Building Expertise on Diversity Education at Vanier College

Comprend des références bibliographiques

“You Don’t Need a Fatwa”: Muslim Feminist Blogging as Religious Interpretation

Through an examination of four prominent blogs written by self-identified Muslim feminists in North America, this dissertation looks at blogging as it relates to Islam, gender, sexuality, religious interpretations, community, and the public sphere. I begin by locating blogging in relation to literature on the public sphere, counterpublics, and alternative media, looking at issues including the divisions between public and private, questions of self-disclosure and anonymity, and the different shapes that audiences and communities may take in response to a blog. Using Sa’diyya Shaikh’s (2007) notion of “tafsir through praxis” – a lens through which she considers Muslim women’s lived experiences as sources of religious interpretation – I propose the concept of “tafsir through blogging.” I argue that blogging shapes the development of religious interpretation online in a number of ways as it weaves together personal narratives, textual interpretations, short episodic posts, audiovisual elements, and public discussions with an audience of readers. The investigation of this practice through a focus on the topics of menstruation, queer issues, and gendered prayer spaces offers insights into how the bloggers’ writing practices challenge dominant discourses about women’s bodies, construct online interpretive communities, and provide new perspectives on Muslim feminist work. My examination of the bloggers’ discussion of menstruation looks at how the writers challenge expectations that menstruation should be kept private and conceptions of menstruating bodies as contaminated. Next, I look at how the bloggers use their writing to point to the limitations of dominant Muslim discourses on queer sexualities and relationships. Through an examination of blog posts and comments related to women’s prayer spaces in mosques, I consider the collective, public, and counterpublic dimensions of tafsir through blogging. The dissertation concludes by considering what the format of blogging means for questions of authority and legitimacy among Muslim feminists, suggesting that for these women writers whose ideas and online writing styles may be seen as far outside of the religious mainstream, blogging provides them an alternate avenue for establishing legitimacy as participants in public conversations about gender and Islam

Cutaneous Silent Period Characteristics are Dependent on the Organization of Upper Limb Muscles

abstractCutaneous silent periods (CSPs) are inhibitory spinal reflexes mediated by small diameter A-δ fibers, serving to protect the body from harmful stimuli (Leis et al., 1992; Kofler, 2003). Currently, CSPs are believed to only inhibit the extensor muscles of the upper limb halting motions such as reaching, while exciting flexor muscles to withdraw the limb. The present study sought to determine if CSPs could be evoked in both extensor and flexor muscles of the upper limb, thereby providing further insight into the organization of the spinal circuitry associated with this reflex. 22 subjects performed contractions with seven muscles from the hand, forearm, upper arm, and shoulder while muscle activity was recorded with electromyography. Subjects were electrically stimulated (10x perceptual threshold) with 20 individual pulses delivered to each digit II (radial nerve) and digit V (ulnar nerve) of the right hand during each contraction. Results demonstrated significant main effects (p<0.001) across muscles for the key dependent variables of the CSP: onsets (F[6,21] = 15.42, p <0.001), durations (F[6,21] = 65.39, p <0.001), and % of suppression (F[6,21] = 91, p <0.001), similarly for both nerves stimulated. Distal muscles presented with the earliest onset times, longest duration of inhibition, and largest amount of inhibition. Moving proximally, the onset times became later with duration and the amount of inhibition decreasing. Linear regressions showed that the distance of the muscle from the spinal cord (cm) was a significant predictor of the duration (digit II r2 = 0.43; digit V r2 = 0.46) and amount of inhibition (digit II r2 = 0.51; digit V r2 = 0.48). The results demonstrate the occurrence of CSPs throughout the upper limb, with the greatest inhibition of distal muscles, leading us to hypothesize that the corticospinal tract, specifically direct cortico-motorneuronal connections, are directly influenced by the inhibitory input

Monitoring a Small Northwestern Iowa Stream Undergoing Watershed Changes

Stream ecosystems are influenced by their watersheds. Intact watersheds support high water quality and habitat heterogeneity, while providing native allochthonous input. In Iowa, watershed degradation associated with agricultural activities and expanding residential development negatively impacts streams by increasing sedimentation, pesticide exposure, and eutrophication. Our study continued a monitoring program of a low order stream in Sioux County, Iowa. As the surrounding watershed shifts from agricultural to residential use, we are recording changes in stream biodiversity and water quality. At three study sites, we documented the stream’s physical and chemical characteristics and collected macroinvertebrate samples. We also introduced various substrata (gravel, maple leaves, and pavers) to the stream to observe macroinvertebrate colonization. As expected, we found the stream dominated by taxa tolerant of poor water quality. Our results indicate that substrate type significantly affected colonization, with gravel supporting the lowest richness and abundance of macroinvertebrates. Overall, location and colonization month (September vs. October) only affected a subset of our samples. These results differ markedly from those of a similar 2018 study. We anticipate that the results of this study will be compared to future work, enabling researchers to monitor how the stream responds to changes in the watershed and hydrological events

Stormbreaker8 and A3Wally Bacteriophage Genome Annotations

Stormbreaker8 and A3Wally are two novel bacteriophages isolated and purified on Microbacterium foliorum NRRL B-24224 by students in the Fall 2020 Discovery course. Stormbreaker8, an EA1 cluster lytic phage, was isolated from soil collected in Orange City, IA. Its circular permuted genome contains 41,751 base-pairs with 63.4% GC content. A3Wally, a GD cluster phage, was isolated from soil collected in Sioux Center, IA. Its genome is 60.1% GC, contains 194,724 base-pairs, and its ends are direct terminal repeats. Spring 2021 Genetics students annotated the genomes using bioinformatics software

Shared genetic risk between eating disorder- and substance-use-related phenotypes:Evidence from genome-wide association studies

First published: 16 February 202

Contributions of mean and shape of blood pressure distribution to worldwide trends and variations in raised blood pressure: A pooled analysis of 1018 population-based measurement studies with 88.6 million participants

© The Author(s) 2018. Background: Change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure could be due to both shifts in the entire distribution of blood pressure (representing the combined effects of public health interventions and secular trends) and changes in its high-blood-pressure tail (representing successful clinical interventions to control blood pressure in the hypertensive population). Our aim was to quantify the contributions of these two phenomena to the worldwide trends in the prevalence of raised blood pressure. Methods: We pooled 1018 population-based studies with blood pressure measurements on 88.6 million participants from 1985 to 2016. We first calculated mean systolic blood pressure (SBP), mean diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and prevalence of raised blood pressure by sex and 10-year age group from 20-29 years to 70-79 years in each study, taking into account complex survey design and survey sample weights, where relevant. We used a linear mixed effect model to quantify the association between (probittransformed) prevalence of raised blood pressure and age-group- and sex-specific mean blood pressure. We calculated the contributions of change in mean SBP and DBP, and of change in the prevalence-mean association, to the change in prevalence of raised blood pressure. Results: In 2005-16, at the same level of population mean SBP and DBP, men and women in South Asia and in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa would have the highest prevalence of raised blood pressure, and men and women in the highincome Asia Pacific and high-income Western regions would have the lowest. In most region-sex-age groups where the prevalence of raised blood pressure declined, one half or more of the decline was due to the decline in mean blood pressure. Where prevalence of raised blood pressure has increased, the change was entirely driven by increasing mean blood pressure, offset partly by the change in the prevalence-mean association. Conclusions: Change in mean blood pressure is the main driver of the worldwide change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure, but change in the high-blood-pressure tail of the distribution has also contributed to the change in prevalence, especially in older age groups

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages