Reflections on the rhetoric of (de)colonization in Brexit discourse

This essay begins with an acknowledgment that attempts to understand Brexit are, at this stage, condemned to partial understanding, at best, because as an event it is incomplete and moving in contradictory directions. Just a brief inventory of the many ways in which Brexit can be, and has been, approached gives one a sense of this centrifugalism – sovereignty; globalization; free trade; immigration; racism; disenfranchisement; nostalgia; affect; generational schism; post-imperial decline; neoliberalism; populism; poverty; austerity; class; multiculturalism; cosmopolitanism; far-right and Islamist extremism; Islam and Muslims; refugees; and so on and so on. One particular line of thought emerging among more scholarly treatments from within the arts and humanities (for example, as found in several essays in the volume Brexit and Literature) concerns itself with Brexit as an affective phenomenon, one that speaks to the structures of feeling that bind ‘Britishness’ into a cultural assemblage that goes beyond the artefactual sense of ‘culture’ to that nebulous and barely perceptible ‘way of life’ which constitutes the affective economy of most people living in the British Isles. This, however, is articulated – in the sense used by Stuart Hall – in very different ways depending on class, gender, region, educational background, nationality and, of course, race and ethnicity. This essay will probe the ways in which the affective economy of Brexit is mobilized by picking out one particular thread from within the tangled knot of multiple determinations that have brought the United Kingdom to where it now is: this thread follows the trope of (de)colonization across Brexit rhetorics and places it within a long durée that illuminates the extent to which the affective economy underlying Brexit is deeply embedded in a racialized sense of nationhood that reaches back to the beginnings of Britain’s colonial and thence post-colonial history

The shape of free speech: rethinking liberal free speech theory

Noting the apparent inconsistency in attitudes towards free speech with respect to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in western liberal democracies, this article works through the problem of inconsistency within liberal free speech theory, arguing that this symptomatically reveals an aporia that exposes the inability of liberal free speech theory to account for the ways in which free speech actually operates in liberal social orders. Liberal free speech theory conceptualizes liberty as smooth, continuous, homogeneous, indivisible and extendable without interruption until it reaches the outer limits. This makes it difficult for liberal free speech theory to account for restrictions that lie within those outer limits, and therefore for the ways in which restraints, restrictions and closures are always already at work within the lived experience of liberty, for it is these – and the inconsistencies they give rise to – that give freedom its particular texture and timbre in any given social and cultural context. The article concludes with an alternative ‘liquid’ theory of free speech, which accounts for the ‘shaping’ of liberty by social forces, culture and institutional practices

In-Vitro Anti-oxidant And Antimicrobial Study of Ficus Hispida

Ficus hispida L. belongs to the Moraceae family and is used by the maaiba trible (indigenous medicine - man of Manipur, India) as an indigenous traditional medicine. Present study deals with the successive extraction of the aerial parts of Ficus hispida and in-vitro screening of anti-oxidant and anti-microbial activity. The phytochemical screening of the methanol extract of Ficus hispida shows the presence of secondary metabolite groups like alkaloid, phenolic compounds, flavonoid, glycosides, protein etc. Phenolic compounds are commonly found in both edible and nonedible plants and are responsible for various medicinal activities of plants, so our study is based on determining antioxidant activity and anti-microbial activity. Beside these, we also measured the total flavonoid and total phenolic content of the respective sample to understand the effect of polyphenolic compound on different pathophysiological state associated with high free radical production. The in-vitro investigation proves the efficiency of this plant in various diseases states

Automated pipeline processing X‐ray diffraction data from dynamic compression experiments on the Extreme Conditions Beamline of PETRA III

Presented and discussed here is the implementation of a software solution that provides prompt X‐ray diffraction data analysis during fast dynamic compression experiments conducted within the dynamic diamond anvil cell technique. It includes efficient data collection, streaming of data and metadata to a high‐performance cluster (HPC), fast azimuthal data integration on the cluster, and tools for controlling the data processing steps and visualizing the data using the DIOPTAS software package. This data processing pipeline is invaluable for a great number of studies. The potential of the pipeline is illustrated with two examples of data collected on ammonia–water mixtures and multiphase mineral assemblies under high pressure. The pipeline is designed to be generic in nature and could be readily adapted to provide rapid feedback for many other X‐ray diffraction techniques, e.g. large‐volume press studies, in situ stress/strain studies, phase transformation studies, chemical reactions studied with high‐resolution diffraction etc

Articles of Faith: Freedom of Expression and Religious Freedom in Contemporary Multiculture

This article examines the relationship between freedom of religion and freedom of speech and expression within contemporary multicultural liberal democracies. These two fundamental human rights have increasingly been seen, in public and political discourse, in terms of tension if not outright opposition, a view reinforced by the Charlie Hebdo killings in January 2015. And yet in every human rights charter they are proximate to one another. This essay argues that this adjacency is not coincidental, that it has a history and that, in illuminating this history, it is possible to explore how the contemporary framing of these two rights as being in opposition has come about. Looking back to the framing of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the essay offers an historical perspective that, in turn, facilitates a reappraisal and re-evaluation of these two liberties that is the necessary, albeit insufficient, predicate to the task of addressing the problematic of multicultural ‘crisis' in the contemporary liberal democracies of Western Europe, North America and Australasia, in which the presence of certain religious communities (Muslims, in particular) and the role of religion in public and political life more generally (and, conversely, of secularism) has assumed a central importance

Assessment of ecosystem services of rice farms in eastern India

Authors acknowledge the financial help provided by Ministry of Earth Sciences, Govt. of India and also thank Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Director, ICAR-National Rice Research Institute (NRRI) for giving all the necessary help in executing the work. The help provided by Odisha state officials in carrying out the survey work is gratefully acknowledged. This study is a part of the project entitled “Delivering food security on limited land (DEVIL; Belmont Forum / FACCE-JPI via NERC: NE/M021327/1).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Mobilizing Pakistani heritage, approaching marriage

This paper examines the ongoing significance of Pakistani heritage in the lives of young British Pakistani Muslims. Drawing upon interviews with 56 women and men, it explores the link between Pakistani heritage and young peoples’ lives, focusing upon marriage. Pakistani heritage is widely regarded as a constraint and an anachronism, which young people are jettisoning in favour of religious or secular identities: as Muslims, British, or both. This is a half-truth, at most. Some young people are turning away from Pakistaniness, but others are embracing and exploring versions and elements of this heritage as they make decisions about whether, when and whom to marry. Whether they are rejecting or embracing Pakistani heritage, young people are actively mobilizing the terms “Pakistan” and “Pakistani” as springboards from which to identify and make life choices. They are exploring possibilities rather than acknowledging inevitabilities, and approaching heritage as a resource rather than a constraint

A MHz X-ray diffraction set-up for dynamic compression experiments in the diamond anvil cell

An experimental platform for dynamic diamond anvil cell (dDAC) research has been developed at the High Energy Density (HED) Instrument at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (European XFEL). Advantage was taken of the high repetition rate of the European XFEL (up to 4.5 MHz) to collect pulse-resolved MHz X-ray diffraction data from samples as they are dynamically compressed at intermediate strain rates (≤103 s−1), where up to 352 diffraction images can be collected from a single pulse train. The set-up employs piezo-driven dDACs capable of compressing samples in ≥340 µs, compatible with the maximum length of the pulse train (550 µs). Results from rapid compression experiments on a wide range of sample systems with different X-ray scattering powers are presented. A maximum compression rate of 87 TPa s−1 was observed during the fast compression of Au, while a strain rate of ∼1100 s−1 was achieved during the rapid compression of N2 at 23 TPa s−1