Reproductive (In)Justice: Exploring young women’s experiences of reproductive saliency in an oppressive environment

Young North American women are currently coming of age in a sociopolitical context governed by neoliberal ideology, post-feminist assumptions, agentic femininities, and demographic trends that have lengthened pathways to adulthood. Consequently, the avoidance of early reproductive experiences has become a key requisite governing the success of the young female subject. This project explores the diverse reproductive experiences of eleven young (≤ 24 years of age) women residing in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Prince Edward Island’s conservative community culture, anti-choice policies, and limited youth focused sexual-reproductive health services produces a unique experiential setting for young women who encounter reproductive events. Through interpretative phenomenological analysis, 5 superordinate themes were identified in participant’s communications; Transformation, Negotiation, Gender as Experience, Gender as Category, and Island Observation(s). These themes highlight how interactions between the larger sociocultural context and the localized environment function to structure young women’s reproductive experiences and influence material realities. It was found that young women residing in Prince Edward Island experience distinct barriers to sexual-reproductive health and wellbeing, and that these barriers become particularly oppressive in the context of reproductive experiences

Education Matters: Certified health professionals have higher credibility than non health professionals on Instagram

Social media serves as an accessible source of health information and nutrition information. Instagram, an internationally known social media platform with an average of more than 1 billion monthly active users, allows its users to create and share content. However, the credibility of the nutrition content created by users with unknown qualifications may be questionable. The objective of this study is to assess the credibility of content created by nutrition influencers on Instagram by comparing health professionals with non-health professionals.  For this study, “influencer” is defined as an Instagram user with at least 15,000 followers who promotes products, services, or ideas and who creates nutrition- or health-related content. For each influencer (n=29), two posts were selected every month from August 2018 to July 2019. Using the “Credible Information Factsheet” from the Dietitians of Canada, a credibility score based on four dichotomous criteria was created. Looking at the 24 posts of each influencer holistically, a credibility score out of 4 was calculated, with 0 being the least credible and 4 being the most credible.  Without exception, a greater proportion of health professionals compared to non-health professionals met each criterion from the “Credible Information Factsheet”. 92% of the health professionals met criteria 1 (Miracle Cure) compared to only 31% of non-health professionals. This demonstrates how the vast majority of health professionals would not promise a miracle cure, while most non-health professionals would readily promise a miracle cure. Additionally, 46% of health professionals met criteria 4 (Research-based) compared to only 19% of non-health professionals, which demonstrates how non-health professionals do not support claims with research. When looking at the total credibility scores for health professionals and non-health professionals, not a single health professional scored a total of 0, while not a single non-health professional scored a total of 4. Most importantly, health professionals had an average credibility score of 2.4, which is twice as high as that of non-health professionals (1.2).  Overall, health professionals appeared to be more credible than non-health professionals. By viewing nutrition information posted on Instagram by non-health professionals, followers potentially expose themselves to misinformation. Further research should be undertaken to validate the credibility score based on the “Credible Information Factsheet” by determining how adept the factsheet is at differentiating credibility for Instagram content

Collapse, social tipping dynamics, and framing climate change

In this article, we claim that recent developments in climate science and renewable energy should prompt a reframing of debates surrounding climate change mitigation. Taken together, we argue that these developments suggest (1) global climate collapse in this century is a non-negligible risk, (2) mitigation offers substantial benefits to current generations, and (3) mitigation by some can generate social tipping dynamics that could ultimately make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels. We explain how these claims undermine familiar framings of climate change, wherein mitigation is understood as self-sacrifice that individuals and governments must be morally persuaded or incentivized to undertake

ERPs reveal the temporal dynamics of auditory word recognition in specific language impairment.

