The revenge of geopolitics: the space as a metaphor of fear in the clash of civilizations

Una de las obras que más ha contribuido a forjar el imaginario geopolítico del mundo occidental es el libro de S. P. Huntington El choque de civilizaciones. En este artículo pretendo evidenciar que este libro y su tesis son estrictamente geopolíticas, es decir, que entran en el marco de los análisis que adoptan un enfoque de ciencia geográfica aplicada, útil para los políticos y para orientar y movilizar a los lectores. De acuerdo con mi lectura, la interpretación de Huntington se encuentra alineada con el imperialismo de Estados Unidos y tiene un impacto insospechado en la política interna de los países occidentales; Por otra parte, la tesis del choque de civilizaciones se basa en una ceguera consciente de la naturaleza de la sociedad contemporánea y los efectos de la globalización. Esta “zona oscura” de la teoría de Huntington revela la preocupación principal del trabajo, a saber, la defensa de Occidente frente a la des-occidentalización. El objetivo de este artículo, por lo tanto, es demostrar en primer lugar que el modelo geopolítico de Huntington se deriva de una fuerte tradición de la historia de la hegemonía estadounidense; en segundo lugar, que su principal objetivo es reconstruir un orden y homogeneidad estables dentro de la civilización occidental; por último, que el incremento reciente en el uso de este modelo puede dar lugar a un aumento de las tensiones entre grupos y los individuos.One of the works that forged the Western geopolitical imagination was The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington. This book, which has been dealt with primarily as a political, sociological work, is imbued by schemes and categories coming from the geographical and geopolitical. My contribution shows that Huntington’s geopolitical approach, that enjoyed a huge success in the world, has an origin in USA imperialism and that it has a much stronger impact than usually noticed. Here I will argue that the Clash of civilizations thesis is based on a conscious blindness with regard to the nature of contemporary societies and by a strong internal contradiction between its description of the world market and its interpretation of culture. These blind spots reveal the main focus of Huntington’s approach: the celebration of homogeneity inside each civilization – and in particular the protection of the West against any de-westernization

Lighting the Way to the Stars

NASA has long recognized the importance of biological life-support systems to remove carbon dioxide, generate oxygen, purify water, and produce food for long-duration space missions. Experiments to understand the effects of the space environment on plant development have been performed since early days of the space program. In the late 1970s, NASA sponsored a series of workshops to identify issues associated with developing a sustainable, biological life-support system for long-duration space missions. Based on findings from these workshops, NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) program began funding research at university and field centers to systematically conduct the research identified in those workshops. Key issues were the necessity to reduce mass, power/energy requirements, and volume of all components

Microgravity Effects on the Early Events of Biological Nitrogen Fixation in Medicago Truncatula: Results from the SyNRGE Experiment

SyNRGE (Symbiotic Nodulation in a Reduced Gravity Environment) was a sortie mission on STS-135 in the Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) hardware to study the effect of microgravity on a plant-microbe symbiosis resulting in biological nitrogen fixation. Medicago truncatula, a model species for th legume family, was inoculated with its bacterial symbiont, Sinorhizobium meliloti, to observe early biomolecular events associated with infection and nodulation in Petri Dish Fixation Units (PDFU's)

Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe

In their paper, Cultures of Populism and the Political Right in Central Europe, Patricia Chiantera-Stutte and Andrea Petö analyze the common points and differences in which imagined and mythologized histories are serving as a mobilizing force for extreme-right movements in three Central European countries, in Austria, Hungary, and Italy. The authors discuss how populist and right-wing political parties in these countries construct their conceptions of an alternative identity for the European Union. Further, the authors analyze the politico-territorial myths constructed by the three populist right-wing parties, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Northern League in Italy, and the Party of Hungarian Life and Truth. The programs of the three parties assert the equasion of the German concept of Volk with territory: the Freedom Party propagates a particular concept of Central Europe (Mitteleuropa), the Northern League of Padania assumes to be the true nation of the reagion, and the Party of Hungarian Life and Truth builds on imagined and mythologized concepts of an ancient Hungary with a homogeneous society and culture. The authors analyze the construction of essentialist identities based on imagined historical communities and on the exclusion of the Other where anti-Semitism is a driving factor represent a sceptical ideology evident in the discourse of the said parties

