The shape of equality: discourses around the Section 28 repeal in Scotland

This article focuses on conceptualizations of equality in the discourses deployed in the campaign to repeal Section 28 in Scotland. I use the parliamentary debates and two newspapers: the Daily Record, which supported the campaign to Keep the Clause, and The Guardian, which supported repeal, to exemplify the different discursive articulations around equality and citizenship. I suggest that the Scottish example provides further evidence of the ways in which liberalism naturalizes heterosexuality as the standard for citizenship and thus bequeaths a hierarchy of 'equality' and citizenship in the realm of sexuality, wherein lesbian and gay citizenship is either rendered invalid or characterized as 'special rights'. However, within the narrow confines of the parliamentary debates, more expansive and differentiated notions of citizenship and equality are evident. Whilst I conclude that the 'shape' of equality achieved through the repeal has been moulded to support institutionalized heterosexuality - with Section 28 replaced by statutory guidelines on sex education which advocate marriage - I also suggest equality is contested, both through the recognition of transformations in heterosexual family forms and the appeal to non-discrimination as a democratic principle. It is possible, therefore, that current destabilizations of the heterosexual social order simultaneously destabilize the precepts of liberal democracy

Electron Quasiparticles Drive the Superconductor-to-Insulator Transition in Homogeneously Disordered Thin Films

Transport data on Bi, MoGe, and PbBi/Ge homogeneously-disordered thin films demonstrate that the critical resistivity, $R_c$, at the nominal insulator-superconductor transition is linearly proportional to the normal sheet resistance, $R_N$. In addition, the critical magnetic field scales linearly with the superconducting energy gap and is well-approximated by $H_{c2}$. Because $R_N$ is determined at high temperatures and $H_{c2}$ is the pair-breaking field, the two immediate consequences are: 1) electron-quasiparticles populate the insulating side of the transition and 2) standard phase-only models are incapable of describing the destruction of the superconducting state. As gapless electronic excitations populate the insulating state, the universality class is no longer the 3D XY model. The lack of a unique critical resistance in homogeneously disordered films can be understood in this context. In light of the recent experiments which observe an intervening metallic state separating the insulator from the superconductor in homogeneously disordered MoGe thin films, we argue that the two transitions that accompany the destruction of superconductivity are 1) superconductor to Bose metal in which phase coherence is lost and 2) Bose metal to localized electron insulator via pair-breaking.Comment: This article is included in the Festschrift for Prof. Michael Pollak on occasion of his 75th birthda

Pufendorf, Samuel

During the last two decades, Samuel von Pufendorf’s (1632–1694) natural law philosophy has become the subject of renewed and growing attentiveness among intellectual historians and philosophers (Seidler 2015). In the late-seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, Pufendorf was the most widely-read moral and political philosopher in Europe, whose reputation is most clearly exemplified in the impressive number of translations and editions of his works. Pufendorfian natural law theory offered a shared vocabulary and conceptual possibilities for the discussion of morality, politics and interstate relations for numerous eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Christian Thomasius, the authors of the Scottish Enlightenment and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Pufendorf spent large parts of his career in princely courts and portrayed the history of states and their natural law foundations in his widely circulated historical works (Seidler 1997). Moreover, he also wrote on the issues of theology and church-state relations (Döring 1992, Zurbuchen 1998).Peer reviewe

Cooperativity in sandpiles: statistics of bridge geometries

Bridges form dynamically in granular media as a result of spatiotemporal inhomogeneities. We classify bridges as linear and complex, and analyse their geometrical characteristics. In particular, we find that the length distribution of linear bridges is exponential. We then turn to the analysis of the orientational distribution of linear bridges and find that, in three dimensions, they are {\it vertically diffusive but horizontally superdiffusive}; thus, when they exist, long linear bridges form `domes'. Our results are in good accord with Monte Carlo simulations of bridge structure; we make predictions for quantities that are experimentally accessible, and suggest that bridges are very closely related to force chains.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures. Minor changes and update

Reduced Interhemispheric Functional Connectivity in the Motor Cortex during Rest in Limb-Onset Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder of motor neurons that leads to paralysis and eventually death. There is evidence that atrophy occurs in the primary motor cortex (M1), but it is unclear how the disease affects the intrinsic connectivity of this structure. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine interhemispheric coupling of low frequency blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal fluctuations in M1 using functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging during rest. Because disease progression is rapid, high-functioning patients were recruited to assess neural changes in the relatively early stages of ALS. Twenty patients with limb-onset ALS participated in this study. A parceling technique was employed to segment both precentral gyri into multiple regions of interest (ROI), thus increasing sensitivity to detect changes that exist along discretely localized regions of the motor cortex. We report an overall systemic decrease in functional connectivity between right and left motor cortices in patients with limb-onset ALS. Additionally, we observed a pronounced disconnection between dorsal ROI pairs in the ALS group compared to the healthy control group. Furthermore, measures of limb functioning correlated with the connectivity data from dorsal ROI pairs in the ALS group, suggesting a symptomatic relationship with interhemispheric M1 connectivity

Theoretical Description of Resistive Behavior near a Quantum Vortex-Glass Transition

Resistive behaviors at nonzero temperatures (T > 0) reflecting a quantum vortex-glass (VG) transition (the so-called field-tuned superconductor-insulator transition at T=0) are studied based on a quantum Ginzburg-Landau (GL) action for a s-wave pairing case containing microscopic details. The ordinary dissipative dynamics of the pair-field is assumed on the basis of a consistency between the fluctuation conductance terms excluded from GL approach and an observed negative magnetoresistance. It is shown that the VG contribution, G_{vg}(B=B_{vg}, T \to 0),to 2D fluctuation conductance at the VG transition field B_{vg} depends on the strength of a repulsive-interaction between electrons and takes a universal value only in the ordinary dirty limit neglecting the electron-repulsion. Available resistivity data near B_{vg} are discussed based on our results, and extensions to the cases of a d-wave pairing and of 3D systems are briefly commented on.Comment: Explanation of data in strongly disordered case, as well as Fig.2 and 3, was renewed, and comments on recent publications were added. To appear in J.Phys.Soc. Jp