Incorporating mindfulness: questioning capitalism

This paper engages with Buddhist critiques of capitalism and consumerism; and it challenges the capitalist appropriations of Buddhist techniques. We show how Buddhist modernism and Marxism/socialism can align, and how Engaged Buddhism spawns communalism and socially revolutionary impulses for sustainability and ecological responsibility within the framework of Buddhist thought and mindfulness traditions. Our case study of the Thai Asoke community exemplifies Buddhist communal mindfulness-in-action, explores successes and idiosyncrasies, and shows how communal principles can operate in such work-based communities

Endothelial cyclooxygenase-1 paradoxically drives local vasoconstriction and atherogenesis despite underpinning prostacyclin generation

Endothelial cyclooxygenase-1–derived prostanoids, including prostacyclin, have clear cardioprotective roles associated with their anti-thrombotic potential but have also been suggested to have paradoxical pathological activities within arteries. To date it has not been possible to test the importance of this because no models have been available that separate vascular cyclooxygenase-1 products from those generated elsewhere. Here, we have used unique endothelial-specific cyclooxygenase-1 knockout mice to show that endothelial cyclooxygenase-1 produces both protective and pathological products. Functionally, however, the overall effect of these was to drive pathological responses in the context of both vasoconstriction in vitro and the development of atherosclerosis and vascular inflammation in vivo. These data provide the first demonstration of a pathological role for the vascular cyclooxygenase-1 pathway, highlighting its potential as a therapeutic target. They also emphasize that, across biology, the role of prostanoids is not always predictable due to unique balances of context, products, and receptors

Women are more likely than men to blame structural factors for women's political under-representation: evidence from 27 countries

Over time, gender and politics research has made progress in identifying those factors that result in low numbers of women in political institutions and in making evidence-informed suggestions about how to ameliorate them. These factors include discrimination in party recruitment processes, male-dominated political culture and broader gender inequalities in society. In contrast, little is known about public opinion regarding these drivers of women's political under-representation, especially whether to who or what women assign blame for the under-representation of women in politics differs from men. This article provides the first discussion and analysis of blame assignment for women's numeric under-representation in politics. In doing so, it outlines and operationalises a framework that distinguishes between meritocratic explanations of women's under-representation, whereby the blame for women not holding political office in greater numbers is assigned to women themselves, and structural explanations, whereby social forces external to women are seen to result in their numeric under-representation. Cross-national data from 27 European countries is used to show that women are significantly more likely than men to assign blame for women's numeric under-representation to structural factors. The hierarchical nature of the dataset is exploited using multilevel models and significant differences in levels of structural blame assignment between countries is found as well as between-country variation in the probability of women assigning blame to structural explanations for women's under-representation. Finally, the category of structural explanations is disaggregated in order to assess their relative prominence and to provide strong corroborative evidence that women predominantly assign blame for women's under-representation to political culture over other structural blame factors. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the study's findings for policy makers contemplating the pursuit of gender equality policies aimed at increasing women's political representation and makes suggestions for the direction of future research in this area.</p

A Forecasting Model to Predict the Demand of Roses in an Ecuadorian Small Business Under Uncertain Scenarios

[EN] Ecuador is worldwide considered as one of the main natural flower producers and exporters ¿being roses the most salient ones. Such a fact has naturally led the emergence of small and medium sized companies devoted to the production of quality roses in the Ecuadorian highlands, which intrinsically entails resource usage optimization. One of the first steps towards optimizing the use of resources is to forecast demand, since it enables a fair perspective of the future, in such a manner that the in-advance raw materials supply can be previewed against eventualities, resources usage can be properly planned, as well as the misuse can be avoided. Within this approach, the problem of forecasting the supply of roses was solved into two phases: the first phase consists of the macro-forecast of the total amount to be exported by the Ecuadorian flower sector by the year 2020, using multi-layer neural networks. In the second phase, the monthly demand for the main rose varieties offered by the study company was micro-forecasted by testing seven models. In addition, a Bayesian network model is designed, which takes into consideration macroeconomic aspects, the level of employability in Ecuador and weather-related aspects. This Bayesian network provided satisfactory results without the need for a large amount of historical data and at a low-computational cost.Authors of this publication acknowledge the contribution of the Project 691249, RUC-APS ¿Enhancing and implementing Knowledge based ICT solutions within high Risk and Uncertain Conditions for Agriculture Production Systems¿ (www.ruc-aps.eu), funded by the European Union under their funding scheme H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015. In addition, the authors are greatly grateful by the support given by the SDAS Research Group (www.sdas-group.com)Herrera-Granda, ID.; Lorente-Leyva, LL.; Peluffo-Ordóñez, DH.; Alemany Díaz, MDM. (2021). A Forecasting Model to Predict the Demand of Roses in an Ecuadorian Small Business Under Uncertain Scenarios. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 12566:245-258. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64580-9_21S24525812566Asociación de Productores y Exportadores de Flores: Inicio – Expoflores. https://expoflores.com/Palacios, J., Rosero, D.: Análisis de las condiciones climáticas registradas en el Ecuador continental en el año 2013 y su impacto en el sector agrícola. Estud. e Investig. meteorológicas. Ina. Inst. Nac. Meteorol. e Hidrol. Ecuador, 28, p. (2014)Hidalgo-Proaño, M.: Variabilidad climática interanual sobre el Ecuador asociada a ENOS. CienciAmérica 6, 42–47 (2017)Ritchie, J.W., Abawi, G.Y., Dutta, S.C., Harris, T.R., Bange, M.: Risk management strategies using seasonal climate forecasting in irrigated cotton production: a tale of stochastic dominance. Aust. J. Agric. Resour. 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Syst. 106, 33–45 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2011.10.005Scott, S.L., Varian, H.R.: Predicting the present with bayesian structural time series. Available SSRN 2304426 (2013)Prudhomme, C., Shaffrey, L., Woollings, T., Jackson, C., Fowler, H., Anderson, B.: IMPETUS: Improving predictions of drought for user decision-making. International Conference on Drought: Research and Science-Policy Interfacing, 2015. pp. 273–278. CRC Press/Balkema, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (2015)Wiles, P., Enke, D.: A hybrid neuro-fuzzy model to forecast the Soybean complex. International Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Management 2015, ASEM 2015. pp. 1–5. American Society for Engineering Management, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Department, United States (2015)Hansen, B.G., Li, Y.: An analysis of past world market prices of feed and milk and predictions for the future. Agribusiness 33, 175–193 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21474Johnson, M.D., Hsieh, W.W., Cannon, A.J., Davidson, A., Bedard, F.: Crop yield forecasting on the Canadian Prairies by remotely sensed vegetation indices and machine learning methods. Agric. For. Meteorol. 218, 74–84 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2015.11.003Chen, J., Yang, J., Zhao, J., Xu, F., Shen, Z., Zhang, L.: Energy demand forecasting of the greenhouses using nonlinear models based on model optimized prediction method. Neurocomputing 174, 1087–1100 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2015.09.105Fodor, N., et al.: Integrating plant science and crop modeling: assessment of the impact of climate change on soybean and maize production. Plant Cell Physiol. 58, 1833–1847 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcx141Chapman, R., et al.: Using Bayesian networks to predict future yield functions with data from commercial oil palm plantations: a proof of concept analysis. Comput. Electron. Agric. 151, 338–348 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2018.06.006Lara-Estrada, L., Rasche, L., Sucar, L.E., Schneider, U.A.: Inferring Missing Climate Data for Agricultural Planning Using Bayesian Networks. LAND. 7 (2018). https://doi.org/10.3390/land7010004Abdelaal, H.S.A., Thilmany, D.: Grains production prospects and long run food security in Egypt. Sustain. 11 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3390/su11164457Kusunose, Y., Ma, L., Van Sanford, D.: User responses to imperfect forecasts: findings from an experiment with Kentucky wheat farmers. Weather. Clim. Soc. 11, 791–808 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1175/wcas-d-18-0135.1Kadigi, I.L., et al.: Forecasting yields, prices and net returns for main cereal crops in Tanzania as probability distributions: a multivariate empirical (MVE) approach. Agric. Syst. 180 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2019.102693McGrath, G., Rao, P.S.C., Mellander, P.-E., Kennedy, I., Rose, M., van Zwieten, L.: Real-time forecasting of pesticide concentrations in soil. Sci. Total Environ. 663, 709–717 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.01.401Yang, B., Xie, L.: Bayesian network modelling for “direct farm” mode based agricultural supply chain risk. Ekoloji 28, 2361–2368 (2019)Zaporozhtseva, L.A., Sabetova, T. V, Yu Fedulova, I.: Assessment of the uncertainty factors in computer modelling of an agricultural company operation. International Conference on Information Technologies in Business and Industries, ITBI 2019. Institute of Physics Publishing, Voronezh State Agrarian University, Michurina Str. 30, Voronezh, 394087, Russian Federation (2019)Box, G.E.P., Jenkins, G.M., Reinsel, G.C., Ljung, G.M.: Time series analysis: forecasting and control. Wiley (2015)Hanke, J., Wichern, D.: Business forecast. 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Critical animal and media studies: Expanding the understanding of oppression in communication research

Critical and communication studies have traditionally neglected the oppression conducted by humans towards other animals. However, our (mis)treatment of other animals is the result of public consent supported by a morally speciesist-anthropocentric system of values. Speciesism or anthroparchy, as much as any other mainstream ideologies, feeds the media and at the same time is perpetuated by them. The goal of this article is to remedy this neglect by introducing the subdiscipline of Critical Animal and Media Studies. Critical Animal and Media Studies takes inspiration both from critical animal studies – which is so far the most consolidated critical field of research in the social sciences addressing our exploitation of other animals – and from the normative-moral stance rooted in the cornerstones of traditional critical media studies. The authors argue that the Critical Animal and Media Studies approach is an unavoidable step forward for critical media and communication studies to engage with the expanded circle of concerns of contemporary ethical thinking

Application of COMPOCHIP Microarray to Investigate the Bacterial Communities of Different Composts

A microarray spotted with 369 different 16S rRNA gene probes specific to microorganisms involved in the degradation process of organic waste during composting was developed. The microarray was tested with pure cultures, and of the 30,258 individual probe-target hybridization reactions performed, there were only 188 false positive (0.62%) and 22 false negative signals (0.07%). Labeled target DNA was prepared by polymerase chain reaction amplification of 16S rRNA genes using a Cy5-labeled universal bacterial forward primer and a universal reverse primer. The COMPOCHIP microarray was applied to three different compost types (green compost, manure mix compost, and anaerobic digestate compost) of different maturity (2, 8, and 16 weeks), and differences in the microorganisms in the three compost types and maturity stages were observed. Multivariate analysis showed that the bacterial composition of the three composts was different at the beginning of the composting process and became more similar upon maturation. Certain probes (targeting Sphingobacterium, Actinomyces, Xylella/Xanthomonas/ Stenotrophomonas, Microbacterium, Verrucomicrobia, Planctomycetes, Low G + C and Alphaproteobacteria) were more influential in discriminating between different composts. Results from denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis supported those of microarray analysis. This study showed that the COMPOCHIP array is a suitable tool to study bacterial communities in composts

Acetate as a model for aspartate-based CXCR4 chemokine receptor binding of cobalt and nickel complexes of cross-bridged tetraazamacrocycles

A number of disease states including WHIM syndrome, HIV infection and cancer have been linked to the chemokine receptor CXCR4. High-affinity CXCR4 antagonist transition metal complexes of configurationally restricted bis-tetraazamacrocyclic ligands have been identified in previous studies. Recently synthesised and structurally characterised Co2+/Co3+ and Ni2+ acetate complexes of mono-macrocycle cross-bridged ligands have been used to mimic their known coordination interaction with the aspartate side chains on binding to CXCR4. Here, X-ray crystal structures for three Co2+/Co3+ acetate complexes and five Ni2+ acetate complexes are presented and demonstrate flexibility in the mode of binding to the acetate ligand concomitantly with the requisite cis-V-configured cross-bridged tetraazamacrocyle. Complexes of the smaller Co3+ metal ion exclusively bind acetate by chelating both oxygens of acetate. Larger Co2+ and Ni2+ metal ions in cross-bridged tetraazamacrocycles show a clear tendency to coordinate acetate in a monodentate fashion with a coordinated water molecule completing the octahedral coordination sphere. However, in unbridged tetraazamacrocycle acetate structures reported in the literature, the coordination preference is to chelate both acetate oxygens. We conclude that the short ethylene cross-bridge restricts the equatorial bulk of the macrocycle, prompting the metal ion to fill the equator with the larger monodentate acetate plus water ligand set. In unbridged ligand examples, the flexible macrocycle expands equatorially and generally only allows chelation of the sterically smaller acetate alone. These results provide insight for generation of optimised bis-macrocyclic CXCR4 antagonists utilising cobalt and nickel ions

The ideal job-seeker norm: unemployment and marital privileges in the professional middle-class

Objective: To understand how heterosexual US married parents interpret and respond to a spouse's unemployment and subsequent job-searching. Background: The pervasiveness of employment uncertainty, and unemployment, may propel families to embrace gender egalitarian norms. Quantitative research finds that this possibility is not borne out. Qualitative research has sought to illuminate mechanisms as to how gender norms persist even during a time that is optimal for dismantling them, but these mechanisms remain unclear. Method: Seventy-two in-depth interviews were conducted with a nonrandom sample of heterosexual, professional, dual-earner, married, unemployed women, men, and their spouses in the United States. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 35 participants. Intensive family observations were conducted with four families, two of unemployed men, and two of unemployed women. Results: Unemployed women, men, and spouses acknowledge that a set of time-intensive activities are key for reemployment (the ideal job-seeker norm). Couples with unemployed men direct resources such as time, space, and even money to facilitate unemployed men's compliance with the ideal job-seeker norm. Couples downplay the importance of women's reemployment and do not direct similar resources to help unemployed women job-search. Conclusion: Couples preserve a traditional gender status quo, often in defiance of material realities, by actively maintaining men's position at the helm of paid work and women's at unpaid work. Implications: Linking unemployment and job-seeking with the institution of heterosexual marriage reveals novel insights into social and marital processes shaping job-seeking

Mammals of Italy: An annotated checklist

Checklists represent a basic tool for conservation and management of regional faunas. However, our knowledge on species composition in a territory changes over time due to species movements across borders, extinctions, introductions, as well as to new taxonomic evidence. We aimed to provide the most updated data on native and non-native species of mammals occurring, or that used to occur until recently, on the Italian political territory and seas. The checklist only includes species whose taxonomic status was explicitly agreed in the most recent peer-reviewed literature and based on the most updated taxonomic approaches. For each species, we provided the following information: scientific and common name, global and Italian range, relevant information for management and conservation (e.g. whether it is endemic, allochthonous, or listed in international regulations and red list assessments), as well as remarks on taxonomy and distribution. This new check list of Italian mammal fauna includes nine marine and 114 terrestrial species, belonging to seven orders (Erinaceomorpha, Soricomorpha, Chiroptera, Carnivora, Cetartiodactyla, Rodentia, Lagomorpha), and 28 families. Vespertilionidae represents the richest family (n=27 species), followed by Cricetidae (n=12) and Soricidae (n=11). The list includes 15–16 allocthonous species. Considering the relative small size of the country, Italy is confirmed as a hotspot of mammal diversity in Europe, hosting the highest species richness in relation to the total area