COVID-19 has brought to unavoidable prominence what feminist geopolitics has long insisted, namely that the global and the intimate are always, everywhere, already entangled. Drawing on ...Anglo-American experiences of the pandemic, this paper aims to make two key arguments. The first is that feminist geopolitics is a conceptual approach that is perhaps uniquely placed to make sense of COVID geographies. The second is to propose that this account of COVID speaks back to recent debates about the future of feminist geopolitics. Reflecting on recent debates about possible futures for feminist geopolitics, the paper will make the case for a materially-engaged feminist geopolitics which nevertheless keeps the socially-marked body at the heart of analysis.
This article seeks to advance the case for feminist geopolitics that recognises the challenges both to the Enlightenment individual and the discursive turn in geography posed by ‘new materialisms’. I ...will argue that for a distinctively feminist geopolitics a consideration of the way that representational categories align the material around bodies is vital. After a brief discussion of feminist geopolitical approaches, the article moves on to consider accounts of new materialism and assemblage approaches as they are applied to geopolitics, before moving on to consider what a forensic approach might offer to a materialist feminist geopolitics.
Livestock keepers in sub-Saharan Africa face a range of pressures, including climate change, land loss, restrictive policies, and population increase. Widespread adaptation in response can lead to ...the emergence of new, non-traditional typologies of livestock production. We sought to characterise livestock production systems in two administrative regions in northern Tanzania, an area undergoing rapid social, economic, and environmental change. Questionnaire and spatial data were collected from 404 livestock-keeping households in 21 villages in Arusha and Manyara Regions in 2016. Multiple factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis were used to classify households into livestock production systems based on household-level characteristics. Adversity-based indicators of vulnerability, including reports of hunger, illness, and livestock, land and crop losses were compared between production systems. Three distinct clusters emerged through this process. The ethnic, environmental and livestock management characteristics of households in each cluster broadly mapped onto traditional definitions of 'pastoral', 'agro-pastoral' and 'smallholder' livestock production in the study area, suggesting that this quantitative classification system is complementary to more qualitative classification methods. Our approach allowed us to demonstrate a diversity in typologies of livestock production at small spatial scales, with almost half of study villages comprising more than one production system. We also found indicators of change within livestock production systems, most notably the adoption of crop agriculture in the majority of pastoral households. System-level heterogeneities in vulnerability were evident, with agro-pastoral households most likely to report hunger and pastoral households most likely to report illness in people and livestock, and livestock losses. We demonstrate that livestock production systems can provide context for assessing household vulnerability in northern Tanzania. Policy initiatives to improve household and community well-being should recognise the continuing diversity of traditional livestock production systems in northern Tanzania, including the diversity that can exist at small spatial scales.
Spatially resolved functional grading is a key differentiator for additive manufacturing, achieving a level of control that could not be realised by conventional methods. Here we use the rapid ...solidification and thermal strain associated with selective laser melting to create an in-situ microstructurally and magnetically graded single-composition material, exploiting the solid-state austenite-martensite phase transformation. The fine grain sizes resulting from high cooling rates suppress the thermal martensite start temperature, increasing the proportion of retained austenite. Then the thermal strain accrued during the build causes in-situ deformation-driven martensitic transformation. By controlling the thermal strain, through appropriate selection of build parameters and geometry, we have been able to control the final ratio of austenite to martensite. Fully austenitic regions are paramagnetic, while dual-phase regions show increasingly ferromagnetic behaviour with an increasing proportion of martensite. We exploit this to build a magnetically graded rotor which we run successfully in a synchronous motor.
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•A fully austenitic structure was retained in 17-4PH by using the fine grain size to completely suppress thermally-driven martensite•Strain accrued during the build was used to trigger and control the extent of deformation-driven martensitic transformation•The effect was shown to be sensitive to both build parameters and sample geometry•A magnetically-graded single-composition material was built by tailoring the ratio of ferromagnetic martensite to paramagnetic austenite•This was exploited to build a magnetically graded rotor which was run in a synchronous motor
One Health perspectives are growing in influence in global health. One Health is presented as being inherently interdisciplinary and integrative, drawing together human, animal and environmental ...health into a single gaze. Closer inspection, however, reveals that this presentation of entanglement is dependent upon an apolitical understanding of three pre-existing separate conceptual spaces that are brought to a point of connection. Drawing on research with livestock keepers in northern Tanzania, in the context of the history of livestock policy in colonial and postcolonial East Africa, this demonstrates what an extended model of One Health - one that moves from bounded human, animal and environmental sectors to co-constitutive assemblages - can do to create a flexible space that is inclusive of the multiplicity of health.
•We show that One Health is based on conceptual separation•Colonial and postcolonial health policy in East Africa enacted this separation•Critical social science forces One Health to recognise interspecies entanglements.
COVID-19 has stimulated the rapid development of new antibody and small molecule therapeutics to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection. Here we describe a third antiviral modality that combines the drug-like ...advantages of both. Bicycles are entropically constrained peptides stabilized by a central chemical scaffold into a bi-cyclic structure. Rapid screening of diverse bacteriophage libraries against SARS-CoV-2 Spike yielded unique Bicycle binders across the entire protein. Exploiting Bicycles' inherent chemical combinability, we converted early micromolar hits into nanomolar viral inhibitors through simple multimerization. We also show how combining Bicycles against different epitopes into a single biparatopic agent allows Spike from diverse variants of concern (VoC) to be targeted (Alpha, Beta, Delta and Omicron). Finally, we demonstrate in both male hACE2-transgenic mice and Syrian golden hamsters that both multimerized and biparatopic Bicycles reduce viraemia and prevent host inflammation. These results introduce Bicycles as a potential antiviral modality to tackle new and rapidly evolving viruses.
This special issue presents a challenge to the division of critical geopolitics that has come to frame the sub-discipline. Instead of thinking about popular geopolitics as the way in which ...geopolitical practice escapes the formal realms of statecraft, academia and think-tanks, Woodyer and Carter, and the other contributing authors here, suggest we instead reframe our inquiry around the domestication of geopolitics. Woodyer and Carter suggest that this responds to recent moves within critical geopolitics to go beyond the discursive to reformulate geopolitics as "an encounter between texts, objects, bodies and practices". It challenges the intentionality of representations sometimes assumed by popular geopolitics where the "agency of cultural producers has been prioritised over that of audiences, that textual and discursive methods have been prioritised over more embodied and affective approaches" - leaving more openess for play and mis-/re- interpretation - and it challenges the privileging of certain sites (most notably, different forms of mass media) that have tended to dominate this approach since its inception.
COVID-19 is a spectrum of clinical symptoms in humans caused by infection with SARS-CoV-2. The coalescence of SARS-CoV-2 with seasonal respiratory viruses, particularly influenza viruses, is a global ...health concern. To understand this, transgenic mice expressing the human ACE2 receptor (K18-hACE2) were infected with influenza A virus (IAV) followed by SARS-CoV-2 and the host response and effect on virus biology was compared to K18-hACE2 mice infected with IAV or SARS-CoV-2 alone. The sequentially infected mice showed reduced SARS-CoV-2 RNA synthesis, yet exhibited more rapid weight loss, more severe lung damage and a prolongation of the innate response compared to the singly infected or control mice. Sequential infection also exacerbated the extrapulmonary encephalitic manifestations associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. Conversely, prior infection with a commercially available, multivalent live-attenuated influenza vaccine (Fluenz Tetra) elicited the same reduction in SARS-CoV-2 RNA synthesis, albeit without the associated increase in disease severity. This suggests that the innate immune response stimulated by IAV inhibits SARS-CoV-2. Interestingly, infection with an attenuated, apathogenic influenza vaccine does not result in an aberrant immune response and enhanced disease severity. Taken together, the data suggest coinfection (‘twinfection’) is deleterious and mitigation steps should be instituted as part of the comprehensive public health and management strategy of COVID-19.
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