Money Earning Activities and Empowerment Experiences of Rural Migrant Women in the City: The Case of Turkey

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This article investigates empowerment in relation to money-earning activities in the context of rural-to-urban migrant women in poor families in Turkey. Acknowledging the exploitative character of employment accessible to migrant women, it asks whether working migrant women gain something in their families in return for their economic contributions. The article points to the traditional role of men as the heads of the family and family honor (namus) as the cultural basis which acts against the empowerment of migrant women in Turkish society. It attempts to understand empowerment as articulated by the women themselves based upon their lived experiences. While doing so, it examines women’s positions in the family with regard to their role in the intra-family decision making, their degree of control over their earned money, and male violence in the family. It further discusses whether or not the experiences of migrant women can be considered as empowerment, and in this way it aims to contribute to the theoretical development of the concept ‘‘empowerment.’

1 mJ pulse bursts from a Yb-doped fiber amplifier

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We demonstrate burst-mode operation of a polarization-maintaining Yb-doped fiber amplifier capable of generating 60 mu J pulses within bursts of 11 pulses with extremely uniform energy distribution facilitated by a novel feedback mechanism shaping the seed of the burst-mode amplifier. The burst energy can be scaled up to 1 mJ, comprising 25 pulses with 40 mu J average individual energy. The amplifier is synchronously pulse pumped to minimize amplified spontaneous emission between the bursts. Pulse propagation is entirely in fiber and fiber-integrated components until the grating compressor, which allows for highly robust operation. The burst repetition rate is set to 1 kHz and spacing between individual pulses is 10 ns. The 40 mu J pulses are externally compressible to a full width at half-maximum of 600 fs. However, due to the substantial pedestal of the compressed pulses, the effective pulse duration is longer, estimated to be 1.2 ps. (C) 2012 Optical Society of Americ

Doping management for high-power fiber lasers: 100 W, few-picosecond pulse generation from an all-fiber-integrated amplifier

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Thermal effects, which limit the average power, can be minimized by using low-doped, longer gain fibers, whereas the presence of nonlinear effects requires use of high-doped, shorter fibers to maximize the peak power. We propose the use of varying doping levels along the gain fiber to circumvent these opposing requirements. By analogy to dispersion management and nonlinearity management, we refer to this scheme as doping management. As a practical first implementation, we report on the development of a fiber laser-amplifier system, the last stage of which has a hybrid gain fiber composed of high-doped and low-doped Yb fibers. The amplifier generates 100 W at 100 MHz with pulse energy of 1 mu J. The seed source is a passively mode-locked fiber oscillator operating in the all-normal-dispersion regime. The amplifier comprises three stages, which are all-fiber-integrated, delivering 13 ps pulses at full power. By optionally placing a grating compressor after the first stage amplifier, chirp of the seed pulses can be controlled, which allows an extra degree of freedom in the interplay between dispersion and self-phase modulation. This way, the laser delivers 4.5 ps pulses with similar to 200 kW peak power directly from fiber, without using external pulse compression. (C) 2012 Optical Society of Americ

Texturing of titanium (Ti6Al4V) medical implant surfaces with MHz-repetition-rate femtosecond and picosecond Yb-doped fiber lasers

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We propose and demonstrate the use of short pulsed fiber lasers in surface texturing using MHz-repetition-rate, microjoule- and sub-microjoule-energy pulses. Texturing of titanium-based (Ti6Al4V) dental implant surfaces is achieved using femtosecond, picosecond and (for comparison) nanosecond pulses with the aim of controlling attachment of human cells onto the surface. Femtosecond and picosecond pulses yield similar results in the creation of micron-scale textures with greatly reduced or no thermal heat effects, whereas nanosecond pulses result in strong thermal effects. Various surface textures are created with excellent uniformity and repeatability on a desired portion of the surface. The effects of the surface texturing on the attachment and proliferation of cells are characterized under cell culture conditions. Our data indicate that picosecond-pulsed laser modification can be utilized effectively in low-cost laser surface engineering of medical implants, where different areas on the surface can be made cell-attachment friendly or hostile through the use of different patterns. (C) 2011 Optical Society of Americ

Development of a thulium (Tm:YAP) laser system for brain tissue ablation

In this study, a thulium (Tm:YAP) laser system was developed for brain surgery applications. As the Tm:YAP laser is a continuous-wave laser delivered via silica fibers, it would have great potential for stereotaxic neurosurgery with highest local absorption in the IR region. The laser system developed in this study allowed the user to set the power level, exposure time, and modulation parameters (pulse width and on-off cycles). The Tm:YAP laser beam (200-600 mW, 69-208 W/cm 2) was delivered from a distance of 2 mm to cortical and subcortical regions of ex-vivo Wistar rat brain tissue samples via a 200-μm-core optical fiber. The system performance, dosimetry study, and ablation characteristics of the Tm:YAP laser were tested at different power levels by maximizing the therapeutic effects and minimizing unwanted thermal side-effects. The coagulation and ablation diameters were measured under microscope. The maximum ablation efficiency (100 × ablation diameter/coagulation diameter) was obtained when the Tm:YAP laser system was operated at 200 mW for 10 s. At this laser dose, the ablation efficiency was found to be 71.4% and 58.7% for cortical and subcortical regions, respectively. The fiber-coupled Tm:YAP laser system in hence proposed for the delivery of photothermal therapies in medical applications. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Ltd

