Book review: Sexuality and social justice in Africa: rethinking homophobia and forging resistance

"Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa: Rethinking Homophobia and Forging Resistance." Marc Epprecht. Zed Books. July 2013. --- The persecution of people in Africa on the basis of their homosexual orientation has recently received considerable coverage in the media. However, much of the analysis thus far has been highly critical of African leadership and culture without considering local nuances, historical factors and external influences that are contributing to the problem. In this book, based on pioneering research on the history of homosexualities and engagement with current LGBTI activism, Marc Epprecht aims to provide a sympathetic overview of the issues at play. Clearly written and richly annotated, the book will prove to be a useful guide for academics, social workers, and activists, writes Jia Hui Lee

Empirical Modeling of Ducting Effects on a Mobile Microwave Link Over a Sea Surface

In this paper, signal enhancement due to the ducts over a sea surface is experimentally investigated and modeled. The investigation is carried out through the study of air-to-ground mobile microwave links over a tropical ocean with low airborne altitudes (0.37 - 1.83 km) at C band (5.7 GHz). The distance-dependence of the ducting induced enhancement (with reference to the free-space propagation) is linearly modeled, and the physical variations of the ducts are found to be Gaussian distributed. Empirical ducting coefficients and parameters for the Gaussian function are estimated and provided for the prediction of the distance-dependent signal enhancement due to the ducts in similar scenarios

Nodes in the Gap Function of LaFePO, the Gap Function of the Fe(Se,Te) Systems, and the STM Signature of the s±_{\pm} Pairing

We reiterate, in more details, our previous proposal of using quasi-particle interference to determine the pairing form factor in iron-based superconductors. We also present our functional renormalization group(FRG) results on LaFePO and Fe(Se,Te) superconductors. In particular we found that the leading pairing channel in LaFePO is nodal s$_{\pm}$, with nodes on electron Fermi surfaces. For Fe(Se,Te) system we found fully gapped s$_{\pm}$ pairing, with substantial gap anisotropy on electron Fermi surfaces, and large gap is concentrated in regions with dominant $xy$ orbital character. We further fit the form factor obtained by FRG to real space orbital basis pairing picture, which shows more clearly the differences between different iron-based superconductors.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, RevTex4, references update