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare auditory word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI group; N=14) to a group of typically developing children (TD group; N=14). Subjects were presented with pictures of items and heard auditory words that either matched or mismatched the pictures. Mismatches overlapped expected words in word-onset (cohort mismatches; see: DOLL, hear: dog), rhyme (CONE -bone), or were unrelated (SHELL -mug). In match trials, the SLI group showed a different pattern of N100 responses to auditory stimuli compared to the TD group, indicative of early auditory processing differences in SLI. However, the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) response to mismatching items was comparable across groups, suggesting that just like TD children, children with SLI are capable of establishing phonological expectations and detecting violations of these expectations in an online fashion. Perhaps most importantly, we observed a lack of attenuation of the N400 for rhyming words in the SLI group, which suggests that either these children were not as sensitive to rhyme similarity as their typically developing peers, or did not suppress lexical alternatives to the same extent. These findings help shed light on the underlying deficits responsible for SLI

Observational evidence for matter propagation in accretion flows

We study simultaneous X-ray and optical observations of three intermediate polars EX Hya, V1223 Sgr and TV Col with the aim to understand the propagation of matter in their accretion flows. We show that in all cases the power spectra of flux variability of binary systems in X-rays and in optical band are similar to each other and the majority of X-ray and optical fluxes are correlated with time lag <1 sec. These findings support the idea that optical emission of accretion disks, in these binary systems,largely originates as reprocessing of X-ray luminosity of their white dwarfs. In the best obtained dataset of EX Hya we see that the optical lightcurve unambiguously contains some component, which leads the X-ray emission by ~7 sec. We interpret this in the framework of the model of propagating fluctuations and thus deduce the time of travel of the matter from the innermost part of the truncated accretion disk to the white dwarf surface. This value agrees very well with the time expected for matter threaded onto the magnetosphere of the white dwarf to fall to its surface. The datasets of V1223 Sgr and TV Col in general confirm these findings,but have poorer quality.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

A method for the reconstruction of unknown non-monotonic growth functions in the chemostat

We propose an adaptive control law that allows one to identify unstable steady states of the open-loop system in the single-species chemostat model without the knowledge of the growth function. We then show how one can use this control law to trace out (reconstruct) the whole graph of the growth function. The process of tracing out the graph can be performed either continuously or step-wise. We present and compare both approaches. Even in the case of two species in competition, which is not directly accessible with our approach due to lack of controllability, feedback control improves identifiability of the non-dominant growth rate.Comment: expansion of ideas from proceedings paper (17 pages, 8 figures), proceedings paper is version v

Generation of rotationally dominated galaxies by mergers of pressure-supported progenitors

Through the analysis of a set of numerical simulations of major mergers between initially non-rotating, pressure supported progenitor galaxies with a range of central mass concentrations, we have shown that: (1) it is possible to generate elliptical-like galaxies, with v/sigma > 1 outside one effective radius, as a result of the conversion of orbital- into internal-angular momentum; (2) the outer regions acquire part of the angular momentum first; (3) both the baryonic and the dark matter components of the remnant galaxy acquire part of the angular momentum, the relative fractions depend on the initial concentration of the merging galaxies. For this conversion to occur the initial baryonic component must be sufficiently dense and/or the encounter should take place on a orbit with high angular momentum. Systems with these hybrid properties have been recently observed through a combination of stellar absorption lines and planetary nebulae for kinematic studies of early-type galaxies. Our results are in qualitative agreement with such observations and demonstrate that even mergers composed of non-rotating, pressure-supported progenitor galaxies can produce early-type galaxies with significant rotation at large radii.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A Letter

The core fundamental plane of B2 radio galaxies

The photometric, structural and kinematical properties of the centers of elliptical galaxies, harbor important information of the formation history of the galaxies. In the case of non active elliptical galaxies these properties are linked in a way that surface brightness, break radius and velocity dispersion of the core lie on a fundamental plane similar to that found for their global properties. We construct the Core Fundamental Plane (CFP) for a sizeable sample of low redshift radio galaxies and compare it with that of non radio ellipticals. To pursue this aim we combine data obtained from high resolution HST images with medium resolution optical spectroscopy to derive the photometric and kinematic properties of ~40 low redshift radio galaxies. We find that the CFPs of radio galaxies is indistinguishable from that defined by non radio elliptical galaxies of similar luminosity. The characteristics of the CFP of radio galaxies are also consistent (same slope) with those of the Fundamental Plane (FP) derived from the global properties of radio (and non radio) elliptical galaxies. The similarity of CFP and FP for radio and non radio ellipticals suggests that the active phase of these galaxies has minimal effects for the structure of the galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic