Examining Men’s Perceptions of GBV Prevention Programming Content

As global efforts to engage men in preventing gender-based violence (GBV) continue to grow, understanding male participants’ perceptions of prevention events is needed. Data from a global sample of 319 men who had attended GBV prevention events were used to (a) assess men’s perceptions of what topics were covered, (b) determine whether profiles of these perceptions could be identified, and (c) describe the degree to which content prerception profiles are associated with levels of men’s motivation and confidence related to antiviolence action. Latent class analysis identified four perception profiles of prevention topics. Implications for GBV prevention programming are discussed. © The Author(s) 2018

Walking the Walk or Just Talk?: A Global Examination of Men’s Intentions to Take Violence Preventative Action

Given the increasing prominence of both bystander-based approaches to gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and of proactively engaging men and boys to join efforts to end GBV, understanding the factors that support men’s antiviolence bystander behavior is important. This study examined correlates of willingness to engage in violence preventative bystander behavior in a global sample of 299 adult men engaged in GBV prevention events or work. Participants came from over 50 countries and provided data via an online, anonymous survey available in English, Spanish, and French. Path analysis was used to model participants’ willingness to engage in a variety of violence-preventative behaviors in the future, with variable selection guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and by research implicating gender-related attitudes in bystander willingness and behavior. Findings suggest that bystander willingness was supported by past bystander behavior, self-efficacy to engage in bystander behavior, positive beliefs about the contributions of antiviolence involvement, and by an awareness of male privilege. Social network support for GBV prevention work, and support for gender equity were not significant correlates of bystander willingness in the full path model. These findings held across participants from the Global North and Global South, suggesting that self-efficacy, an awareness of male privilege, and positive attitudes toward antiviolence work are factors which may support men’s violence preventative actions across broad regional contexts. © 2018 Taylor & Franci

TEMPERATURE AND RELATIVITY

We investigate whether inertial thermometers moving in a thermal bath behave as being hotter or colder. This question is directly related to the classical controversy concerning how temperature transforms under Lorentz transformations. Rather than basing our arguments on thermodynamical hypotheses, we perform straightforward calculations in the context of relativistic quantum field theory. For this purpose we use Unruh-DeWitt detectors, since they have been shown to be reliable thermometers in semi-classical gravity. We believe that our discussion helps in definitely clarifying this issue.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure available upon reques

Ideal Stars and General Relativity

We study a system of differential equations that governs the distribution of matter in the theory of General Relativity. The new element in this paper is the use of a dynamical action principle that includes all the degrees of freedom, matter as well as metric. The matter lagrangian defines a relativistic version of non-viscous, isentropic hydrodynamics. The matter fields are a scalar density and a velocity potential; the conventional, four-vector velocity field is replaced by the gradient of the potential and its scale is fixed by one of the eulerian equations of motion, an innovation that significantly affects the imposition of boundary conditions. If the density is integrable at infinity, then the metric approaches the Schwarzschild metric at large distances. There are stars without boundary and with finite total mass; the metric shows rapid variation in the neighbourhood of the Schwarzschild radius and there is a very small core where a singularity indicates that the gas laws break down. For stars with boundary there emerges a new, critical relation between the radius and the gravitational mass, a consequence of the stronger boundary conditions. Tentative applications are suggested, to certain Red Giants, and to neutron stars, but the investigation reported here was limited to polytropic equations of state. Comparison with the results of Oppenheimer and Volkoff on neutron cores shows a close agreement of numerical results. However, in the model the boundary of the star is fixed uniquely by the required matching of the interior metric to the external Schwarzschild metric, which is not the case in the traditional approach.Comment: 26 pages, 7 figure

Einstein energy associated with the Friedmann -Robertson -Walker metric

Following Einstein's definition of Lagrangian density and gravitational field energy density (Einstein, A., Ann. Phys. Lpz., 49, 806 (1916); Einstein, A., Phys. Z., 19, 115 (1918); Pauli, W., {\it Theory of Relativity}, B.I. Publications, Mumbai, 1963, Trans. by G. Field), Tolman derived a general formula for the total matter plus gravitational field energy ($P_0$) of an arbitrary system (Tolman, R.C., Phys. Rev., 35(8), 875 (1930); Tolman, R.C., {\it Relativity, Thermodynamics & Cosmology}, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1962)); Xulu, S.S., arXiv:hep-th/0308070 (2003)). For a static isolated system, in quasi-Cartesian coordinates, this formula leads to the well known result $P_0 = \int \sqrt{-g} (T_0^0 - T_1^1 -T_2^2 -T_3^3) ~d^3 x$, where $g$ is the determinant of the metric tensor and $T^a_b$ is the energy momentum tensor of the {\em matter}. Though in the literature, this is known as "Tolman Mass", it must be realized that this is essentially "Einstein Mass" because the underlying pseudo-tensor here is due to Einstein. In fact, Landau -Lifshitz obtained the same expression for the "inertial mass" of a static isolated system without using any pseudo-tensor at all and which points to physical significance and correctness of Einstein Mass (Landau, L.D., and Lifshitz, E.M., {\it The Classical Theory of Fields}, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 2th ed., 1962)! For the first time we apply this general formula to find an expression for $P_0$ for the Friedmann- Robertson -Walker (FRW) metric by using the same quasi-Cartesian basis. As we analyze this new result, physically, a spatially flat model having no cosmological constant is suggested. Eventually, it is seen that conservation of $P_0$ is honoured only in the a static limit.Comment: By mistake a marginally different earlier version was loaded, now the journal version is uploade

