Emotions of Protest in Mark 11−13: Responding to an Affective Turn in Social-Scientific Discourse

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Bloomsbury Academic in Matthew and Mark Across Perspectives on 11th Feb 2016, available online: http://www.bloomsbury.com/ 9780567655905Here I want to imaginatively juxtapose Barton’s attention to the emotions with Telford’s close reading of the fig tree and temple incident to probe emotional dimensions of ‘protest’ encountered in the context of Mark chapters 11−13. For, as the sociologist James Jasper has shown, as a fundamental grounding of both social movements and actions, ‘affective and reactive emotions enter into protest activities at every stage.’ Mark’s specific casting of the emotional fabric of these chapters, as will be seen, seems purposefully designed to rouse within his audience emotions which can be channelled into endurance in the face of persecution, and social and ideological protest against the status quo

Disease and Disability Metaphors in Gospel Worlds

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordThe use of leprosy and blindness metaphors in the Gospels tends to stigmatize individuals as other. Untouchability was associated with social death and sight with the navigation of both material and moral terrain. Though the majority of disease and disability metaphors in the Gospels fall within this category, there are some exceptions that subvert the normative (abled) perspective. These exceptions provide promising spaces for disability advocates to challenge ableist links between disease, disability, and malevolence, and to imagine counter-narratives in which disease and disability represent more positive themes and identities

Evil and the Body of Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Disability, Disgust and Tropes of Monstrosity in 2 Maccabees 9:1−12

Through a hermeneutical lens structured on the intersections of disability, disgust, and tropes of monstrosity, here I will probe the discursive and bodily act of expelling evil through the narration of the body of a notorious villain of the Second Temple period, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, as it is told in 2 Maccabees 9:1─12. This narrative has long been seen to number among “death of tyrant type scenes” in which tormentors are brought to account for offending the divine, informing so-called “de mortibus persecutorum literature.” Relatively few commentators have, however, probed Antiochus’s actual embodied performance here. This is surprising given that 2 Macc 9 seems (in contrast to other narrations of Antiochus’s death) to intentionally to foreground bodily materiality and invoke sensory stimuli to intrude as macabre spectacles from which the audience physically recoils. As will be seen, this passage ultimately vomits out Antiochus’s liminal body and the ontological, ideological, and spatial crises it represents as an abhorrent, foul, and repugnant embodiment of evil

Unsteady effects during resistance tests on a ship model in a towing tank

It is known that there are oscillations in the wave resistance during the constantvelocity phase of a towing-tank resistance test on a ship model. In this work, the unsteady thin-ship resistance theory has been applied to this case. The results have been compared with experiment data obtained using a towing carriage the velocity history of which can be programmed. It is demonstrated here that generally excellent correlation exists between the theory and the experiments. In particular, one can predict the influence of Froude number, rate of acceleration, and type of smoothing of the acceleration on the characteristics of the oscillations. These characteristics include the amplitude, rate of decay, frequency, and phasing of the oscillations in the curve of wave resistance versus time

Vital Johnannine Signs: 'Crip-tic' Enactments of a Man at the Pool (John 5:1-18)

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Brill via the DOI in this record.John 5:1-18 is here interpreted ‘crip-tically’ (through a crip hermeneutic) which seeks to pay due attention to the man at the pool and his ‘enactments’. In order to subvert notions of what Alison Kafer has termed ‘curative time’, here this sign is seen to afford something other than a normalisation or physical healing of a body. Inspiration is drawn from two recent disability arts exhibits – Liz Crow’s Bedding Out (2012-2013) and Noëmi Lakmaier’s One Morning in May (2012) – and their respective illustrations of crip time and movement to highlight how the man in John 5:1-18 too has the potential to subversively refigure ‘normative’ understandings of time, space and embodiment within the Gospel

Nuclear ribosomal DNA diversity of a cotton pest (Rotylenchulus reniformis) in the United States

The reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) has emerged as a major cotton pest in the United States. A recent analysis of over 20 amphimictic populations of this pest from the US and three othercountries has shown no sequence variation at the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) despite the region’s usual variability. We investigated this unexpected outcome by amplifying, cloningand sequencing two regions of the nuclear ribosomal DNA (18S, ITS1) to ascertain whether any variation occurred within and among populations of reniform nematodes in Alabama, US. Both thenrITS1 and the relatively conserved 18S region showed a fairly substantial amount of variation among populations. The identity among ITS sequences ranged from 1.00 to 0.86, while sequence identity at the18S ranged from 1.00 to 0.948. We conclude that variation does exist in these sequences in reniform nematodes, and the earlier report showing no ribosomal ITS variation in this pest might have beencaused by preferential amplification of a conserved ITS paralog. Current and future application towards resistance in cotton varieties to this pest requires reliable information on the molecular variability of thenematode in cotton-growing areas

Spread Supersymmetry

In the multiverse the scale of SUSY breaking, \tilde{m} = F_X/M_*, may scan and environmental constraints on the dark matter density may exclude a large range of \tilde{m} from the reheating temperature after inflation down to values that yield a LSP mass of order a TeV. After selection effects, the distribution for \tilde{m} may prefer larger values. A single environmental constraint from dark matter can then lead to multi-component dark matter, including both axions and the LSP, giving a TeV-scale LSP lighter than the corresponding value for single-component LSP dark matter. If SUSY breaking is mediated to the SM sector at order X^* X, only squarks, sleptons and one Higgs doublet acquire masses of order \tilde{m}. The gravitino mass is lighter by a factor of M_*/M_Pl and the gaugino masses are suppressed by a further loop factor. This Spread SUSY spectrum has two versions; the Higgsino masses are generated in one from supergravity giving a wino LSP and in the other radiatively giving a Higgsino LSP. The environmental restriction on dark matter fixes the LSP mass to the TeV domain, so that the squark and slepton masses are order 10^3 TeV and 10^6 TeV in these two schemes. We study the spectrum, dark matter and collider signals of these two versions of Spread SUSY. The Higgs is SM-like and lighter than 145 GeV; monochromatic photons in cosmic rays arise from dark matter annihilations in the halo; exotic short charged tracks occur at the LHC, at least for the wino LSP; and there are the eventual possibilities of direct detection of dark matter and detailed exploration of the TeV-scale states at a future linear collider. Gauge coupling unification is as in minimal SUSY theories. If SUSY breaking is mediated at order X, a much less hierarchical spectrum results---similar to that of the MSSM, but with the superpartner masses 1--2 orders of magnitude larger than in natural theories.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figure

Origins of Hidden Sector Dark Matter I: Cosmology

We present a systematic cosmological study of a universe in which the visible sector is coupled, albeit very weakly, to a hidden sector comprised of its own set of particles and interactions. Assuming that dark matter (DM) resides in the hidden sector and is charged under a stabilizing symmetry shared by both sectors, we determine all possible origins of weak-scale DM allowed within this broad framework. We show that DM can arise only through a handful of mechanisms, lending particular focus to Freeze-Out and Decay and Freeze-In, as well as their variations involving late time re-annihilations of DM and DM particle anti-particle asymmetries. Much like standard Freeze-Out, where the abundance of DM depends only on the annihilation cross-section of the DM particle, these mechanisms depend only on a very small subset of physical parameters, many of which may be measured directly at the LHC. In particular, we show that each DM production mechanism is associated with a distinctive window in lifetimes and cross-sections for particles which may be produced in the near future. We evaluate prospects for employing the LHC to definitively reconstruct the origin of DM in a companion paper.Comment: 32 pages, 19 figures; v2: references added, published versio

Communicating personalized risks from COVID-19: guidelines from an empirical study.

As increasing amounts of data accumulate on the effects of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the risk factors that lead to poor outcomes, it is possible to produce personalized estimates of the risks faced by groups of people with different characteristics. The challenge of how to communicate these then becomes apparent. Based on empirical work (total n = 5520, UK) supported by in-person interviews with the public and physicians, we make recommendations on the presentation of such information. These include: using predominantly percentages when communicating the absolute risk, but also providing, for balance, a format which conveys a contrasting (higher) perception of risk (expected frequency out of 10 000); using a visual linear scale cut at an appropriate point to illustrate the maximum risk, explained through an illustrative 'persona' who might face that highest level of risk; and providing context to the absolute risk through presenting a range of other 'personas' illustrating people who would face risks of a wide range of different levels. These 'personas' should have their major risk factors (age, existing health conditions) described. By contrast, giving people absolute likelihoods of other risks they face in an attempt to add context was considered less helpful. We note that observed effect sizes generally were small. However, even small effects are meaningful and relevant when scaled up to population levels