Law handbook

2004 handbook for the faculty of La

Women and Work in Contemporary Japan: Deconstructing the "Crisis" of the Gender Order

ABSTRACT The 1990s saw important developments in the employment practices of Japanese women as necessitated by economic recession. Japanese women are increasingly postponing their traditional roles of wife and mother in lieu of expanding education and employment opportunities, suggesting that we are approaching or witnessing a period of redefinition of the prevailing gender structure. This thesis offers a theoretical exposition of this “crisis” in the gender structure utilising Connell’s concept of “hegemonic masculinity” and Finnemore and Sikkink’s “norm life cycle model”. This thesis will be presented as follows: i) hegemonic masculinity will be applied to the Japanese context to argue for the centrality of masculinity defined through the corporation, and for its significance in an understanding of femininity; ii) discussion of the “feminisation” of part-time work in Japan will test whether a challenge to the gender order from within of this nature represents a profound redefinition of the hegemonic gender structure; and iii) discursive study of Japanese state legislation and policy will reveal government commitment to ensuring continuity in gender norm dynamics. The findings suggest that we are not witnessing a period of “crisis” or profound transformation in the gender structure for greater gender equality. The pervasiveness of gender norm ideology in Japan is such that once established these norms have maintained an internal momentum so that changes in the material sphere are constrained by these ideational structures and not vice versa. The current period is marked by cooptation of gender norm challenges by corporations and government in an effort to neutralise gender norm challenge.N/ADepartment of Government and International Relation

'The medical gaze and the watchful eye' : the treatment, prevention and epidemiology of venereal diseases in New South Wales c.1901 - 1925

From Federation in 1901 through the first three decades of the twentieth century there was a perceptible shift in modes of rule in New South Wales (NSW) related to the management of venereal diseases. At the beginning of the twentieth century a medicopenal approach was central. By 1925, persuasion and ‘responsibilisation’ were becoming important modes, and young people rather than ‘case-hardened prostitutes' were assessed as being a ‘venereal’ risk. Framing this period were three important legislative developments which informed, and were informed by, these shifts: the NSW Prisoners Detention Act 1909, the NSW Select Committee into the Prevalence of Venereal Diseases 1915 and the NSW Venereal Diseases Act 1918. At its core this thesis is concerned with examining shifting modes of rule. This thesis closely examines each. I suggest that these modes of rule can be viewed through the lens of biopolitics, and following Foucault, deploy the ‘medical gaze’ and the ‘watchful eye’ as constructs to examine the relationship between the government of self, government of others and government of the state. I use the medical gaze to describe not only the individual venereal patient attending a hospital and the body of the patient diagnosed with syphilis and/or gonorrhoea, but most importantly to describe the power relationship between the medical practitioner, the teaching hospital and the patient. I use the watchful eye in a more overarching way to suggest the suite of techniques and apparatus deployed by government to monitor and regulate the venereal body politic, both the populations perceived to be posing a venereal risk, and populations at risk of venereal infection. In relation to the venereal body and the venereal body politic, I analyse three fundamental aspects of the management of venereal diseases: treatment, prevention and epidemiology. Treatment: Over this period, treatment moved from lock institutions to outpatient clinics. Embodied in this change was a widespread institutional ambivalence towards treating venereal patients. I contend that treatment of venereal diseases was painful, prolonged and punitive precisely because of the moral sickness perceived to be at the iv heart of venereal infection. I track this ambivalence to a systemic fear of institutional ‘venerealisation’, which decreased perceptibly across the period. Closely analysing surviving patient records, I argue that in their conduct, venereal patients were often compliant, conscientious and responsible. Prevention: I argue that preventative approaches to venereal diseases became increasingly complex, and operated in three domains – preventative medicine (diagnosis, treatment and vaccination); public health prevention (notification, isolation and disinfection); and prevention education (social purity campaigns and sex hygiene). An emerging plethora of community-based organisations and campaigns began to shift the sites and practices of power. Epidemiology: I suggest that there was a shift from danger to risk in the conceptualisation of venereal diseases. This shift necessitated a focus on factors affecting populations, as opposed to factors affecting individuals. This in turn led to the deployment of various techniques to monitor the conduct of venereal populations. The NSW Venereal Diseases Act 1918 created two important new venereal categories: the ‘notified person’ and the ‘defaulter,’ both of which came to permeate renditions of venereal patients throughout the 20th century

Endoscopical and pathological dissociation in severe colitis induced by immune-checkpoint inhibitors

Checkpoint inhibitors have improved the survival of patients with advanced tumors and show a manageable toxicity profile. However, auto-immune colitis remains a relevant side effect, and combinations of anti-PD1/PDL1 and anti-CTLA-4 increase its incidence and severity. Here, we report the case of a 50-year-old patient diagnosed with stage IV cervical cancer that relapsed following radical surgery, external radiation/brachytherapy and standard chemotherapy. She was subsequently treated with Nivolumab and Ipilimumab combination and developed grade 2 colitis presenting a dissociation between endoscopic and pathological findings. At cycle 10 the patient reported grade 3 diarrhea and abdominal discomfort, without blood or mucus in the stools. Immunotherapy was withheld and a colonoscopy was performed, showing normal mucosa in the entire colon. Puzzlingly, histologic evaluation of randomly sampled mucosal biopsy of the distal colon showed an intense intraepithelial lymphocyte infiltration with crypt loss and some regenerating crypts with a few apoptotic bodies set in a chronically inflamed lamina propria, consistent with the microscopic diagnosis of colitis. Treatment with methylprednisolone 2 mg/kg was initiated which led to a decrease in the number of stools to grade 1. Additional investigations to exclude other causes of diarrhea rendered negative results. The patient experienced a major partial response and, following the resolution of diarrhea, she was re-challenged again with immunotherapy, with the reappearance of grade 2 diarrhea, leading to permanent immunotherapy interruption. We conclude and propose that performing random colonic biopsies should be considered in cases of immune checkpoint-associated unexplained diarrhea, even when colonoscopy shows macroscopically normal colonic mucosa inflammatory lesions

A Performance Analysis Framework for WiFi/WiMAX Heterogeneous Metropolitan Networks Based on Cross-Layer Design

The communication between network nodes within different protocol domains is often regarded simply as a black box with unknown configuration conditions in the path. We address network heterogeneity using a white box approach and focus on its interconnection processes. To achieve this purpose, a Performance Analysis Framework (PAF) is proposed which is composed of the formalization of the latter using process algebra (PA) and the corresponding teletraffic performance models. In this contribution, we target the IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.11 protocols. For the teletraffic models, we extend previous models for such scenario with the inclusion of the following protocol operational parameters (metrics): bit error rate (BER), packet error ratio (PER), and packet length (pl). From the framework teletraffic models, the optimal packet length (OPL), end to end throughput, delay, and packet loss are obtained. The PAF outperforms previous modeling solutions in terms of delay and throughput relative to NS3 simulation results. </jats:p

The wind catcher : a passive cooling device for hot arid climate

BACKGROUND: fMRI is becoming a standard tool for the presurgical lateralization and mapping of brain areas involved in language processing. However, its within-subject reproducibility has yet to be fully explored. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate within-test and test-retest reliability of language fMRI in consecutive patients undergoing evaluation for epilepsy surgery. METHODS: Thirty-four unselected patients were investigated once (within-test reliability) and 12 patients twice (test-retest reliability). The imaging series consisted of an alternating 25-second synonym judgment condition with a 25-second letter-matching condition repeated 15 times. Reproducibility of activation maps of the first and second half of session 1 or activation maps of sessions 1 and 2 was evaluated by comparing one global and three regional lateralization indexes (Broca's area, remaining prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal area) and on a voxel-by-voxel basis (intraclass correlation coefficient, percentage overlap, correlation of t-values). RESULTS: Global and regional language lateralization was achieved with high reliability within and across sessions. Reproducibility was evenly distributed across both hemispheres but not within each hemisphere. Frontal activations were more reliable than temporoparietal ones. Depending on the statistical threshold chosen, the voxel-by-voxel analysis revealed a mean overlap of activations derived from the first and second investigation of up to 48.9%. CONCLUSION: Language fMRI proved sufficiently reliable for the determination of global and regional lateralization of language representation in individual unselected patients with epilepsy

The confining-Higgs phase transition in U(1)-Higgs LGT

Abstract We simulate the compact U(1)-Higgs model in a four-dimensional lattice. We present a numerical study for the behaviour around the region where the transition between the confining and Higgs phases disappears. The transition line is found to be first order and to end in a second-order point. We measure the critical exponents of the endpoint obtaining the mean field ones within errors