Just taxes? tracing 14th century Damascene politics through objects, space and historiography

In this thesis, I explore the political culture in Damascus during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries by examining the symbolic practices through which sultanic rulers and their subjects negotiated local power relations. As my point of departure, I use a protest against Mamluk tax policies that took place in 711/1311. I argue that this protest should not be understood as a spontaneous outburst of popular anger, but as a meaningful political act that reflects the wider political culture of the period and lends itself to interpretation of multiple levels. First, I demonstrate how the 711 protesters engaged in a multi-layered form of visual communication by carrying objects that referenced local identity, contemporary politics and Islamic history. I then contextualise the protest within the urban landscape of medieval Damascus. By exploring the historical development of procession routes and parade grounds in Damascus, I argue that the choice of venue that characterised this and later protests was based on a desire to appropriate spatial nodes in the topography of sultanic power. I then turn to the Umayyad Mosque as the antithesis of the ceremonial culture of the military parade ground. I argue that the protesters of 711 used visual references to the mosque in their procession, especially by placing the khaṭīb (Friday preacher) as leader of the procession, but that his participation must also be understood in the light of his wider socio-political role. Finally, I examine the narrative sources through which we access this and other political events in Mamluk Damascus. I argue that the use of these narratives as a source for political history must be accompanied by a comparison of how individual authors frame the same events and critical reflection on how representations of historical events are shaped by and shape the overarching agendas of their respective works

Just taxes? tracing 14th century Damascene politics through objects, space and historiography

In this thesis, I explore the political culture in Damascus during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries by examining the symbolic practices through which sultanic rulers and their subjects negotiated local power relations. As my point of departure, I use a protest against Mamluk tax policies that took place in 711/1311. I argue that this protest should not be understood as a spontaneous outburst of popular anger, but as a meaningful political act that reflects the wider political culture of the period and lends itself to interpretation of multiple levels. First, I demonstrate how the 711 protesters engaged in a multi-layered form of visual communication by carrying objects that referenced local identity, contemporary politics and Islamic history. I then contextualise the protest within the urban landscape of medieval Damascus. By exploring the historical development of procession routes and parade grounds in Damascus, I argue that the choice of venue that characterised this and later protests was based on a desire to appropriate spatial nodes in the topography of sultanic power. I then turn to the Umayyad Mosque as the antithesis of the ceremonial culture of the military parade ground. I argue that the protesters of 711 used visual references to the mosque in their procession, especially by placing the khaṭīb (Friday preacher) as leader of the procession, but that his participation must also be understood in the light of his wider socio-political role. Finally, I examine the narrative sources through which we access this and other political events in Mamluk Damascus. I argue that the use of these narratives as a source for political history must be accompanied by a comparison of how individual authors frame the same events and critical reflection on how representations of historical events are shaped by and shape the overarching agendas of their respective works

A Prismatic Analyser concept for Neutron Spectrometers

A development in modern neutron spectroscopy is to avoid the need of large samples. We demonstrate how small samples together with the right choice of analyser and detector components makes distance collimation an important concept in crystal analyser spectrometers. We further show that this opens new possibilities where neutrons with different energies are reflected by the same analyser but counted in different detectors, thus improving both energy resolution and total count rate compared to conventional spectrometers. The technique can be combined with advanced focusing geometries and with multiplexing instrument designs. We present a combination of simulations and data with 3 energies from one analyser. The data was taken on a prototype installed at PSI, Switzerland, and shows excellent agreement with the predictions. Typical improvements will be 2 times finer resolution and a factor 1.9 in flux gain compared to a Rowland geometry or 3 times finer resolution and a factor 3.2 in flux gain compared to a single flat analyser slab

De krydspressede elitepiger - et diskursteoretisk perspektiv på køn og eliteidræt

Artiklen tager udgangspunkt i en undersøgelse af kvindelige udøvere i alderen 15-18 år med mulighed for at nå eliten. Ud fra undersøgelsen gives et et teoretisk perspektiv på det identifikatoriske krydspres pigerne giver udtryk for at stå i, mellem den idrætslige og civile kontekst, dette for at forstå hvad der står på spil, når elitepiger falder fra. Maja Plum, Rasmus K. Storm og Stinne Lyager Bech: The double character of identity construction – gender and its impact on girls in elite sport Girls with elite sport carriers find themselves in a strange and paradoxical situation: They are different compared to the male standards dominating the world of elite sport; and they are different seen in relation to the signs of femininity in society in general. Taking a discourse theoretical approach, this article focuses on the ’double’ character of identity construction that these girls are facing. Furthermore, the consequences of this identity construction are discussed in relation to th

Novelty detection of foreign objects in food using multi-modal X-ray imaging

In this paper we demonstrate a method for novelty detection of foreign objects in food products using grating-based multimodal X-ray imaging. With this imaging technique three modalities are available with pixel correspondence, enhancing organic materials such as wood chips, insects and soft plastics not detectable by conventional X-ray absorption radiography. We conduct experiments, where several food products are imaged with common foreign objects typically found in the food processing industry. To evaluate the benefit from using this multi-contrast X-ray technique over conventional X-ray absorption imaging, a novelty detection scheme based on well known image- and statistical analysis techniques is proposed. The results show that the presented method gives superior recognition results and highlights the advantage of grating-based imaging

Regional Longitudinal Myocardial Deformation Provides Incremental Prognostic Information in Patients with ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction

Global longitudinal systolic strain (GLS) has recently been demonstrated to be a superior prognosticator to conventional echocardiographic measures in patients after myocardial infarction (MI). The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of regional longitudinal myocardial deformation in comparison to GLS, conventional echocardiography and clinical information.In total 391 patients were admitted with ST-Segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), treated with primary percutaneous coronary intervention and subsequently examined by echocardiography. All patients were examined by tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) and two-dimensional strain echocardiography (2DSE).During a median-follow-up of 5.3 (IQR 2.5-6.1) years the primary endpoint (death, heart failure or a new MI) was reached by 145 (38.9%) patients. After adjustment for significant confounders (including conventional echocardiographic parameters) and culprit lesion, reduced longitudinal performance in the anterior septal and inferior myocardial regions (but not GLS) remained independent predictors of the combined outcome. Furthermore, inferior myocardial longitudinal deformation provided incremental prognostic information to clinical and conventional echocardiographic information (Harrell's c-statistics: 0.63 vs. 0.67, p = 0.032). In addition, impaired longitudinal deformation outside the culprit lesion perfusion region was significantly associated with an adverse outcome (p<0.05 for all deformation parameters).Regional longitudinal myocardial deformation measures, regardless if determined by TDI or 2DSE, are superior prognosticators to GLS. In addition, impaired longitudinal deformation in the inferior myocardial segment provides prognostic information over and above clinical and conventional echocardiographic risk factors. Furthermore, impaired longitudinal deformation outside the culprit lesion perfusion region seems to be a paramount marker of adverse outcome