bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Inherent Evil Nature in Golding’s Lord of the Flies: A Psychoanalytical Approach
Authors: Paudyal Ganga Ram
Published: September 2024

This article analyzes William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies from the psychological perspective to explore the hidden intent of the characters. It is about a small group of children who divide and involve murdering each other from their peaceful beginning. Jack and his tribe of hunters including Roger are inclined to be guided by their unconscious and do many evil activities. The objective of this article is to explore how the characters in the novel are guided by unconscious and become savage. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon are guided by reasoning as they can control their unconscious and are not guided by evil as much as the groups of Jack do. Evil is not confined to any group or person, it is found everywhere within all even in Piggy and Ralph. If it is not controlled by our subconscious, the evil will take disastrous form. It applies a qualitative method of study to explore the unconscious activities of the characters and how they reflect evil activities rather than good activities. Studying the novel from the lens of psychoanalysis, it is found that human nature is inclined to exercise wild and instinctual drives than rational and logical activities.
The Brazilian City and the Negation of the Other
Authors: Melgaço Lucas
Published: September 2024

Historically, cities have not been equally friendly and accommodating to everybody. Indeed, they were born from the identification and consolidation of a group of “equals” who shared the aim of protecting their own interests and defending themselves from the encroachments of the “other”. In the classical Greek city examples of this were strangers and prisoners of war. In the medieval European city the sick, such as lepers, and the jobless were those branded “undesirable” (Le Goff 1997). Presently, Arabs and black Africans, in Western Europe, and Latino immigrants, in the United States, are some examples of those who are frequently considered the others. Despite the extensive contributions of the English-speaking scientific community to the understanding of these classification and differentiation processes (e.g. Jenkins 2000), scholars have overlooked the reproduction of this discrimination in the so-called “global south”. In this short article I will cover particular aspects of the Brazilian case and show how the negation of the other, here, is not limited to actions and discourse, but also materializes in urban forms dedicated to separating and rejecting undesirable persons.
The Production of Meaning, Economy and Politics. Intercultural Relations, Conflicts, Appropriations, Articulations and Transformations
Authors: Mato Daniel , Dupuits Emilie
Published: September 2024

The work of Nestor Garcia Canclini was, and still is, an important source of inspiration and learning for research in Latin America. In this article by Daniel Mato and translated by Emilie Dupuits, the author comments on some key aspects of his work that are of particular importance and usefulness for contemporary social research. The title of this post tries to name synthetically some of these aspects, or, more accurately, his interpretation of them.
International Investment Law, Development and Sovereignty: No Harm?
Authors: Perrone Nicolas
Published: September 2024

Since the 1990s, foreign investment has been presented as a strong means for development. Foreign investment serves to climb the value ladder, bridge the investment gap, and maintain a ‘maxim effective utilization of economic resources.’ Yet, attracting and enabling foreign investment is not an easy task for governments. In a context of fierce competition for capital, this requires an active state promoting policies that match the needs of foreign investors. As a result, the control and steering of foreign investment of the 1960s and 1970s was quickly replaced with a model in which governments must facilitate foreign investor initiatives and reap the benefits of multinational corporate activity. This short essay aims to illustrate this more general debate by looking at the awards in the case Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) II v Ecuador, where the tribunal imposed one of the highest awards against a host state.
Cameras to the people: Reclaiming local histories and restoring environmental justice in community based forest management through participatory video
Authors: Rodriguez Iokiñe , Inturias Mirna
Published: September 2024

Indigenous peoples’ histories and memories are almost invisible to the eyes and ears of western civilization. When we do hear about them, we generally do so through accounts and reconstructions made by naturalists, priests, explorers and more recently historians, geographers, and anthropologists – rarely from indigenous people themselves. Yet indigenous peoples in Latin America are very much aware that an important part of their struggle for cultural and physical survival involves telling the world their own histories. This post discusses how “participatory video” (PV) can help with indigenous peoples’ needs for cultural reassertion as well as with creating opportunities for restoring environmental justice in their territories
Bricherismo in Peruvian touristic areas: the configuration of gender in asymmetrical and intercultural encounters
Authors: Roguet Juliette
Published: September 2024

The analysis of encounters of alterity, within the context of seduction and in a touristic environment, gives us the possibility to reflect upon powerful relations between gender, race and class. How can femininities and masculinities be analysed in an intercultural context and asymmetrical socio-economic situations? The focus on seduction strategies gives the possibility to investigate gender staging in this specific context of cultural-mixing. The commercial exploitation of romance interrogates the lack of transcendence in post-modern societies. The encounter of fantasies allows us to study the complex identity process marked by domination logics.
Liberation through Consumption: Six Hypotheses on the Passage from Exclusive Neoliberalism to the New Runfla Capitalism
Authors: Valeriano Diego , Muñoz Gerardo
Published: September 2024

Throughout this last decade and a half, and in parallel to the general crisis of global capitalism, a wide popular urban sector of the periphery (from Argentina but also from elsewhere) sought a favorable cycle that included themselves in consumption. One could think of this new access to wealth as a process of liberation (unlike the orthodox critique that interprets it as alienation), with the caveat of amplifying the very notion of “liberation”. With the increase of consumption there are new modes of sensing, desiring, thinking, socializing; but also other ways of being, loving, enjoying, and dying that have been radically altered. New possibilities emerge and the traditional knowledge of governing populations radically breaks down. Far from pointing to a decline in the old forms of social organization, collective action opens a new gap in a time that is unprecedented and incalculable.
Pyrrhic Victories: The Fall and Rise of the Left Turns
Authors: Beasley-Murray Jon
Published: September 2024

All victories are Pyrrhic, to a greater or lesser extent. That is, no victory is ever complete; victors always have to concede something to the vanquished. At the very least, for instance, those who emerge victorious from a political (or other) struggle either depend upon or, worse still, have to make do without the recognition on the part of the vanquished that they have indeed won. Either, that is, the losing side sign, metaphorically or otherwise, the equivalent of some kind of document of surrender, in which case they have retained the power to determine that the struggle is indeed at an end. And this retained power forces an acknowledgement, on the part of the winners, that their victory cannot be total even if the surrender is unconditional. Or, worse still, the losers do not sign such a document, either because they refuse to acknowledge defeat or because they will not or cannot acknowledge the victors and the legitimacy of their victory. In which case, symbolically and perhaps not just symbolically, the struggle continues and victory remains elusive for the victors.
Lake Atitlán, Guatemala: "The Possibility of a Shared World”
Authors: Travieso Emilio
Published: September 2024

Conflicts around development issues are increasingly focused on water. These conflicts tend to intertwine a struggle over whether water should be treated as a commodity with struggles over how its management should be configured, and by whom (Castro 2008). Latin America has emerged as a particularly relevant region for these debates (Ávila-Garcia 2016). This article presents the case of Lake Atitlán, in the Sololá department of Guatemala, where long-standing conflicts and divergent imaginaries have made it difficult to create consensus about how to solve an ecological problem. The article is based on four months (April to July 2016) of ethnographic fieldwork, in three towns and one village on the shores of the lake. Many names and other identifying details are left out, due to safety concerns.
The Many Natures of Water in Latin-American Neo-Extractivist Conflicts
Authors: Bonelli Cristobal , Roca-Servat Denisse , Bueno de Mesquita Mourik
Published: September 2024

Thousands of diverse ‘water protectors’ representing different ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds throughout the American continent are standing firm against the destruction of ecological systems carried out by extractive development projects. One recent example concerning indigenous peoples has been the mobilization carried out by the Hunkpapa Lakota and Yanktonai Dakota Native American people of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline project is a $3.8 billion investment to move 500,000 barrels of domestic crude oil a day through four U.S. states. If constructed, the Dakota pipeline would pass through sacred burial grounds as well as the Missouri river – the main water source for the Standing Rock Sioux population.
Water Security, Justice and the Politics Rights in Peru and Bolivia
Authors: Tejada Laura
Published: September 2024

The overall goal of Water Security, Justice and the Politics of Water Rights in Peru and Bolivia is to scrutinize the claim by legislators, policymakers and development institutes that legal recognition of local water rights reduces water conflict and increases water security and equality for peasants and indigenous communities. This is indeed an ambitious goal of the author Miriam Seemann, given the fact that nearly no studies have looked at the actual impacts of water rights formalization policies on the ground so far. Nonetheless, the book touches a subject of major importance in view of the trend towards the adoption of new water legislations in the last decades, resulting in the formalization of water rights and entitlements, not only in Latin-American countries such as Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, but on a global scale (Baillat 2010). Well aware of the shortcomings of mainstream approaches to property rights formalization, like de Soto's (2000) theoretical presupposition that formal property rights are the most important institution for economic growth and development, the book demonstrates that uncritical formalization of local water rights may lead to weakening, instead of strengthening, local water security.
Cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitics and indigenous peoples: elements for a possible alliance
Authors: Flores Silva Fabian
Published: September 2024

We are witnessing the re-emergence of cosmopolitism. Cosmopolitanism is rising as a politico-cultural movement, which while being globalised in the inter-metropolis connection, it chiefly reaffirms the normative engagement with human rights beyond national borders. Almost simultaneously, several theories have appeared under the term ‘cosmopolitical’. They question cosmopolitan common sense and its mono-naturalism as they reclaim the polyphonic de- and re-construction of the world from the heterogeneous forces and entities that inhabit it. Considering their dissimilar assumptions, cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics do not seem to encounter points of convergence, except their aspirations to think about the world. For those who support cosmopolitanism, this is the field of human political action, while for advocates of cosmopolitics the world is something to be constructed by involving human and non-human actors. In this way, as suggested by Bruno Latour, it could be argued that we are obliged to decide between cosmopolitism and cosmopolitics; between assuming the urgency of saving the world and the slowing down of decisions that undermine this enterprise; between the ‘logical equivalence’ and the ‘operator of equality’ that Isabelle Stengers tells us about (2014).
Endless dispossession: looking at Mexico through David Harvey’s gaze
Authors: De Coss-Corzo Alejandro
Published: September 2024

