How to Stop (Worrying and Love) the Bubble: Boundary Changing Solutions

We discover that a class of bubbles of nothing are embedded as time dependent scaling limits of previous spacelike-brane solutions. With the right initial conditions, a near-bubble solution can relax its expansion and open the compact circle. Thermodynamics of the new class of solutions is discussed and the relationships between brane/flux transitions, tachyon condensation and imaginary D-branes are outlined. Finally, a related class of simultaneous connected S-branes are also examined.Comment: 47 pages; v2 introduction to Weyl cards added, comments added, references added, typos corrected, matches JHEP versio

Negotiating Gender Role Expectations: Rhetorical Leadership and Women in the US Senate

The historical paucity of US women senators has provided little opportunity to study women at one of the highest and most prestigious leadership levels. Through a content analysis of 12 months of public discourse in a variety of media, we explore the rhetorical leadership of women senators as they carry out their elected roles. Results indicate that women senators use significantly less aggressive and more ambivalent speech when compared to political norms, and are less likely to use terms denoting accomplishment, praise and human interest. Overall, our results suggest that women continue to feel the effects of gender stereotypes and expectations in higher levels of political office, and these effects may have important negative implications for perceptions of their leadership and effectiveness