Academic literature on the topic 'Chiral active matter'

A swarm of active-spinner particles displays a reversal of their swarming direction as their packing density is increased, an effect that can be enhanced by adding geometric friction between the particles.

Bacterial suspensions show turbulence-like spatiotemporal dynamics and vortices moving irregularly inside the suspensions. Understanding these ordered vortices is an ongoing challenge in active matter physics, and their application to the control of autonomous material transport will provide significant development in microfluidics. Despite the extensive studies, one of the key aspects of bacterial propulsion has remained elusive: The motion of bacteria is chiral, i.e., it breaks mirror symmetry. Therefore, the mechanism of control of macroscopic active turbulence by microscopic chirality is still poorly understood. Here, we report the selective stabilization of chiral rotational direction of bacterial vortices in achiral circular microwells sealed by an oil/water interface. The intrinsic chirality of bacterial swimming near the top and bottom interfaces generates chiral collective motions of bacteria at the lateral boundary of the microwell that are opposite in directions. These edge currents grow stronger as bacterial density increases, and, within different top and bottom interfaces, their competition leads to a global rotation of the bacterial suspension in a favored direction, breaking the mirror symmetry of the system. We further demonstrate that chiral edge current favors corotational configurations of interacting vortices, enhancing their ordering. The intrinsic chirality of bacteria is a key feature of the pairing order transition from active turbulence, and the geometric rule of pairing order transition may shed light on the strategy for designing chiral active matter.

Due to its inherent out-of-equilibrium nature, active matter in confinement may exhibit collective behavior absent in unconfined systems. Extensive studies have indicated that hydrodynamic or steric interactions between active particles and boundary play an important role in the emergence of collective behavior. However, besides introducing external couplings at the single-particle level, the confinement also induces an inhomogeneous density distribution due to particle-position correlations, whose effect on collective behavior remains unclear. Here, we investigate this effect in a minimal chiral active matter composed of self-spinning rotors through simulation, experiment, and theory. We find that the density inhomogeneity leads to a position-dependent frictional stress that results from interrotor friction and couples the spin to the translation of the particles, which can then drive a striking spatially oscillating collective motion of the chiral active matter along the confinement boundary. Moreover, depending on the oscillation properties, the collective behavior has three different modes as the packing fraction varies. The structural origins of the transitions between the different modes are well identified by the percolation of solid-like regions or the occurrence of defect-induced particle rearrangement. Our results thus show that the confinement-induced inhomogeneity, dynamic structure, and compressibility have significant influences on collective behavior of active matter and should be properly taken into account.

Biological matter is driven far from thermodynamic equilibrium by active processes on the molecular scale. These processes are usually driven by the chemical reaction of a fuel and generate spontaneous movements and mechanical stresses in the system, even in the absence of external forces or torques. Moreover these active stresses effectively fluidify the material. The cell cytoskeleton, suspensions of swimming microorganisms or tissues are prominent examples of active fluids. Active processes in biological systems often exhibit chiral asymmetries. Examples are the chirality of cytoskeletal filaments which interact with motor proteins, the chirality of the beat of cilia and flagella as well as the helical trajectories of many biological micro-swimmers. Moreover, large scale chiral flows have been observed in the cell cortex of C. elegans and Xenopus embryos. Active force generation induces force and torque dipoles in the material. If all forces are internal the total force and torque vanish as required by the conservation of momentum and angular momentum. The density of force dipoles is an active stress in the material. In addition, active chiral processes allow for the existence of active torque dipoles which enter the conservation of angular momentum and generate an active antisymmetric stress and active angular momentum fluxes. We developed a generic description of active fluids that takes into account active chiral processes and explicitly keeps track of spin and orbital angular momentum densities. We derived constitutive equations for an active chiral fluid based on identifying the entropy production rate from the rate of change of the free energy and linearly expanding thermodynamic fluxes in terms of thermodynamic forces. We identified four elementary chiral motors that correspond to localized distributions of chiral force and torque dipoles that differ by their symmetry and produce different chiral fluid flows and intrinsic rotation fields. We employ our theory to analyze different active chiral processes. We first show that chiral flows can occur spontaneously in an active fluid even in the absence of chiral processes. For this we investigate the Taylor-Couette motor, that is an active fluid confined between two concentric cylinders. For sufficiently high active stresses the fluid generates spontaneous rotations of the two cylinders with respect to each other thus breaking the chiral symmetry of the system spontaneously. We then investigate cases where active chiral processes on the molecular scale break the chiral symmetry of the whole system. We show that chiral flows occur in films of chiral motors and derive a generic theory for thin films of active fluids. We discuss our results in the context of carpets of beating cilia or E. coli swimming close to a surface. Finally, we discuss chiral flows that are observed in the cellular cortex of the nematode C. elegans at the one cell stage. Two distinct chiral flow events are observed. The first chiral flow event (i) is a screw like chiral rotation of the two cell halves with respect to each other and occurs around 15min after fertilization. This event coincides with the establishment of cortical cell polarity. The second chiral flow event (ii) is a chiral rotation of the entire cell cortex around the anterior posterior axis of the whole cell and occurs around 30min after fertilization. Measuring densities of molecular motors during episode (i) we fit the flow patterns observed using only two fit parameters: the hydrodynamic length and cortical chirality. The flows during (ii) can be understood assuming an increase of the hydrodynamic length. We hypothesize that the cell actively regulates the cortical viscosity and the friction of the cortex with the eggshell and cytosol. We show that active chiral processes in soft biological matter give rise to interesting new physics and are essential to understand the material properties of many biological systems, such as the cell cortex.

Microfabrication techniques have opened up new ways to study the dynamics of microsystems expanding the range of applications in microengineering and cell biology. Among three-dimensional microfabrication techniques, two-photon polymerization enjoys a unique set of characteristics that make it appealing for designing complex structures of arbitrary form. During the last decades, two-photon polymerization has evolved from the first structure fabricated with this technique, a coil with a diameter of 7 μm and a total length of approximately 34 μm (by Maruo et al.), to generate sophisticated systems like remotely driven micromachines. In the present thesis, we address two main applications of microfabrication. On the first line of research, the design, and fabrication of efficient and self-powered micro-robots have been a very active research topic. Motile micro-organisms like E. coli may provide an optimal solution to generate propulsion in artificial microsystems. It has been demonstrated that microstructures can be transported when released on a layer of swarming bacteria, suspended in a bacterial bath, or covered by surface adhering bacteria. Although it is possible to obtain a net movement in the mentioned cases, the displacement is stochastic and self-propulsion characteristics are hard to reproduce. In this thesis, we investigate possible design strategies for bio-hybrid micro shuttles having a defined number of propelling units that self-assemble onto precisely defined locations. One of the biggest issues involved in the optimization design process of the microshuttles is an irreversible adhesion of structures in the substrate, which often is caused by Van der Waals attraction. To overcome this problem we use different stabilization methods with unsuccessful results. Looking for a less invasive and biocompatible strategy we investigate the possibility of changing the sign of Van der Walls forces turning them from attractive to repulsive. To this aim, we develop a method that demonstrates to reduce the adhesion observed before. So, the final design aims at minimizing friction and adhesion with the substrate while optimizing propulsion speed and self-assembly efficiency. Finally, using a mutated strain of E. coli the microshuttle can be remotely controlled by dynamic structured light patterns for reaching an optimal control of the motion of the structures. In a different direction of microfabrication applications, 3D microstructures can also offer new opportunities to address more fundamental problems in the soft matter dynamic. On this second line of research, we have designed and used complex 3D microstructures to investigate the Brownian dynamics and hydrodynamics of propeller shaped particles, as well as to probe effective interactions in colloidal systems, like critical Casimir forces. In the dynamics of microhelices we use optical tweezers to study the mechanic and hydrodynamic properties of micro-fabricated helices suspended in a fluid. For the case of rigid helices, we track Brownian fluctuations around mean values with a high precision and over a long observation time. Through the statistical analysis of fluctuations in translational and rotational coordinates, we recover the full mobility matrix of the micro-helix including the off diagonal terms related with roto-translational coupling. Exploiting the high degree of spatial control provided by optical trapping, we can systematically study the effect of a nearby wall on the roto-translational coupling, and conclude that a rotating helical propeller moves faster near a no-slip boundary. We also study the relaxation dynamics of deformable micro-helices stretched by optical traps. We find that hydrodynamic drag only weakly depends on elongation resulting in an exponential relaxation to equilibrium. In connection with the versatility of microfabrication by two-photon polymerization, we find the study of interaction in colloidal systems. At macroscopic scales, thermal fluctuations of a physical property on a system are typically negligible, but at the micrometer and nanometer scales instead, fluctuations become generally relevant and they give rise to novel and intriguing phenomena such as critical Casimir effect. Critical Casimir forces are induced between colloidal objects suspended in a critical binary mixture undergoing strong thermal fluctuations. So far, most of the experiments and proposed models consider the interaction between simple geometrical objects such as two spheres, or a single sphere and a plate. In the last part of this thesis, we propose a novel 3D printed microprobes consisting of the main body and two handles that can be optically trapped to directly measure effective forces and torques between colloidal objects with non spherical shapes. The organization of this thesis is as follows. Chapter 1 gives a general introduction to the physical phenomenon behind the 3D microfabrication technique employed in our experiments, two-photon polymerization. We describe the differences between two phenomena: single-photon absorption and two-photon absorption, and explain the effectiveness of using two-photon polymerization for reaching a resolution of 100 nanometers in microfabrication. Then we present an experimental characterization of the voxel size of our custom-built two-photon polymerization set-up. We explain the sample preparation steps for microfabrication as well as the development of an innovative low-refractive index layer for eliminating irreversible adhesion of SU-8 microstructures. Chapter 2 provides a general introduction to E. coli motility, the propulsion mechanism of these bacteria, and the circular trajectory developed by the microorganism when swimming near a rigid boundary. Besides, we briefly explain the possibility of using synthetic biology to obtain light-driven strains of E. coli by the expression of Proteorhodopsin on the bacteria membrane. In Chapter 3 we combine two-photon polymerization technique and genetically modified bacteria to create a biohybrid microshuttle. We start with a basic microshuttle design whose propulsion is obtained from four E. coli bacteria. After integrating ramps in another microshuttle model for minimizing the circular trajectory showed in the microstructure trajectory, we make major changes in the distribution of microchambers inside the last model named catamaran microshuttle. Exploiting the ability of a mutated strain of E. coli expressing proteorhodopsin, we successfully control the microrobot steering by illuminating our sample with green light patterns. In Chapter 4 we design and use 3D microhelices from two different materials to investigate, through optical tweezers, Brownian dynamics, and hydrodynamics of this kind of chiral particles. Through the statistical analysis of fluctuations in translational and rotational coordinates, we study the roto-translational coupling element from the mobility matrix of the micro-helix. Besides, we conclude that a rotating helical propeller moves faster near a no-slip boundary. For the case of a deformable micro=helix, we find that hydrodynamic drag only depends on its elongation. Finally, Chapter 5 presents the design for a microprobe to measure critical Casimir forces using holographic optical tweezers. We show a characterization experiment for a micro-cube with two handles, concluding that a third handle will improve the stability of a microprobe inside the sample.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

AbstractThe court documents will be served after the determination of adjudicatory personnel. In China, the service of court documents is effected by the court, with necessary assistance from the party if needed. Chinese courts may serve court documents by personal service, service by mail and the like. In practice, service by mail is the preferred method of service among most Chinese courts. However, to improve the efficiency of service, Chinese courts are now actively trying electronic service. If court documents cannot be served by the foregoing means, the court may also resort to service by publication. Due to fast and widespread population migration and intentional evasion of the service of court documents, Chinese courts are facing “difficulty in effecting service of court documents” to a certain extent, which in turn upsets the litigation efficiency. To solve this problem, Chinese courts have taken various measures, which significantly improve the efficiency of service. If the defendant is a foreign party without domicile in China, the Chinese court may serve court documents on its designated personnel or organization in China. In the absence of such personnel or organization, Chinese courts usually serve court documents in accordance with international treaties such as the Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (hereinafter referred to as the “Hague Service Convention”). To the extent permitted by the internal law of the state of the person to be served, Chinese courts may also serve court documents by mail and electronic means. Anyway, service by publication still remains the last resort for service of court documents of Chinese courts. As a contracting state to the Hague Service Convention, China is obligated to assist foreign courts in service of court documents in accordance therewith. For this purpose, Chinese courts have also stipulated a clear process for assisting foreign courts in service of court documents. If there are bilateral treaties between China and other contracting states to the Hague Service Convention, there will be some flexibilities in the application of either the Hague Service Convention or bilateral treaties.