High-speed, thermal damage-free ablation of brain tissue with femtosecond pulse bursts

We report a novel ultrafast burst mode fiber laser system and results on ablation of rat brain tissue at rates approaching an order of magnitude improvement over previous reports, with no discernible thermal damage. © 2015 IEEE

1 mJ pulse bursts from a Yb-doped fiber amplifier

We demonstrate burst-mode operation of a polarization-maintaining Yb-doped fiber amplifier capable of generating 60 μJ pulses within bursts of 11 pulses with extremely uniform energy distribution facilitated by a novel feedback mechanism shaping the seed of the burst-mode amplifier. The burst energy can be scaled up to 1 mJ, comprising 25 pulses with 40 μJ average individual energy. The amplifier is synchronously pulse pumped to minimize amplified spontaneous emission between the bursts. Pulse propagation is entirely in fiber and fiber-integrated components until the grating compressor, which allows for highly robust operation. The burst repetition rate is set to 1 kHz and spacing between individual pulses is 10 ns. The 40 μJ pulses are externally compressible to a full width at halfmaximum of 600 fs. However, due to the substantial pedestal of the compressed pulses, the effective pulse duration is longer, estimated to be 1.2 ps. © 2012 Optical Society of America

Ablation-cooled material removal at high speed with femtosecond pulse bursts

We report exploitation of ablation cooling, a concept well-known in rocket design, to remove materials, including metals, silicon, hard and soft tissue. Exciting possibilities include ablation using sub-microjoule pulses with efficiencies of 100-mJ pulses. © OSA 2015

Interdisciplinarity in practice: reflections from early-career researchers developing a risk-informed decision support environment for Tomorrow's cities

The concept of disaster risk is cross-disciplinary by nature and reducing disaster risk has become of interest for various disciplines. Yet, moving from a collection of multiple disciplinary perspectives to integrated interdisciplinary disaster risk approaches remains a fundamental challenge. This paper reflects on the experience of a group of early-career researchers spanning physical scientists, engineers and social scientists from different organisations across the global North and global South who came together to lead the refinement, operationalisation and testing of a risk-informed decision support environment for Tomorrow's Cities (TCDSE). Drawing on the notions of subjects and boundary objects, members of the group reflect on their individual and collective journey of transgressing disciplinary boundaries across three case studies between June–December 2021: operationalisation process of the TCDSE; development of a virtual urban testbed as a demonstration case for the implementation of the TCDSE; and consolidation of frequently asked questions about the TCDSE for communication purposes. The paper argues that (1) the production of boundary objects in interdisciplinary research nurtures relations of reciprocal recognition and the emergence of interdisciplinary subjects; (2) the intrinsic characteristics of boundary objects define the norms of engagement between disciplinary subjects and constrain the expression of interdisciplinary contradictions; and (3) affects and operations of power explain the contingent settlement of interdisciplinary disagreements and the emergence of new knowledge. Activating the interdisciplinary capacities of early-career researchers across disciplines and geographies is a fundamental step towards transforming siloed research practices to reduce disaster risk

Proprioceptive performance of bilateral upper and lower limb joints: side-general and site-specific effects

Superiority of the left upper limb in proprioception tasks performed by right-handed individuals has been attributed to better utilization of proprioceptive information by a non-preferred arm/hemisphere system. However, it is undetermined whether this holds for multiple upper and lower limb joints. Accordingly, the present study tested active movement proprioception at four pairs of upper and lower limb joints, after selecting twelve participants with both strong right arm and right leg preference. A battery of versions of the active movement extent discrimination apparatus were employed to generate the stimuli for movements of different extents at the ankle, knee, shoulder and fingers on the right and left sides of the body, and discrimination scores were derived from participants’ responses. Proprioceptive performance on the non-preferred left side was significantly better than the preferred right side at all four joints tested (overall F(1, 11) = 36.36, p < 0.001, partial η(2) = 0.77). In the 8 × 8 matrix formed by all joints, only correlations between the proprioceptive accuracy scores for the right and left sides at the same joint were significant (ankles 0.93, knees 0.89, shoulders 0.87, fingers 0.91, p ≤ 0.001; all others r ≤ 0.40, p ≥ 0.20). The results point to both a side-general effect and a site-specific effect in the integration of proprioceptive information during active movement tasks, whereby the non-preferred limb/hemisphere system is specialized in the utilization of the best proprioceptive sources available at each specific joint, but the combination of sources employed differs between body sites