JIHAD for WHOM? the Radicalization of Religion as a Response to Political Oppression: From Turkish to Indonesian Islam

The confrontation with Western colonialism has become part of the Islamic history since the nineteenth century. This paper is an attempt to investigate the radicalization of religion in several parts of the Islamic world. It focuses, however, on the review of the history of the caliphate and its adjunct notions like “pan-Islamism” or rule over all Muslims, and jihād to fight for it. Having assessed the attempts made by Muslim in several parts of the Islamic world in dealing with Western colonialism, the paper then reflects the manifestation of Islamic politics in Indonesia. The paper argues that the majority of Muslims whenever they have a chance to voice their aspirations, do not support a radicalization or even militarization of their religion. Muslims in Indonesia, in particular, had this chance to opt for their political or societal aspirations in several general elections, and the large majority of them voted for politicians and parties who pursue an inclusive policy, reflecting the plural composition of their society

Bounds on Lorentz and CPT Violation from the Earth-Ionosphere Cavity

Electromagnetic resonant cavities form the basis of many tests of Lorentz invariance involving photons. The effects of some forms of Lorentz violation scale with cavity size. We investigate possible signals of violations in the naturally occurring resonances formed in the Earth-ionosphere cavity. Comparison with observed resonances places the first terrestrial constraints on coefficients associated with dimension-three Lorentz-violating operators at the level of 10^{-20} GeV.Comment: 8 pages REVTe

Falling Prices: Does This Cause Purchases to Be Delayed or Speed Up? Evidence From the Gasoline Market

When teaching macroeconomics, students intuitively know why macroeconomists stress the dangers of inflation, but question why economists will say deflation is worse. To explain macroeconomists will almost always point to Japan’s “Lost decade”, a spiral of declining economic activity intertwined with declining prices. Their claim is that the deflation was a principle driver for the deepening recession as declining prices could cause consumers not to purchase more (as the law of demand would normally expect) but rather less in anticipation of even lower prices to come. This paper looked at the empirical evidence from the energy sector, specifically gasoline sales during the 2013-2015 time period and verified that there is evidence that some US consumers did indeed delay purchases even if they ultimately bought more

Ultrafast spin polarization control of Dirac fermions in topological insulators

Three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) are characterized by spin-polarized Dirac-cone surface states that are protected from backscattering by time-reversal symmetry. Control of the spin polarization of topological surface states (TSSs) using femtosecond light pulses opens novel perspectives for the generation and manipulation of dissipationless surface spin currents on ultrafast timescales. Using time-, spin-, and angle-resolved spectroscopy, we directly monitor for the first time the ultrafast response of the spin polarization of photoexcited TSSs to circularly-polarized femtosecond pulses of infrared light. We achieve all-optical switching of the transient out-of-plane spin polarization, which relaxes in about 1.2 ps. Our observations establish the feasibility of ultrafast optical control of spin-polarized Dirac fermions in TIs and pave the way for novel optospintronic applications at ultimate speeds.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Evidence for charge orbital and spin stripe order in an overdoped manganite

We present diffraction data on a single-layered manganite La(0.42)Sr(1.58)MnO4 with hole doping (x>0.5). Overdoped La(0.42)Sr(1.58)MnO4 exhibits a complex ordering of charges, orbitals and spins. Single crystal neutron diffraction experiments reveal three incommensurate and one commensurate order parameters to be tightly coupled. The position and the shape of the distinct superstructure scattering points to a stripe arrangement in which ferromagnetic zigzag chains are disrupted by additional Mn4+ stripes

Full spin switch effect for the superconducting current in a superconductor/ferromagnet thin film heterostructure

Superconductor/ferromagnet (S/F) proximity effect theory predicts that the superconducting critical temperature of the F1/F2/S or F1/S/F2 trilayers for the parallel orientation of the F1 and F2 magnetizations is smaller than for the antiparallel one. This suggests a possibility of a controlled switching between the superconducting and normal states in the S layer. Here, using the spin switch design F1/F2/S theoretically proposed by Oh et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 71, 2376 (1997)], that comprises a ferromagnetic bilayer separated by a non-magnetic metallic spacer layer as a ferromagnetic component, and an ordinary superconductor as the second interface component, we have successfully realized a full spin switch effect for the superconducting current.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure