Anchoring “The Symbolic Economy of Alterity” with Autobiography

This essay addresses the usefulness of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro\u27s concept of the symbolic economy of alterity for understanding the subjectively meaningful historical details of individual lives. My focus is the autobiographical narratives of two Kayabi men from central Brazil whose lives have spanned the twentieth century. Their accounts show that these men do, in fact, speak of identity, with kin as being fashioned gradually out from alterity, in keeping with Viveiros de Castro\u27s model. However, this process, when seen over a significant span of time, is highly reversible, causing others and selves to become very ambiguous figures with respect to identity and alterity. Este ensaio explora a utilidade do conceito da economia simbólica da alteridade de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro para entendcr o significado subjetivo dos detalhes htstóricos da vida de indivíduos. Este artigo focaliza as narrativas autobiográficas de dois índios Kayabi que viveram ao longo do século vinte no Brasil central. Essas narrativas mostram de fato que esses índios apresentam uma identidade familiar que foi formada gradualmente a partir da alteridade, de acordo com o modelo de Viveiros de Castro. Entretanto, quando esse processo é analisado durante um período de tempo mais longo ele é altamente reversível, levando outros e eles mesmos a se tornarem figuras muito ambíguas com respeito à identidade e à alteridade

Isolating Chemical Reaction Mechanism as a Variable with Reactive Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics: Step-Growth versus Chain-Growth Polymerization

We present a general approach to isolate chemical reaction mechanism as an independently controllable variable across chemically distinct systems. Modern approaches to reduce the computational expense of molecular dynamics simulations often group multiple atoms into a single "coarse-grained" interaction site, which leads to a loss of chemical resolution. In this work we convert this shortcoming into a feature and use identical coarse-grained models to represent molecules that share non-reactive characteristics but react by different mechanisms. As a proof of concept we use this approach to simulate and investigate distinct, yet similar, trifunctional isocyanurate resin formulations that polymerize by either chain- or step-growth. Since the underlying molecular mechanics of these models are identical, all emergent differences are a function of the reaction mechanism only. We find that the microscopic morphologies resemble related all-atom simulations and that simulated mechanical testing reasonably agrees with experiment

Ultra-low-density digitally architected carbon with a strutted tube-in-tube structure

Porous materials with engineered stretching-dominated lattice designs, which offer attractive mechanical properties with ultra-light weight and large surface area for wide-ranging applications, have recently achieved near-ideal linear scaling between stiffness and density. Here, rather than optimizing the microlattice topology, we explore a different approach to strengthen low-density structural materials by designing tube-in-tube beam structures. We develop a process to transform fully dense, three-dimensional printed polymeric beams into graphitic carbon hollow tube-in-tube sandwich morphologies, where, similar to grass stems, the inner and outer tubes are connected through a network of struts. Compression tests and computational modelling show that this change in beam morphology dramatically slows down the decrease in stiffness with decreasing density. In situ pillar compression experiments further demonstrate large deformation recovery after 30-50% compression and high specific damping merit index. Our strutted tube-in-tube design opens up the space and realizes highly desirable high modulus-low density and high modulus-high damping material structures

Being Explicit about Culture: Māori, Neoliberalism, and the New Zealand Parliament

In this article, I explore how people use the culture concept in legislatures to understand the minorities they legislate for and about. I focus on recent debates in the New Zealand parliament over whether the indigenous Ma¯ ori are a cultural group or a racial group. A Westminster parliament system encourages these debates, in which political parties argue that Ma¯ ori are either cultural or racial but not both. For the ruling Labour Party and its allies, Ma¯ ori are cultural; for their opposition, the National Party and its allies, Ma¯ ori are a racial group. This division is possible only because of the legislators’ neoliberal assumptions about identity categories. To complicate these political divisions, Ma¯ ori MPs currently belong to political parties from all parts of the political spectrum, and their effectiveness as culture bearers in a parliamentary context can disrupt the terms of this debate

Ruthenium-Catalyzed Azide–Thioalkyne Cycloadditions in Aqueous Media: A Mild, Orthogonal, and Biocompatible Chemical Ligation

The development of efficient metal-promoted bioorthogonal ligations remains as a major scientific challenge. Demonstrated herein is that azides undergo efficient and regioselective room-temperature annulations with thioalkynes in aqueous milieu when treated with catalytic amounts of a suitable ruthenium complex. The reaction is compatible with different biomolecules, and can be carried out in complex aqueous mixtures such as phosphate buffered saline, cell lysates, fetal bovine serum, and even living bacteria (E. coli). Importantly, the reaction is mutually compatible with the classical CuAACThis work has received financial support from Spanish grants (SAF2016-76689-R and SAF2013-41943-R), the Xunta de Galicia (2015-CP082 and Centro Singular de Investigaciln de Galicia accreditation 2016-2019 ED431G/09), the European Union (European Regional Development Fund - ERDF), and the ERC (Adv. Grant 340055)S