Shipibo-Conibo Textiles 2010-2018: Artists of the Amazon Culturally Engaged

This paper considers the intersection of processes of making and cultural memory as contemporary Shipibo artists design, produce, and exchange of their contemporary textiles and art. One sees a continuation of traditional collaborative social networks both in Peru’s deep Amazon region and in new Shipibo communities of Pucallpa and Lima. In cities, they create new artistic networks and expressions of art in ceremony. In these artworks, one sees how Shipibo relationship to the natural world, the forest, plants, animals, and waters reflects deep spiritual beliefs, wisdom, and community knowledge. Shipibo communities in 2017 face ever-expanding challenges from intrusions into their Lima community and their remote Amazon communities through legal and illegal acquisition of resources, and degradation of their lands and waters from oil spills, mining wastes, and corporate farms within Amazon forests. This paper considers a variety of energized community responses by artists and Shipibo community members as they embrace the aesthetics of their kene designs and collaborative textile practices to articulate the deep local of their Amazon communities in the pan global world. How have textile practices, consumption, and design evolved in recent years as a response to these changes? How have some artists become activists and expanded their use of technology, media, and conversations about kene design in Peruvian culture to support a local and global audience as their artworks continue to express “I am Shipibo.” This paper also explores the complicated relationships of consumers and designers as the hand worked process of woven, embroidered, and painted kene heritage confronts commercial appropriation of their designs. This work draws on recent research and my 2007-2011 participation in the Field Museum’s expeditions into Peru’s remote Amazon to record, document, collect textiles, as well as creating a documentary “Shipibo: Movie of our Memories.

Advances on Matroid Secretary Problems: Free Order Model and Laminar Case

The most well-known conjecture in the context of matroid secretary problems claims the existence of a constant-factor approximation applicable to any matroid. Whereas this conjecture remains open, modified forms of it were shown to be true, when assuming that the assignment of weights to the secretaries is not adversarial but uniformly random (Soto [SODA 2011], Oveis Gharan and Vondr\'ak [ESA 2011]). However, so far, there was no variant of the matroid secretary problem with adversarial weight assignment for which a constant-factor approximation was found. We address this point by presenting a 9-approximation for the \emph{free order model}, a model suggested shortly after the introduction of the matroid secretary problem, and for which no constant-factor approximation was known so far. The free order model is a relaxed version of the original matroid secretary problem, with the only difference that one can choose the order in which secretaries are interviewed. Furthermore, we consider the classical matroid secretary problem for the special case of laminar matroids. Only recently, a constant-factor approximation has been found for this case, using a clever but rather involved method and analysis (Im and Wang, [SODA 2011]) that leads to a 16000/3-approximation. This is arguably the most involved special case of the matroid secretary problem for which a constant-factor approximation is known. We present a considerably simpler and stronger $3\sqrt{3}e\approx 14.12$-approximation, based on reducing the problem to a matroid secretary problem on a partition matroid

Shedding Light on the Symmetries of Dark Matter

I consider symmetries which could explain observed properties of dark matter, namely, its stability on Gyr time scales or its relic density and discuss how such symmetries can be discovered through the study of the propagation and polarization of light in its transit through dark matter.Comment: 6 pages, Invited talk at the 4th International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP 2009), June 2-5, 2009, Taipei, Taiwa

The ontological security of special relationships: the case of Germany’s relations with Israel

This article suggests studying special relationships in international politics from an ontological security perspective. It argues that conceptualising the partners to special relationships as ontological security-seekers provides a promising theoretical angle to address gaps in our understanding of three important dimensions of such relations: their emergence and stability; the processes and practices of maintaining them; and the power relations within special relations. The article illustrates its theoretical argument in a case study on the German-Israeli relationship. The close partnership between the two countries that has developed since the Holocaust ranks as one of the most remarkable examples of special relationships in the international arena. We argue that foregrounding the ontological security which the special relationship provides in particular for Germany sheds important new light on how German-Israeli relations have developed. Specifically, we hold that Germany’s ontological security needs already were an important driver in establishing the relationship and have been a key stabiliser of it ever since; that the ontological security perspective can make sense of three interrelated practices of maintaining the ‘specialness’ of the relationship; and that the asymmetries between the ontological security needs of the two partners help account for Israel’s political leverage in the relationship

The significance of hazardous chemicals in wastewater treatment works effluents

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Science of The Total Environment. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.The advent of increasingly stringent and wider ranging European Union legislation relating to water and the environment has required regulators to assess compliance risk and to respond by formulating appropriate pollution control measures. To support this process the UK Water Industry has completed a national Chemicals Investigation Programme (CIP), to monitor over 160 wastewater treatment works (WwTWs) for 70 determinands. Final effluent concentrations of zinc, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene, benzo(g,h,i)perylene and indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene), “penta” congeners (BDEs) 47 and 99, tributyltin, triclosan, erythromycin, oxytetracycline, ibuprofen, propranolol, fluoxetine, diclofenac, 17β-estradiol and 17α-ethinyl estradiol exceeded existing or proposed Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) in over 50% of WwTWs. Dilution by receiving water might ensure compliance with EQSs for these chemicals, apart from the BDEs. However, in some cases there will be insufficient dilution to ensure compliance and additional management options may be required

Ariel - Volume 10 Number 3

Executive Editors Madalyn Schaefgen David Reich Business Manager David Reich News Editors Medical College Edward Zurad CAHS John Guardiani World Mark Zwanger Features Editors Meg Trexler Jim O\u27Brien Editorials Editor Jeffrey Banyas Photography and Sports Editor Stuart Singer Commons Editor Brenda Peterso

Increases in Arousal are More Long-Lasting than Decreases in Arousal: On Homeostatic Failures During Emotion Regulation in Infancy

In emotion regulation, negative or undesired emotions are downregulated, but there are also opponent processes to emotion regulation—in which undesired emotions are exacerbated dynamically over time by processes that have an amplifying or upregulating impact. Evidence for such processes has been shown in adults, but little previous work has examined whether infants show similar patterns. To examine this, we measured physiological arousal in 57 typical 12 month olds while presenting a 20‐min mixed viewing battery. Fluctuations in autonomic arousal were measured via heart rate, electrodermal activity, and movement. We reasoned that if transitions in autonomic arousal are random (stochastic), then (1) arousal would be normally distributed across the session, and (2) episodes where arousal exceeded a certain threshold above the mean should be as long‐lived as those where arousal exceeded the same threshold below the mean. In fact we found that (1) heart rate and movement (but not electrodermal activity) were positively skewed, and (2) that increases in arousal have a lower extinction probability than decreases in arousal. Our findings may suggest that increases in arousal are self‐sustaining. These patterns are the opposite of the homeostatic mechanisms predicted by naïve approaches to emotion regulation

Bioenergetics in diabetic neuropathy: what we need to know

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91209/1/j.1529-8027.2012.00389.x.pd