Chapter 6 examines the role governments play when it comes to oil and gas. It argues that there are serious challenges to global climate governance and that national affiliations matter—when countries keep good company, they are more likely to be more aligned with climate goals under the Paris Agreement. The chapter surveys various countries as to their national climate leadership prospects. These are parsed out into three categories: (1) possible acts to follow (Canada, Norway, Australia, and California); (2) where greater government action is possible (United States, other US states, Mexico and Brazil, the Middle East, Alberta, and Japan); and (3) where the greatest climate risks lie (Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, Taymyr, India, and China). The chapter concludes with the reality that it is local communities that pay the price for oil and gas climate inaction and discusses several examples where public sector innovations could pay off as governments strive to build back better.

In this chapter, I critically reflect on the inescapable expectation to write first and foremost on China’s assertive infrastructure push under the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) label when studying current developments in (northern) Laos. I start instead by considering uncertainty and change as integral parts of northern Lao traders’ transnational worlds. Their engagement with the intensified, but not unprecedented, Chinese impact in the region needs to be understood against the backdrop of their resilience, versatility, and resourcefulness in continually finding new venues for economic experimentation—and in living with, and actively impacting on, China-driven developments. I flesh out how they translate, reproduce, or challenge larger Chinese visions of modernity, development, and infrastructural connectivity as aspirations, hopes, dreams, and fears.

The paper aims to analyse three questions which arise naturally in examining India’s closer engagement with the world economy in the last two decades. First, how has it evolved and what is its extent? Second, what is its impact on India? Third, what is its impact on the world? Evolution and Extent: For four decades after independence, India’s economic policies had a marked autarkic bias and by 1990 it had become one of the most closed economies in the world. A major goal of the historic reforms launched in 1991 was to reintegrate the country into the global economy, and there has been a progressive move in this direction Effect on India: In post-independent India, many sceptical voices made dire predictions about the effects of opening up, such as deindustrialisation and destabilisation of the economy, and impoverishment of the people. After opening-up, these alarming prophecies did not materialise. Undesirable features of India’s development, such as inadequate poverty alleviation despite rapid growth, have domestic causes and are not the result of globalisation. Effect on the World: India’s effect on the world economy is growing but has to be seen in the context of China’s simultaneous rapid rise. It is very likely that on all the major contentious global economic issues such as exchange rate coordination, trade liberalisation, and climate change mitigation, global action will have to involve the participation of China and India. For good or ill, China and India will matter in the 21st century both for each other and for the world.

The chapter defends an interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita as a self-cultivation philosophy. First, it depicts our existential starting point as a state of anxiety, fear, confusion, and worry. Second, it describes the ideal state of being as a life of wisdom, union with the divine, self-control, peace, renunciation of desire, freedom from attachments and disruptive emotions, and performance of our duties—and ultimately liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Third, its transformation program includes spiritual exercises that emphasize philosophical reflection, meditative understanding, the purification of our affective states, and the reformation of our habits, all under the guidance of Krishna (namely, action, knowledge, and devotion yoga). Finally, this analysis is based on a complex conception of human nature according to which, though our true self appears to be prakṛti (matter), it is in fact puruṣa (spirit), and it is connected to other persons and the divine, especially Krishna.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019. The characteristics of the spread of COVID-19 infection from one person to another have led to an increasing number of infected cases and caused tremendous pressure around the world. The rapid spread of COVID-19 infection has made it a pandemic. In India, as of mid-May 2020, there were approximately 75,048 confirmed cases and 2,440 deaths due to COVID-19 alone. In order to break the COVID-19 chain, the Indian government decided to implement a lockdown, which was first implemented on March 23, 2020. The significant benefits of the lockdown have led to a reduction in air pollutants in cities around the world. The significant benefits of the lockdown have led to a reduction in air pollutants in cities around the world. The importance of particulate matter, temperature (°C) and relative humidity (%) to the spread of the COVID-19 virus and its correlation with the total number of cases (TC), active cases (AC), recovered cases (RC) and death cases (DC) Reference DEL will be discussed in detail in this chapter.

This chapter provides an account of China’s institutional and policy learning efforts to move from a centrally planned to a development-state model of structural transformation. What distinguishes China’s experience—as in the case of other East Asian countries—in successfully building and upgrading local sectors and firms lies not so much with a unique set of policy tools, as a willingness to experiment with those tools and to attach performance criteria that helped guide the behavior of firms towards wider national development objectives. While many other developing countries under structural adjustment programmes quickly adopted export promotion, China was closely studying East Asian countries in its transition by strategically blending an export push with selective import substitution. In short, Chinese policymakers had direct experience on how powerful industrial policies could be misused, but this did not stop them from actively trying to find better ways of using them. Doing so was a matter of political economy.

Abstract This Chapter explores how America’s non-accession to UNCLOS has damaged its traditional leadership in oceans matters. At least since World War II, the United States, with the largest navy and the largest economy in the world, and bordering three oceans, has been a leader in oceans policy matters. But to the delight of its enemies and the consternation of its friends, American oceans leadership has been significantly harmed by its absence from the Law of the Sea Convention. America has not been able to participate in the new oceans institutions created by UNCLOS, it has been relegated to second class citizenship as a mere observer in the annual UNCLOS Meeting of States Parties, it has reduced effectiveness in dealing with international negotiations affecting the oceans, such as the ongoing BBNJ negotiations, and American absence has hampered and delayed American industry and government from actively engaging oceans opportunities and challenges. As examples of the costs for American leadership from non-adherence this chapter examines in separate sections the important issues presented by a thawing Arctic Ocean, as well as conflict in the South and East China Seas.

This chapter describes instances where the voice of migrant protesters is made simultaneously both audible and inaudible through people who act as their agents. In particular, it looks at three different groups who assume such roles: migrant volunteers at the China Japan Volunteer Organization (CJVO), immigration lawyers, and interpreters. With their professional expertise on legal matters, familiarity with Japanese culture and language as well as those of migrant workers, these agents play an important role in migrant activism. They facilitate negotiations between migrant workers and their employers, represent them at court, and help migrant workers to communicate with their Japanese counterparts. Crucially, they act not only as the spokespersons of migrant protesters, but also as mediators. They interfere with the interaction between migrants and their employers, quietly and sometimes without the knowledge of migrants, to achieve what they see as the best course of action for the migrant protesters. In this way, they play an indispensable role in creating the ‘voice’ of migrants. While migrant protesters become visible and audible thanks to those who assume the role of their spokespersons, they do so, however, at the cost of losing control of their own voices.

AREVA has been running since decades nuclear reprocessing and recycling installations in France. Several industrial facilities have been built and used to this aim across the time. Following those decades and with the more and more precise monitoring of the impact of those installations, precise data and lessons-learned have been collected that can be used for the stakeholders of potential new facilities. China has expressed strong interest in building such facilities. As a matter of fact, the issue of accumulation of spent fuel is becoming serious in China and jeopardizes the operation of several nuclear power plants, through the running out of space of storage pools. Tomorrow, with the extremely high pace of nuclear development of China, accumulation of spent fuel will be unbearable. Building reprocessing and recycling installations takes time. A decision has to be taken so as to enable the responsible development of nuclear in China. Without a solution for the back end of its nuclear fuel cycle, the development of nuclear energy will face a wall. This is what the Chinese central government, through the action of its industrial CNNC, has well understood. Several years of negotiations have been held with AREVA. Everybody in the sector seems now convinced. However, now that the negotiation is coming to an end, an effort should be done towards all the stakeholders, sharing actual information from France’s reference facilities on: safety, security, mitigation measures for health protection (of the workers, of the public), mitigation measures for the protection of the environment. Most of this information is public, as France has since years promulgated a law on Nuclear transparency. China is also in need for more transparency, yet lacks means to access this public information, often in French language, so let’s open our books!