Religion, Gender and Sexuality Workshop Report: 1–5 June 2015, Garden Court Hotel, Eastgate, Johannesburg

Religious doctrine shapes and informs decision-making at the individual and collective levels, and sexuality and gender rights advocates must therefore work with faith-based organisations and religious activists to challenge harmful and discriminatory sexuality and gender norms and practices. The Religion, Gender and Sexuality workshop provided a space for faith leaders and those engaging with faith institutions to discuss successes, challenges and learning around sexual diversity and gender justice. In sharing their knowledge and experience, and through a range of facilitated discussions on the themes discussed in this report, the participants were able to collectively build on their knowledge, skills and awareness linked to gender and sexuality. Given the rise of religious activism in civil society, the political arena and in law- and policymaking, it has become imperative to offer training to organisations and individuals who work in the religious/faith-based sector on issues of gender and human rights-based approaches. With the support of Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the University of Witwatersrand’s Wits Centre for Diversity Studies (WiCDS) the workshop sought to provide members of faith communities across Africa with the knowledge to advocate for sexuality and gender equality and human rights. The workshop was hosted by: Sonke Gender Justice, MenEngage Africa, Institute of Development Studies and Wits Centre for Diversity Studies.UK Department for International Developmen

Artificial Sweeteners Disrupt Tight Junctions and Barrier Function in the Intestinal Epithelium through Activation of the Sweet Taste Receptor, T1R3

The breakdown of the intestinal epithelial barrier and subsequent increase in intestinal permeability can lead to systemic inflammatory diseases and multiple-organ failure. Nutrition impacts the intestinal barrier, with dietary components such as gluten increasing permeability. Artificial sweeteners are increasingly consumed by the general public in a range of foods and drinks. The sweet taste receptor (T1R3) is activated by artificial sweeteners and has been identified in the intestine to play a role in incretin release and glucose transport; however, T1R3 has not been previously linked to intestinal permeability. Here, the intestinal epithelial cell line, Caco-2, was used to study the effect of commonly-consumed artificial sweeteners, sucralose, aspartame and saccharin, on permeability. At high concentrations, aspartame and saccharin were found to induce apoptosis and cell death in intestinal epithelial cells, while at low concentrations, sucralose and aspartame increased epithelial barrier permeability and down-regulated claudin 3 at the cell surface. T1R3 knockdown was found to attenuate these effects of artificial sweeteners. Aspartame induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) production to cause permeability and claudin 3 internalization, while sweetener-induced permeability and oxidative stress was rescued by the overexpression of claudin 3. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the artificial sweeteners sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin exert a range of negative effects on the intestinal epithelium through the sweet taste receptor T1R3

Molecular dynamics simulations of lead clusters

Molecular dynamics simulations of nanometer-sized lead clusters have been performed using the Lim, Ong and Ercolessi glue potential (Surf. Sci. {\bf 269/270}, 1109 (1992)). The binding energies of clusters forming crystalline (fcc), decahedron and icosahedron structures are compared, showing that fcc cuboctahedra are the most energetically favoured of these polyhedral model structures. However, simulations of the freezing of liquid droplets produced a characteristic form of ``shaved'' icosahedron, in which atoms are absent at the edges and apexes of the polyhedron. This arrangement is energetically favoured for 600-4000 atom clusters. Larger clusters favour crystalline structures. Indeed, simulated freezing of a 6525-atom liquid droplet produced an imperfect fcc Wulff particle, containing a number of parallel stacking faults. The effects of temperature on the preferred structure of crystalline clusters below the melting point have been considered. The implications of these results for the interpretation of experimental data is discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 18 figues, new section added and one figure added, other minor changes for publicatio

Uncomputably noisy ergodic limits

V'yugin has shown that there are a computable shift-invariant measure on Cantor space and a simple function f such that there is no computable bound on the rate of convergence of the ergodic averages A_n f. Here it is shown that in fact one can construct an example with the property that there is no computable bound on the complexity of the limit; that is, there is no computable bound on how complex a simple function needs to be to approximate the limit to within a given epsilon

Shalom bayit—Peace of the Home: Ritual and Tradition in American Jewish Families

Utilizing a sample of 30 regionally diverse families (N=75 individuals) belonging to various branches of Judaism, we qualitatively explored how Judaism enhanced and facilitated participants' general life strengths and relational strengths (i.e., marriage and parenting). Based on our findings, Jewish rituals, traditions, and observances had a positive influence on participants' personal lives and family relationships. A sense of duty and responsibility felt toward Jewish observance and to family relationships seemed to facilitate much of this influence.12 month embargo; published online: 02 Jul 2018This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

An efficient Fredholm method for calculation of highly excited states of billiards

A numerically efficient Fredholm formulation of the billiard problem is presented. The standard solution in the framework of the boundary integral method in terms of a search for roots of a secular determinant is reviewed first. We next reformulate the singularity condition in terms of a flow in the space of an auxiliary one-parameter family of eigenproblems and argue that the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions are analytic functions within a certain domain. Based on this analytic behavior we present a numerical algorithm to compute a range of billiard eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors by only two diagonalizations.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures; included systematic study of accuracy with 2 new figures, movie to Fig. 4, http://www.quantumchaos.de/Media/0703030media.av

Surface-reconstructed Icosahedral Structures for Lead Clusters

We describe a new family of icosahedral structures for lead clusters. In general, structures in this family contain a Mackay icosahedral core with a reconstructed two-shell outer-layer. This family includes the anti-Mackay icosahedra, which have have a Mackay icosahedral core but with most of the surface atoms in hexagonal close-packed positions. Using a many-body glue potential for lead, we identify two icosahedral structures in this family which have the lowest energies of any known structure in the size range from 900 to 15000 lead atoms. We show that these structures are stabilized by a feature of the many-body glue part of the interatomic potential.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure