Reframing Disability through an Ecocritical Perspective in Sara Mesa\u27a \u3cem\u3eCara de pan\u3c/em\u3e

This article establishes a dialogue between disability studies and ecocriticism to analyze Sara Mesa’s novel Cara de pan (2018), which narrates the relationship between a thirteen-year-old girl bullied at school and a fifty-four-year-old man with an atypical appearance who fixates on limited topics. The analysis examines the hegemony of normativity and dominant social narratives about disability, gender, and sexuality. Grounded in the idea that people with disabilities actively intervene in their environment, the essay argues that the characters’ environmental empathy supports the need for a diversity of experiences and perspectives, positively resituating disability and autism

Unorthodox Theories and Beings: Science, Technology, and Women in the Narratives of Rosa Montero

This essay analyzes Montero\u27s representation of female figures connected to science and technology in the narratives Instrucciones para salvar el mundo (2008; Instructions to save the world), Lágrimas en la lluvia (2011; Tears in Rain, 2012), La ridícula idea de no volver a verte (2013; The ridiculous idea of never seeing you again), and El peso del corazón (2015; Weight of the Heart, 2016)

Bell inequality violation by entangled single photon states generated from a laser, a LED or a Halogen lamp

In single-particle or intraparticle entanglement, two degrees of freedom of a single particle, e.g., momentum and polarization of a single photon, are entangled. Single-particle entanglement (SPE) provides a source of non classical correlations which can be exploited both in quantum communication protocols and in experimental tests of noncontextuality based on the Kochen-Specker theorem. Furthermore, SPE is robust under decoherence phenomena. Here, we show that single-particle entangled states of single photons can be produced from attenuated sources of light, even classical ones. To experimentally certify the entanglement, we perform a Bell test, observing a violation of the Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (CHSH) inequality. On the one hand, we show that this entanglement can be achieved even in a classical light beam, provided that first-order coherence is maintained between the degrees of freedom involved in the entanglement. On the other hand, we prove that filtered and attenuated light sources provide a flux of independent SPE photons that, from a statistical point of view, are indistinguishable from those generated by a single photon source. This has important consequences, since it demonstrates that cheap, compact, and low power entangled photon sources can be used for a range of quantum technology applications

REPRESENTATIONS OF STRANGER AND NON-STRANGER HOMICIDE: A QUALITATIVE CONTENT ANALYSIS OF CANADIAN NEWS MEDIA

The news media play a significant role in shaping public narratives about homicide by the particular incidents that journalists choose to report – or not report – on. Newspapers, in particular, lack the benefit of constant imagery, special effects, and live-action reporting that T.V. news reports have, and, as a result, forces newspapers to construct sensational and newsworthy homicide stories in order to be competitive and gain readership. To achieve this, newspapers often disproportionately report on bizarre and atypical homicide incidents, which most frequently involve a stranger or unknown assailant. While there is substantive literature surrounding the newsworthiness of homicide incidents in the United States and elsewhere, an accurate and comprehensive understanding of how the news media portray incidents of stranger homicide compared to non-stranger homicide in Canadian newspapers is lacking. In this research project, I address this gap by coding 359 Canadian newspaper articles on reported homicide incidents and analyzing this data to identify key themes, which will be used to contextualize larger systemic issues in society, and provide suggestions for future research. This research project used media constructions of crime to inform its analysis of the three major themes: the demonization of offenders, gendered blame of female victims and offenders, and the intersection between culture, class, and crime. The results of this data collection and my subsequent analysis of the themes revealed three unique findings which contribute to the literature. First, an analysis of the demonization of offenders revealed the ‘devaluing of rehabilitation’ as a prominent theme surrounding the construction of stranger offenders. This was an interesting and unique finding that was not previously found in the literature. This suggests that additional research needs to be conducted to reveal the implications of news media’s framing of violent crime and the ensuing punishment and punitive attitudes towards crime from the public. In addition, many of the articles analyzed in this study used gendered discourse to construct the female victims and offenders in homicide cases. Most research on media constructions of female victims and offenders discuss the imbalance between portrayals of women and men in news media discourse and highlight the obscuring of men’s violence towards women while simultaneously blaming females for their own victimization. This research confirms this notion and also introduces the responsibilization of women other than the primary victim or offender as a distinct finding. Lastly, I present and discuss the intersection between social class and crime in the news media. Analysis of the data collected in this study illustrated that the news media construct crime as emerging from ‘deviant’ cultures as opposed to rooting crime in the social conditions from which they manifest. This results in further marginalization of particular individuals and groups in society who are already discriminated against (e.g., racial minorities, the lower-class, etc.). Overall, the present study attempts to expand general knowledge and understanding of news media constructions of stranger homicide compared to non-stranger homicide, and the impact such framing could potentially have on public discourse surrounding certain marginalized individuals and groups in society, particularly visible minorities and victims of domestic violence

Detection of Contact Binaries Using Sparse High Phase Angle Lightcurves

We show that candidate contact binary asteroids can be efficiently identified from sparsely sampled photometry taken at phase angles >60deg. At high phase angle, close/contact binary systems produce distinctive lightcurves that spend most of the time at maximum or minimum (typically >1mag apart) brightness with relatively fast transitions between the two. This means that a few (~5) sparse observations will suffice to measure the large range of variation and identify candidate contact binary systems. This finding can be used in the context of all-sky surveys to constrain the fraction of contact binary near-Earth objects. High phase angle lightcurve data can also reveal the absolute sense of the spin.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJ

PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS OF THE SILURIAN AFRO-SOUTH AMERICAN BRACHIOPODS ANABAIA, HARRINGTONINA AND CLARKEIA: NEW INSIGHTS FROM THEIR ONTOGENY

Hundreds of specimens of the rhynchonellide brachiopod Clarkeia antisiensis (d’Orbigny) recovered from the stratotype of the Tarabuco Formation of Bolivia form a complete series of growth stages providing a good opportunity for reconstructing its ontogenetic development. The fact that juvenile specimens of C. antisiensis are nearly indistinguishable from adult individuals of Harringtonina australis Boucot strongly suggests that Clarkeia evolved from Harringtonina by the heterochronic process of peramorphosis. On the other hand, adult specimens of both the Brazilian Anabaia paraia Clarke and the Precordilleran specimrens of Anabaia never exceed the youngest ontogenetic stage of Harringtonina australis, to which share small hinge plates supported by a septalium-like structure and absence of cardinal process. The overlap of adult morphology of Anabaia with the juvenile morphology of Harringtonina australis allows interpreting this succession as an evolutionary lineage showing increasingly more peramorphic characters. This hypothesis is supported by the correlation between the stratigraphic record of taxa and the inferred developmental sequence being Anabaia the oldest member (Early Silurian), Harringtonina australis the intermediate form (Wenlock-Ludlow), and Clarkeia antisiensis the youngest (Pridoli). This interpretation raises a systematic problem because the leptocoeliids Anabaia and Harringtonina are currently classified within the superfamily Uncinuloidea whereas Clarkeia is placed among the Rhynchotrematoidea. If the hypothesis is proven, these superfamilies, as presently constituted, would be polyphyletic groups

A search for magnetic fields on central stars in planetary nebulae

One of the possible mechanisms responsible for the panoply of shapes in planetary nebulae is the presence of magnetic fields that drive the ejection of ionized material during the proto-planetary nebula phase. Therefore, detecting magnetic fields in such objects is of key importance for understanding their dynamics. Still, magnetic fields have not been detected using polarimetry in the central stars of planetary nebulae. Circularly polarized light spectra have been obtained with the Focal Reducer and Low Dispersion Spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory and the Intermediate dispersion Spectrograph and Imaging System at the William Herschel Telescope. Nineteen planetary nebulae spanning very different morphology and evolutionary stages have been selected. Most of central stars have been observed at different rotation phases to point out evidence of magnetic variability. In this paper, we present the result of two observational campaigns aimed to detect and measure the magnetic field in the central stars of planetary nebulae on the basis of low resolution spectropolarimetry. In the limit of the adopted method, we can state that large scale fields of kG order are not hosted on the central star of planetary nebulae.Comment: Paper accepted to be published in Astronomy and Astrophysics on 20/01/201

Resolving the radio nebula around beta Lyrae

In this paper we present high spatial resolution radio images of the puzzling binary system beta Lyrae obtained with MERLIN at 5 GHz. We find a nebula surrounding the binary with a brightness temperature of 11000+-700K approximately 40AU across. This definitively confirms the thermal origin of the radio emission, which is consistent with emission from the wind of the B6-8II component (mass loss of order of 10^-7 Msun per year), ionized by the radiation field of the hotter companion. This nebula, surrounding the binary, is the proof that beta Layrae evolved in a non-conservative way, i. e. not all the mass lost by the primary is accretted by the secondary, and present measurements indicate that almost 0.015Msun had been lost from the system since the onset of the Roche lobe overflow phase. Moreover, the nebula is aligned with the jet-like structures inferred from recent optical measurements, indicating a possible connection among them.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Accepted for publication in A&