The liminality of loneliness: negotiating feminist ethics and intersectional affectivity

This paper draws on auto-ethnographic and creative material to disentangle loneliness as including moments of tension but also the potential for personal liberation. The analysis draws on intersectional reflexivity as a joint project building on feminist friendship and activist academic collaboration. Our collaborative critical auto-ethnography sought to reach the co-production of narratives of loneliness while embracing the diversities of our positionalities. Our differing points of departure and arrival were harnessed to understand our experiential perspectives on loneliness. We conceptualise through feminist and intersectional theories the liminalities of a ‘biopolitics’ of loneliness. We address ethical, affective and performative aspects of how loneliness is understood. We can then advance propositions for alternative analyses that can contribute to feminist studies of loneliness. In the analysis we clarify the often nebulous interconnections of materialisms, affectivities and ethical feminisms to disentangle loneliness from the ‘individual experience’ to a ‘social platform’ of wider collective responsibility in tackling some of its traumatic and destructive effects. We explore these issues in the emerging context of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic that has led to far reaching social, psychological, and physical impacts upon loneliness, in turn augmented by UK state policies

Electric‐field dependence of interband transitions in In_(0.53)Ga_(0.47)As/In_(0.52)Al_(0.48)As single quantum wells by room‐temperature electrotransmittance

Room‐temperature electrotransmittance has been used in order to investigate the interband excitonic transitions in a 250‐Å‐thick In_(0.53)Ga_(0.47)As/In_(0.52)Al_(0.48)As single‐quantum‐well system as a function of an externally applied electric field. Parity forbidden transitions, involving conduction‐band states with quantum numbers up to n=5, which become more pronounced at high electric fields were observed. The ground‐state and the forbidden transitions showed a significant red shift due to the quantum confined Stark effect. A comparison with previously reported results on thinner InGaAs/InAlAs quantum wells indicated that the wide‐well sample exhibits the largest shift, as expected from theory. Despite the appreciable Stark shift, the rather large, field‐induced linewidth broadening and the relatively low electric field at which the ground‐state exciton is ionized poses limitations on using this wide‐quantum‐well system for electro‐optic applications

'Diverse mobilities': second-generation Greek-Germans engage with the homeland as children and as adults

This paper is about the children of Greek labour migrants in Germany. We focus on two life-stages of ‘return’ for this second generation: as young children brought to Greece on holidays or sent back for longer periods, and as young adults exercising an independent ‘return’ migration. We draw both on literature and on our own field interviews with 50 first- and second-generation Greek-Germans. We find the practise of sending young children back to Greece to have been surprisingly widespread yet little documented. Adult relocation to the parental homeland takes place for five reasons: (i) a ‘search for self’; (ii) attraction of the Greek way of life; (iii) the actualisation of the ‘family narrative of return’ by the second, rather than the first, generation; (iv) life-stage events such as going to university or marrying a Greek; (v) escape from a traumatic event or oppressive family situation. Yet the return often brings difficulties, disillusionment, identity reappraisal, and a re-evaluation of the German context

Discovery of close companions to the nearby young stars HD 199143 and HD 358623

Young stellar systems in the solar neighborhood provide valuable laboratories for detailed studies of star and planet formation. The bright F8V star HD 199143 and the Li-rich late-type emission line star HD 358623 are among the nearest young stars identified to date, and may be members of a young association in Capricornus. We present high-resolution near-infrared images of these two sources, obtained using the adaptive optics system on the 3.6-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile. Our observations reveal that both are in fact close binary systems. The newly discovered companion at a separation of $\sim$1'' may account for the unusual characteristics of HD 199143 --rapid rotation, emission lines, ultraviolet variability, and excess infrared emission-- recently discussed by van den Ancker and co-workers. HD 199143 may be a rare example of a close binary with only a circum{\it secondary} disk. With the detection of a $\sim$2'' companion, HD 358623 is now possibly one of the closest known T Tauri binaries. Both binary systems are prime targets for follow-up spectroscopic and astrometric observations.Comment: 9 pages, 1 PostScript figure, to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letter

Rice endosperm is cost-effective for the production of recombinant griffithsin with potent activity against HIV

Protein microbicides containing neutralizing antibodies and antiviral lectins may help to reduce the rate of infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) if it is possible to manufacture the components in large quantities at a cost affordable in HIV‐endemic regions such as sub‐Saharan Africa. We expressed the antiviral lectin griffithsin (GRFT), which shows potent neutralizing activity against HIV, in the endosperm of transgenic rice plants (Oryza sativa), to determine whether rice can be used to produce inexpensive GRFT as a microbicide ingredient. The yield of (OS)GRFT in the best‐performing plants was 223 μg/g dry seed weight. We also established a one‐step purification protocol, achieving a recovery of 74% and a purity of 80%, which potentially could be developed into a larger‐scale process to facilitate inexpensive downstream processing. (OS)GRFT bound to HIV glycans with similar efficiency to GRFT produced in Escherichia coli. Whole‐cell assays using purified (OS)GRFT and infectivity assays using crude extracts of transgenic rice endosperm confirmed that both crude and pure (OS)GRFT showed potent activity against HIV and the crude extracts were not toxic towards human cell lines, suggesting they could be administered as a microbicide with only minimal processing. A freedom‐to‐operate analysis confirmed that GRFT produced in rice is suitable for commercial development, and an economic evaluation suggested that 1.8 kg/ha of pure GRFT could be produced from rice seeds. Our data therefore indicate that rice could be developed as an inexpensive production platform for GRFT as a microbicide component

More Evidence for a Distribution of Tunnel Splittings in Mn12_{12}-acetate

In magnetic fields applied parallel to the anisotropy axis, the magnetization of Mn$_{12}$ has been measured in response to a field that is swept back and forth across the resonances corresponding to steps $N=4,5,...9$. The fraction of molecules remaining in the metastable well after each sweep through the resonance is inconsistent with expectations for an ensemble of identical molecules. The data are consistent instead with the presence of a broad distribution of tunnel splittings. A very good fit is obtained for a Gaussian distribution of the second-order anisotropy tunneling parameter $X_E=-\ln(\mid E\mid/2D)$. We show that dipolar shuffling is a negligible effect which cannot explain our data.Comment: minor corrections (PACS nos, signs in Fig. 2

Pressure Dependence of the Magnetic Anisotropy in the "Single-Molecule Magnet" [Mn4O3Br(OAc)3(dbm)3]

The anisotropy splitting in the ground state of the single-molecule magnet [Mn4O3Br(OAc)3(dbm)3] is studied by inelastic neutron scattering as a function of hydrostatic pressure. This allows a tuning of the anisotropy and thus the energy barrier for slow magnetisation relaxation at low temperatures. The value of the negative axial anisotropy parameter $D_{\rm cluster}$ changes from -0.0627(1) meV at ambient to -0.0603(3) meV at 12 kbar pressure, and in the same pressure range the height of the energy barrier between up and down spins is reduced from 1.260(5) meV to 1.213(9) meV. Since the $\rm Mn-Br$ bond is significantly softer and thus more compressible than the $\rm Mn-O$ bonds, pressure induces a tilt of the single ion Mn$^{3+}$ anisotropy axes, resulting in the net reduction of the axial cluster anisotropy.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure