Structuring Liminality: Theorizing the Creation and Maintenance of the Cuban Exile Identity

In this article, we examine the exilic experience of the Cuban-American community in South Florida through the dual concepts of structure and liminality. We postulate that in the case of this exilic diaspora, specific structures arose to render liminality a persistent element of the Cuban-American identity. The liminal, rather than being a temporal transitory stage, becomes an integral part of the group identity. This paper theorizes and recasts the Cuban-American exile experience in Miami as explicable not only as the story of successful economic and political incorporation, although the literature certainly emphasizes this interpretation, but one consisting of permanent liminality institutionalized by structural components of the exiled diaspora. We argue that the story of exemplary incorporation so prevalent in the academic literature is a result of structured liminality. We apply Turner\u27s conceptualization to the creation and maintenance of the Cuban-American Exile Identity (Grenier and Perez, 2003). While testing the theoretical postulates is beyond the scope of this article, we interpret previous research through our new theoretical lens

The 1991 FIU Cuba Poll- Views on Policy Options toward Cuba Held by Cuban-American Residents of Dade County, Florida

Results from the 1991 FIU Cuba Pollhttps://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cuba_poll/1005/thumbnail.jp

Contribution of Gypsum-board Sheathing to the Compressive Resistance of Wood Studs Subjected to Gravitational Loads

Gypsum board is the most commonly used sheathing material in Canadian residential construction. Current Canadian standards recognize the role of gypsum-board sheathing in bracing studs to prevent weak-axis buckling and in resisting in-plane shear, but do not recognize its potential contribution to axial compressive resistance of a sheathed wall. The research in this thesis, therefore, investigates this contribution for light-frame wood stud walls sheathed with gypsum-board on both sides of the stud. The axial compressive resistance of bare and gypsum-board sheathed studs were computed using new finite element models that account for the nonlinear wood stress-strain relationship and nonlinear shear load-slip response of gypsum-board-to-stud fastener connections. These models were validated using full-scale test data for 100 bare and 19 sheathed studs, and with an idealized responses of fastener connections derived using test data from 283 monotonic and 15 load-reversal tests. The strength distributions of the axial capacities of bare and sheathed studs were quantified by conducting Monte Carlo simulations using these models. As a result, it was determined that gypsum-board sheathing increases the axial compressive resistance of wood studs by a factor of 1.05 to 1.56, depending on the stud size, stud length, gypsum-board thickness, and fastener spacing. A modification factor that conforms to the current CAN/CSA-086-09 equations (CWC, 2009) to account for the strength increment provided by the gypsum-board sheathing was then derived as a function modulus of elasticity of the wood for various stud sizes and lengths, gypsum-board thicknesses, and fastener spacings. The revised equation was used to compute the factored axial compressive resistance of 2400 and 3600 mm long gypsum-board-sheathed 38x89 and 38x140 mm wood studs. A total of 15 additional stud designs are recommended to be included in Part 9 “Housing and Small Buildings” of National Building Code of Canada (NRC, 2010) when the extra strength provided by 12.7 mm or 15.9 mm gypsum-board sheathing, with a maximum fastener spacing of 300 mm, is accounted for

Rotational velocities of A-type stars II. Measurement of vsini in the northern hemisphere

This work is the second part of the set of measurements of vsini for A-type stars, begun by Royer et al. (2002). Spectra of 249 B8 to F2-type stars brighter than V=7 have been collected at Observatoire de Haute-Provence (OHP). Fourier transforms of several line profiles in the range 4200--4600 A are used to derive vsini from the frequency of the first zero. Statistical analysis of the sample indicates that measurement error mainly depends on vsini and this relative error of the rotational velocity is found to be about 5% on average. The systematic shift with respect to standard values from Slettebak et al. (1975), previously found in the first paper, is here confirmed. Comparisons with data from the literature agree with our findings: vsini values from Slettebak et al. are underestimated and the relation between both scales follows a linear law: vsini(new) = 1.03 vsini(old) + 7.7. Finally, these data are combined with those from the previous paper (Royer et al. 2002), together with the catalogue of Abt & Morrell (1995). The resulting sample includes some 2150 stars with homogenized rotational velocities.Comment: 16 pages, includes 13 figures, accepted in A&

Fractionalization of minimal excitations in integer quantum Hall edge channels

A theoretical study of the single electron coherence properties of Lorentzian and rectangular pulses is presented. By combining bosonization and the Floquet scattering approach, the effect of interactions on a periodic source of voltage pulses is computed exactly. When such excitations are injected into one of the channels of a system of two copropagating quantum Hall edge channels, they fractionalize into pulses whose charge and shape reflects the properties of interactions. We show that the dependence of fractionalization induced electron/hole pair production in the pulses amplitude contains clear signatures of the fractionalization of the individual excitations. We propose an experimental setup combining a source of Lorentzian pulses and an Hanbury Brown and Twiss interferometer to measure interaction induced electron/hole pair production and more generally to reconstruct single electron coherence of these excitations before and after their fractionalization.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl

The Next Geminga: Deep Multiwavelength Observations of a Neutron Star Identified with 3EG J1835+5918

We describe Chandra, HST, and radio observations that reveal a radio-quiet but magnetospherically active neutron star in the error circle of the high-energy gamma-ray source 3EG J1835+5918, the brightest of the unidentified EGRET sources at high Galactic latitude. A Chandra ACIS-S spectrum of the ultrasoft X-ray source RX J1836.2+5925, suggested by Mirabal & Halpern as the neutron star counterpart of 3EG J1835+5918, requires two components: a blackbody of T~3x10^5 K and a hard tail that can be parameterized as a power law of photon index Gamma~2. An upper limit of d < 800 pc can be derived from the blackbody fit under an assumption of R = 10 km. Deep optical imaging with the HST STIS CCD failed to detect this source to a limit of V > 28.5, thus f_X/f_V > 6000 and d > 250 pc assuming the X-ray fitted temperature for the full surface. Repeated observations with the 76 m Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank place an upper limit of < 0.1 mJy on the flux density at 1400 MHz for a pulsar with P > 0.1 s, and < 0.25 mJy for a ~10 ms pulsar at the location of RX J1836.2+5925. All of this evidence points to an older, possibly more distant version of the highly efficient gamma-ray pulsar Geminga, as the origin of the gamma-rays from 3EG J1835+5918.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Cosmic-ray propagation properties for an origin in SNRs

We have studied the impact of cosmic-ray acceleration in SNR on the spectra of cosmic-ray nuclei in the Galaxy using a series expansion of the propagation equation, which allows us to use analytical solutions for part of the problem and an efficient numerical treatment of the remaining equations and thus accurately describes the cosmic-ray propagation on small scales around their sources in three spatial dimensions and time. We found strong variations of the cosmic-ray nuclei flux by typically 20% with occasional spikes of much higher amplitude, but only minor changes in the spectral distribution. The locally measured spectra of primary cosmic rays fit well into the obtained range of possible spectra. We further showed that the spectra of the secondary element Boron show almost no variations, so that the above findings also imply significant fluctuations of the Boron-to-Carbon ratio. Therefore the commonly used method of determining CR propagation parameters by fitting secondary-to-primary ratios appears flawed on account of the variations that these ratios would show throughout the Galaxy.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Magnetic and thermodynamic properties of Sr_{2}LaFe_{3}O_{9}

Using a Dirac-Heisenberg Hamiltonian with biquadratic exchange interactions, we study the effect of iron disproportionation on the magnetic ordering, and describe the first-order magnetic transition occurring in the perovskite Sr_{2}LaFe_{3}O_{9}. Upon fitting the experimental data, we give an estimate of the exchange integrals for the antiferromagntic and ferromagnetic interactions, in agreement with previous works on kindered compounds. Spin-wave theory yields a magnon spectrum with a gapless antiferromagnetic mode together with two gapped ferromagnetic ones.Comment: 8 pages of RevTex, 5 figures (available upon request), submitted to J. Mag. Mag. Ma