1,594 research outputs found
From Theory to Action: A Saudi Arabian Case Study of Feminist Academic Activism against State Oppression
This article explores the intricate landscape of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, an authoritarian state within the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (GCC), where the pursuit of modernization strategically utilizes women’s issues as symbols of national identity and markers of progress. The article focuses on the transformative potential of academic activism, exemplified by the work of Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi, in countering oppression against women. It demonstrates how women navigate the realms of academia and activism to reshape gender dynamics and shape their nation’s modernization trajectory. By emphasizing the critical intersection between academic inquiry and activism, this article dispels the misconception that academia and activism are mutually exclusive. In contexts such as Saudi Arabia, where women’s rights face suppression, this intersection emerges as imperative for informed research and frontline advocacy, effectively addressing state-sponsored violence. Furthermore, this article critically evaluates the persistent challenge of feminist neo-Orientalist scholarship, which often distorts the depiction of Saudi women’s experiences. It offers a contribution to a nuanced understanding of women’s theorization that includes the ethico-political context within which women operate.<br/
CP violation and mass hierarchy at medium baselines in the large theta(13) era
The large value of theta(13) recently measured by rector and accelerator
experiments opens unprecedented opportunities for precision oscillation
physics. In this paper, we reconsider the physics reach of medium baseline
superbeams. For theta(13) ~ 9 degree we show that facilities at medium
baselines -- i.e. L ~ O(1000 km) -- remain optimal for the study of CP
violation in the leptonic sector, although their ultimate precision strongly
depends on experimental systematics. This is demonstrated in particular for
facilities of practical interest in Europe: a CERN to Gran Sasso and CERN to
Phyasalmi nu_mu beam based on the present SPS and on new high power 50 GeV
proton driver. Due to the large value of theta(13), spectral information can be
employed at medium baselines to resolve the sign ambiguity and determine the
neutrino mass hierarchy. However, longer baselines, where matter effects
dominate the nu_mu->nu_e transition, can achieve much stronger sensitivity to
sign(Delta m^2) even at moderate exposures.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, version to appear in EPJ
Event-related potentials associated with cognitive mechanisms underlying lexical-semantic processing in monolingual and bilingual 18-month-old children
Prior to their second birthday, children are sensitive to the semantic relatedness between spoken words. Yet, it remains unclear whether simultaneous second language acquisition affects this sensitivity. Here, we investigated the influence of early acquisition of two languages on the event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with lexical-semantic processing of spoken words in 18-month-old monolingual and bilingual children. Children were exposed to an auditory semantic priming task in French, while their ERPs were recorded. Word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike), and they were presented at two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA). The results revealed that only monolingual children exhibited a semantic priming effect at the short SOA while at the long SOA condition, both monolingual and bilingual children exhibited more pronounced ERPs in response to unrelated compared with related target words. This finding suggests that both language groups are sensitive to taxonomic relations between words but activation of sematic network might be less automatized or slower in bilingual children
A compact light readout system for longitudinally segmented shashlik calorimeters
The longitudinal segmentation of shashlik calorimeters is challenged by dead
zones and non-uniformities introduced by the light collection and readout
system. This limitation can be overcome by direct fiber-photosensor coupling,
avoiding routing and bundling of the wavelength shifter fibers and embedding
ultra-compact photosensors (SiPMs) in the bulk of the calorimeter. We present
the first experimental test of this readout scheme performed at the CERN PS-T9
beamline in 2015 with negative particles in the 1-5~GeV energy range. In this
paper, we demonstrate that the scheme does not compromise the energy resolution
and linearity compared with standard light collection and readout systems. In
addition, we study the performance of the calorimeter for partially contained
charged hadrons to assess the separation capability and the response of
the photosensors to direct ionization.Comment: To appear in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research,
Effect of handedness on the occurrence of semantic N400 priming effect in 18- and 24-month-old children
It is frequently stated that right-handedness reflects hemispheric dominance for language. Indeed, most right-handers process phonological aspects of language with the left hemisphere (and other aspects with the right hemisphere). However, given the overwhelming majority of right-handers and of individuals showing left-hemisphere language dominance, there is a high probability to be right-handed and at the same time process phonology within the left hemisphere even if there was no causal link between both. One way to understand the link between handedness and language lateralization is to observe how they co-develop. In this study, we investigated to what extent handedness is related to the occurrence of a right-hemisphere lateralized N400 event related potential in a semantic priming task in children. The N400 component in a semantic priming task is more negative for unrelated than for related word pairs. We have shown earlier that N400 effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites, whereas no significant effect was obtained over the left hemisphere sites. In 18-month-olds, this effect was observed only in those children with higher word production ability. Since handedness has also been associated with the vocabulary size at these ages, we investigated the relationship between the N400 and handedness in 18- and 24-months as a function of their vocabulary. The results showed that right-handers had significantly higher vocabulary size and more pronounced N400 effect over the right hemisphere than non-lateralized children, but only in the 18-month-old group. We propose that the emergences of right-handedness and right-distributed N400 effect are not causally related, but that both developmental processes reflect a general tendency to recruit the hemispheres in a lateralized manner. The lack of this relationship at 24 months further suggests that there is no direct causal relation between handedness and language lateralization. © 2014 Fagard, Sirri and Rämä
Fragmentation cross sections of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} ions of 0.3-10 A GeV on CR39, polyethylene and aluminum targets
New measurements of the total and partial fragmentation cross sections in the
energy range 0.3-10 A GeV of Fe^{26+}, Si^{14+} and C^{6+} beams on
polyethylene, CR39 and aluminum targets are presented. The exposures were made
at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA, and Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator
in Chiba (HIMAC), Japan. The CR39 nuclear track detectors were used to identify
the incident and survived beams and their fragments. The total fragmentation
cross sections for all targets are almost energy independent while they depend
on the target mass. The measured partial fragmentation cross sections are also
discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figures. Talk given at the 24th International
Conference on Nuclear Tracks in Solids, Bologna, Italy, 1-5 September 200
Rhabdomyosarcoma of Soft Tissues in an Adult Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis)
This report describes a spontaneously arising rhabdomyosarcoma of soft tissues in a brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis). The lesion was examined by means of histology, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The cross-reactivity of the primary antibodies used in the IHC was investigated in silico using the Protein Blast system. Microscopically, the lesion appeared as a 'small round cell' undifferentiated sarcoma with rare myotube formation. IHC identified expression of sarcomeric actin and vimentin and these molecules showed the highest protein sequence identity. Lower protein sequence identity coincided with negative immunolabelling for desmin, MyoD1, myogenin and CD3. TEM revealed myofibrils, but without a defined sarcomeric architecture. The diagnosis of solid alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma of soft tissues was achieved on the basis of histological and ultrastructural finding
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