Murine nephrotoxic nephritis as a model of chronic kidney disease

Using the nonaccelerated murine nephrotoxic nephritis (NTN) as a model of chronic kidney disease (CKD) could provide an easily inducible model that enables a rapid test of treatments. Originally, the NTN model was developed as an acute model of glomerulonephritis, but in this study we evaluate the model as a CKD model and compare CD1 and C57BL/6 female and male mice. CD1 mice have previously showed an increased susceptibility to CKD in other CKD models. NTN was induced by injecting nephrotoxic serum (NTS) and evaluated by CKD parameters including albuminuria, glomerular filtration rate (GFR), mesangial expansion, and renal fibrosis. Both strains showed significant albuminuria on days 2-3 which remained significant until the last time point on days 36-37 supporting dysfunctional filtration also observed by a significantly declined GFR on days 5-6, 15–17, and 34–37. Both strains showed early progressive mesangial expansion and significant renal fibrosis within three weeks suggesting CKD development. CD1 and C57BL/6 females showed a similar disease progression, but female mice seemed more susceptible to NTS compared to male mice. The presence of albuminuria, GFR decline, mesangial expansion, and fibrosis showed that the NTN model is a relevant CKD model both in C57BL/6 and in CD1 mice

Imagining new feminist futures:How feminist social movements contest the neoliberalization of feminism in an increasingly corporate‐dominated world

Increasingly it is argued that feminism has been co‐opted by neoliberal agendas: becoming more individualistic and losing touch with its wider social change objectives. The neoliberalization of feminism is driven in part by increased corporate power, including the growing role of corporations in governance arenas, and corporate social responsibility agendas. However, we turn to social movement theory to elucidate strategies that social movements, including feminist social movements, are adopting in such spaces. In so doing, we find that feminist activists are engaging with new political opportunities, mobilizing structures and strategic framing processes that emerge in the context of increasingly neoliberal and privatized governance systems. We suggest that despite the significant challenges to their agendas, far from being co‐opted by neoliberalism, feminist social movements remain robust, existing alongside and developing new strategies to contest the neoliberalization of feminism in a variety of innovative ways

Outsourcing Governance: States and the Politics of a ‘Global Value Chain World’

Politics, and by extension states, are marginal in debates about the genesis, evolution and functioning of the GVC-based global economy. We contend here that the core complexity of state agency and state power needs to be much more carefully understood in GVC and related debates, as a basis on which the governance of the evolving GVC world can be properly theorised as revolving around the inseparability of economic and political power. We advance a framework for understanding the role of politics and states in the construction and maintenance of a GVC world, using a three-fold typology of facilitative, regulatory and distributive forms of governance, and propose a notion of ‘outsourcing governance’ as an attempt to capture the ways in which states purposefully, through active political agency, have engaged in a process of delegating a variety of governance functions and authority to private actors. Our overarching argument is normative: ‘outsourced governance’ of the form we currently observe is associated with regressive distributional outcomes, and is antithetical to an inclusive and sustainable global economy

The Contested Politics of Corporate Governance: The Case of the Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has successfully become institutionalized as the preeminent global framework for voluntary corporate environmental and social reporting. Its success can be attributed to the “institutional entrepreneurs” who analyzed the reporting field and deployed discursive, material, and organizational strategies to change it. GRI has, however, fallen short of the aspirations of its founders to use disclosure to empower nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The authors argue that its trajectory reflects the power relations between members of the field, their strategic choices and compromises, their ability to mobilize alliances and resources, and constraints imposed by the broader institutions of financial and capital markets. The authors draw three notable implications from this study. First, institutional theory needs to pay more attention to economic structures, strategies, and resources. Second, institutional entrepreneurship by relatively weak societal groups such as NGOs is inherently constrained by the structural power of wider institutions and by the compromises required to initiate change. Third, the strategies of NGOs represent a form of power capable of shifting, if not transforming, the field of corporate governance

National Government Responses to Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Fisheries Certification: Insights from Atlantic Canada

Over the last decade, the proliferation of social and environmental certification programmes has attracted the attention of a growing number of political scientists interested in new forms of ‘private’ transnational governance. However, we still lack analyses on the nature and extent of different state responses to and involvement in new private transnational governance arrangements in particular sectors and in different jurisdictions. This paper advances our understanding of the interactions between nation-state and private transnational modes of governance by analysing the role of national government authorities in Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) fisheries certification in Atlantic Canada, known more for the disastrous collapse of Northern cod stocks than good marine stewardship. Focusing on the 2008 certification of Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fisheries off the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, the analysis finds that the implementation and maintenance of MSC certification in this case depended on significant support from government authorities. The delicate legitimacy of both authorities face a period of uncertainty in this case since some certified shrimp stocks appear to be in decline and perhaps also migrating northward off Newfoundland and Labrador

Foreign policy and globalization theory: The case of Israel

Since the early 1990s, international relations has witnessed a stimulating debate on globalization. This debate laid the foundations for globalization theory (GT), providing the tools for an empirical examination of the globalization of multiple activities: from politics and organized violence, to finance, trade and production, through culture and environmental degradation. However, examination of what appear to be the best-known works on globalization reveals that foreign policy has been virtually excluded from GT. In this context, based on what is described here as a synergistic transformationalist approach (STA) to globalization, I provide a critique of GT. The critique is geared towards examining why foreign policy hitherto has been overlooked by contemporary GT. I expose the problems this generates and address them by exploring how STA enables GT to incorporate foreign policy. I use the case of Israel heuristically to elicit how incorporating foreign policy into GT may provide a better understanding of the relationship between foreign policy and globalization. Three themes are highlighted: the role of foreign policy in inducing and reproducing globalization; determining the mutually constitutive relationship between globalization and the state; and shaping the interfacing between international politics and globalization

GPAW: open Python package for electronic-structure calculations

We review the GPAW open-source Python package for electronic structure calculations. GPAW is based on the projector-augmented wave method and can solve the self-consistent density functional theory (DFT) equations using three different wave-function representations, namely real-space grids, plane waves, and numerical atomic orbitals. The three representations are complementary and mutually independent and can be connected by transformations via the real-space grid. This multi-basis feature renders GPAW highly versatile and unique among similar codes. By virtue of its modular structure, the GPAW code constitutes an ideal platform for implementation of new features and methodologies. Moreover, it is well integrated with the Atomic Simulation Environment (ASE) providing a flexible and dynamic user interface. In addition to ground-state DFT calculations, GPAW supports many-body GW band structures, optical excitations from the Bethe-Salpeter Equation (BSE), variational calculations of excited states in molecules and solids via direct optimization, and real-time propagation of the Kohn-Sham equations within time-dependent DFT. A range of more advanced methods to describe magnetic excitations and non-collinear magnetism in solids are also now available. In addition, GPAW can calculate non-linear optical tensors of solids, charged crystal point defects, and much more. Recently, support of GPU acceleration has been achieved with minor modifications of the GPAW code thanks to the CuPy library. We end the review with an outlook describing some future plans for GPAW

Introduction: The Political Economy of Managerialism

As a set of ideas and practices, managerialism has arguably become a powerful behavioural logic shaping a range of processes and outcomes of governance in the world economy. Yet IPE has yet to directly interrogate managerialism as a distinct object of analysis. In this special issue, we bring together a range of authors to explore how managerialism reveals a set of complex histories, agents, and implications that are not self-evident and carry direct relevance for how we understand the global economy. Our main contention is that managerialism is not simply a technical means for the pursuit of policies, but has come to shape the very ways in which policy, and governance more generally, are conceived and conducted. Across a range of cases and fields, we dissect the emergence of the managerial logic, along with how it produces uneven mutations, ruptures, and forms of resistance. In doing so, we reflect upon the requirements for developing a political economy of managerialism

Observing Solvation Dynamics with Simultaneous Femtosecond X-ray Emission Spectroscopy and X-ray Scattering

In liquid phase chemistry dynamic solute–solvent interactions often govern the path, ultimate outcome, and efficiency of chemical reactions. These steps involve many-body movements on subpicosecond time scales and thus ultrafast structural tools capable of capturing both intramolecular electronic and structural changes, and local solvent structural changes are desired. We have studied the intra- and intermolecular dynamics of a model chromophore, aqueous [Fe(bpy)3]2+, with complementary X-ray tools in a single experiment exploiting intense XFEL radiation as a probe. We monitored the ultrafast structural rearrangement of the solute with X-ray emission spectroscopy, thus establishing time zero for the ensuing X-ray diffuse scattering analysis. The simultaneously recorded X-ray diffuse scattering patterns reveal slower subpicosecond dynamics triggered by the intramolecular structural dynamics of the photoexcited solute. By simultaneous combination of both methods only, we can extract new information about the solvation dynamic processes unfolding during the first picosecond (ps). The measured bulk solvent density increase of 0.2% indicates a dramatic change of the solvation shell around each photoexcited solute, confirming previous ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Structural changes in the aqueous solvent associated with density and temperature changes occur with ∼1 ps time constants, characteristic for structural dynamics in water. This slower time scale of the solvent response allows us to directly observe the structure of the excited solute molecules well before the solvent contributions become dominant