Migration reflected through Afghan Women’s Poetry

Landays are two line poems that are most often written by anonymous Afghan women. Intense distillations of emotion and everyday preoccupations, they reveal the struggles faced by those whose husbands, on whom they are forced to depend, migrate. While Pashtun women are increasingly becoming visible in the economy, politics and society, social norms still dictate that most of these women should remain at home, uneducated and dependent on male family members, so that the migration of their husbands renders their lives even more confined. However, while the anonymous form of the poems allow women to complain about the constraints they face, it also permits them to merge as active participants in �their lives, urging suitors to go abroad to earn the money necessary for marriage, to bring back gifts and to remain faithful

Accelerating the laser-induced demagnetization of a ferromagnetic film by antiferromagnetic order in an adjacent layer

We study the ultrafast demagnetization of Ni/NiMn and Co/NiMn ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic bilayer systems after excitation by a laser pulse. We probe the ferromagnetic order of Ni and Co using magnetic circular dichroism in time-resolved pump-probe resonant x-ray reflectivity. Tuning the sample temperature across the antiferromagnetic ordering temperature of the NiMn layer allows us to investigate effects induced by the magnetic order of the latter. The presence of antiferromagnetic order in NiMn speeds up the demagnetization of the ferromagnetic layer, which is attributed to bidirectional laser-induced superdiffusive spin currents between the ferromagnetic and the antiferromagnetic layer

Electronic localization at mesoscopic length scales: different definitions of localization and contact effects in a heuristic DNA model

In this work we investigate the electronic transport along model DNA molecules using an effective tight-binding approach that includes the backbone on site energies. The localization length and participation number are examined as a function of system size, energy dependence, and the contact coupling between the leads and the DNA molecule. On one hand, the transition from an diffusive regime to a localized regime for short systems is identified, suggesting the necessity of a further length scale revealing the system borders sensibility. On the other hand, we show that the lenght localization and participation number, do not depended of system size and contact coupling in the thermodynamic limit. Finally we discuss possible length dependent origins for the large discrepancies among experimental results for the electronic transport in DNA sample

Temperature and force dependence of nanoscale electron transport via the Cu protein Azurin

The mechanisms of solid-state electron transport (ETp) via a monolayer of immobilized Azurin (Az) was examined by conducting probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM), both as function of temperature (248 - 373K) and of applied tip force (6-12 nN). By varying both temperature and force in CP-AFM, we find that the ETp mechanism can alter with a change in the force applied via the tip to the proteins. As the applied force increases, ETp via Az changes from temperature-independent to thermally activated at high temperatures. This is in contrast to the Cu-depleted form of Az (apo-Az), where increasing the applied force causes only small quantitative effects, that fit with a decrease in electrode spacing. At low force ETp via holo-Az is temperature-independent and thermally activated via apo-Az. This observation agrees with macroscopic-scale measurements, thus confirming that the difference in ETp dependence on temperature between holo- and apo-Az is an inherent one that may reflect a difference in rigidity between the two forms. An important implication of these results, which depend on CP-AFM measurements over a significant temperature range, is that for ETp measurements on floppy systems, such as proteins, the stress applied to the sample should be kept constant or, at least controlled during measurement.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, plus Supporting Information with 4 pages and 2 figure

Discovery of four recessive developmental disorders using probabilistic genotype and phenotype matching among 4,125 families.

Discovery of most autosomal recessive disease-associated genes has involved analysis of large, often consanguineous multiplex families or small cohorts of unrelated individuals with a well-defined clinical condition. Discovery of new dominant causes of rare, genetically heterogeneous developmental disorders has been revolutionized by exome analysis of large cohorts of phenotypically diverse parent-offspring trios. Here we analyzed 4,125 families with diverse, rare and genetically heterogeneous developmental disorders and identified four new autosomal recessive disorders. These four disorders were identified by integrating Mendelian filtering (selecting probands with rare, biallelic and putatively damaging variants in the same gene) with statistical assessments of (i) the likelihood of sampling the observed genotypes from the general population and (ii) the phenotypic similarity of patients with recessive variants in the same candidate gene. This new paradigm promises to catalyze the discovery of novel recessive disorders, especially those with less consistent or nonspecific clinical presentations and those caused predominantly by compound heterozygous genotypes