5,663 research outputs found

    European spaces and the Roma: Denaturalizing the naturalized in online reader comments

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    With the entry of several Eastern European nations into the European Union (EU), a ā€œthirdā€ space has developed in the discourse for nations perceived as not fully integrated ā€œinsideā€ the EU system. This article investigates the construction of this ā€œthird spaceā€ in the resultant ā€œmoral panicā€ about undesired immigration from other EU countries and its potential drain on the social services of the United Kingdom and links it to Euroskeptic discourse in British media. The article uses construal operations from cognitive linguistics combined with critical discourse studies as a way of denaturalizing the discourse in online comments that focus on the Bulgarian/Romanian immigration issue which we then connect to anti-Roma discourse. Results reveal a view of the United Kingdom as contaminated by Roma and underscore the need for novel metaphors to be countered before they become entrenched and used as tools for political propaganda

    CMB Polarization B-mode Delensing with SPTpol and Herschel

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    We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the gravitational-lensing generated B-mode component will become increasingly important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg2^2 patch of sky by subtracting a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing potential map estimated from the Herschel\textit{Herschel} 500ā€‰Ī¼m500\,\mu m map of the CIB. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power spectrum by 28% in the multipole range 300<ā„“<2300300 < \ell < 2300; this is shown to be consistent with expectations from theory and simulations and to be robust against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at 6.9Ļƒ6.9 \sigma. Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments, such as CMB-S4.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome

    Measurements of Sub-degree B-mode Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data

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    We present a measurement of the BB-mode polarization power spectrum (the BBBB spectrum) from 100 deg2\mathrm{deg}^2 of sky observed with SPTpol, a polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole Telescope. The observations used in this work were taken during 2012 and early 2013 and include data in spectral bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We report the BBBB spectrum in five bins in multipole space, spanning the range 300ā‰¤ā„“ā‰¤2300300 \le \ell \le 2300, and for three spectral combinations: 95 GHz Ɨ\times 95 GHz, 95 GHz Ɨ\times 150 GHz, and 150 GHz Ɨ\times 150 GHz. We subtract small (<0.5Ļƒ< 0.5 \sigma in units of statistical uncertainty) biases from these spectra and account for the uncertainty in those biases. The resulting power spectra are inconsistent with zero power but consistent with predictions for the BBBB spectrum arising from the gravitational lensing of EE-mode polarization. If we assume no other source of BBBB power besides lensed BB modes, we determine a preference for lensed BB modes of 4.9Ļƒ4.9 \sigma. After marginalizing over tensor power and foregrounds, namely polarized emission from galactic dust and extragalactic sources, this significance is 4.3Ļƒ4.3 \sigma. Fitting for a single parameter, AlensA_\mathrm{lens}, that multiplies the predicted lensed BB-mode spectrum, and marginalizing over tensor power and foregrounds, we find Alens=1.08Ā±0.26A_\mathrm{lens} = 1.08 \pm 0.26, indicating that our measured spectra are consistent with the signal expected from gravitational lensing. The data presented here provide the best measurement to date of the BB-mode power spectrum on these angular scales.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure
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