2,715 research outputs found
Shattered Worlds: Political Trauma Amongst Young Activists in Post-Revolutionary Egypt
Based on qualitative testimonial research with Egyptian youth activists, this article argues that Egypt’s post-revolutionary aftermath has been profoundly traumatic. Trauma shatters one’s assumptive world as it confronts one with the fragility of existence and the possibility of immediate death. Activists experienced automatic psychological coping mechanisms of intrusion (e.g. dreams and nightmares) and numbing, but Egypt’s post-revolutionary social and political context inhibited the operationalisation of non-automatic, socially embedded, coping mechanisms of reintegration and reinterpretation. The former entails the reintegration of one’s experiences into an adjusted assumptive world through a shared holding space and the latter the reinterpretation of the suffered traumas through a positive outcome. In the absence of socially embedded coping mechanisms, due to political polarisation and a lack of positive revolutionary outcomes, Egypt’s social trauma deepened as is illustrated by the depoliticisation of activists as they tried to mend their shattered assumptive worlds
Two liquid states of matter: A new dynamic line on a phase diagram
It is generally agreed that the supercritical region of a liquid consists of
one single state (supercritical fluid). On the other hand, we show here that
liquids in this region exist in two qualitatively different states: "rigid" and
"non-rigid" liquid. Rigid to non-rigid transition corresponds to the condition
{\tau} ~ {\tau}0, where {\tau}is liquid relaxation time and {\tau}0 is the
minimal period of transverse quasi-harmonic waves. This condition defines a new
dynamic line on the phase diagram, and corresponds to the loss of shear
stiffness of a liquid at all available frequencies, and consequently to the
qualitative change of many important liquid properties. We analyze the dynamic
line theoretically as well as in real and model liquids, and show that the
transition corresponds to the disappearance of high-frequency sound,
qualitative changes of diffusion and viscous flow, increase of particle thermal
speed to half of the speed of sound and reduction of the constant volume
specific heat to 2kB per particle. In contrast to the Widom line that exists
near the critical point only, the new dynamic line is universal: it separates
two liquid states at arbitrarily high pressure and temperature, and exists in
systems where liquid - gas transition and the critical point are absent
overall.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure
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