Playing to be influencers: A comparative study on Spanish and Colombian young people on Instagram

This paper explores and describes how Colombian and Spanish young people present themselves on Instagram according to the social game and the symbolic capital that they infer as normative from influencers. The methodology used combines the focus group technique (seven groups) with a content analysis of the profiles of the informants (N = 651). In total, 53 first-year creative industries university students participated. The results show that the work developed by the influencers has given rise to an aspirational narrative genre that young people tend to emulate according to the Instagram habitus in order to be recognised as leading players. Their self-presentation has three main features: a) a preference for showing ‘in-classifying’ practices such as leisure and tastes for freedom; b) the predominance of a specific type of profile and gestures that avoids self-production markers and aspires towards a global audience; and c) the normalisation of self-promotional discourse. Most informants experience Instagram as a game in which they compete to accumulate visibility conceived as relational validation, although in the case of Colombian informants there is a more professional outlook towards the platform. Finally, for all of them, Instagram constitutes a serious game, and many of them admit to feeling too exposed. As a result, they have implemented self-surveillance practices, such as consulting with peers before posting photographs, using secondary accounts and deleting posts.

Practices and Strategies for Adaptation to Climate Variability in Family Farming. An Analysis of Cases of Rural Communities in the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Chile

Climate variability imposes greater challenges on family farming and especially on rural communities in vulnerable mountainous regions such as the Andes in Latin America. Changes in rainfall patterns and fluctuations in temperatures cause a greater frequency of extreme events, increased pests, and crop diseases, which even lead to food insecurity in communities that depend on self-production for survival. This is why strategies need to be developed to face this new scenario. Two cases of adaptation experiences to the effects of climate variability in rural communities in Chile (Araucanía Region) and Colombia (Cauca Department) were analyzed on this paper. For this, a mixed methodological approach was adopted that included the analysis of climate data, socioeconomic, and productive characterization of the communities, and a characterization of adaptation practices for both cases. The results show various ways of adapting mainly to changes in the availability and access of water for the development of agriculture and for domestic use. Likewise, it is shown that in order to be successful, the measures for facing climate variability must be part of coordinated strategies under a community-based adaptation approach and not developed in isolation.

EXPRESS: When non-salient information becomes salient in conversational memory: Collaboration shapes the effects of emotion and self-production.

People’s memory of what was said and who said what during dialogue plays a central role in mutual comprehension and subsequent adaptation. This paper outlines that well-established effects in conversational memory such as the self-production and the emotional effects actually depend on the nature of the interaction. We specifically focus on the impact of the collaborative nature of the interaction, comparing participants’ conversational memory in non-collaborative and collaborative interactive settings involving interactions between two people (i.e., dialogue). The findings reveal that the amplitude of these conversational memory effects depends on the collaborative vs. non-collaborative nature of the interaction. The effects are attenuated when people have the opportunity to collaborate because information that remained non-salient in the non-collaborative condition (neutral and partner-produced words) became salient in the collaborative condition to a level similar to otherwise salient information (emotional and self-produced words). We highlight the importance of these findings in the study of dialogue and conversational memory.

Interleukin-33-Enhanced CXCR4 Signaling Circuit Mediated by Carcinoma-Associated Fibroblasts Promotes Invasiveness of Head and Neck Cancer

Despite recent advances, treatment for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) has limited efficacy in preventing tumor progression. We confirmed previously that carcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAF)-induced interleukin-33 (IL-33) contributed to cancer progression. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the complex communication network of the tumor microenvironment merited further evaluation. To simulate the IL-33-induced autocrine signaling, stable clones of IL-33-overexpressing HNSCC cells were established. Besides well-established IL-33/ST2 and SDF1/CXCR4 (stromal-derived factor 1/C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 4) signaling, the CAF-induced IL-33 upregulated CXCR4 via cancer cell induction of IL-33 self-production. The IL-33-enhanced-CXCR4 regulatory circuit involves SDF1/CXCR4 signaling activation and modulates tumor behavior. An in vivo study confirmed the functional role of IL-33/CXCR4 in tumor initiation and metastasis. The CXCR4 and/or IL-33 blockade reduced HNSCC cell aggressiveness, with attenuated invasions and metastases. Immunohistochemistry confirmed that IL-33 and CXCR4 expression correlated significantly with disease-free survival and IL-33-CXCR4 co-expression predicted a poor outcome. Besides paracrine signaling, the CAF-induced IL-33 reciprocally enhanced the autocrine cancer-cell self-production of IL-33 and the corresponding CXCR4 upregulation, leading to the activation of SDF1/CXCR4 signaling subsequent to cancer progression. Thus, targeting the IL-33-enhanced-CXCR4 regulatory circuit attenuates tumor aggressiveness and provides a potential therapeutic option for improving the prognosis in HNSCC patients.