Mexico, production of urban space, violence and dispossession, capital  accumulation, David Harvey Mexico seems to be immersed in an unending series of catastrophes. Every day new stories of injustices and horrible deaths smother us. Social networks, both physical and virtual, are continuously filled with outrage, which more often than not, suddenly decays. This processes, some clearly connected and others apparently distant, can be explained in a systematic fashion through the work of David Harvey. In his work, Harvey has sought to explain how capital accumulation produces and transforms space. This focus has established his body of work as one of the main contributions to Marxist theory in the last fifty years. In particular, he has focused on explaining the production of urban space; the role of violence and dispossession in the accumulation of capital, and the role finance plays in the capitalist system and its crises. Even if these three topics were scarcely explored by Marx, Harvey looks for clues and follows his steps in a critical and complementary way.
Writing history in the present: The implications of localized forms of science in Latin America for a postcolonial world
Authors: Toomey Anne
Published: September 2024

Scientific research practices, in particular in the biological sciences, are currently undergoing a great deal of scrutiny and change due to recent debates in the social sciences about bioprospecting, biopiracy and the co-production of knowledge. Nowhere are these debates more relevant than in countries with high levels of both biological and cultural diversity that have been subject to a history of colonialism, such as in tropical regions of South America. Many authors have written critically about these issues – however, there is less understanding about the links between such histories and the policies, discourses and relationships as occur in scientific practices in these regions of the world today. In particular, little notice has been taken of localized creations of scientific practice in non-western settings, especially in terms of how they shift scientific trends and debates on a global scale. This essay takes the case of ‘Bolivian science’ in order to show how research encounters in the so-called scientific ‘peripheries’ of the world can have implications for the production and use of science that far outstretch the limits of geographical boundaries, and lead to the decolonization of science back on Western soils.
Furnishing the Social Solidarity Economy
Authors: D’Aloia Alexander
Published: September 2024

Despite its historic roots, the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE) is a concept that has come to prominence in South America over the last decade. It is an alternative theoretical construct of “the economy” that seeks to emphasise relationships of solidarity in an attempt to reinstate the primacy of “society” over “the market”. What makes the SSE distinctive is that while it (mostly) professes itself to be a theoretical construct, it is also explicitly intended to be a guide for policy. This contribution first examines the SSE as an intellectual construct, noting the lack of consistency around the term. It then proceeds to relate these conceptions to the practice of the SSE in the field, looking at the program Mobiliario Escolar, introduced by the Ecuadorian government in 2014. There, the SSE shows much potential, with its slightly ambiguous definition lending it a certain utility for guiding policy. Most importantly, the SSE is shown to be a beneficial example of practice-oriented theory.
The ayllu and territoriality in the Andes
Authors: Yampara Huarachi Simon
Published: September 2024

The ayllu is a political, geographical and ethnic unit that encompasses indigenous communities occupying different ecological levels (Condarco Morales, 1970; Murra, 1975). It was the most basic indigenous territorial organization before the spread of haciendas in the Andean region and it is practiced today in zones historically unaffected by haciendas, or by communities that seek to rebuild their indigenous socio-political organization. The text below focuses on how the Aymara concept of suma qamaña, normally translated as “living well” or vivir bien in Spanish, relates to a native perspective of development stemming from the ayllu organization itself. The book was published in 2001, during a time when “communitarian lands of origin” (TCOs, in their Spanish acronym) were starting to be recognized and institutionalized, a process that began in the mid-1990s. Yampara’s discussion of suma qamaña was highly influential amongst academics and helped to shape the policies adopted by the current administration under Evo Morales. Despite the important influence of this book in particular, and Yampara’s work in general, in Bolivian national politics, his work has remained largely absent in English-speaking academia. We are very happy to share this first translation with you and we welcome comments and inquiries.
Paradoxical wage policy trends: the cases of Uruguay and Chile
Authors: Velasco Juan
Published: September 2024

