G.S. Coulthard, Red Skin White Masks

open1Red Skin, White Masks è uno di quei volumi che lasciano il segno, sia per la forza argomentativa che per l’eleganza della retorica. Il titolo, chiaro omaggio dell’opera di Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs, allerta immediatamente il lettore aprendo uno scenario in cui la dialettica servo-padrone, baluardo delle politiche di riconoscimento, abdica a favore del mantenimento dello status quo coloniale: “Ciò che (il padrone) vuole dallo schiavo non è il riconoscimento, ma il lavoro”, scriveva il filosofo martinicano nel 1952.openChiara StenghelStenghel, Chiar

Two Students Affairs Professionals\u27 Journeys to (Un)Cover

An African-American student named Jamal adopts the nickname “Jay” when he runs for the student government association. A transgender sophomore dresses impeccably in suits and ties, even for biology lab. Yoshino (2006) described these actions as covering, where an individual masks one’s own recognized marginalized identity in order to gain acceptance within the dominant identity. The authors— a gay African-American and a heterosexual Latino— are both male student affairs professionals at predominately White institutions (PWIs). They will each look at the subtle and covert ways student affairs professionals reproduce pressures to cover and offer ways to understand the impact of conforming to the majority culture

Digital RF multiplexing for a TVWS transceiver implementation

Future devices operating in the TV white space (TVWS) spectrum will require to access different bands at different locations and times in order to avoid interference to incumbent users, requiring agility and sufficient spectral masks to satisfy regulators. In order to realise radio devices capable of this, we briefly review design efforts on a radio transceiver capable up- and downconverting the 40 8MHz TVWS channels residing between 470MHz and 790MHz. While we briefly address the overall proposed structure, the aim of this contribution is to address the practical issues of interfacing data conversion devices sampling at RF to state-of-the-art FPGAs which can then perform the digital operations required for up- and downconversion

Book review: black skin, white Masks by Frantz Fanon

In Black Skin, White Masks - first published in 1952 - Frantz Fanon offers a potent philosophical, clinical, literary and political analysis of the deep effects of racism and colonialism on the experiences, lives, minds and relationships of black people and people of colour. At the end of Black History Month in the UK, Leonardo Custódio reflects on the enduring relevance of Fanon’s classic work, here published in a new edition featuring an introduction by Paul Gilroy

From Scholarship Girls to Scholarship Women: Surviving the Contradictions of Class and Race in Academe

This article explores the dilemmas graduate education poses for women of working-class origin who come from different ethnic and racial backgrounds. It proceeds in a chronological narrative using examples from the authors\u27 personal experiences to make general points about how the intricate web of class, race, and gender relations shaped their experiences in higher education. Both women -- Cucidraz, a Chicana, and Pierce, a white woman -- struggle with the feelings of alienation and marginality as outsiders within the academy as well as their material needs for financial support. Their personal narratives reveal, as well, how race shapes their experiences in the academy. Racism renders Cuadraz\u27 class status visible, whereas whiteness masks Pierce\u27s background. Finally, the authors shift their focus from an examination of the structures which shaped their lives to an exploration of their attempts to find their own voices in academic work, and to resist the very structures which excluded their experiences as women from working-class backgrounds

TVWS filter bank transceiver on OMAP-L137 evaluation module

Communications devices operating in the TV white space (TVWS) spectrum will be strictly regulated, requiring compliance with spectral masks to protect incumbent users and sufficient frequency agility to allow access to numerous frequency bands at different times and locations. Therefore, future designs operating at radio frequency (RF) have been proposed. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an implementation of such a transceivers at a scale-down frequency implemented on the OMAP--L137 evaluation module, whereby the RF link can be replaced by the device's audio I/O, thus enabling easier observation and algorithm testing for students

On the Duality of Probing and Fault Attacks

In this work we investigate the problem of simultaneous privacy and integrity protection in cryptographic circuits. We consider a white-box scenario with a powerful, yet limited attacker. A concise metric for the level of probing and fault security is introduced, which is directly related to the capabilities of a realistic attacker. In order to investigate the interrelation of probing and fault security we introduce a common mathematical framework based on the formalism of information and coding theory. The framework unifies the known linear masking schemes. We proof a central theorem about the properties of linear codes which leads to optimal secret sharing schemes. These schemes provide the lower bound for the number of masks needed to counteract an attacker with a given strength. The new formalism reveals an intriguing duality principle between the problems of probing and fault security, and provides a unified view on privacy and integrity protection using error detecting codes. Finally, we introduce a new class of linear tamper-resistant codes. These are eligible to preserve security against an attacker mounting simultaneous probing and fault attacks

Comparative study of manufacturing techniques for coronagraphic binary pupil masks: masks on substrates and free-standing masks

We present a comparative study of the manufacture of binary pupil masks for coronagraphic observations of exoplanets. A checkerboard mask design, a type of binary pupil mask design, was adopted, and identical patterns of the same size were used for all the masks in order that we could compare the differences resulting from the different manufacturing methods. The masks on substrates had aluminum checkerboard patterns with thicknesses of 0.1/0.2/0.4/0.8/1.6$\mu$m constructed on substrates of BK7 glass, silicon, and germanium using photolithography and chemical processes. Free-standing masks made of copper and nickel with thicknesses of 2/5/10/20$\mu$m were also realized using photolithography and chemical processes, which included careful release from the substrate used as an intermediate step in the manufacture. Coronagraphic experiments using a visible laser were carried out for all the masks on BK7 glass substrate and the free-standing masks. The average contrasts were 8.4$\times10^{-8}$, 1.2$\times10^{-7}$, and 1.2$\times10^{-7}$ for the masks on BK7 substrates, the free-standing copper masks, and the free-standing nickel masks, respectively. No significant correlation was concluded between the contrast and the mask properties. The high contrast masks have the potential to cover the needs of coronagraphs for both ground-based and space-borne telescopes over a wide wavelength range. Especially, their application to the infrared space telescope, SPICA, is appropriate.Comment: 21 pates, 12 figures, 2 tables, accepted to PAS

Towards the production of radiotherapy treatment shells on 3D printers using data derived from DICOM CT and MRI: preclinical feasibility studies

Background: Immobilisation for patients undergoing brain or head and neck radiotherapy is achieved using perspex or thermoplastic devices that require direct moulding to patient anatomy. The mould room visit can be distressing for patients and the shells do not always fit perfectly. In addition the mould room process can be time consuming. With recent developments in three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies comes the potential to generate a treatment shell directly from a computer model of a patient. Typically, a patient requiring radiotherapy treatment will have had a computed tomography (CT) scan and if a computer model of a shell could be obtained directly from the CT data it would reduce patient distress, reduce visits, obtain a close fitting shell and possibly enable the patient to start their radiotherapy treatment more quickly. Purpose: This paper focuses on the first stage of generating the front part of the shell and investigates the dosimetric properties of the materials to show the feasibility of 3D printer materials for the production of a radiotherapy treatment shell. Materials and methods: Computer algorithms are used to segment the surface of the patient’s head from CT and MRI datasets. After segmentation approaches are used to construct a 3D model suitable for printing on a 3D printer. To ensure that 3D printing is feasible the properties of a set of 3D printing materials are tested. Conclusions: The majority of the possible candidate 3D printing materials tested result in very similar attenuation of a therapeutic radiotherapy beam as the Orfit soft-drape masks currently in use in many UK radiotherapy centres. The costs involved in 3D printing are reducing and the applications to medicine are becoming more widely adopted. In this paper we show that 3D printing of bespoke radiotherapy masks is feasible and warrants further investigation