Kaufmanhorner1196

Digital media are critical for contemporary activism-even low-effort "clicktivism" is politically consequential and contributes to offline participation. We argue that in the United States and throughout the industrialized West, left- and right-wing activists use digital and legacy media differently to achieve political goals. Although left-wing actors operate primarily through "hashtag activism" and offline protest, right-wing activists manipulate legacy media, migrate to alternative platforms, and work strategically with partisan media to spread their messages. Although scholarship suggests that the right has embraced strategic disinformation and conspiracy theories more than the left, more research is needed to reveal the magnitude and character of left-wing disinformation. Such ideological asymmetries between left- and right-wing activism hold critical implications for democratic practice, social media governance, and the interdisciplinary study of digital politics.If the end of the 20th century was defined by the relatively widespread acceptance of democracy, the second decade of the 21st century is marked by concerns about backsliding in new and established democracies alike and by a notable decline in foreign support for democracy around the world. As democracy's global tailwinds shift to headwinds, scholars have an opportunity to better understand how experience with even superficial forms of democratic institutions across a diverse set of contexts influences citizen behavior when formal democratic institutions erode or disappear. This shift also provides the opportunity to examine whether citizen movements alone-absent external support-are sufficient to check newly emboldened autocrats.Millions of the world's poorest people now live in middle-income democracies that, in theory, could use their resources to end extreme poverty. However, citizens in those countries have not succeeded in using the vote to ensure adequate progressive redistribution. Interventions aiming to provide the economically vulnerable with needed resources must go beyond assisting them directly, they must also improve democratic institutions so that vulnerable populations themselves can push their representatives to implement redistributive policies. Here, I review the literature on such interventions and then consider the "democracy catch-22" How can the poor secure greater democratic influence when the existing democratic playing field is tilted against them?Immigration and globalization have spurred interest in the effects of ethnic diversity in Western societies. Most scholars focus on whether diversity undermines trust, social capital, and collective goods provision. However, the type of prosociality that helps heterogeneous societies function is different from the in-group solidarity that glues homogeneous communities together. Social cohesion in multiethnic societies depends on whether prosocial behavior extends beyond close-knit networks and in-group boundaries. We identify two features of modern societies-social differentiation and economic interdependence-that can set the stage for constructive interactions with dissimilar others. read more Whether societal adaptations to diversity lead toward integration or division depends on the positions occupied by minorities and immigrants in the social structure and economic system, along with the institutional arrangements that determine their political inclusion.Autophagosomes form de novo in a manner that is incompletely understood. Particularly enigmatic are autophagy-related protein 9 (Atg9)-containing vesicles that are required for autophagy machinery assembly but do not supply the bulk of the autophagosomal membrane. In this study, we reconstituted autophagosome nucleation using recombinant components from yeast. We found that Atg9 proteoliposomes first recruited the phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate kinase complex, followed by Atg21, the Atg2-Atg18 lipid transfer complex, and the E3-like Atg12-Atg5-Atg16 complex, which promoted Atg8 lipidation. Furthermore, we found that Atg2 could transfer lipids for Atg8 lipidation. In selective autophagy, these reactions could potentially be coupled to the cargo via the Atg19-Atg11-Atg9 interactions. We thus propose that Atg9 vesicles form seeds that establish membrane contact sites to initiate lipid transfer from compartments such as the endoplasmic reticulum.Vertebrates vary in their ability to regenerate, and the genetic mechanisms underlying such disparity remain elusive. Comparative epigenomic profiling and single-cell sequencing of two related teleost fish uncovered species-specific and evolutionarily conserved genomic responses to regeneration. The conserved response revealed several regeneration-responsive enhancers (RREs), including an element upstream to inhibin beta A (inhba), a known effector of vertebrate regeneration. This element activated expression in regenerating transgenic fish, and its genomic deletion perturbed caudal fin regeneration and abrogated cardiac regeneration altogether. The enhancer is present in mammals, shares functionally essential activator protein 1 (AP-1)-binding motifs, and responds to injury, but it cannot rescue regeneration in fish. This work suggests that changes in AP-1-enriched RREs are likely a crucial source of loss of regenerative capacities in vertebrates.Sleep and wakefulness are homeostatically regulated by a variety of factors, including adenosine. However, how neural activity underlying the sleep-wake cycle controls adenosine release in the brain remains unclear. Using a newly developed genetically encoded adenosine sensor, we found an activity-dependent rapid increase in the concentration of extracellular adenosine in mouse basal forebrain (BF), a critical region controlling sleep and wakefulness. Although the activity of both BF cholinergic and glutamatergic neurons correlated with changes in the concentration of adenosine, optogenetic activation of these neurons at physiological firing frequencies showed that glutamatergic neurons contributed much more to the adenosine increase. Mice with selective ablation of BF glutamatergic neurons exhibited a reduced adenosine increase and impaired sleep homeostasis regulation. Thus, cell type-specific neural activity in the BF dynamically controls sleep homeostasis.