247 research outputs found
Contesting the cruel treatment of abortion-seeking women
NOTICE: this is the authorâs version of a work that was accepted for publication in Reproductive Health Matters. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH MATTERS, [VOL 22, ISSUE 44, (2014)] DOI: 10.1016/S0968-8080(14)44818-
Suprahyoid approach to base-of-tongue squamous cell carcinoma
Objective. To evaluate the suprahyoid approach to treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the base of the tongue at Groote Schuur Hospital between 1999 and 2004. Design and method. Retrospective analysis was done of patients with base-of-tongue squamous cell carcinoma treated using the suprahyoid approach. Results. Seventeen patients underwent treatment for base-of-tongue squamous cell carcinoma utilising the suprahyoid approach. Complete medical records were available for 15 of these patients. The most common presenting symptoms were neck mass (40%) and referred otalgia (33%). Alcohol was a risk factor in more patients (64%) than smoking (47%). Adverse pathological findings were present in less than 50% of patients (involved margins 20%, perineural invasion 40%, vascular invasion 33%). Functional outcome in terms of speech intelligibility was excellent and there were minimal swallowing problems, with most patients using compensatory strategies and dietary modification. There were 2 subsequent deaths (13%) as a result of distant metastasis and a second primary. Conclusion. The suprahyoid approach to treatment of base-of-tongue squamous cell carcinoma provides good exposure, local tumour control and excellent functional outcome
Quadratic Word Equations with Length Constraints, Counter Systems, and Presburger Arithmetic with Divisibility
Word equations are a crucial element in the theoretical foundation of
constraint solving over strings, which have received a lot of attention in
recent years. A word equation relates two words over string variables and
constants. Its solution amounts to a function mapping variables to constant
strings that equate the left and right hand sides of the equation. While the
problem of solving word equations is decidable, the decidability of the problem
of solving a word equation with a length constraint (i.e., a constraint
relating the lengths of words in the word equation) has remained a
long-standing open problem. In this paper, we focus on the subclass of
quadratic word equations, i.e., in which each variable occurs at most twice. We
first show that the length abstractions of solutions to quadratic word
equations are in general not Presburger-definable. We then describe a class of
counter systems with Presburger transition relations which capture the length
abstraction of a quadratic word equation with regular constraints. We provide
an encoding of the effect of a simple loop of the counter systems in the theory
of existential Presburger Arithmetic with divisibility (PAD). Since PAD is
decidable, we get a decision procedure for quadratic words equations with
length constraints for which the associated counter system is \emph{flat}
(i.e., all nodes belong to at most one cycle). We show a decidability result
(in fact, also an NP algorithm with a PAD oracle) for a recently proposed
NP-complete fragment of word equations called regular-oriented word equations,
together with length constraints. Decidability holds when the constraints are
additionally extended with regular constraints with a 1-weak control structure.Comment: 18 page
Cloaked Facebook pages: Exploring fake Islamist propaganda in social media
This research analyses cloaked Facebook pages that are created to spread political propaganda by cloaking a user profile and imitating the identity of a political opponent in order to spark hateful and aggressive reactions. This inquiry is pursued through a multi-sited online ethnographic case study of Danish Facebook pages disguised as radical Islamist pages, which provoked racist and anti-Muslim reactions as well as negative sentiments towards refugees and immigrants in Denmark in general. Drawing on Jessie Danielsâ critical insights into cloaked websites, this research furthermore analyses the epistemological, methodological and conceptual challenges of online propaganda. It enhances our understanding of disinformation and propaganda in an increasingly interactive social media environment and contributes to a critical inquiry into social media and subversive politics
âHow is these kids meant to make it out the ghetto now?â Community cohesion and communities of laughter in British multicultural comedy
This article uses readings of Mark Mylodâs Ali G Indahouse, Joe Cornishâs Attack the Block, and Chris Morrisâs Four Lions to argue against a political trend for laying the blame for the purported failure of British multiculturalism at the hands of individual communities. Through my readings of these comic films, I suggest that popular constructions of âcommunityâ based on assumptions about cultural and religious homogeneity are rightly challenged, and new communities are created through shared laughter. Comedyâs structural engagement with taboo means that stereotypes which have gained currency through media and political discourse that seeks to demonize particular groups of young men (Muslims and gang members, for example) are foregrounded. By being brought to the forefront and exposed, these stereotypes can be engaged with and challenged through ridicule and demonstrations of incongruity. Furthermore, I suggest that power relations are made explicit through joking structures that work to include or exclude, meaning that the comedies can draw and redraw communities of laughter in a manner that effectively challenges notions of communities as discrete, homogeneous, and closely connected to cultural heritage. The article works against constructions of British Muslims as the problem community par excellence by using multicultural discourse to contextualize the representation of British Muslims and demonstrate how the discourse has repressed the role of political, social, and economic structures in a focus on âself-segregatingâ communities
Border collapse and boundary maintenance: militarisation and the micro-geographies of violence in IsraelâPalestine
This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Drawing upon subaltern geopolitics and feminist geography, this article explores how militarisation shapes micro-geographies of violence and occupation in IsraelâPalestine. While accounts of spectacular and large-scale political violence dominate popular imaginaries and academic analyses in/of the region, a shift to the micro-scale foregrounds the relationship between power, politics and space at the level of everyday life. In the context of IsraelâPalestine, micro-geographies have revealed dynamic strategies for âgetting byâ or âdealing withâ the occupation, as practiced by Palestinian populations in the face of spatialised violence. However, this article considers how Jewish Israelis actively shape the spatial micro-politics of power within and along the borders of the Israeli state. Based on 12 months of ethnographic research in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem during 2010â2011, an analysis of everyday narratives illustrates how relations of violence, occupation and domination rely upon gendered dynamics of border collapse and boundary maintenance. Here, the borders between home front and battlefield break down at the same time as communal boundaries are reproduced, generating conditions of âtotal militarismâ wherein military interests and agendas are both actively and passively diffused. Through gendering the militarised micro-geographies of violence among Jewish Israelis, this article reveals how individuals construct, navigate and regulate the everyday spaces of occupation, detailing more precisely how macro political power endures.This work was supported by the SOAS, University of London; University of London Central Research Fund
Conviviality and Parallax in David Olusogaâs Black and British: A Forgotten History
Through examining the BBC television series, Black and British: A Forgotten History, written and presented by the historian David Olusoga, and in extending Paul Gilroyâs assertion that the everyday, banality of living with difference is now an ordinary part of British life, this article considers how Olusogaâs historicization of the black British experience reflects a convivial rendering of UK multiculture. In particular, when used alongside ĆœiĆŸekâs notion of parallax, it is argued that understandings of convivial culture can be supported by a historical importance that deliberately âshocksâ and, subsequently dislodges, popular interpretations of the UKâs âwhite pastâ. Notably, it is parallax which puts antagonism, strangeness and ambivalence at the heart of contemporary depictions of convivial Britain, with the UKâs cultural differences located in the âgapsâ and tensions which characterize both its past and present. These differences should not be feared but, as a characteristic part of our convivial culture, should be supplemented with historical analyses that highlight but, also, undermine, the significance of cultural differences in the present. Consequently, it is suggested that if the spontaneity of conviviality is to encourage openness, then, understandings of multiculturalism need to go beyond reification in order to challenge our understandings of the past. Here, examples of âalterityâ are neither ânewâ nor âcontemporaryâ but, instead, constitute a fundamental part of the nationâs history: of the âgapâ made visible in transiting past and present
Funky Days are (Not) Back Again: Cool Britannia and the Rise and Fall of British South Asian Cultural Production
This article explores the conditions that led to the rise and fall of British South Asian cultural production. Following a high point in the 1990s when for the first time a South Asian diasporic presence was felt in British popular culture, across television, film, music, literature and theatre, Asians have now returned to the periphery of the cultural industries. But this is not a simple case of British Asians falling in and out of fashion. Rather, as this article explores, British Asian cultural producers were enabled but then ultimately constrained by shifts in cultural policy (and specifically âcreative industriesâ policy) and, more broadly, by the politics of multiculturalism in the UK and beyond. In particular, it focuses on the moment of New Labour and âCool Britanniaâ as a significant cultural and political moment that led to the rise and subsequent demise of British Asian cultural production. Through such an analysis the article adds to the growing body of work on race and production studies. It demonstrates the value of the historical approach, outlined by the âcultural industriesâ tradition of political economy, which is interested in how historical forces come together to produce a particular set of institutional and social arrangements that shape the practices of British Asian creative workers. While the article foregrounds television and film, it explores the field of British Asian cultural production more broadly and, in doing so, marks the ascendency of the âdiversity discourseâ that characterises cultural policy in the present day
Neo-liberal racism: Excision, ethnicity and the Children and Families Act 2014
This article focuses on the removal in the Children and Families Act 2014 of the so-called âethnicity clauseâ relating to adoption. Reviewing the background to the contentious issue of adoption for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic children and the coalitionâs drive to increase its scale, the article analyses the discursive resources deployed â especially during the Billâs passage through Parliament â to justify, oppose or modify the legal change. It is argued that the emergent government policy can be seen as incoherent, even contradictory in relation to ethnicity and its significance and that this can be understood through the competing aims of striking a populist blow against âpolitical correctnessâ while staving off accusations of being ânaĂŻveâ (or worse) about race and ethnicity. These developments and debates are also analysed in the context of the growing power of racial neo-liberalism in shaping debates on child welfare
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