The quality and trends of the policymaking processes in Latin America have been under permanent debate. A rich literature has pointed out different factors that have influenced policymaking since the return to democracy in the 1980s. Particularly important objects of debate have been the political and ideological predominant positions, like the neoliberal (1980s-1990s) and pink (2000s-2010s) waves (Castañeda, 2006; Roberts, 2007; Levistky and Roberts, 2011; Kingstone, 2011). It has also been pointed out the influence of the economic trends that the region has faced, and the internal economic imbalances that produced crisis and adjustments (Ffrench-Davis, 2000; Diez and Franschet, 2012; Haggard and Kaufman, 2012). Other issues discussed are more politically structural, like the balance of power under presidential regimes, how the structure of policymaking is set up between Government and Parliament or under Unitarian/Federal regimes, and the structure of political participation and the composition (fragmented/majoritarian) of political coalitions in Government or Parliament (Stein et al., 2008; Aninat et al. 2008; Sehnbruch and Siavelis, 2014). Finally, the debate also highlighted the importance of different stakeholders (i.e. business elites) and their influence in Latin American policymaking (Cook, 2007; Schneider, 2008; Karcher and Schneider, 2012). The overlapping of these issues are key to understand how policies evolve. However, even though general economic, political and societal waves define a trend or direction, the differences in terms of magnitude and sustainability of policies among countries show there are idiosyncratic elements for explaining changes.
Degrowth - Unsuited for the Global South?
Authors: Lang Miriam
Published: September 2024

Hegemonic common sense suggests that a project as exotic as controlled economic degrowth is at its best applicable only in the geopolitical Global North while for the South, economic growth would be a requirement. Despite this, more and more voices are questioning the arguments that give economic growth a central place in political discussions, suggesting that this type of criticism could be liberating for many parts of the world (Max-Neef 1995; Latouche 2010; Altvater 2013; Muraca 2014; Gudynas y Acosta 2014; Lang 2016). The fifth international conference on degrowth that took place in Budapest, capital of Hungary, between the 30th of august and the 3rd of september 2016, revealed that reflections around degrowth are also a place of convergence for multiple transformatory narratives: from political ecology to ecological economics, considering also feminist perspectives that suggest the organization of society around a logic of care; from ideas of environmental and climate justice to policy ideas of universal and unconditional basic income. In this way, degrowth constitutes an additional contribution from a new internationalism, a contribution that seems necessary for interventions from the plural left over the globalized world. This internationalism is not limited to solidarity practices in struggles that take place in far away places, but instead, it looks for convergence, as well as complementarity and reciprocity between transformatory struggles that are contextualized and diverse.
Por una Vida Digna: Science as Technique of Power and Mode of Resistance in Argentina
Authors: Feeney-McCandless Ingrid Elísabet
Published: September 2024

Two decades after the approval of the use of GMO seeds in Argentina, the devastating consequences of the use of agro-chemicals linked to genetically modified seeds are becoming painfully clear. Rural populations are increasingly becoming aware of the dreadful environmental and health impacts of the use of the ‘technological package’ that has fuelled the expansion of Argentina’s agribusiness. Importantly, this paper provides an insight into how this growing awareness has become translated into greater community organisation across the country, with the aim of not only questioning the implementation of the current agribusiness model, but also the different ways in which these practices are legitimised. Her analysis of the movement for a Ciencia Digna (‘a dignified science’) demonstrates the epistemological battles that are fought in the everyday resistance organised by these communities.
¿Y si no en Habana? Landless science, peasant struggle, and capitalist development in Colombia
Authors: Liebman Alexander , Peller Henry A.
Published: September 2024

On November 30th 2016, the Colombian government and FARC signed a peace agreement despite its narrow rejection in a national plebiscite two months earlier. The Havana Accords promise to end five decades of civil war. Among the FARC’s central objectives in the negotiations was agrarian reform. This, in order to resolve the highest land inequity in the Western Hemisphere and the accumulated centuries of violent injustice onto the rural poor. About 80% of agricultural land in Colombia is concentrated among 14% of landowners (USAID 2010). Land is most often used for export production and extensive cattle production. From the Andean highlands to the Eastern Plains, cattle dominate the landscape, occupying 80% of agricultural land, often the most productive areas. Another 40% of Colombian territory is under contract with multinational productions for agriculture, forestry, or mining export (OXFAM 2013). Inequality of land access is also borne unequally across race and gender – Afro-Colombians and women facing the highest levels of internal displacement due to rural conflict and agri-business land accumulation (Gomez 2012).
IWRM and the legacies of large-scale agriculture in the Peruvian Amazon
Authors: Vila Benites Giselle
Published: September 2024

The advancement of agribusiness in Latin America has created environmental strains and les to increasing conflicts with local based economies dependent on small scale agriculture. Among the efforts to halt its negative effects, new models of resource governance emerged aiming to integrate stakeholders and users into accountable organisations. This article reviews the attempt to impose Integrated water resources management (IWRM) over the water governance arrangements of a native community in the Peruvian Amazon that faces an increasing intervention of rice agribusiness in their lands. The resulting dynamic can be understood as an altered arrangement: it doesn’t lead to the creation of an IWRM institution, nor does it reject new governance architectures. The rescaling of water governance, the interpretation of IWRM meanings and the contingency of the results, all within the frame of a history of agricultural development interventions in indigenous lands, helps us understand this phenomenon.
The quinoa boom and the commoditisation debate: critical reflections on the re-emergence of a peasantry in the Southern Altiplano
Authors: Tschopp Maurice
Published: September 2024

Quinoa farmers and new Peasantry in Bolivia Quinoa is currently integrated in global production networks, although this crop was almost completely unknown some decades ago. In Bolivia, prices of quinoa reached an all-time high in 2013 and 2014, which resulted in an important expansion of the agricultural frontier. This article discusses the impact of the quinoa boom through the lenses of the commoditisation debate. It examines practises and perceptions linked to land and labour, two elements that were coined out as “fictitious commodities” by Karl Polanyi. While Land cannot be sold in the region, because of its legal status, several elements point toward a commoditisation process. The findings also suggest that labour has been increasingly commoditised as well. Quinoa producers indeed tend to rely increasingly more on casual labour and the multiplication of productive assets in the area resulted in new forms of commoditised social relations.
Small-scale Farmers’ Vulnerability to Climate Change in the Peruvian Andes
Authors: Heikkinen Anna
Published: September 2024

Peru has been ranked as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to the consequences of climate change (UNEP, 2013). Most of the world’s tropical glaciers (71%) are found in Peru (Vuille et al, 2008). During the past decades, scientists have observed the alarming impacts of global warming in the Peruvian Andes—thirty per cent of the glacier snowpack has been lost in a 30-year period (Urrutia & Vuille, 2009) and abnormal changes in seasonal precipitation patterns have been monitored (Sanabria et al, 2014). These changes in hydrological cycles pose a serious concern for populations living in the Andean lowland communities where glacier meltwater and precipitation provide a fundamental source of water. In some regions of the Andean highlands, rural populations already have restricted access to potable water and irrigation. Poor highland communities often have less capacity to respond to the increasing water scarcity due to weak infrastructure, low income, strong reliance on agriculture and limited opportunities for alternative livelihoods. It is, therefore, projected that livelihoods and the daily survival of rural populations in the Andes will be threatened as the water supply continues to decline (Mark et al, 2010). Myriad studies have been conducted on climate change in the Andean region from the standpoint of the natural sciences, revealing the biophysical threats climatic changes are posing to local ecosystems (Perez et al, 2010; Drenkahn et al, 2015). However, fewer studies have focused on climate vulnerability of local people in the rural highlands (Bury et al, 2011; Lynch, 2012).Andean highland populations have also suffered from political marginalization and discrimination for centuries in the Peruvian society, and some studies have suggested that climatic changes will further increase their vulnerability (Lynch, 2012; Rasmussen, 2015).
Higher education and indigenous and afro-descendant peoples as a field of study and intervention in Latin America
Authors: Mancinelli Gloria
Published: September 2024

Since 2008, there has been a notable increase in studies on processes of inclusion, retention and graduation of indigenous students in higher education in Latin America; a growing interest in research and university extension activities in collaboration with indigenous and Afro-descendant communities; and the establishment of intercultural academic spaces in the region. This article offers a literature review analysis of this field of study and intervention, elaborated in Spanish and Portuguese in the framework of Latin American institutions. This analysis identifies the various voices, analytical perspectives, lines of research, conceptual debates and contributions that enrich the understanding of some types of experiences in this field, often described as 'intercultural', and others usually considered as educational inclusion of indigenous and Afro-descendant populations in the field of Higher Education in Latin America. The literature review reveals that much of this research is the result of collaborative work between diverse actors committed to promoting intercultural perspectives at the higher education level, and reflects the historical struggles sustained by these peoples as the fundamental structuring component of these experiences. It is concluded that the increase in research and interventions makes it plausible to postulate and describe the consolidation of a specific field of study and intervention for Latin America, which can be defined as 'Higher Education, Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples' and that the experiences analysed reflect a particular and historical link between university systems and Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America.
On Weathering: Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Struggles Around the Nicaragua Mural in Berlin After 2018
Authors: Marty Samira
Published: September 2024

This article looks at the process of historical reinterpretation and anti-imperialist struggle around the Nicaragua mural in (former East) Berlin to demonstrate how internationalist solidarity does not unfold singularly but in a multi-layered, often contradictory manner. Since 2018, this mural has turned from an inconspicuous site into a place of contestation. On the one hand, for residents, the mural has transformed into a projection of rescuing and reinstating memory of the former GDR’s efforts of internationalist friendship and solidarity. On the other hand, it has become a site for political struggle for Nicaraguan exiles living in the area. Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Nicaragua and Germany in 2018–2019 and 2023, this article complicates how memory practices shape everyday lives in Berlin for German and Nicaraguan residents alike. Their divergent interpretations of the mural’s meaning sheds light on the tensions of memory politics vis à vis political and historical reinterpretation and demonstrate the potential for the Nicaragua mural to place a magnifying glass over the anti-imperial politics of Berlin.
Political Caricature to Mobilize Solidarity Through Humor
Authors: Molina Pedro X.
Published: September 2024

As part of our special issue, we invited artist Pedro X. Molina to choose a selection of his works to dialogue with our central themes of past and present European-Latin American solidarities, and the role of artifacts therein. Molina has chosen three caricatures for our special issue, which we include over the coming pages. Reflecting on current socio-political affairs such as Nicaraguan authoritarianism, migration to the US, and memories of violence, his work manages to address these issues with sharpness and rigour.
A Low-Cost Attitude Determination System using Multiple Sensors for High-Altitude Balloon Flights
Authors: Jain Ankit , Isenberg Douglas R.
Published: September 2024

This paper discusses the calibration and implementation of a low-cost attitude determi- nation system for high-altitude balloon flights using multiple sensors. The attitude determination system is comprised of a 3-axis accelerometer and a sun sensor. The accelerometer is utilized to measure the gravitational acceleration vector of the payload in the payload's body frame. The measured acceleration vector is based upon the accelerometer's bias and sensitivity which can be found through calibration under zero motion conditions. The sun sensor is comprised of many solar cells at various angles. These are utilized to obtain an accurate sunlight directional vector of the payload in the payload's body frame from an over-determined system of measurement equations. The development of these equations is discussed. Both the gravitational acceleration vector and the sunlight directional vector can also be measured in an inertial frame. It is assumed that these measurements are known a-priori. This provides enough information to solve for an attitude at each sample instance, utilizing two independent vector measurements (i.e., the sunlight and acceleration vectors). The attitude determination system utilizes Markley's solution to Wahba's problem. A 3-axis rate gyroscope is also utilized to gather angular velocity information of the payload in the payload's body frame and was used to compare against angular velocity derived from the estimated attitude to validate the accuracy of the attitude determination system. The measured angular velocity vector is based upon the rate gyroscope's bias and sensitivity which can be found through calibration under zero motion conditions.
Eclipse-Ballooning 2017: The U of MN–Twin Cities Experience
Authors: Flaten James , Bowers Ryan , Geadlemann Benjamin , Langford Austin , Eiler Austin , Diers Jordan , Toth Daniel , Peterson Simon , Ailts Garrett , Waataja Michael , Gonzalez Celia , Zumwalt Lucas , Kwiencinski Kathryn , Och Ethan , Mitchell Sawyer , O'Connor Esther , Warbritton Alexandra , Koenig Michael , Talberg Nicholas , Gosch Christopher , Wegner Stephanie , Serba Chad
Published: September 2024

The stratospheric ballooning team at the U of MN – Twin Cities started working on eclipse-ballooning in the fall of 2013, even before the Montana Space Grant announced their plan to organize a national Eclipse Ballooning Project. Our team promptly signed up to assist their effort, and have been heavily involved ever since. This presentation will discuss our eclipse-ballooning efforts and progress over the past 4 years. Our experiences include experimenting with a GoPro-based video-telemetry system (which ultimately was not as successful as Montana’s Raspberry-Pi-based system), adopting (then helping test, modify, and teach other teams to learn to use) the Montana telemetry system, practicing with up-range and down-range ground station placement, developing and testing passive anti- rotation devices and active camera-pointing devices to improve video quality, landing two eclipse-telemetry systems in Minnesota lakes one week before the eclipse (ouch!), flying five balloon stacks during the eclipse from near Grand Island, NE, and organizing/hosting
AHAC 2017. We will also discuss ways in which we have already begun to use the telemetry
equipment for non-eclipse balloon missions. The eclipse project has greatly expanded our
HAB network and ballooning capabilities in multiple different directions, and will continue
to strongly influence our stratospheric ballooning program for years to come.
Production of bacterial cellulose from Kombucha tea and coffee husk infusion
Authors: Jiménez-Sánchez Augusta , Hernández-Gil Linet , Jiménez-Sánchez Yesenia Yomara , García Pérez Mario A. , Rodríguez-Larraburu Elianne
Published: September 2024

In this work, the best formulation of culture medium based on Kombucha tea and infusion of coffee husk for the production of bacterial cellulose (BC) from Acetobacter xylinum was determined. The highest BC production corresponded to the medium containing tea, coffee husk infusion, sugar and 0.005% methionine. This greater production occurred when the inoculum was kept in the dark, which allowed high multiplication of the microorganisms and, therefore, greater production of the polymer. The introduction of a new, feasible, malleable material from an environmentally friendly process will allow the replacement of materials with a greater impact on pollution and cost.
Elementos fundamentales para un pregrado con impronta social comunitaria, comprometido con el cambio social
Authors: Valencia Zapata Adriana , Montenegro Romero Orlando , González Mendoza Almeida Liliana , Herrera Contreras José Alexander
Published: September 2024

Introducción: Las comprensiones sobre una apuesta social comunitaria en un plan de estudios de psicología desbordan el interés de una disciplina en particular. Se convierten en tema de interés por su propósito de incidir en problemáticas y necesidades psicosociales y comunitarias del mundo actual, para el bienestar multidimensional de sujetos, grupos y colectivos. Las reflexiones que se presentan son el resultado de una investigación realizada entre 2021 y 2023, en un programa de psicología que centró su interés en la identificación de los pilares de la impronta social comunitaria que promulga la Universidad de origen y su ejecución en el plan de estudios. Metodología: Fundamentada en el paradigma crítico social, de corte cualitativo y con una metodología de investigación–acción, bajo técnicas de revisión documental, grupo focal y  herramientas Atlas TI y metaplan. Resultados: Los hallazgos de esta investigación permitieron la identificación de 3 pilares metodológicos-epistemológicos, que fundamentan la mirada social comunitaria, adaptables a grados de formación que busquen agenciar acciones comunitarias para superar diversos problemas psicosociales. Discusión: Se sugieren algunos aspectos críticos a considerar, para que las acciones generadas apunten realmente a la transformación social. Conclusiones: Es necesario fortalecer la formación solidaria y comunitaria del programa universitario estudiado.
Competencias clave en una escuela unitaria a través de la educación musical: Estudio de caso
Authors: Monreal-Guerrero Inés María , Álvarez García Francisco José , Berrón Ruiz Elena , Herrero Gozalo Sara
Published: September 2024

Introducción: El presente artículo analiza de qué manera la educación musical favorece el desarrollo de las competencias clave en el alumnado de Educación Primaria de un aula internivelar. Metodología: Para ello se lleva a cabo un proyecto de investigación desarrollado en una escuela unitaria perteneciente a un Colegio Rural Agrupado de la provincia de León durante el curso 2020-2021. El tipo de diseño metodológico utilizado se apoya en un estudio de caso enmarcado en el enfoque cualitativo y dentro del paradigma interpretativo. Resultados y discusión: Las principales conclusiones extraídas subrayan la versatilidad que ofrece la educación musical en el desarrollo de la labor docente desde un enfoque competencial, así como los beneficios que esta brinda en el trabajo por competencias en los grupos de estudiantes con diferentes niveles educativos.
Estimation of the spin of a supermassive black hole in Sagittarius A*
Authors: Andrianov A. S. , Chernov S. V.
Published: September 2024

In April 2017, the Event Horizon telescope received an image of a supermassive black hole in the Sagittarius A* source. This image consists of a ring-like structure that contains three areas with increased brightness (spots). If we assume that these spots are associated with flares near the event horizon of a black hole, then we can estimate its spin. Our estimate gives a value of the order of a ≈ 0.9.
Transition from super-alfvenic to sub-alfvenic stellar wind flow passing by an exoplanet, using the example of HD 209458b
Authors: Belenkaya E. S.
Published: September 2024

Depending on the distance of the exoplanet from the central star and on the properties of this star, different regimes of stellar wind flow around it arise. If the exoplanet is at a distance up to the Alfven radius at which the wind speed is equal to the Alfven speed, or the Alfven Mach number MA = 1, then the exoplanet generates Alfven wings. If it is located beyond the Alfven radius, a comet-like magnetosphere appears, like that of the planets of the Solar System. The paper examines how the transition from one flow regime to another can be described on the base of a paraboloid model of the magnetospheric magnetic field using the example of exoplanet HD 209458b.
Global families of periodic orbits adjacent to libration points in the restricted three-body problem
Authors: Tkhai V. N.
Published: September 2024

The restricted circular three-body problem is studied. All global families of periodic orbits adjacent to the libration points are found. A scenario for the evolution of orbits in the family is given. Chains of global families will be highlighted; the chain begins at the triangular libration point, contains global families for the triangular and all collinear libration points, and ends with a family whose orbits are pressed against the main bodies. The evolution of global families in the chain associated with changes in the energy of the system is described. Planar and spatial orbits are studied.
National software for processing information of the satellite – satellite space geodetic system
Authors: Zhamkov A. S. , Ayukov S. V. , Filetkin A. I. , Milyukov V. K. , Vlasov I. Yu. , Sementsov V. N. , Gusev I. V. , Zharov V. E.
Published: September 2024

The paper presents the principle of operation, the main components and the results of the work of the software designed for processing large amounts of space geodetic information created at SAI MSU. The developed PC was used to process inter-satellite measurements of a space constellation intended to measure the parameters of the Earth’s gravitational field (EGF). The experimental option of the software enables working with both simulated data and real data of GRACE and GRACE-FO missions. This experimental version was used to recover the EGF parameters on real GRACE and GRACE-FO mission data. Solutions were developed for every month within the measurement periods of 2010 and 2021, as well as for extended periods of 4.3 years and 7.6 years. A comparison of the obtained solutions with the results of the EGF recovering obtained by other researchers is presented.
Displacement norm in the presence of an inverse-square perturbing acceleration in the reference frame associated with the radius vector
Authors: Sannikova T. N.
Published: September 2024

The problem of motion of a zero-mass point under the influence of attraction to the central body and a small perturbing acceleration P′ = P/r 2 is considered, where r is the distance to the attracting center, components of the vector P are assumed to be constant in a reference system with axes directed along the radius vector, the transversal and the angular momentum vector. Previously, for this problem, we found equations of motion in the mean elements and formulas for the transition from the osculating elements to the mean elements in the first order of smallness; we neglected second-order quantities. In this work, the Euclidean (root–mean–square over the mean anomaly) displacement norm ||dr||2 is obtained, where dr represents the difference between the position vectors on the osculating and mean orbit. It turned out that ||dr||2 depends only on the components of the vector P (positive definite quadratic form), the semi–major axis (proportional to the second power) and the eccentricity of the osculating ellipse. The norm ||dr||2 is obtained in the form of series in powers of the β=e/1+1-e2and in powers of the eccentricity e. The results are applied to the problem of the motion of asteroids under the influence of a perturbing acceleration inversely proportional to the square of the heliocentric distance, in particular, under the influence of the Yarkovsky effect.
Effects of Thorium-232 on the Bioluminescent Enzymatic System and Radioprotective Activity of Humic Substances
Authors: Rozhko T. V , Kolesnik O. V , Sachkova A. S , Romanova N. Yu , Stom D. I. , Kudryasheva N. S
Published: September 2024

Research into the effects of low-dose radiation exposure is relevant due to an increase in the number of areas to which anthropogenic loading has occurred. Thorium is one of the radioactive elements naturally occurring in ecosystems; the amounts of thorium in the environment may be increased due to the activities related to the extraction of natural resources and operation of thermal power plants. Special interest focuses on the biological effects of thorium in the presence of humic substances as natural detoxicants. The aim of this study is to explore whether humic substances exert "mitigating" effects during exposure to thorium-232 at low-doses (< 0.04 Gy). A bioluminescent system of the enzymatic reactions including the bacterial luciferase and NADH: FMN-oxidoreductase has been chosen as a biological object. It was found that the activation of bioluminescence occurred in the initial stage of the exposure (up to 50 min) and production of reactive oxygen species increased after the 50 min exposure of this system to thorium-232. The relationship between the intensity of bioluminescence and the level of reactive oxygen species (correlation coefficient is −0.86) is shown. The addition of humic substances helps to neutralize thorium activity and reduce the level of reactive oxygen species to the control value. The effects of humic substances on the rate of NADH-dependent enzymatic process including redox reactions are shown. The results obtained contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms of the effects of thorium-232 at molecular level and its neutralization effects on the enzymatic processes.
Effect of Viscous Media on the Quantum Yield of Bioluminescence in a Reaction Catalyzed by Bacterial Luciferase
Authors: Lisitsa A. E , Sukovatyi L. A , Kratasyuk V. A , Nemtseva E. V
Published: September 2024

Based on previously obtained data on the transient kinetics of the bioluminescent reaction catalyzed by P. leiognathi luciferase in media with polyols and sugars, the relative quantum yield of bioluminescence per substrate molecule was determined using mathematical modeling. It was found that in some media the relative quantum yield per aldehyde molecule increases compared to the value in the buffer: by 18% in the presence of glycerol and by 33% in the presence of sucrose. The conformation of the side chain of αHis44, which is the functionally important and conservative in all bacterial luciferases, was analyzed using molecular dynamics methods. It has been established that in the presence of all cosolvents there is an increase in the probability of formation the optimal for catalysis orientation of this amino acid, which may contribute to the observed increase in the quantum yield of bioluminescence in viscous media.
Acclimation of Primary Photosynthetic Reactions in the Cells of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to Cadmium: Analysis of Cell Population Heterogeneity
Authors: Volgusheva А. А , Konyukhov I. V , Antal T. K
Published: September 2024

The mechanisms of acclimation of primary photosynthetic reactions in the green microalgae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to the toxic action of cadmium were investigated by analyzing the dynamics of distribution of key photosynthetic parameters in cell population. A synchronous culture of microalgae was incubated for 96 h in the presence of 25 μM Cd, and OJIP-transient curves of individual cells were recorded at different stages of incubation with the toxicant using an original microfluorometer. The analysis of OJIP-transient curves made it possible to determine distributions of key JIP-test parameters: FV/FM, ETO/ABS, RC/ABS, which represent photochemical activity of PS II, electron transport in PS II, and light absorption per active reaction center in PS II, respectively. Acclimation of primary photosynthetic reactions in microalgae to cadmium was accompanied by the appearance of two dominating cell fractions, which demonstrated the stable values of photosynthetic parameters when energy imbalance occurred due to the presence of the toxicant. The cells related to the first fraction retained moderate PS II activity by the effect of reduced PS II antenna size, while the cells of the second fraction showed low photochemical activity of PS II keeping antenna size similar to those of control cells.