It\u27s common (but we don\u27t talk about it) : how straight male use of gay male porn influences acts, identities, and desire

This exploratory study was conducted to determine what potential pornography might hold as a productive space for exploring desire and identity, in addition to influencing sexual behaviors or preferences outside of pornography use. Specifically, this research set out to understand how and why individuals may watch pornography that represents identities or acts that are not considered to be in alignment with their stated or felt sexual orientation. In-person semistructured interviews were conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area, with 11 straight- or formerly straight-identified men. From there, interview data was organized and coded with thematic analysis. Although the findings were not generalizable due to the small number of participants and limited racial diversity, some results indicate the need for future research. First, participants indicated that while use of gay porn had had made them think about their sexuality, it did not threaten an identification with straightness. Eight of the participants instead indicated that a primary motivation for watching was that gay porn and the sex acts portrayed therein seemed more authentic and less fake that straight porn. Additionally, interviewees found gay porn to be a site for learning about male sexuality and stereotypically gay sex acts such as anal penetration, which several had then practiced with female partners. Finally, 7 of 11 participants indicated that they felt identification with a non-monogamous lifestyle and/or childhood experiences had influenced both their interest in gay porn and their feelings about how use of gay porn impacted their own identities

Molecular hydrogen in the galaxy and galactic gamma rays

Recent surveys of 2.6 mm CO emission and 100 MeV gamma-radiation in the galactic plane reveal a striking correlation suggesting that both emissions may be primarily proportional to the line-of-sight column density of H2 in the inner galaxy. Both the gamma ray and CO data suggest a prominent ring or arm consisting of cool clouds of H2 at a galactocentric distance of approximately 5 kpc with a mean density of approximately 4 atoms/cu cm. The importance of H2 in understanding galactic gamma ray observations is also reflected in the correlation of galactic latitude distribution of gamma rays and dense dust clouds. A detailed calculation of the gamma ray flux distribution in the 0 deg to 180 deg range using the CO data to obtain the average distribution of molecular clouds in the galaxy shows that most of the enhancement in the inner galaxy is due to pion-decay radiation and the 5 kpc ring plays a major role. Detailed agreement with the gamma ray data is obtained with the additional inclusion of contributions from bremsstrahlung and Compton radiation of secondary electrons and Compton radiation from the intense radiation field near the galactic center

Functional maps representation on product manifolds

We consider the tasks of representing, analysing and manipulating maps between shapes. We model maps as densities over the product manifold of the input shapes; these densities can be treated as scalar functions and therefore are manipulable using the language of signal processing on manifolds. Being a manifold itself, the product space endows the set of maps with a geometry of its own, which we exploit to define map operations in the spectral domain; we also derive relationships with other existing representations (soft maps and functional maps). To apply these ideas in practice, we discretize product manifolds and their Laplace–Beltrami operators, and we introduce localized spectral analysis of the product manifold as a novel tool for map processing. Our framework applies to maps defined between and across 2D and 3D shapes without requiring special adjustment, and it can be implemented efficiently with simple operations on sparse matrices

Algebraic symmetries of generic (m+1)(m+1) dimensional periodic Costas arrays

In this work we present two generators for the group of symmetries of the generic $(m+1)$ dimensional periodic Costas arrays over elementary abelian $(\mathbb{Z}_p)^m$ groups: one that is defined by multiplication on $m$ dimensions and the other by shear (addition) on $m$ dimensions. Through exhaustive search we observe that these two generators characterize the group of symmetries for the examples we were able to compute. Following the results, we conjecture that these generators characterize the group of symmetries of the generic $(m+1)$ dimensional periodic Costas arrays over elementary abelian $(\mathbb{Z}_p)^m$ groups

Molecular clouds in the Galaxy

The J = 1 → 0 emission of CO has been surveyed in the galactic plane between ℓ = -10° and +90° with a U beam sampling every degree. Molecular clouds emitting in the CO line are plentiful over the inner region of the Galaxy. Their greatest number occurs in the galactic nucleus and at a radius of 5.5 kpc—a distribution similar to radio H II regions and galactic γ-ray emission but very different from that previously derived for atomic hydrogen. The total mass in molecular clouds is found to be 1-3 x 10^9 and each typically has 10^5 M_⊙, an H_2 density of 700 cm^(-3), and a temperature near 7 K. These results suggest that most of the interstellar medium in the interior of the Galaxy is molecular H_2