773 research outputs found
Mothers’ Rights are Human Rights: Reflections on Activism and History
In popular discourse today, mothers are often set in opposition to political and evenhuman rights. Conservatives see women’s “right to choose” as an assault on the fetus’s human rights. Feminists, recalling the equality vs. difference debate, stress the incompatibilityof organizing for mothers’ rights and advancing women’s rights more broadly. Advocates of “mothers’ rights,” at least in the U.S. and Canada, usually focuson issues—such as breastfeeding, child custody, and worklife balance—associated more with the quality of life for the middle class than with conventional human rights.This article argues for a new political discourse calling for mothers’ human rights. It first reflects on two pivotal moments when the debate over mothers’ rights and entitlements entered the mainstream: the call for motherhood endowment around 1920, and the demand for welfare rights fifty years later. Since the failure of those movements, the circumstances facing U.S. mothers today has become so dire that we cannot afford not to talk about mothers’ human rights
An investigation of the impact of young children's self-knowledge of trustworthiness on school adjustment: a test of the realistic self-knowledge and positive illusion models
The study aimed to examine the relationship between self-knowledge of trustworthiness and young children’s school adjustment. One hundred and seventy-three (84 male and 89 female) children from school years 1 and 2 in the United Kingdom (mean age 6 years 2 months) were tested twice over one year. Children’s trustworthiness was assessed using: (a) self-report at Time 1 and Time 2, (b) peers’ reports at Time 1 and Time 2, and (c) teacher-reports at Time 2. School adjustment was assessed by child-rated school-liking and the Short-Form Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment. Longitudinal quadratic relationships were found between school adjustment and children’s self-knowledge, using peer-reported trustworthiness as a reference: more accurate self-knowledge of trustworthiness predicted increases in school adjustment. Comparable concurrent quadratic relationships were found between teacher-rated school adjustment and children’s self-knowledge, using teacher-reported trustworthiness as a reference, at Time 2. The findings support the conclusion that young children’s psychosocial adjustment is best accounted for by the realistic self-knowledge model (Colvin & Block, 1994)
Political Theory, Political Science, And The End Of Civic Engagement
Within a span of fifteen years civic engagement has become a cottage industry in political science and political theory, but the term has now outlived its usefulness and exemplifies Giovanni Sartori\u27s worry about conceptual stretching. This article traces civic engagement\u27s ascension as a catch-all term for almost anything that citizens might happen to do together or alone, and illustrates the confusion that its popularity has occasioned. It proposes that civic engagement meet a well-deserved end, to be replaced with a more nuanced and descriptive set of engagements: political, social, and moral. It also examines the appeal of engagement itself, a term that entails both attention and energy. Attention and energy are the mainsprings of politics and most other challenging human endeavors. But they can be invested politically, or in associative pursuits, or in moral reasoning and follow-through, and those types of engagement can, but need not, coincide. We should be asking which kinds of engagement-which kinds of attention and energetic activity-make democracy work, and how they might be measured and promoted
Effects of nanoparticles and surfactant on droplets in shear flow
We present three-dimensional numerical simulations, employing the
well-established lattice Boltzmann method, and investigate similarities and
differences between surfactants and nanoparticles as additives at a fluid-fluid
interface. We report on their respective effects on the surface tension of such
an interface. Next, we subject a fluid droplet to shear and explore the
deformation properties of the droplet, its inclination angle relative to the
shear flow, the dynamics of the particles at the interface, and the possibility
of breakup. Particles are seen not to affect the surface tension of the
interface, although they do change the overall interfacial free energy. The
particles do not remain homogeneously distributed over the interface, but form
clusters in preferred regions that are stable for as long as the shear is
applied. However, although the overall structure remains stable, individual
nanoparticles roam the droplet interface, with a frequency of revolution that
is highest in the middle of the droplet interface, normal to the shear flow,
and increases with capillary number. We recover Taylor's law for small
deformation of droplets when surfactant or particles are added to the droplet
interface. The effect of surfactant is captured in the capillary number, but
the inertia of adsorbed massive particles increases deformation at higher
capillary number and eventually leads to easier breakup of the droplet.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures. The figure quality was reduced to fulfill
arXiv's file size restriction
Controlling the quantum dynamics of a mesoscopic spin bath in diamond
Understanding and mitigating decoherence is a key challenge for quantum
science and technology. The main source of decoherence for solid-state spin
systems is the uncontrolled spin bath environment. Here, we demonstrate quantum
control of a mesoscopic spin bath in diamond at room temperature that is
composed of electron spins of substitutional nitrogen impurities. The resulting
spin bath dynamics are probed using a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre
electron spin as a magnetic field sensor. We exploit the spin bath control to
dynamically suppress dephasing of the NV spin by the spin bath. Furthermore, by
combining spin bath control with dynamical decoupling, we directly measure the
coherence and temporal correlations of different groups of bath spins. These
results uncover a new arena for fundamental studies on decoherence and enable
novel avenues for spin-based magnetometry and quantum information processing
Observation of anomalous decoherence effect in a quantum bath at room temperature
Decoherence of quantum objects is critical to modern quantum sciences and
technologies. It is generally believed that stronger noises cause faster
decoherence. Strikingly, recent theoretical research discovers the opposite
case for spins in quantum baths. Here we report experimental observation of the
anomalous decoherence effect for the electron spin-1 of a nitrogen-vacancy
centre in high-purity diamond at room temperature. We demonstrate that under
dynamical decoupling, the double-transition can have longer coherence time than
the single-transition, even though the former couples to the nuclear spin bath
as twice strongly as the latter does. The excellent agreement between the
experimental and the theoretical results confirms the controllability of the
weakly coupled nuclear spins in the bath, which is useful in quantum
information processing and quantum metrology.Comment: 22 pages, related paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.557
Effectiveness of a community group and home based exercise intervention on the maintenance of vertebral body height and prevention of vertebral compression fractures in older adults: The ProAct65+bone study [Abstract]
Effectiveness of a community group and home based exercise intervention on the maintenance of vertebral body height and prevention of vertebral compression fractures in older adults: The ProAct65+bone study [Abstract
Sensing electric fields using single diamond spins
The ability to sensitively detect charges under ambient conditions would be a
fascinating new tool benefitting a wide range of researchers across
disciplines. However, most current techniques are limited to low-temperature
methods like single-electron transistors (SET), single-electron electrostatic
force microscopy and scanning tunnelling microscopy. Here we open up a new
quantum metrology technique demonstrating precision electric field measurement
using a single nitrogen-vacancy defect centre(NV) spin in diamond. An AC
electric field sensitivity reaching ~ 140V/cm/\surd Hz has been achieved. This
corresponds to the electric field produced by a single elementary charge
located at a distance of ~ 150 nm from our spin sensor with averaging for one
second. By careful analysis of the electronic structure of the defect centre,
we show how an applied magnetic field influences the electric field sensing
properties. By this we demonstrate that diamond defect centre spins can be
switched between electric and magnetic field sensing modes and identify
suitable parameter ranges for both detector schemes. By combining magnetic and
electric field sensitivity, nanoscale detection and ambient operation our study
opens up new frontiers in imaging and sensing applications ranging from
material science to bioimaging
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