Analyzing Infrastructures in the Anthropocene

This contribution takes the multiple ecological crises as the background to connect discourses on sustainability and infrastructures. It discusses the preservation, development, or disorder of infrastructures by different actors and practices in the context of diverse imaginaries of sustainability. When infrastructures are addressed and scrutinized against different visions of the future, their order-forming elements, dysfunctionalities, and transformation potentials come to the fore. The question of which decisions, translations, and norms are inscribed in infrastructures is of particular importance in the discourses on ecology. Moreover, focusing on the planetary dimensions of the ecological crisis adds particular complexity to the infrastructural analysis. An ecological perspective fundamentally challenges the view of infrastructure, as traditional concepts are no longer able to contribute to necessary planetary solutions. Since struggles for the futures of sustainability are struggles for the modernization and transformation of, as well as control over and through (material, immaterial, planetary), infrastructures, we argue that infrastructures will and should receive special attention in the social sciences and humanities in the future

Ein nachhaltiger Planet im digitalen Zeitalter: Welche Bedeutung können soziale Welten, Arenen und Grenzobjekte für die Erforschung von Konventionen haben?

Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit sind zwei gegenwärtig dominante Transformationsdynamiken, die sich sowohl entsprechen als auch widersprechen können. Mit ihrem Verhältnis befasse ich mich in diesem Beitrag. Digitale Technologien bergen das Potenzial für einen nachhaltigen Wandel (Energieeffizienz), gleichzeitig haben digitale Technologien (z.B. Rechenzentren) einen hohen Energiebedarf. Auf die daraus resultierenden Handlungsprobleme müssen gesellschaftliche Akteur*innen legitime Lösungen finden und Strategien entwickeln. Offen bleibt, wie diese Lösungen beschaffen sind. Um die Entstehung und Entwicklungen solcher Lösungsstrategien zu analysieren, schlage ich die Verknüpfung zweier pragmatistischer Theorietraditionen vor: die französische Soziologie der Konventionen und die US-amerikanische Theorie sozialer Welten und Arenen. Das Ziel ist es, Konzepte und Ansätze miteinander zu kombinieren, um sowohl die Entstehung als auch die Etablierung von Institutionen empirisch untersuchen zu können. Am Beispiel des "Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age" der Multistakeholder-Initiative Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES 2022a) wird die Bedeutung der Analyse von sozialen Welten, Arenen und Grenzobjekten für die Soziologie der Konventionen aufgezeigt.Digitalization and sustainability are two transformation dynamics both corresponding and contradicting each other. I will examine their relationship in this article. While digital technologies hold considerable potential for sustainable change (energy efficiency), they also have high energy requirements (e.g., data centers). Modern societies must find legitimate solutions to the resulting problems of action and develop strategies to approach them. What remains unresolved is how such solutions will look. In order to analyze the emergence and development of such solution strategies, I propose to combine two pragmatistic traditions: the French sociology of conventions and the US-American theory of social worlds and arenas. The aim is to make both the creation and the establishment of institutions empirically tangible. By taking the "Action Plan for a Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age" of the multi-stakeholder initiative Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES, 2022a) as an example, the relevance of the analysis of social worlds, arenas and boundary objects for the sociology of conventions is established.

Wie viel Nachhaltigkeit braucht gute Arbeit? Arbeitsansprüche in beruflichen Umbruchphasen

In den letzten Jahren lässt sich ein zunehmendes Nachdenken über Nachhaltigkeit beobachten. Wenngleich Nachhaltigkeit zu einem allgegenwärtigen Leitbegriff gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Wandels avanciert, werden Themen der nachhaltigen Entwicklung von Arbeit trotz dieser Dynamiken kaum thematisiert. Es bleibt bisweilen offen, welche Relevanz die Idee von Nachhaltigkeit für die Beschäftigten hat, was sie unter Nachhaltigkeit verstehen und inwieweit sich Ansprüche an Nachhaltigkeit in der Arbeit identifizieren lassen. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich dieser Beitrag der Bedeutung der Nachhaltigkeitsidee in subjektiven Konzepten von guter und sinnvoller Arbeit. Auf der Basis von teilstrukturierten narrativen Interviews werden Phasen der beruflichen Umorientierung als moments critiques analysiert, da diese in verdichteter Form Aufschluss über die zugrunde liegenden Motive, Vorstellungen und Wünsche an eine gute Arbeit geben. Die Analyse zeigt, dass sich Nachhaltigkeitsvorstellungen in drei Dimensionen rekonstruieren lassen: der Arbeitskraft, der Profession und des sozialen wie ökologischen Umweltbezuges. Da Nachhaltigkeit in Verbindung mit anderen Ansprüchen eingefordert wird, lässt sich von einem flankierenden Anspruch sprechen.In recent years, there was a growing interest in sustainability. Although sustainability rises to a leading concept in thinking about social and economic change, sustainable development of work is rarely discussed. How employees understand sustainability in the context of work and if they have any demands on sustainability of work remain open questions. Against this backdrop, this contribution focuses on the relevance of sustainability in subjective concepts of good and meaningful work. Based on semi-structured narrative interviews, we analyze changes of jobs as moments critiques that give insights on motives, visions and demands of good work. Our findings show three dimensions which are linked to sustainability: labor, professions and relations to social and ecological aims. Besides, demands for sustainability always appear in connection with other demands for good work

Cryptic haplotype‐specific gamete selection yields offspring with optimal MHC immune genes

Females choose specific mates in order to produce fitter offspring. However, several factors interfere with females' control over fertilization of their eggs, including sneaker males and phenotypically unpredictable allele segregation during meiosis. Mate choice at the individual level thus provides only a poor approximation for obtaining the best genetic match. Consequently, postcopulatory sperm selection by female oocytes has been proposed as a mechanism to achieve complementary combinations of parental haplotypes. Here, using controlled in vitro fertilization of three‐spined stickleback eggs, we find haplotype‐specific fertilization bias toward gametes with complementary major histocompatibility complex (MHC) immunogenes. The resulting zygote (and thus offspring) genotypes exhibit an intermediate level of individual MHC diversity that was previously shown to confer highest pathogen resistance. Our finding of haplotype‐specific gamete selection thus represents an intriguing mechanism for fine‐tuned optimization of the offspring's immune gene composition and an evolutionary advantage in the Red Queen dynamics of host‐parasite coevolution

Cryptic haplotype‐specific gamete selection yields offspring with optimal MHC immune genes

Females choose specific mates in order to produce fitter offspring. However, several factors interfere with females' control over fertilization of their eggs, including sneaker males and phenotypically unpredictable allele segregation during meiosis. Mate choice at the individual level thus provides only a poor approximation for obtaining the best genetic match. Consequently, postcopulatory sperm selection by female oocytes has been proposed as a mechanism to achieve complementary combinations of parental haplotypes. Here, using controlled in vitro fertilization of three‐spined stickleback eggs, we find haplotype‐specific fertilization bias toward gametes with complementary major histocompatibility complex (MHC) immunogenes. The resulting zygote (and thus offspring) genotypes exhibit an intermediate level of individual MHC diversity that was previously shown to confer highest pathogen resistance. Our finding of haplotype‐specific gamete selection thus represents an intriguing mechanism for fine‐tuned optimization of the offspring's immune gene composition and an evolutionary advantage in the Red Queen dynamics of host‐parasite coevolution

O QUE UM ANGU DE CAROÇO E A KETTLE OF FISH TÊM EM COMUM

Tendo como fundamentação teórica a Linguística Cognitiva e os estudos sobre Metáforas Conceituais, analisamos 18 expressões idiomáticas com nomes de alimento, em inglês e suas traduções em português, licenciadas pela metáfora primária dificuldade/facilidade é um alimento difícil/fácil de manusear/ingerir, objetivando identificar como esses alimentos são usados metaforicamente na construção dessas expressões e se há interferência cultural em suas realizações. As expressões foram coletadas em dicionários de expressões idiomáticas, nas duas línguas, e selecionadas conforme suas ocorrências e frequências de uso, obtidas com as ferramentas Webcorp e Google Books N-gram. Observamos que os alimentos que compõem as expressões idiomáticas evidenciam a experiência corpórea do domínio fonte, tais como a dificuldade de manipular um ‘abacaxi’ ou uma ‘batata quente’, e a facilidade de ingerir um pedaço de ‘bolo’ ou ‘mamão’. Verificamos que essa metáfora conceitual licencia expressões idiomáticas mesmo quando elas são originadas de fatos históricos ou associadas a fábulas (e.g. to pull the chestnuts out of/from the fire), e que há evidências de influência cultural também na realização das expressões idiomáticas correspondentes em ambas as línguas contendo alimentos diferentes (e.g. a piece of cake e mamão com mel/açúcar) ou o mesmo alimento (e.g. walk on eggs/eggshells e pisar em/sobre ovos). Nossos resultados mostram que a indagação sobre o papel que a cultura exerce na composição das expressões idiomáticas é relevante, pois embora a geração da metáfora primária em si não envolva aspectos culturais, o léxico gerado por ela contém aspectos culturais que devem ser levados em consideração, principalmente nos estudos que envolvem mais de uma língua

A non-native macroalga is less attractive for herbivores but more susceptible to light limitation and grazing stress than a comparable native species

It has been suggested that non-native species are more tolerant towards abiotic stress than ecologically comparable native species. Furthermore, non-native marine macroalgae should be under lower grazing pressure than native seaweeds, because they left their co-evolved enemies behind. As a consequence, they generally need to allocate less energy to defences and can invest more into compensating the negative effects of abiotic stress or, assuming that grazing pressure is low but not zero, to defensive reactions following grazer attack. This, in turn, should make them more stress tolerant and less susceptible to herbivory. However, empirical evidence for both concepts is still scarce and very little is known about whether enemy release is commonly associated with an enhanced tolerance towards abiotic or biotic stress. We therefore ran an experimental study that (a) assessed attractiveness for grazers, (b) verified whether short-term low-light stress impairs growth and (c) investigated whether light limitation and previous grazing interactively affect the consumption of two macroalgae from Madeira Island, the native brown alga Stypopodium zonale and the non-native red alga Grateloupia imbricata by the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. To come to ecologically meaningful low-light stress levels, pilot studies were performed in order to determine the light compensation point of photosynthesis for each algal species and then we established six light regimes around this point by reducing the amount of incoming light. Simultaneously, we let one sea urchin graze on each algal individual to stimulate a chemical defence in the seaweeds if present. In parallel to this, we kept the same number of algal replicates in the absence of sea urchins. After 21 days, we compared algal growth in the absence of grazers as well as the attractiveness of previously grazed and non-grazed algal material for P. lividus across all light regimes. Algal attractiveness was assessed in no-choice feeding assays. The observation that the non-native alga was less consumed by the grazer than the native species generally confirms the concept of enemy release. However, light limitation reduced growth in the non-native but not in the native seaweed, while previous grazing reduced consumption of the native but enhanced it in case of the non-native alga. These findings do not corroborate the assumption that enemy release can, through the re-allocation of energy, enhance tolerance to abiotic (light limitation) or biotic (grazing) stressors in non-native marine macroalgae

Calpain-mediated cleavage of collapsin response mediator protein-2 drives acute axonal degeneration

Axonal degeneration is a key initiating event in many neurological diseases. Focal lesions to axons result in a rapid disintegration of the perilesional axon by acute axonal degeneration (AAD) within several hours. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of AAD are only incompletely understood. Here, we studied AAD in vivo through live-imaging of the rat optic nerve and in vitro in primary rat cortical neurons in microfluidic chambers. We found that calpain is activated early during AAD of the optic nerve and that calpain inhibition completely inhibits axonal fragmentation on the proximal side of the crush while it attenuates AAD on the distal side. A screening of calpain targets revealed that collapsin response mediator protein-2 (CRMP2) is a main downstream target of calpain activation in AAD. CRMP2-overexpression delayed bulb formation and rescued impairment of axonal mitochondrial transport after axotomy in vitro. In vivo, CRMP2-overexpression effectively protected the proximal axon from fragmentation within 6 hours after crush. Finally, a proteomic analysis of the optic nerve was performed at 6 hours after crush, which identified further proteins regulated during AAD, including several interactors of CRMP2. These findings reveal CRMP2 as an important mediator of AAD and define it as a putative therapeutic target