701 research outputs found
De-militarizing masculinities in the age of empire
'Dieser Artikel untersucht kritisch die Beziehung zwischen Männern, vorherrschenden Männlichkeitskonzeptionen und den Prozessen und Praktiken, die ins Spiel kommen, wenn Männlichkeiten militarisiert und zum Kriegszweck eingesetzt werden. Nach einer einleitenden Übersicht über die feministische und nicht feministische Literatur zu Militarisierung und Männlichkeitskonstruktionen konzentriert sich der Artikel auf die Aussichten für eine Demilitarisierung von Männern und Männlichkeitskonstruktionen im US-Empire seit dem 11. September 2001 und insbesondere im Kontext der Kriege in Afghanistan und im Irak unter der Führung der USA. Die Analyse unterscheidet zwischen dem Militär als System, Militarisierung als Prozess und Soldaten als Menschen. Da Kriege nicht ohne militarisierte Männlichkeit zu führen sind, helfen Kriegsgeschichten von Soldaten, die zu einer Demystifizierung des Krieges beitragen, auch die enge Verknüpfung zwischen Männlichkeit und Gewalt zu schwächen oder sogar aufzubrechen. Zu diesem Zweck steht die Analyse der Beschreibungen von Soldaten im Zentrum des Artikels. Eine wichtige Schlussfolgerung des Artikels ist, dass der Prozess der Demilitarisierung ausdrücklich alle Systeme der Herrschaft und Unterdrückung, einschließlich Sexismus, Rassismus und Homophobie, die explizit und implizit im Militarisierungsprozess zur Anwendung kommen, in Frage stellen und delegitimieren muss.' (Autorenreferat)'This article examines critically the relationship between men, dominant conceptions of masculinity, and the processes and practices that are at play as masculinities become militarized and deployed to fight a war. Following a critical review of feminist and non-feminist literature on militarization and masculinities, the article focuses on the prospects for de-militarizing men and masculinities in the United States empire since 11 September 2001 and especially in the context of the US-led wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. The analysis distinguishes between the military as a system, militarization as a process, and soldiers as human beings. As war cannot be fought without militarized masculinities, soldiers' war stories help de-mystify war, also work in turn to weaken, if not undo, the tightly constructed knot between masculinities and violence. Towards this end, a close reading of soldiers' accounts is at the center of the article. A key conclusion of the article is that the process of de-militarization has to explicitly call into question and to de-legitimize all systems of domination and oppression, including sexism, racism, and homophobia, that have been used both explicitly and implicitly during the process of militarization.' (author's abstract
Multiple Avalanches Across the Metal-Insulator Transition of Vanadium Oxide Nano-scaled Junctions
The metal insulator transition of nano-scaled devices is drastically
different from the smooth transport curves generally reported. The temperature
driven transition occurs through a series of resistance jumps ranging over 2
decades in amplitude, indicating that the transition is caused by avalanches.
We find a power law distribution of the jump amplitudes, demonstrating an
inherent property of the films. We report a surprising relation between
jump amplitude and device size. A percolation model captures the general
transport behavior, but cannot account for the statistical behavior.Comment: 4 papers and 4 figures submitted to PR
Gender and Conflict Transformation in Israel/Palestine
A careful examination of women’s involvement in peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Israel and Palestine provides a unique perspective on key turning points in the history of the conflict in the past two and one-half decades, since the first Palestinian uprising, knows as the Intifada. The article analyzes the changes in modes of organizing, as well as in the broader vision and key strategies of women’s organizing, mostly at the grassroots level, on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli divide. By exposing the gendered dimensions of the conflict, women activists have began to transform the cultures of their respective collectivities, ensuring that gender and other inequalities and oppressions are not overlooked. Notwithstanding the challenges facing women in both communities, the article concludes that the women who have been working for justice and peace in the region constitute a critical mass that will not only impact the nature of conflict transformation but will also be instrumental in envisioning post-conflict realities
On the Capacity Limits of Privileged ERM
We study the supervised learning paradigm called Learning Using Privileged
Information, first suggested by Vapnik and Vashist (2009). In this paradigm, in
addition to the examples and labels, additional (privileged) information is
provided only for training examples. The goal is to use this information to
improve the classification accuracy of the resulting classifier, where this
classifier can only use the non-privileged information of new example instances
to predict their label. We study the theory of privileged learning with the
zero-one loss under the natural Privileged ERM algorithm proposed in Pechyony
and Vapnik (2010a). We provide a counter example to a claim made in that work
regarding the VC dimension of the loss class induced by this problem; We
conclude that the claim is incorrect. We then provide a correct VC dimension
analysis which gives both lower and upper bounds on the capacity of the
Privileged ERM loss class. We further show, via a generalization analysis, that
worst-case guarantees for Privileged ERM cannot improve over standard
non-privileged ERM, unless the capacity of the privileged information is
similar or smaller to that of the non-privileged information. This result
points to an important limitation of the Privileged ERM approach. In our
closing discussion, we suggest another way in which Privileged ERM might still
be helpful, even when the capacity of the privileged information is large.Comment: AISTATS 202
Andreev bound states in rounded corners of d-wave superconductors
Andreev bound states at boundaries of d-wave superconductors are strongly
influenced by the boundary geometry itself. In this work, the zero-energy
spectral weight of the local quasiparticle density of states is presented for
the case of wedge-shaped boundaries with rounded corners. Generally, both
orientation of the d-wave and the specific local reflection properties of the
rounded wedges determine, whether Andreev bound states exist or not. For the
bisecting line of the wedge being parallel to the nodal direction of the d-wave
gap function, strong zero-energy Andreev bound states are expected at the round
part of the boundary
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