Sole-Source Lighting for Controlled-Environment Agriculture

Since plants on Earth evolved under broad-spectrum solar radiation, anytime they are grown exclusively under electric lighting that does not contain all wavelengths in similar proportion to those in sunlight, plant appearance and size could be uniquely different. Nevertheless, plants have been grown for decades under fluorescent (FL) (1) + incandescent (IN) (2) lamps as a sole source of lighting (SSL), and researchers have become comfortable that, in certain proportions of FL + IN for a given species, plants can appear "normal" relative to their growth outdoors. The problem with using such traditional SSLs for commercial production typically is short lamp lifespans and not obtaining enough photosynthetically active radiation (PAR, 400-700 nm) when desired. These limitations led to supplementation of FL + IN lamp outputs with longer-lived, high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps in growth chambers (3). As researchers became comfortable that mixes of orange-biased high-pressure sodium (HPS) and blue-biased metal halide (MH) HIDs together also could give normal plant growth at higher intensities, growth chambers and phytotrons subsequently were equipped mainly with HID lamps, with their intense thermal output filtered out by ventilated light caps or thermal-controlled water barriers. For the most part, IN and HID lamps have found a home in commercial protected horticulture, usually for night-break photoperiod lighting (IN) or for seasonal supplemental lighting (mostly HPS) in greenhouses. However, lack of economically viable options for SSL have held back aspects of year-round indoor agriculture from taking off commercially

Microgravity Effects on Plant Boundary Layers

The goal of these series of experiment was to determine the effects of microgravity conditions on the developmental boundary layers in roots and leaves and to determine the effects of air flow on boundary layer development. It is hypothesized that microgravity induces larger boundary layers around plant organs because of the absence of buoyancy-driven convection. These larger boundary layers may affect normal metabolic function because they may reduce the fluxes of heat and metabolically active gases (e.g., oxygen, water vapor, and carbon dioxide. These experiments are to test whether there is a change in boundary layer associated with microgravity, quantify the change if it exists, and determine influence of air velocity on boundary layer thickness under different gravity conditions

SELEX RICH Performance and Physics Results

SELEX took data in the 1996/7 Fixed Target Run at Fermilab. The excellent performance parameters of the SELEX RICH Detector had direct influence on the quality of the obtained physics results.Comment: Contributed talk at the Fourth Workshop on RICH Detectors, June 5-10, 2002, Pylos, Greece. Accepted for publication in NIM

Process for producing vegetative and tuber growth regulator

A process of making a vegetative and tuber growth regulator. The vegetative and tuber growth regulator is made by growing potato plants in a recirculating hydroponic system for a sufficient time to produce the growth regulator. Also, the use of the vegetative and growth regulator on solanaceous plants, tuber forming plants and ornamental seedlings by contacting the roots or shoots of the plant with a sufficient amount of the growth regulator to regulate the growth of the plant and one more of canopy size, plant height, stem length, internode number and presence of tubers in fresh mass. Finally, a method for regulating the growth of potato plants using a recirculating hydroponic system is described

Plant Science in Reduced Gravity: Lessons Learned

The effect of gravity on the growth and development of plants has been the subject of scientific investigation for over a century. The results obtained in space to test specific hypotheses on gravitropism, gene expression, seed formation, or growth rate are affected by both the primary effect of the microgravity and secondary effects of the spaceflight environment. The secondary effects of the spaceflight environment include physical effects arising from physical changes, such as the absence of buoyancy driven convective mixing, altered behavior of liquids and gases, and the environmental conditions in the spacecraft atmosphere. Thus, the design of biological experiments (e.g. cells, plants, animals, etc.) conducted in microgravity must account for changes in the physical forces, as well as the environmental conditions, imposed by the specific spaceflight vehicle and experimental hardware. In addition, researchers must become familiar with other aspects of spaceflight experiments: payload integration with hardware developers, safety documentation and crew procedures, and the logistics of conducting flight and ground controls. This report reviews the physical and environmental factors that directly and indirectly affect the results of plant science experiments in microgravity and is intended to serve as a guide in the design and implementation plant experiments in space