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Mediated intimacy: Sex advice in media culture
The bold argument of Mediated Intimacy (Barker et al., 2018)1 is that media of various kinds play an increasingly important role in shaping peopleâs knowledge, desires, practices and expectations about intimate relationships. While arguments rage about the nature and content of sex and relationship education in schools, it is becoming clear that more and more of us â young and old â look not to formal education, or even to our friends, for information about sex, but to the media (Albury, 2016; Attwood et al., 2015). This is not simply a matter of media âadviceâ in the form of self-help books, magazine problem pages, or online âagonyâ columns â though these are all proliferating and are discussed at length in the book. It is also about the wider cultural habitat of images, ideas and discourses about intimacy that circulate through and across media: the âhappy endingsâ of romantic comedies; the âmoney shotsâ of pornography; the celebrity gossip about who is seeing whom, who is âcheatingâ, and who is looking âhotâ; the lifestyle TV about âembarrassing bodiesâ or being âundateableâ; the newspaper features on how to have a âgoodâ divorce or âten things never to say on a first dateâ; the new apps that incite us to quantify and rate our sex lives, and so forth. These constitute the âtaken for grantedâ of everyday understandings of intimacy, and they are at the heart of Mediated Intimacy
Focussing effects in laser-electron Thomson scattering
We study the effects of laser pulse focussing on the spectral properties of
Thomson scattered radiation. Modelling the laser as a paraxial beam we find
that, in all but the most extreme cases of focussing, the temporal envelope has
a much bigger effect on the spectrum than the focussing itself. For the case of
ultra-short pulses, where the paraxial model is no longer valid, we adopt a
sub-cycle vector beam description of the field. It is found that the emission
harmonics are blue shifted and broaden out in frequency space as the pulse
becomes shorter. Additionally the carrier envelope phase becomes important,
resulting in an angular asymmetry in the spectrum. We then use the same model
to study the effects of focussing beyond the limit where the paraxial expansion
is valid. It is found that fields focussed to sub-wavelength spot sizes produce
spectra that are qualitatively similar to those from sub-cycle pulses due to
the shortening of the pulse with focussing. Finally, we study high-intensity
fields and find that, in general, the focussing makes negligible difference to
the spectra in the regime of radiation reaction.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figure
Teaching statistical physics by thinking about models and algorithms
We discuss several ways of illustrating fundamental concepts in statistical
and thermal physics by considering various models and algorithms. We emphasize
the importance of replacing students' incomplete mental images by models that
are physically accurate. In some cases it is sufficient to discuss the results
of an algorithm or the behavior of a model rather than having students write a
program.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the American Journal of Physic
Looking away from faces: influence of high-level visual processes on saccade programming
Human faces capture attention more than other visual stimuli. Here we investigated whether such face-specific biases rely on automatic (involuntary) or voluntary orienting responses. To this end, we used an anti-saccade paradigm, which requires the ability to inhibit a reflexive automatic response and to generate a voluntary saccade in the opposite direction of the stimulus. To control for potential low-level confounds in the eye-movement data, we manipulated the high-level visual properties of the stimuli while normalizing their global low-level visual properties. Eye movements were recorded in 21 participants who performed either pro- or anti-saccades to a face, car, or noise pattern, randomly presented to the left or right of a fixation point. For each trial, a symbolic cue instructed the observer to generate either a pro-saccade or an anti-saccade. We report a significant increase in anti-saccade error rates for faces compared to cars and noise patterns, as well as faster pro-saccades to faces and cars in comparison to noise patterns. These results indicate that human faces induce stronger involuntary orienting responses than other visual objects, i.e., responses that are beyond the control of the observer. Importantly, this involuntary processing cannot be accounted for by global low-level visual factors
Study to establish cost predictions for the production of Redox chemicals
The chromium and iron chloride chemicals are significant first costs for NASA Redox energy storage systems. This study was performed to determine the lowest cost at which chromium and iron chlorides could be obtained for a complex of redox energy storage systems. In addition, since the solutions gradually become intermixed during the course of operation of Redox units, it was an objective to evaluate schemes for regeneration of the operating solutions. Three processes were evaluated for the production of chromium and iron chlorides. As a basis for the preliminary plant design and economic evaluation, it was assumed that the plant would produce about 25,000 tons of contained chromium as CrCl3 and an equivalent molar quantity of FeCl2. Preliminary plant designs, including materials and energy balances and sizing of major equipment, were prepared, and capital and operating costs were estimated
Multispectral oximetry of murine tendon microvasculature with inflammation
We report a novel multispectral imaging technique for localised measurement of vascular oxygen saturation (SO2) in vivo. Annular back-illumination is generated using a Schwarzchild-design reflective objective. Analysis of multispectral data is performed using a calibration-free oximetry algorithm. This technique is applied to oximetry in mice to measure SO2 in microvasculature supplying inflamed tendon tissue in the hind leg. Average SO2 for controls was 94.8 ± 7.0 % (N = 6), and 84.0 ± 13.5 % for mice with inflamed tendon tissue (N = 6). We believe this to be the first localised measurement of hypoxia in tendon microvasculature due to inflammation. Quantification of localised SO2 is important for the study of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, where hypoxia is thought to play a role in pathogenesis
Minimally Invasive Optical Biopsy for Oximetry
The study of localised oxygen saturation in blood vessels can shed light on the etiology and progression of
many diseases with which hypoxia is associated. For example, hypoxia in the tendon has been linked to early
stages of rheumatoid arthritis, an auto-immune inflammatory disease. Vascular oximetry of deep tissue presents
significant challenges as vessels are not optically accessible. In this paper, we present a novel multispectral
imaging technique for vascular oximetry, and recent developments made towards its adaptation for minimally
invasive imaging. We present proof-of-concept of the system and illumination scheme as well as the analysis
technique. We present results of a validation study performed in vivo on mice with acutely inflamed tendons.
Adaptation of the technique for minimally invasive microendoscopy is also presented, along with preliminary
results of minimally invasive ex vivo vascular oximetry
Star formation in the large Magellanic cloud
What role the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf irregular galaxy, plays in understanding infrared luminous galaxies is discussed. There are two main reasons the LMC may prove helpful. One, the LMC is only 55 kpc away, very nearby compared to much rarer high luminosity systems. Second, the environment in the LMC is distinctly different than in the Milky Way, at least those parts of the Milky Way interior to the sun, where most of the studies of massive star formation were concentrated. The LMC is an interacting system with a large amount of neutral hydrogen that is pushed around by the galaxy's encounter with the Milky Way. Perhaps a good understanding of star formation process in the LMC will provide guidance in the study of the infrared luminous galaxies. Two questions which will be addressed are: how is star formation in the LMC similar to the Milky Way Galaxy, and how is it different
Empirical Investigation of Flexible Pricing and Payment Alternatives on Canadian Wheat Board Pooling for Wheat
Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,
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