Geographies of Religion and Spirituality: Beyond the ‘officially’ sacred

The papers in this special issue, Geographies of Religion and Spirituality: Pilgrimage beyond the ‘Officially Sacred,’ are placed in the context of a comprehensive theoretical overview of the role that the sacred plays in shaping, conducting, controlling, and contesting pilgrimage. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of travelers has demonstrated, pilgrimages need not necessarily be religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned. Rather, if pilgrimages are perceived as ‘hyper-meaningful’ by the practitioner, the authors in this special issue argue that a common denominator of all of these journeys is the perception of sacredness—a quality that is opposed to profane, everyday life. Separating the social category of ‘religion’ from the ‘sacred,’ these articles employ an interdisciplinary approach to theorize sacredness, its variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or condemned. Thus, the authors pay particular attention to the authorizing processes that religious and temporal power centers employ to either promote, co-opt, or stave off, such popular manifestations of devotion, focusing on three ways: through tradition, text or institutionalized norms. Referencing examples from across the globe, and linking them to the varied contributions in this special issue, this introduction complexifies the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, locals and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate, negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the sacred. Delving ‘beyond the officially sacred,’ this collective examination of pilgrimages, both well-established and new; religious and secular; authorized and not; the contributions to this special issue, as well as this Introduction, examines the interplay of a transcendent sacred for pilgrims and tourists so as to provide a blueprint for how work in the geography of religion and the fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism may move forward

Conductance quantization in etched Si/SiGe quantum point contacts

We fabricated strongly confined Schottky-gated quantum point contacts by etching Si/SiGe heterostructures and observed intriguing conductance quantization in units of approximately 1e2/h. Non-linear conductance measurements were performed depleting the quantum point contacts at fixed mode-energy separation. We report evidences of the formation of a half 1e2/h plateau, supporting the speculation that adiabatic transmission occurs through 1D modes with complete removal of valley and spin degeneracies.Comment: to appear in Physical Review

Reframing and Reconceptualising Gambling tourism in Macau as a Chinese Pilgrimage

While dominant discourses, media representations and corporate entities in China downplay the presence of Chinese mainland gambling in Macau, Beijing sanctions millions of its citizens to make the journey to Macau to gamble each year. While Macau’s success is often put down to the extent to which visitors are drawn to a secular destination with integrated resorts to engage in individualistic activities, our approach explores Chinese gambling tourists’ movements, rituals and behaviours along post-structuralist lines, so as to generate new insights. The analysis shows how the metaphor of pilgrimage is an important lens to address individual and communal practices amongst outbound Chinese gambling tourists and brings to light the hyper-meaningfulness, shared values, ritualization, play, risk, and liminal conditions that characterise the processes of their entanglements and the centrality of commercial and political interests. In particular, the analysis indicates the need to explore the significance of cultural, spiritual, economic and social dimensions of Chinese outbound tourism, as well as the unique discourses of power and control affecting their movement and practices. By reframing and reconceptualising gambling tourists as a Chinese pilgrimage, we account for manifestations of culture, governmentality and intentional ritualization as well as contribute an alternative construction of pilgrimage beyond euro-centric accounts, which in turn, will stimulate discussion on geographies of pilgrimage

Gate-source distance scaling effects in H-terminated diamond MESFETs

In this paper, an analysis of gate-source and gate-drain scaling effects in MESFETs fabricated on hydrogen-terminated single-crystal diamond films is reported. The experimental results show that a decrease in gate-source spacing can improve the device performance by increasing the device output current density and its transconductance. On the contrary, the gate--drain distance produces less pronounced effects on device performance. Breakdown voltage, knee voltage, and threshold voltage variations due to changes in gate-source and drain-source distances have also been investigated. The obtained results can be used as a design guideline for the layout optimization of H-terminated diamond-based MESFETs

imaging the coupling of terahertz radiation to a high electron mobility transistor in the near field

We used AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors as room-temperature direct detectors of radiation at 0.15 THz from a free electron laser, hence 5 times higher than their cutoff frequency of 30 GHz. By near-field active mapping we investigated the antenna-like coupling of the radiation to the transistor channel. We formulate a model for the detection based on self-mixing in the transistor channel. The noise equivalent power is found in the range of 10^{-7} W/Hz^{0.5} without any optimization of the device responsivity. Present day AlGaN/GaN fabrication technology may provide operation at higher frequency, integration of amplifiers for improved responsivity and fast switches for multiplexing, which make the detector here described the basic element of a monolithic terahertz focal plane array

Recent results from HELIOS

Transfer and inelastic scattering reactions using light-ion beams and stable or long-lived targets have traditionally provided detailed information on the structure of nuclei near the line of beta stability. Such studies can now be extended to nuclei away from the line of β-stability as radioactive beams are becoming available at a number of facilities around the world, including the CARIBU facility at Argonne. These measurements must, however, be carried out in inverse kinematics, resulting in a loss of the effective experimental resolution when conventional detection schemes are employed. The HELIOS spectrometer is based on a new concept, that is especially well suited for such studies by reducing the resolution problem, providing simple particle identification, and giving high detection efficiency with moderate Si detector area. In this talk, the HELIOS concept and results from the first series of experiments will be presented

Fusion of 60Ni + 100Mo below barrier

The fusion cross section of 60Ni + 100Mo has been measured down to microbarn level, looking for hindrance at low energy, in a system with positive Q-values for neutron transfer. The measured cross sections look similar to those of the nearby 64Ni + 100Mo, but no conclusive statement can be made at this stage, as to the onset of hindrance in this system

The prognostic value of four interleukin-1 gene polymorphisms in caucasian women with breast cancer – a multicenter study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-1 (IL-1) is known to play an important role in the carcinogenesis of breast cancer. Although IL-1 gene polymorphisms were reported to be associated with increased risk of breast cancer, their influence on survival of Caucasian breast cancer patients remains to be shown.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied the influence of four common gene polymorphisms (<it>IL1A </it>-889C/T, <it>IL1B </it>-511C/T, <it>IL1B </it>+3953E1/E2, and <it>IL1RN </it>long/2) of the IL-1 family on survival in 262 Caucasian patients with breast cancer by univariate and multivariate survival analysis. The combined effect of the four gene polymorphisms on overall survival was studied by haplotype analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the present study 38 cases of cancer related death and a median time of follow-up (range) of 55.3 (0.4–175.8) months was observed. <it>IL1RN </it>2/2 (homozygous mutant) gene polymorphism was associated with shortened disease free and overall survival in a univariate (p = 0.001 and p = 0.01, respectively) and multivariate analysis (p = 0.002, Odds Ratio [95% Confidence Interval] = 3.6 [1.6–8.0] and p = 0.05, Odds Ratio = 3.0 [1.1–9.3], respectively). Presence of the homozygous mutant genotype of the <it>IL1A </it>-889 and <it>IL1B </it>+3953 gene polymorphism was associated with overall survival in the univariate (p = 0.004 and p = 0.002, respectively), but not in the multivariate analysis. No association was observed between all possible haplotype combinations and overall survival.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Carriage of the mutant alleles of <it>IL1RN </it>was independently associated with shortened disease free and overall survival rates in Caucasian patients with breast cancer.</p