Rent Seekers in Rentier States: When Greed Brings Peace

Paxillin brings peace to microtubules

Lipid droplets ensure their own consumption H ungry yeast cells use a clever form of recycling to ensure that they can keep consuming stored lipids, Wang et al. show. Lean times spur yeast cells to enter a quiescent state known as the stationary phase. They break down cached lipids by delivering lipid droplets to the vacuole and resort to autophagy, in which they digest a portion of their own c...

State Formation Processes in Rentier States:

When Graffiti Brings Order

Most researchers use Petri nets as a formal notation with mathematically defined semantics. Their graphical part is usually only seen as a notation, that does not carry semantics. Contrary to this tradition, we show in this article that, when created by a human, there is inherent semantics in the positions of places, transitions and arcs. We propose to use the full definition of Petri nets: whe...

Rentier States and International Relations Theory

The state plays a central position in theoretical debates in International Relations (IR). Both Realists and Liberals see the state as the central actor in the international system and thereby follow a Western understanding of the state as the holder of the monopoly of force. In the IRsub discipline of security studies new categories such as weak state, quasi state or state failure have created...

Style Brings in Mental States!

I Much of what I write these days is an elaboration of Alan Palmer’s argument that “novel reading is mind-reading.” Here, too, I take up one aspect of that argument and consider it in light of my recent experience of studying fiction in a lab with fMRI equipment. (Well, not really—we are actually very far from approaching actual works of literature with brain imaging technology—but as close as ...