warriors”? Experiences of India's community health workers (ASHAs) in India's COVID-19 response

India's nearly 1-million strong band of quasi-volunteer accredited social health activists (ASHAs) have been key actors in government efforts to control COVID-19. Utilizing a nationalist rhetoric of war, ASHAs were swiftly mobilized by the government in March 2020 as ‘COVID warriors’ engaged in tracking illness, disseminating information, and caring for quarantined individuals. The speed at which ASHAs were mobilized into mentally and physically grueling labor was all the more stunning given these minimally paid community health workers have long been seen to have low morale given their precarious, informalized work arrangements. Building on work examining the spatialities of global health governance alongside literature on geographic contingency, this paper explores the ways that nationalist COVID-19 war rhetoric promulgated from Delhi worked as a technology of health governance to propel ASHAs into certain forms of action, yet also opened up spaces of potentiality for them to reimagine their relationship to both the state and the communities they serve. In particular, in our analysis of in-depth telephone interviews with ASHA workers in the state of Himachal Pradesh, we find that their hailing as COVID warriors inspired patriotic calls to duty and legitimized their (long over-looked) roles as critical governance actors, yet also was subject to resistance and reworking due to a combination of institutional histories, local politics, as well as happenstantial everyday encounters of ASHA work. The precarious employment of ASHAs – in terms of basic remuneration as well as the great on-the-job risks that they have faced – underscores both the fragile nature of India's health governance system as well as possible political movements for its renewal. We conclude by calling for geographers to give greater attention to community health care workers as a key window into understanding the uneven ways in which health systems are made manifest on the ground, and their ability to respond to citizens' healthcare needs – both in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Taylorism 2.0: Gamification, Scientific Management and the Capitalist Appropriation of Play

By making work seem more like leisure time, gamification and corporate training games serve as a mechanism for solving a range of problems and, significantly, of increasing productivity. This piece examines the implications of gamification as a means of productivity gains that extend Frederick Winslow Taylor\u27s principles of scientific management, or Taylorism. Relying on measurement and observation as a mechanism to collapse the domains of labour and leisure for the benefit of businesses (rather than for the benefit or fulfilment of workers), gamification potentially subjugates all time into productive time, even as business leaders use games to mask all labour as something to be enjoyed. In so doing, this study argues, the agency of individuals - whether worker or player - becomes subject to the rationalized nature of production. This rationalization changes the nature of play, making it a duty rather than a choice, a routine rather than a process of exploration. Taken too far or used unthinkingly, it renders Huizinga\u27s magic circle into one more regulated office cubicle

Resonant transport and electrostatic effects in single-molecule electrical junctions

In this contribution we demonstrate structural control over a transport resonance in HS(CH2)n[1,4 −C6H4](CH2)nSH (n = 1, 3, 4, 6) metal-molecule-metal junctions, fabricated and tested using the scanning tunnelingmicroscopy-based I (z)method. The Breit-Wigner resonance originates from one of the arene π-bonding orbitals, which sharpens and moves closer to the contact Fermi energy as n increases. Varying the number of methylene groups thus leads to a very shallow decay of the conductance with the length of the molecule. We demonstrate that the electrical behavior observed here can be straightforwardly rationalized by analyzing the effects caused by the electrostatic balance created at the metal-molecule interface. Such resonances offer future prospects in molecular electronics in terms of controlling charge transport over longer distances, and also in single-molecule conductance switching if the resonances can be externally gatedThis research was supported by the EPSRC (Grant No. EP/H035184/1), by MINECO under Grant No. FIS2013-47328, by the European Union structural funds and the Comunidad de Madrid MAD2D-CM Program under Grant. P2013/MIT-2850, and by Generalitat Valenciana under Grant PROMETEO/2012/011

Charge Transport at a Molecular GaAs Nanoscale Junction

The use of semiconducting electrodes in molecular junctions is an elegant way to impart new properties to nanodevices. Here we report metal-molecule(s)–metal Schottky photodiodes whose behaviour can be tuned by appropriate choice of molecule and doping density, giving further insights into the molecule–semiconductor interface.</p

Apportioned Commodity Fetishism and the Transformative Power of Game Studies

This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, and vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification

The Grizzly, November 11, 2010

UC Students Reach Out to Collegeville • Wireless Internet on Campus Causes Problems for Students • Career Services Offers Five Tips for Successful Networking • Animal Rights Group Comes to UC • Community Involvement • Students Celebrate National Novel Writing Month • Senior Spotlight: Katie Gigs Gigl • Leadership at UC • Internship Profile: Elisa DiPrinzio • Opinions: Fringe Candidate Goes Viral; Play Review: Breakaway\u27s Never Swim Alone Proves Big Hit • Field Hockey Wins Seventh Straight Title • Ursinus Football Comes Up Short Against Muhlenberghttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1824/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, April 21, 2011

Trappe Tavern Features Student Radio Show • Relay for Life Raises Money for the American Cancer Society • Ursinus is Talking About Student Photography • Ursinus Students Highlighted in New York Times Article • Dennis Winters Visits Ursinus Campus • Photos from Second Annual Tri Sigma Drag Show • Ursinus College Dance Club Rocks the Stage • CAB Organizes Student Trip to Philadelphia for the Day • CAB Gives Options for Students to Escape the Books • Internship Spotlight: Laura Faith • Senior Reflection: My Time as a Kosher Thespian • Opinion: Difficult Decisions Must be Made for the Ivory Coast; Is the Grizzly Looking a Bit Grizzled?: An Editor\u27s Perspective • UC Men\u27s Lacrosse Prepares for Playoff Run • Senior Spotlight: Chris Capone and Brian Lutzowhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1835/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, February 4, 2011

Hate Crime Discussed During Meeting • What is Love Course has Students Talking • Dolce Suono Ensemble Performs at Ursinus • Community Survey Results • UC-Rising Debuts • Presenting the Best and Worst of Ursinus College • Campus Activities Board Packs Semester with Great Fun • First African-American Graduate to be Honored • Internship Profile: Maria Linder • Winter Birthright Trip Proves to be Worthwhile • Recent Winter Weather is Anything But a Wanted Wonderland • Opinions: President Obama Attempts to Reach out to U.S. • UC Basketball Seniors Approaching End of Seasonhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1828/thumbnail.jp

The Grizzly, February 24, 2011

Greek Recruitment Week Underway • Collegiate Learning Assessment for Graduating Students • Kwesi Koomson Talks About Heritage Academy in Ghana • Sexy Talk with a Twist of Love and Revolution • Birthright Provides Unique Experience • The Women of Whitians Honor Society Make Moves • WeCan Attempts to Bring Change to UC Dining Services • Relay for Life Recruits for a Strong Turnout • Internship Profile: Chris Michael • Positive Changes Made to SPINT • Diversity Column: Language of Race • Opinions: Egypt President Falls, Other Countries Hopeful • Men\u27s Basketball Season Ends on Sour Note • Men\u27s Club Soccer Team Seeks New Membershttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1831/thumbnail.jp

Evidence for a hopping mechanism in metal|single molecule|metal junctions involving conjugated metal–terpyridyl complexes; potential-dependent conductances of complexes [M(pyterpy)₂] ²⁺ (M = Co and Fe; pyterpy = 4′-(pyridin-4-yl)-2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine) in ionic liquid

Extensive studies of various families of conjugated molecules in metal|molecule|metal junctions suggest that the mechanism of conductance is usually tunnelling for molecular lengths < ca. 4 nm, and that for longer molecules, coherence is lost as a hopping element becomes more significant. In this work we present evidence that, for a family of conjugated, redox-active metal complexes, hopping may be a significant factor for even the shortest molecule studied (ca. 1 nm between contact atoms). The length dependence of conductance for two series of such complexes which differ essentially in the number of conjugated 1,4-C₆H₄- rings in the structures has been studied, and it is found that the junction conductances vary linearly with molecular length, consistent with a hopping mechanism, whereas there is significant deviation from linearity in plots of log(conductance) vs. length that would be characteristic of tunnelling, and the slopes of the log(conductance)–length plots are much smaller than expected for an oligophenyl system. Moreover, the conductances of molecular junctions involving the redox–active molecules, [M(pyterpy)₂] ²⁺/³⁺ (M = Co, Fe) have been studied as a function of electrochemical potential in ionic liquid electrolyte, and the conductance–overpotential relationship is found to fit well with the Kuznetsov–Ulstrup relationship, which is essentially a hopping description