What is “Fashion” and How to Research it? : Polybius for Punk Fashion Sociology

Fashion changes societies, and is also itself shaped by multiple socio-cultural processes, including processes of globalization. At the same time, fashion scholarship is not only speaking about and seeking to understand fashion, but is also actively formulating ideas, assumptions and understandings as to what fashion can be, and where in history and in which geographical locations fashion can be found. This paper addresses the increasingly complex question of the nature of fashion in a globalized and increasingly interconnected world. Arguing for a radical, “punk,” attitude toward fashion scholarship, and a concomitant rethinking of fashion, we suggest an approach that goes beyond academic and political fashions, drawing upon historical scolarship and examples. For while it is strikingly obvious that fashion is a global and globalized phenomenon, its specific character, and indeed its geographical locations and origins, remain contested. Drawing inspiration from the ancient Greek historian Polybius, and his ideas of an "ecumenical analytical" approach to studying world-wide phenomena, we reflect upon the history and current state of fashion studies in what we consider an ecumenical moment, which demands novel insights, but also holds many new opportunities for the field.Peer reviewe

An action to an object does not improve its episodic encoding, but removes distraction

There is some debate as to whether responding to objects in our environment improves episodic memory or doesn't impact it. Some authors claim that actively encoding objects improves their representation in episodic memory. Conversely, episodic memory has also been shown to improve in passive conditions, suggesting that the action itself could interfere with the encoding process. This study looks at the impact of attention and action on episodic memory using a novel WWW task that includes information about object identity (What), spatial (Where) and temporal (When) properties. With this approach we studied the episodic memory of two types of object: Target, where attention or an action is defined, and Distractor, object to be ignored, following two selective states: active vs. passive selection. When targets were actively selected, we found no evidence of episodic memory enhancement compared to passive selection; but instead memory from irrelevant sources was suppressed. The pattern was replicated across a 2D static display and a more realistic 3D virtual environment. This selective attention effect on episodic memory was not observed on non-episodic measures, demonstrating a link between attention and the encoding of episodic experiences

In Older Men’s Wardrobes: Creative Tales of Affect, Style and Constraint

Fashion in old age has been of increasing interest within various disciplines including social gerontology and fashion studies. However, there remains a scarcity of research concerning older men’s everyday dress practices. This paper redresses this imbalance through a detailed exploration of the everyday dress practices of a group of three sartorially minded older men. A series of in-depth interviews revealed the conscious ways in which the men style themselves, the various constraints that structure their dress and above all, the men’s emotional entanglements with their garments. The notion of wardrobe as a conceptual space (which is both mental and spatial) frames this study. Importantly, the older men’s dress practices are considered as they contribute to and extend notions of everyday creativity. Typically, when creativity is considered amongst older people this has tended to focus on individuals who can be conventionally defined and socially labelled as ‘creative’ types (artists, musicians etc.). In contrast, this study helps to reveal the extent to which all aspects of social life, including the mundane act of dressing may involve creative practices. If creativity is de-coupled from ‘high artistic achievement’ we can begin to understand how all individuals possess diverse forms of creative potential and capacity

PITHD1 is a proteasome-interacting protein essential for male fertilization

Hiroyuki Kondo, Takafumi Matsumura, Mari Kaneko, Kenichi Inoue, Hidetaka Kosako, Masahito Ikawa, Yousuke Takahama, Izumi Ohigashi, PITHD1 is a proteasome-interacting protein essential for male fertilization, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Volume 295, Issue 6, 2020, Pages 1658-1672, ISSN 0021-9258, https://doi.org/10.1074/jbc.RA119.011144

Some triviality results for quasi-Einstein manifolds and Einstein warped products

In this paper we prove a number of triviality results for Einstein warped products and quasi-Einstein manifolds using different techniques and under assumptions of various nature. In particular we obtain and exploit gradient estimates for solutions of weighted Poisson-type equations and adaptations to the weighted setting of some Liouville-type theorems.Comment: 15 pages, fixed minor mistakes in Section

The Knee of the Cosmic Hydrogen and Helium Spectrum below 1 PeV Measured by ARGO-YBJ and a Cherenkov Telescope of LHAASO

The measurement of cosmic ray energy spectra, in particular for individual species, is an essential approach in finding their origin. Locating the "knees" of the spectra is an important part of the approach and has yet to be achieved. Here we report a measurement of the mixed Hydrogen and Helium spectrum using the combination of the ARGO-YBJ experiment and of a prototype Cherenkov telescope for the LHAASO experiment. A knee feature at 640+/-87 TeV, with a clear steepening of the spectrum, is observed. This gives fundamental inputs to galactic cosmic ray acceleration models

Mean Interplanetary Magnetic Field Measurement Using the ARGO-YBJ Experiment

The sun blocks cosmic ray particles from outside the solar system, forming a detectable shadow in the sky map of cosmic rays detected by the ARGO-YBJ experiment in Tibet. Because the cosmic ray particles are positive charged, the magnetic field between the sun and the earth deflects them from straight trajectories and results in a shift of the shadow from the true location of the sun. Here we show that the shift measures the intensity of the field which is transported by the solar wind from the sun to the earth.Comment: 6 papges,3 figure

Gamma ray flares from Mrk421 in 2008 observed with the ARGO-YBJ detector

In 2008 the blazar Markarian 421 entered a very active phase and was one of the brightest sources in the sky at TeV energies, showing frequent flaring episodes. Using the data of ARGO-YBJ, a full coverage air shower detector located at Yangbajing (4300 m a.s.l., Tibet, China), we monitored the source at gamma ray energies E > 0.3 TeV during the whole year. The observed flux was variable, with the strongest flares in March and June, in correlation with X-ray enhanced activity. While during specific episodes the TeV flux could be several times larger than the Crab Nebula one, the average emission from day 41 to 180 was almost twice the Crab level, with an integral flux of (3.6 +-0.6) 10^-11 photons cm^-2 s^-1 for energies E > 1 TeV, and decreased afterwards. This paper concentrates on the flares occurred in the first half of June. This period has been deeply studied from optical to 100 MeV gamma rays, and partially up to TeV energies, since the moonlight hampered the Cherenkov telescope observations during the most intense part of the emission. Our data complete these observations, with the detection of a signal with a statistical significance of 3.8 standard deviations on June 11-13, corresponding to a gamma ray flux about 6 times larger than the Crab one above 1 TeV. The reconstructed differential spectrum, corrected for the intergalactic absorption, can be represented by a power law with an index alpha = -2.1 extending up to several TeV. The spectrum slope is fully consistent with previous observations reporting a correlation between the flux and the spectral index, suggesting that this property is maintained in different epochs and characterizes the source emission processes.Comment: Accepted for publication on ApJ

4.5 years multi-wavelength observations of Mrk 421 during the ARGO-YBJ and Fermi common operation time

We report on the extensive multi-wavelength observations of the blazar Markarian 421 (Mrk 421) covering radio to gamma-rays, during the 4.5 year period of ARGO-YBJ and Fermi common operation time, from August 2008 to February 2013. In particular, thanks to the ARGO-YBJ and Fermi data, the whole energy range from 100 MeV to 10 TeV is covered without any gap. In the observation period, Mrk 421 showed both low and high activity states at all wavebands. The correlations among flux variations in different wavebands were analyzed. Seven large flares, including five X-ray flares and two GeV gamma-ray flares with variable durations (3-58 days), and one X-ray outburst phase were identified and used to investigate the variation of the spectral energy distribution with respect to a relative quiescent phase. During the outburst phase and the seven flaring episodes, the peak energy in X-rays is observed to increase from sub-keV to few keV. The TeV gamma-ray flux increases up to 0.9-7.2 times the flux of the Crab Nebula. The behavior of GeV gamma-rays is found to vary depending on the flare, a feature that leads us to classify flares into three groups according to the GeV flux variation. Finally, the one-zone synchrotron self-Compton model was adopted to describe the emission spectra. Two out of three groups can be satisfactorily described using injected electrons with a power-law spectral index around 2.2, as expected from relativistic diffuse shock acceleration, whereas the remaining group requires a harder injected spectrum. The underlying physical mechanisms responsible for different groups may be related to the acceleration process or to the environment properties.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables, Accepted for publication in ApJ

Laser Fabrication of Polymer Ferroelectric Nanostructures for Nonvolatile Organic Memory Devices

8 pags.; 5 figs.© 2015 American Chemical Society. Polymer ferroelectric laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) have been prepared on ferroelectric thin films of a poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymer. Although this copolymer does not absorb light at the laser wavelength, LIPSS on the copolymer can be obtained by forming a bilayer with other light-absorbing polymers. The ferroelectric nature of the structured bilayer was proven by piezoresponse force microscopy measurements. Ferroelectric hysteresis was found on both the bilayer and the laser-structured bilayer. We show that it is possible to write ferroelectric information at the nanoscale. The laser-structured ferroelectric bilayer showed an increase in the information storage density of an order of magnitude, in comparison to the original bilayer.The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), through Contract Nos. MAT 2011-23455, MAT 2012- 33517, and CTQ 2013-43086-P. D.E.M. thanks CSIC for the tenure of JAE-Pre fellowship and Fondo Social Europeo (FSE) for cofinancing the JAE Program. A.R.R. and E.R. thank MINECO for the tenure of a FPI contract (BES-2013-062620) and a Ramón y Cajal contract (No. RYC-2011-08069), respectively.Peer Reviewe