Consensual Violence: A Cultural Contradiction

In American culture, violence is typically understood as inherently negative; no one would want to be personally subjected to violence because violence by its very nature is undesirable. Thus, the idea of seeking out violence seems paradoxical. In cases where a person actively pursues violent treatment, the question arises: can violence be consensual? This question is included in discourse on sadomasochism (SM), or an attraction to giving or receiving pain in a sensual or sexual context, which many argue is a form of violence. Through a critical discourse analysis of legal statutes regarding interpersonal violence and interviews with women involved in SM, I will address the question of whether or not sadomasochism can be considered physical and sexual violence

The Acute Effects of Cupping Therapy on Hamstring Range of Motion Compared to Sham

Context: Flexibility is an important aspect of physical performance and when deficient can result in an increased opportunity for injury. Cupping therapy is an ancient technique that has recently seen a growth in popularity in Western Orthopedic medicine as a soft tissue mobilization technique. Most cupping therapy research explores the use of cupping therapy for treating headache, herpes zoster, asthma, cough, and other non-orthopedic pathologies. Cupping therapy has had positive results on an injured population for increasing flexibility. Objective: To identify if cupping therapy applied passively for 10 minutes results in an increase in flexibility, and to identify if there is a placebo effect with the sham cupping treatment. Design: Double-blinded randomized repeated measures trial. Setting: laboratory. Participants: 40 semi-active participants were recruited (age: 23.52 ± 3.50 years, height: 171.89 ± 9.23 cm, mass: 72.864 ± 14.90 kg) with hamstring range of motion less than 80 degrees. Exclusion criteria included previous cupping therapy experience, allergies to adhesive, any lower extremity injury in the past 6 months, previous cupping experience and cupping therapy contraindications: pregnancy, sunburn, rash, contusions. Methods: Participants reported to the Sports Injury Research Clinic on three occasions, on the first occasion participants completed informed consent and questionnaire, followed by the secondary investigator performing the pre-treatment measurement, then the primary investigator performed one of three randomly assigned treatment options, cupping, sham, and control. Treatment was for 10 minutes with the patient laying prone and relaxed. Then the participant underwent range of motion testing post treatment, and after 10 minutes of laying relaxed. Participants returned on two other occasions with at least one week in between to perform the other treatment conditions. Main Outcome Measurements: Hamstring range of motion to measure flexibility, measured three times, pre-treatment, post-treatment, and 10 minutes post-treatment. An active straight leg raise was performed 4 times for each measurement with the average of the last 2 was taken as the measurement. A 3x3x2 ANOVA in SPSS was utilized for data analysis. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between cupping and control conditions (p=0.004). Cupping had a significantly higher range of motion at pre-treatment (p=0.032), post-treatment (p=0.017), and 10-minutes (p=0.006). There was no significant difference in the interaction between Condition, Time, and Sex (p=0.263). There was no significant interaction between Condition and Sex (p=0.230), Time and Condition (p=0.443), and Time and Sex (p=0.064). Conclusion: Cupping therapy applied to a healthy individual for 10 minutes does not create an increase in hamstring flexibility. Word Count: 410 word

Computability Theory

Computability is one of the fundamental notions of mathematics, trying to capture the effective content of mathematics. Starting from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, it has now blossomed into a rich area with strong connections with other areas of mathematical logic as well as algebra and theoretical computer science

A Lie algebra attached to a projective variety

Each choice of a K\"ahler class on a compact complex manifold defines an action of the Lie algebra \slt on its total complex cohomology. If a nonempty set of such K\"ahler classes is given, then we prove that the corresponding \slt-copies generate a semisimple Lie algebra. We investigate the formal properties of the resulting representation and we work things out explicitly in the case of complex tori, hyperk\"ahler manifolds and flag varieties. We pay special attention to the cases where this leads to a Jordan algebra structure or a graded Frobenius algebra.Comment: AMSTeX v2.1, 46 page