Political Economy of Thailand’s Third Gender

Not man, not woman, but kathoey. This study focuses on the political economy surrounding the construction of the third gender in Thailand and opportunities available to non-binary gender identities. Analysis of the kathoey experience sheds new light on the politics of gender and identity and dispells the notion of Thailand as the "gay paradise" that many originally thought.Anthropolog

Nataly Aguirre - Stress, Risk, and Reward in Financial Decision-Making: The Roles of Probability and Magnitude

Considerable research suggests acute stress influences decision-making. There has, however, been a lack of research examining the possibility that separable components of the stress response may influence decision-making differently: the sympatho-adrenomedullary (SAM) and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axes. In the current pilot study, participants engaged in a gambling task where they made choices between decisions of varied probability and magnitude for potential gains of money after being exposed to acute stress (via a variant of the cold pressor task). Further, the timing of the stressor was varied to allow examination of SAM and HPA effects separately. Cortisol and skin conductance were measured. Given the task was in the gain frame only, in support of past research on framing results indicated that individuals made significantly more conservative or risk-averse choices in the gambling. Further, risk-taking scaled to the expected value of a decision. Males made more risk-seeking choices as compared to females. Divergent from the original hypothesis, however, stress of neither type had an effect on individuals’ risk-taking overall, nor as a function of probability or magnitude. This suggests that decisions framed as potential gains may not be influenced by stress as readily as decisions framed as potential losses, and that stress may not alter how people perceive the probability or magnitude associated with a decision. Methodological flaws highlighted by the pilot study which may have contributed to the lack of a stress effect will also be discussed.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1000/thumbnail.jp

Hurdles for Recent Measures in Eternal Inflation

In recent literature on eternal inflation, a number of measures have been introduced which attempt to assign probabilities to different pocket universes by counting the number of each type of pocket according to a specific procedure. We give an overview of the existing measures, pointing out some interesting connections and generic predictions. For example, pairs of vacua that undergo fast transitions between themselves will be strongly favored. The resultant implications for making predictions in a generic potential landscape are discussed. We also raise a number of issues concerning the types of transitions that observers in eternal inflation are able to experience.Comment: 15 PRD-style pages, 5 figures, expanded discussion of measures in Sec. II, added reference

Modification of the masses of the lightest neutral mesons in a hadronic medium under an external magnetic field

The effective masses of the neutral mesons in a hadronic medium and under an external magnetic field are evaluated as functions of the baryonic density and the field intensity. For this purpose, the meson polarization is evaluated in the one-loop approximation using a quantum hadrodynamics model which includes π, σ, ω, and ρ mesons. The propagators of the baryons include the full effect of the coupling to the magnetic field through their charges and their anomalous magnetic moments. Within the range of magnetic intensities considered here 1017 GFil: Aguirre, Ricardo Miguel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Física La Plata. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Departamento de Física; Argentin

Equation of state of hadronic matter with dibaryons in an effective quark model

The equation of state of symmetric nuclear matter with the inclusion of non-strange dibaryons is studied. We pay special attention to the existence of a dibaryon condensate at zero temperature. These calculations have been performed in an extended quark-meson coupling model with density-dependent parameters, which takes into account the finite size of nucleons and dibaryons. A first-order phase-transition to pure dibaryon matter has been found. The corresponding critical density is strongly dependent on the value of the dibaryon mass. The density behavior of the nucleon and dibaryon effective masses and confining volumes have also been discussed.Comment: 9 pages, LaTex, 3 Postscript figures, a misprint correcte

Impact of tree root pruning on yield of durum wheat and barley in a mediterranean alley cropping system

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