9,880 research outputs found
The body in the library: adventures in realism
This essay looks at two aspects of the virtual ‘material world’ of realist fiction: objects encountered by the protagonist and the latter’s body. Taking from Sartre two angles on the realist pact by which readers agree to lend
their bodies, feelings, and experiences to the otherwise ‘languishing signs’ of the text, it goes on to examine two sets of first-person fictions published between 1902 and 1956 — first, four modernist texts in which banal objects defy and then gratify the protagonist, who ends up ready and almost able to write; and, second, three novels in which the body of the protagonist is indeterminate in its sex, gender, or sexuality. In each of these cases, how do we as readers make texts work for us as ‘an adventure of the body’
Large-scale structure and the redshift-distance relation
In efforts to demonstrate the linear Hubble law v = Hr from galaxy
observations, the underlying simplicity is often obscured by complexities
arising from magnitude-limited data. In this paper we point out a simple but
previously unremarked fact: that the shapes and orientations of structures in
redshift space contain in themselves independent information about the
cosmological redshift-distance relation.
The orientations of voids in the CfA slice support the Hubble law, giving a
redshift-distance power index p = 0.83 +/- 0.36 (void data from Slezak, de
Lapparent, & Bijoui 1993) or p = 0.99 +/- 0.38 (void data from Malik &
Subramanian 1997).Comment: 11 pages (AASTeX), 4 figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal
Letter
Nondimensionality and Nonlinearity in Linkages Between Congress and Constituencies
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50829/1/45.pd
Confinement effects in a guided-wave interferometer with millimeter-scale arm separation
Guided-wave atom interferometers measure interference effects using atoms
held in a confining potential. In one common implementation, the confinement is
primarily two-dimensional, and the atoms move along the nearly free dimension
under the influence of an off-resonant standing wave laser beam. In this
configuration, residual confinement along the nominally free axis can introduce
a phase gradient to the atoms that limits the arm separation of the
interferometer. We experimentally investigate this effect in detail, and show
that it can be alleviated by having the atoms undergo a more symmetric motion
in the guide. This can be achieved by either using additional laser pulses or
by allowing the atoms to freely oscillate in the potential. Using these
techniques, we demonstrate interferometer measurement times up to 72 ms and arm
separations up to 0.42 mm with a well controlled phase, or times of 0.91 s and
separations of 1.7 mm with an uncontrolled phase.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure
Laser cooling in the Penning trap: an analytical model for cooling rates in the presence of an axializing field
Ions stored in Penning traps may have useful applications in the field of
quantum information processing. There are, however, difficulties associated
with the laser cooling of one of the radial motions of ions in these traps,
namely the magnetron motion. The application of a small radio-frequency
quadrupolar electric potential resonant with the sum of the two radial motional
frequencies has been shown to couple these motions and to lead to more
efficient laser cooling. We present an analytical model that enables us to
determine laser cooling rates in the presence of such an 'axializing' field. It
is found that this field leads to an averaging of the laser cooling rates for
the two motions and hence improves the overall laser cooling efficiency. The
model also predicts shifts in the motional frequencies due to the axializing
field that are in qualitative agreement with those measured in recent
experiments. It is possible to determine laser cooling rates experimentally by
studying the phase response of the cooled ions to a near resonant excitation
field. Using the model developed in this paper, we study the expected phase
response when an axializing field is present.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Body Mass Index: Comparative Analysis of Monozygotic Twins, Dizygotic Twins and Same-Age Unrelated Siblings
Background—Earlier studies have established that a substantial percentage of variance in obesity-related phenotypes is explained by genetic components. However, only one study has used both virtual twins (VTs) and biological twins and was able to simultaneously estimate additive genetic, non-additive genetic, shared environmental and unshared environmental components in body mass index (BMI). Our current goal was to re-estimate four components of variance in BMI, applying a more rigorous model to biological and virtual multiples with additional data. Virtual multiples share the same family environment, offering unique opportunities to estimate common environmental influence on phenotypes that cannot be separated from the non-additive genetic component using only biological multiples.
Methods—Data included 929 individuals from 164 monozygotic twin pairs, 156 dizygotic twin pairs, five triplet sets, one quadruplet set, 128 VT pairs, two virtual triplet sets and two virtual quadruplet sets. Virtual multiples consist of one biological child (or twins or triplets) plus one same-aged adoptee who are all raised together since infancy. We estimated the additive genetic, non-additive genetic, shared environmental and unshared random components in BMI using a linear mixed model. The analysis was adjusted for age, age2, age3, height, height2, height3, gender and race.
Results—Both non-additive genetic and common environmental contributions were significant in our model (P-values \u3c 0.0001). No significant additive genetic contribution was found. In all, 63.6% (95% confidence interval (CI) 51.8–75.3%) of the total variance of BMI was explained by a non-additive genetic component, 25.7% (95% CI 13.8–37.5%) by a common environmental component and the remaining 10.7% by an unshared component.
Conclusion—Our results suggest that genetic components play an essential role in BMI and that common environmental factors such as diet or exercise also affect BMI. This conclusion is consistent with our earlier study using a smaller sample and shows the utility of virtual multiples for separating non-additive genetic variance from common environmental variance
Gender, war and militarism: making and questioning the links
The gender dynamics of militarism have traditionally been seen as straightforward, given the cultural mythologies of warfare and the disciplining of ‘masculinity’ that occurs in the training and use of men's capacity for violence in the armed services. However, women's relation to both war and peace has been varied and complex. It is women who have often been most prominent in working for peace, although there are no necessary links between women and opposition to militarism. In addition, more women than ever are serving in many of today's armies, with feminists rather uncertain on how to relate to this phenomenon. In this article, I explore some of the complexities of applying gender analyses to militarism and peace work in sites of conflict today, looking most closely at the Israeli feminist group, New Profile, and their insistence upon the costs of the militarized nature of Israeli society. They expose the very permeable boundaries between the military and civil society, as violence seeps into the fears and practices of everyday life in Israel. I place their work in the context of broader feminist analysis offered by researchers such as Cynthia Enloe and Cynthia Cockburn, who have for decades been writing about the ‘masculinist’ postures and practices of warfare, as well as the situation of women caught up in them. Finally, I suggest that rethinking the gendered nature of warfare must also encompass the costs of war to men, whose fundamental vulnerability to psychological abuse and physical injury is often downplayed, whether in mainstream accounts of warfare or in more specific gender analysis. Feminists need to pay careful attention to masculinity and its fragmentations in addressing the topic of gender, war and militarism
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