Open-source personal pipetting robots with live-cell incubation and microscopy compatibility

Liquid handling robots have the potential to automate many procedures in life sciences. However, they are not in widespread use in academic settings, where funding, space and maintenance specialists are usually limiting. In addition, current robots require lengthy programming by specialists and are incompatible with most academic laboratories with constantly changing small-scale projects. Here, we present the Pipetting Helper Imaging Lid (PHIL), an inexpensive, small, open-source personal liquid handling robot. It is designed for inexperienced users, with self-production from cheap commercial and 3D-printable components and custom control software. PHIL successfully automated pipetting for e.g. tissue immunostainings and stimulations of live stem and progenitor cells during time-lapse microscopy. PHIL is cheap enough for any laboratory member to have their own personal pipetting robot(s), and enables users without programming skills to easily automate a large range of experiments.

The future is always-already now: Instituent praxis and the activist university

In this paper, we place the issue of university activism in the context of constituent and constituted power. By this we mean the ever-present danger that activists’ demands will be co-opted and concurrently deactivated. To mitigate this risk, we develop a set of conceptual tools that enables thinking about the activist university in terms of instituent praxis; that is, an open process of co-becoming of an institution and its actors through the continuous co-production of rules that drive their actions. Contrary to the view of the university as something instituted, the activist university that we propose emphasises the possibility of sustaining the process of acting and its underlying rules, rather than the result of the act. The activist university is understood here as a crack that leaves the instituted university open every time the self-production of its subject emerges by the self-transformation of the actors in the very course of their activities. We observe a chance for grounding instituent praxis in the ontological shift in thinking the activist university from being to co-becoming, as this will allow for reclaiming the future for the university and its broader ecology.

Online Mediatization of the Identity of the Writers During the Pandemic

Self-exposure has become a mode of communication on which the functioning of social networks and blogs is based. Internet users create content in the digital environment, built on habits acquired in the old media. Remixability and mobility make possible new forms of mediation and self-production in the process of mediatization. During the research on the self-exposure of Romanian writers in the online environment, the pandemic represented the opportunity to investigate the behavioral changes in the conditions of prohibiting face-to-face events (including cultural ones). Starting from the hypothesis that, given the quarantine period and the prohibition of events, the only sources of information are traditional media, especially television. Through mediatization, the authors apply strategies to keep their visibility online to promote their books through self-exposure and emergence of identities. The research used autoethnography, based on the writer's experience, to track the emergence of identities and the types of narration used in the posts and their multimodality. Monitoring for data collection was performed on a private site like a diary/blog and processed with empirical tools. We noticed that the writers had exposed themselves online by mediatized identities, and the narratives had diversified during that period; identities and posts are mediatized around the news provided by the media. Researched periods: 23-29 March and 13-20 April 2020. Total posts: 224. This study could be apart from a bigger social image of life during the pandemic when online activity had intensified.

The Imperial Russian Navy in the Epoch of Turbomachinery: On the history of the arms industry

Восстановление надводного флота Российской империи в 1906–1917 гг. происходило в условиях революционных сдвигов в мировой кораблестроительной технике. Произошел переход от традиционных поршневых паровых машин в качестве главного двигателя к турбинным механизмам. Для самостоятельного изготовления судовых турбин машиностроительным заводам в империи не хватало мощного металлургического оборудования и технологического опыта. В условиях спешной подготовки к войне правительство пожертвовало традиционным официальным принципом — строить все у себя, из отечественных материалов, своими силами. Турбинные двигатели для всех классов кораблей царский флот получал из Германии, Англии, Швейцарии и США. В России же производство турбин в основном сводилось к механической обработке стальных заготовок, полученных от зарубежных поставщиков, и последующей сборки под руководством специалистов из авторитетных в данной области западных фирм. В историографии вопроса наблюдается систематическое противоречие: достоверное фактически описание кораблестроительной практики, как правило, опровергает обобщения, основанные на преувеличенных представлениях о достигнутом заводской техникой России научно-производственном уровне. The restoration of the Imperial Russian surface fleet in 1900–1917 took place during major technological shifts in world shipbuilding. It was the time of transition from traditional reciprocating steam engines to turbine mechanisms. The Empire’s machine-building plants lacked powerful metallurgical equipment and technological experience required for production of ship turbines. Within the circumstances of rapid war preparations, the government shifted from traditional principles of self-production, towards using international resources and powers. The Imperial Russian Navy was supplied by turbine engines for all classes of ships by Germany, England, Switzerland and the USA. Turbine engines in Russia were manufactured by processing steel templates provided by foreign suppliers. Further construction of the engines took place under the supervision of experienced western entities. A systematic contradiction in the historiography on this issue can be seen. The author reveals a verified factually based descriptions of the shipmanufacturing process, and disapproves past general conclusions, which were based on the exaggerated notions about the level of Russian scientific and technological development.