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The concept of energy sovereignty redefines the priorities for decision making regarding energy systems while encouraging increased reliance on renewable energy technologies like solar. Energy sovereignty involves centering the inherent right of humans and communities to make decisions about the energy systems they use, including decisions about the sources, scales, and forms of ownership that structure energy access. Current U.S energy policy does not center concerns of energy sovereignty, and in many cases may work against it. Policies to enhance energy sovereignty can accelerate electricity decarbonization while also empowering community scale decision making and offering communities control to reduce the myriad externalities associated with the fossil-fuel energy system.

Moving toward a sustainable global society requires substantial change in both social and technological systems. This sustainability is dependent not only on addressing the environmental impacts of current social and technological systems, but also on addressing the social, economic and political harms that continue to be perpetuated through systematic forms of oppression and the exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities. To adequately identify and address these harms, we argue that scientists, practitioners, and communities need a transdisciplinary framework that integrates multiple types of knowledge, in particular, Indigenous and experiential knowledge. Indigenous knowledge systems embrace relationality and reciprocity rather than extraction and oppression, and experiential knowledge grounds transition priorities in lived experiences rather than expert assessments. Here, we demonstrate how an Indigenous, experiential, and community-based participatory framework for understanding and advancing socio-technological system transitions can facilitate the co-design and co-development of community-owned energy systems.

The global COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a justice crisis. It also brings to light multiple ongoing, underlying social crises. The COVID-19 crisis is actively revealing crises of energy sovereignty in at least four ways. First, there are many whose access to basic health services is compromised because of the lack of energy services necessary to provide these services. Second, some people are more vulnerable to COVID-19 because of exposure to environmental pollution associated with energy production. Third, energy services are vital to human wellbeing, yet access to energy services is largely organized as a consumer good. The loss of stable income precipitated by COVID-19 may therefore mean that many lose reliable access to essential energy services. Fourth, the COVID-19 crisis has created a window of opportunity for corporate interests to engage in aggressive pursuit of energy agendas that perpetuate carbon intensive and corporate controlled energy systems, which illuminates the ongoing procedural injustices of energy decision making. These four related crises demonstrate why energy sovereignty is essential for a just energy future. Energy sovereignty is defined as the right for communities, rather than corporate interests, to control access to and decision making regarding the sources, scales, and forms of ownership characterizing access to energy services. Energy sovereignty is a critical component in the design of a post-COVID-19 energy system that is capable of being resilient to future shocks without exacerbating injustices that are killing the most vulnerable among us.

Scholars bridging the fields of science and technology studies (STS) and energy research in social sciences (ERSS) offer a rich and integrated conceptualization of how energy systems are imbued in social systems, including cultures, social structures, institutions, and social relations of power. Yet as fields of study, STS and ERSS are dominated by approaches to understanding nature, culture, and relationships among them with origins in western European Enlightenment thinking. In this article, we argue that the language of “imaginaries” provides an understanding of culturally organized normative commitments but may obscure attention to what are actually diverse and sometimes incommensurable yet legitimate plural ontologies. Tribal Nations, Indigenous communities, and other non-Western worldviews are not simply imagined; they offer different teachings regarding the relational and embedded realities governing relations among human and more-than-human beings across time and space. The field of STS has a rich history of exploring ontological controversies and provides insight into understanding diverse and competing perspectives in science and technology, yet without articulating the connection between this conceptual terrain and the lived realities of socio-technological system entrenchment or change. ERSS recognizes participation, energy system democratization, and even co-production as components of a just energy transition, while most typically thinking about participation as a methodology or research approach rather than as requiring consideration and even wholesale reconceptualization of ontological foundations. To advance convergent, transdisciplinary social science research in socio-technological transitions requires grappling with plural ontologies regarding the reality of relations in the world. Here, we explore diverse ontologies shaping the realities of energy systems through the lens of Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region in the United States. Ontologies that recognize reciprocal relationships among human and more-than-human beings as well as the sovereignty of these beings and their collective kinships suggest fundamentally different priorities for energy systems transitions. Moving beyond the language of imagination to recognize that cultures can involve diverse and sometimes incommensurable pluralistic ontologies is essential for developing inclusive and just frameworks for socio-technological system transitions.

The enteroendocrine system coordinates gastrointestinal (GI) tract functionality and the whole organism. However, the scarcity of enteroendocrine cells and their scattered distribution make them difficult to study. Here, we glued segments of the GI wall of pigs to a silicon tube, keeping the apical and the basolateral sides separate. The fact that there was less than 1% of 70-kDa fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-dextran on the basolateral side proved that the gluing was efficient. Since the lactate dehydrogenase leakage at basolateral side was lower than 0.1% (1.40 ± 0.17 nKatals) it proved that the tissue was viable. The intestinal barrier function was maintained as it is in segments mounted in Ussing chambers (the amount of Lucifer Yellow crossing it, was similar between them; respectively, % LY, 0.48 ± 0.13; 0.52 ± 0.09; p > 0.05). Finally, apical treatments with two different extract produced differential basolateral enterohormone secretions (basolateral PYY secretion vs control; animal extract, 0.35 ± 0.16; plant extract, 2.5 ± 0.74; p < 0.05). In conclusion, we report an ex vivo system called "Ap-to-Bas" for assaying vectorial transepithelial processes that makes it possible to work with several samples at the same time. It is an optimal device for enterohormone studies in the intestine.

The history of mass spectrometry started at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, it has undergone an enormous expansion in terms of improvements to technical and methodological innovations, which has benefited the growth of its application in chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and medicine. Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that allows molecular mass determination and structural elucidation for both known and unknown molecules. This chapter presents a general introduction to mass spectrometry instrumentation and the basic ‘know-how’ of operating principles of ionization systems and mass analysers for the study of biomolecules.

This chapter describes how the narratives surrounding plagiarism are built upon false notions of authenticity and a focus on product over process. While plagiarism fears have always existed in the writing classroom, digital technologies have brought such concerns to the fore given the sheer amount of sources and paper mills easily accessible and downloadable. The chapter discusses three outcomes crucial for embracing an American Indian ethical approach in classrooms. First, reflective practitioners need to be critically aware of the risk of cultural appropriation in remix. Second, reflective practitioners need to be critically aware that authors and texts do not exist in isolation. All of our writing exists in context, or as American Indian thinkers would say, all of our writing exists in relation. Third, reflective practitioners need to be attuned to the value of both process and product. Rhetoric and composition has seen a rise in American Indian writing studies scholarship.

In a time when Web 2.0 technologies dominate web experiences, and when the media by and large sings the praises of the personal empowerment afforded by such technologies, it is important to bring a critical lens to the design of Web 2.0. Although there are many empowering and engaging features of user-driven content, this article explores the downside to template-driven design. Through tracing the decline of homepage web authoring (where users had control of visual design choices) alongside the rise of social networking sites (where users have little to no control over the visual design of their representation), I call for a renewed attention to the rhetoric of design.

This past summer I spent three weeks at two different workshops, both of which explored the meaning, production, and pedagogical usefulness of new media. Our conversations, while fruitful, would al...

Objective To substantiate the relation between obesity and oxidative stress and to assess the potential beneficial properties of a grapeseed proanthocyanidin extract (GSPE), the amelioration of obesity with oleoyl-estrone (OE), and the possible combined effect of GSPE and OE on the hepatic and renal antioxidant enzyme system in obesity-induced oxidative stress. Methods Male obese Zucker rats were divided into four groups: GSPE, OE, GSPE + OE, and OC (control). For 30 d they were gavaged with GSPE, OE, GSPE + OE, or sunflower oil as the control vehicle (OC). Lean Zucker rats gavaged with the vehicle comprised the lean control group. Hepatic and renal antioxidant enzymes and oxidative biomarkers were determined at the end of the experimental period. Results Hepatic antioxidant activities were higher in obese rats than in lean ones. All these activities decreased when obese rats were treated with GSPE, whereas only some of these activities decreased with OE and GSPE + OE treatments. In the kidney, few antioxidant enzymes had higher activities in obese than in lean rats, and OE and GSPE + OE were the treatments that inhibited most enzymes studied. Glutathione S-transferase activity was always lower with the exception of the kidney of obese rats and all treatments used increased the low glutathione levels found in obesity. Conclusion GSPE and OE improve oxidative stress in obese Zucker rats. The effect of GSPE + OE is comparable to GSPE for the liver and to OE for the kidney. Thus the effects of GSPE and OE are not additive and are organ dependent.

Human and animal studies have demonstrated that procyanidin-rich diets reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and atherosclerosis. Some beneficial effects have been attributed to the well-known antioxidant activity of procyanidins. This study investigated another potential corrective role of procyanidins in cholesterol flux and inflammation in macrophage-derived foam cells. RAW 264.7 macrophages were cultured with moderately oxidized LDL (oxLDL), minimally oxidized LDL (moxLDL), or LPS (0.5 microg/mL) and oxLDL (LPS + oxLDL) to induce foam cells. Then, cells were treated with procyanidins derived from grape seed (PE, 45 microg/mL) for the last 12 h of incubation with the different lipoproteins (25 microg/mL). After lipid extraction, it was determined that total and esterified cholesterol and triglyceride accumulations in foam cells were increased by lipoprotein treatment but reduced by PE incubation. To asses the effect of PE on gene expression, the relative mRNA levels of CD36, ABCA1, iNOS, COX-2, and IkappaBalpha were determined by RT-PCR. It was shown that PE reduced the oxLDL scavenger receptor expression (CD36) and enhanced ATP-binding cassette A1 (ABCA1) expression, a key regulator of macrophage cholesterol efflux. PE also down-regulated inflammatory-related genes such as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and kappa beta inhibitor-alpha (IkappaBalpha) without modifying COX-2 expression. In conclusion, evidence is provided that procyanidins may attenuate the development of foam cell formation by reducing cholesterol accumulation and modulating the expression of key genes in cholesterol flux and inflammation.

The metabolic differences in vitro between genetic and dietary obese rats in the uptake of ammonium and amino acids by the liver and their use for ureogenesis have been assayed using hepatocytes isolated from Lean, Obese Zucker (Genetic obese) rats and Dietary obese rats. The hepatocytes of genetic obese animals took up more ammonium and produced higher amounts of urea from ammonium and alanine than those of lean and dietary obese groups (2 and 5 times more respectively). In the lean and dietary obese groups urea synthesis accounted for almost all the nitrogen taken up as ammonium. Thus, dietary and genetic obesity show a widely different handling of nitrogen, and the genetic obese rats need to break down protein to maintain their hepatocyte function.