AGRIBUSINESS' RESPONSE TO GLOBALIZATION: THE MEXICAN EXPERIENCE

International Relations/Trade,

Youth Lifestyle in a Moslem Magazine: a Reception Analysis on “Muslimah” Readers

This research is about whether or not Indonesian female youth Moslem are easily accepting religious values packaged with popular icons in a Moslem magazine. In this magazine, teenagers do not have to wear long, loose dark colored clothes, but they may wear light colored, tight and trendy dresses known as modern hijab. The main goal of this research is understanding female youths\u27 reception over Muslimah magazine applying Stuart Hall\u27s encoding and decoding approach. Primary data were collected by in-depth interview toward selected readers. The results are: (1) the ability of parents to control their teenagers\u27 religious behavior affect teenagers\u27 reading over Muslimah. (2) Informants who live with their parents younger than 20 years old, and have strong connection with religious peer group—tend to build negotiated readings. (3) Informants who do not depend on their parents—older than 20 years old, and have professional jobs—tend to rely more on mass media for seeking religious information more than their peer group or parents. Therefore, they tend to agree with Muslimah coverage which emphasized more on modern Moslem youth lifestyle than on its syariah (religious values)

Zero modes and charged Skyrmions in graphene bilayer

We show that the electric charge of the Skyrmion in the vector order parameters that characterize the quantum anomalous spin Hall state and the layer-antiferromagnet in a graphene bilayer is four and zero, respectively. The result is based on the demonstration that a vortex configuration in two broken symmetry states in bilayer graphene with the quadratic band crossing has the number of zero modes doubled relative to the single layer. The doubling can be understood as a result of Kramers' theorem implied by the "pseudo time reversal" symmetry of the vortex Hamiltonian. Disordering the quantum anomalous spin Hall state by Skyrmion condensation should produce a superconductor of an elementary charge 4e.Comment: 4+ pages, one table, one figure; (v2) improved pedagogy, new expression for the Pontryagin index derived, additional explanations; (v3) new and updated references, minor typos corrected, published versio

Sustainable Hydrogen from Bio-Oil - Catalytic Steam Reforming of Acetic Acid as a Model Oxygenate

Studies were conducted with acetic acid (HAc) as model oxygenate for the design of active and stable catalysts for steam reforming of bio-oil. Pt/ZrO2 catalysts were prepared by wet impregnation technique. The Pt/ZrO2 catalysts showed high activities at initial time on stream, but lost its activity for steam reforming (H2 production) rapidly. During HAc/H2O reaction over Pt/ZrO2, conversion was close to 100% and constant for 3 hr, however, yields of products changed with time. In the beginning (5 min), H2 and CO2 were the main products, CH4 and CO were observed in small quantities. During HAc/H2O reaction over ZrO2 (without Pt), HAc conversion was close to 90%. The conversion of HAc and yields of the products were constant for 3 hr. However, no steam reforming activity (H2 and CO) was observed, and only acetone and CO2 were observed as products. Both Pt/ZrO2 and ZrO2 were very active for HAc conversion. However, H2 and CO, i.e., steam reforming products, were produced only over Pt/ZrO2 and not over ZrO2. ZrO2 showed acetone yields similar to those observed over Pt/ZrO2 after 25 min time on stream. The presence of acetone in the product mixture and formation of deposits on ZrO2 indicated a role for acetone in catalyst deactivation

Background Free Quantum Gravity based on Conformal Gravity and Conformal Field Theory on M^4

We study four dimensional quantum gravity formulated as a certain conformal field theory at the ultraviolet fixed point, whose dynamics is described by the combined system of Riegert-Wess-Zumino and Weyl actions. Background free nature comes out as quantum diffeomorphism symmetry by quantizing the conformal factor of the metric field nonperturbatively. In this paper, Minkowski background M^4 is employed in practice. The generator of quantum diffeomorphism that forms conformal algebra is constructed. Using it, we study the composite scalar operator that becomes a good conformal field. We find that physical fields are described by such scalar fields with conformal dimension 4. Consequently, tensor fields outside the unitarity bound are excluded. Computations of quantum algebra on M^4 are carried out in the coordinate space using operator products of the fields. The nilpotent BRST operator is also constructed.Comment: 43 pages, eqs.(3.9) and (6.18) correcte

Optical transmission through a polarization preserving single mode optical fiber at two Ar(+) laser wavelengths

The transmission characteristics of two Ar(+) laser wavelengths through a twenty meter Panda type Polarization Preserving Single Mode Optical Fiber (PPSMOF) were measured. The measurements were done with both single and multi-longitudinal mode radiation. In the single longitudinal mode case, a degrading Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) is observed as a backward scattering loss. By choosing an optimum coupling system and manipulating the input polarization, the threshold of the SBS onset can be raised and the transmission efficiency can be increased

Precise LIGO Lensing Rate Predictions for Binary Black Holes

We show how LIGO is expected to detect coalescing binary black holes at $z>1$, that are lensed by the intervening galaxy population. Gravitational magnification, $\mu$, strengthens gravitational wave signals by $\sqrt{\mu}$, without altering their frequencies, which if unrecognised leads to an underestimate of the event redshift and hence an overestimate of the binary mass. High magnifications can be reached for coalescing binaries because the region of intense gravitational wave emission during coalescence is so small ($\sim$100km), permitting very close projections between lensing caustics and gravitational-wave events. Our simulations incorporate accurate waveforms convolved with the LIGO power spectral density. Importantly, we include the detection dependence on sky position and orbital orientation, which for the LIGO configuration translates into a wide spread in observed redshifts and chirp masses. Currently we estimate a detectable rate of lensed events \rateEarly{}, that rises to \rateDesign{}, at LIGO's design sensitivity limit, depending on the high redshift rate of black hole coalescence.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure