On the Brink of Virtual Extinction: Hunting and Killing Animals in Open World Video Games

The article focuses on the underlying structures evaluating acts of violence against different bodies in games. Taking the hunting mechanics of open-world games as its point of discussion, it looks at how game design manifests procedural arguments on the ideological aspects of animal violence. Whereas there are instances of explicit violence in these games, the article argues that the explicitness of such depictions serves to emphasize the “messiness” of producing animal goods, thus impeding the “carnist” ideological view of meat as pure commodity. By considering how games distinguish humans from animals, it looks at what violent acts are rendered acceptable or unacceptable, and notes distinctions between what bodies are protected by, or exempt from, moral and legal rights.Finally, the article considers how the algorithmic nature of spawning makes digital animals immune to extinction. Interestingly enough, the article nevertheless notices how a game may intentionally diverge from this logic in order to defamiliarize its established logic.Among the games discussed are Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption (2010), and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed III (2012) and Far Cry 3 (2012)

Identification and genomic location of a reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) resistance locus (Renari) introgressed from Gossypium aridum into upland cotton (G. hirsutum)

In this association mapping study, a tri-species hybrid, [Gossypium arboreum × (G. hirsutum × G. aridum)2], was crossed with MD51ne (G. hirsutum) and progeny from the cross were used to identify and map SSR markers associated with reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) resistance. Seventy-six progeny (the 50 most resistant and 26 most susceptible) plants were genotyped with 104 markers. Twenty-five markers were associated with a resistance locus that we designated Renari and two markers, BNL3279_132 and BNL2662_090, mapped within 1 cM of Renari. Because the SSR fragments associated with resistance were found in G. aridum and the bridging line G 371, G. aridum is the likely source of this resistance. The resistance is simply inherited, possibly controlled by a single dominant gene. The markers identified in this project are a valuable resource to breeders and geneticists in the quest to produce cotton cultivars with a high level of resistance to reniform nematode

Global Carbon Budget 2023

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land-use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based f CO2 products. The terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence on land and ocean sinks are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, and Earth system models. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2022, EFOS increased by 0.9 % relative to 2021, with fossil emissions at 9.9 ± 0.5 Gt C yr−1 (10.2 ± 0.5 Gt C yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is not included), and ELUC was 1.2 ± 0.7 Gt C yr−1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 11.1 ± 0.8 Gt C yr−1 (40.7±3.2 Gt CO2 yr−1). Also, for 2022, GATM was 4.6±0.2 Gt C yr−1 (2.18±0.1 ppm yr−1; ppm denotes parts per million), SOCEAN was 2.8 ± 0.4 Gt C yr−1, and SLAND was 3.8 ± 0.8 Gt C yr−1, with a BIM of −0.1 Gt C yr−1 (i.e. total estimated sources marginally too low or sinks marginally too high). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2022 reached 417.1 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2023 suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2022 of +1.1 % (0.0 % to 2.1 %) globally and atmospheric CO2 concentration reaching 419.3 ppm, 51 % above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean of and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2022, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 Gt C yr−1 persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows the following: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use changes emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the strength of the ocean sink over the last decade. This living-data update documents changes in methods and data sets applied to this most recent global carbon budget as well as evolving community understanding of the global carbon cycle. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2023 (Friedlingstein et al., 2023)

Making mythopoeic meaning out of plants

The article discusses literary and scientific discourse in relation to plant cognition. I argue that one purpose of literature is to let humans make meaning out of their environment. My focus is not on literature as fiction, or any a priori faculty of counterfactual construction. Rather, I consider literature as the inspired response to external phenomena. In this aspect, literature springs from outside; and this it shares with scientific explanation. But where science lays bare the mechanical laws of the universe, literature operates with compelling narratives of individual wills. I further suggest that the literary mode is specifically suited for envisioning non-human life. Poetic thought is considered as a mode of human cognition that, by suspending the distance between human and world, allows us to think modes of non-human cognition. In literature, we are able to represent those affects we share with other forms of biological life. My focus is on two literary representations of plant life and the blending of life forms in stories where people turn into plants. I start by considering how a few botanists have taken the literary mode as a negative point of departure for their attempts to explain plant behavior. Then, I muster two theoretical accounts in order to read two such stories. Henri and Henriette Frankfort’s description of mythopoeic thought is used as the starting point for an interpretation of Ovid’s take on the myth of Echo and Narcissus; and Roger Caillois’ “comparative biology” for a reading of Johan Borgen’s short story “Kaprifolium”

Ogling Lo : For an Erotics of Literary Description

Att utnyttja Lolita: om förhållandet mellan etik, agens och berättande i litterature

Strindberg before annihilation : Reading the Chamber Plays as dramatic texts

Literary scholars are sometimes reprimanded for reading plays as literary texts rather thantexts intended for the stage. To avoid a purely textual approach, it is often argued that youshould always “visualize” the action as if it took place on the “theater of the mind”. In thisarticle, I suggest that such a hermeneutics of “mind-staging” is misleading. Referencingtheater semiotics and the phenomenological theory of reading of Wolfgang Iser, I argue thatsuch a practice will close the radical openness of the dramatic text, by eliminating its definingindeterminacies. If performance “annihilates” the text by becoming a theatrical event (assuggested by theater semiotics), this will, nevertheless, result in a view of the text aspreceding and enduring outside of performance. Thus, the argument from theater semioticswill also come to motivate a purely textual approach to the play as a literary work.The argument is illustrated with examples from the Chamber Plays of AugustStrindberg. Building on scholars noting his “carelessness” as a playwright, I argue that areading trying to visualize the action will encounter several hermeneutical pseudo-problemsrelevant to the producer of the play but irrelevant to the reader. My first example concerns thesequential distribution of the setting in The Pelican: whereas the reader will experience itsspace as a desolate wasteland (fitting to the theme of the play), the producer, forced tovisualize it all at once, will rather experience it as cluttered. My second example concerns thestrange dialogue in The Ghost Sonata: whereas the literary reader may settle with an analyticdescription of its weird poetics, the producer must try to make new meaningful coherency outof this very weirdness. The third example regards an authorial mistake in The Storm, whichbecomes a puzzle the producer must solve, although it remains unsolvable for the reader

Beröring och begränsning : Om gränssnittet mellan djur och människa

Climate crisis and mass extinction show the need to reshape our understanding of human culture in relation to non-human lifeforms. The article considers touch as a point where the border between humans and other species may be renegotiated. Three supplementary modes of human thought, which combine explanation, speculation, and imagination, are interrogated in terms of how they each deal with the tactility of cross-species interaction: philosophy, mythical representations in literature and art, and documentary film. Interface is used as a common concept for how bodies remain distinct from each other while also being able to connect with each other. First, I present how the interface is conceptualized in general by philosophers like Derrida, Nancy and Harman, and between humans and animals in particulars by thinkers like Wood and Michaux. Then, I relate the discussion to how two mythical motifs, focusing on instances of erotic touch across species lines, have been represented in literature and visual art: Leda and the swan, and Pasiphaë and the bull. Finally, I move on to two documentary films: Robinson Devor’s Zoo (2007) and Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Unser täglich Brot (2005). The idea of zoosexual intercourse is contrasted to the distanced violence of the industrial keeping of animals. I suggest how touch show the possibility of a cross-species communion otherwise negated by late-modern industrial capitalism