Stellar structure and compact objects before 1940: Towards relativistic astrophysics

Since the mid-1920s, different strands of research used stars as "physics laboratories" for investigating the nature of matter under extreme densities and pressures, impossible to realize on Earth. To trace this process this paper is following the evolution of the concept of a dense core in stars, which was important both for an understanding of stellar evolution and as a testing ground for the fast-evolving field of nuclear physics. In spite of the divide between physicists and astrophysicists, some key actors working in the cross-fertilized soil of overlapping but different scientific cultures formulated models and tentative theories that gradually evolved into more realistic and structured astrophysical objects. These investigations culminated in the first contact with general relativity in 1939, when J. Robert Oppenheimer and his students George Volkoff and Hartland Snyder systematically applied the theory to the dense core of a collapsing neutron star. This pioneering application of Einstein's theory to an astrophysical compact object can be regarded as a milestone in the path eventually leading to the emergence of relativistic astrophysics in the early 1960s.Comment: 83 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the European Physical Journal

Empowerment/sexism: Figuring female sexual agency in contemporary advertising

This paper argues that there has been a significant shift in advertising representations of women in recent years, such that rather than being presented as passive objects of the male gaze, young women in adverts are now frequently depicted as active, independent and sexually powerful. This analysis examines contemporary constructions of female sexual agency in advertisements examining three recognizable ‘figures’: the young, heterosexually desiring ‘midriff’, the vengeful woman set on punishing her partner or ex partner for his transgressions, and the ‘hot lesbian’, almost always entwined with her beautiful Other or double. Using recent examples of adverts the paper asks how this apparent ‘agency’ and ‘empowerment’ should be understood. Drawing on accounts of the incorporation or recuperation of feminist ideas in advertising the paper takes a critical approach to these representations, examining their exclusions, their constructions of gender relations and heteronormativity, and the way power is figured within them. A feminist poststructuralist approach is used to interrogate the way in which ‘sexual agency’ becomes a form of regulation in these adverts, that requires the re-moulding of feminine subjectivity to fit the current postfeminist, neoliberal moment in which young women should not only be beautiful but sexy, sexually knowledgeable/practised and always ‘up for it’. The paper makes an original contribution to debates about representations of gender in advertising, to poststructuralist analyses about the contemporary operation of power, and to writing about female ‘sexual agency’ by suggesting that ‘voice’ or ‘agency’ may not be the solution to the ‘missing discourse of female desire' but may in fact be a technology of discipline and regulation

Influence of High Magnetic Field on Access to Stationary H-modes and Pedestal Characteristics in Alcator C-Mod

Recent Alcator C-Mod experiments have explored access to and characteristics of H-modes at magnetic fields approaching 8 T, the highest field achieved to date in a diverted tokamak. The H-modes originated from L-mode densities ranging from $1.1 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$ to $2.8 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$, allowing insight into the density dependence of the H-mode power threshold at high magnetic field. This dependence is compared to predictions from the ITPA scaling law (\cite{martin2008power}), finding that the law is approximately accurate at 7.8 T. However, the law underpredicted the high density H-mode threshold at lower magnetic field in previous C-Mod experiments (\cite{ma2012scaling}), \hl{suggesting that the overall dependence of the threshold on magnetic field is weaker than predicted by the scaling law.} The threshold data at 7.8 T also indicates that the onset of a low density branch at this magnetic field on C-Mod occurs below $1.4 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$, which is lower than predicted by an existing model for low density branch onset. The H-modes achieved steady-state densities ranging from $2.3 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$ to $4.4 \times 10^{20} m^{-3}$, and higher transient densities, and had values of $q_{95}$ from 3.3 to 6.0. This parameter range allowed the achievement of all three types of H-mode routinely observed at lower magnetic field on C-Mod: the stationary, ELM-suppressed enhanced D-alpha (EDA) regime, seen at high densities and high values of $q_{95}$; the nonstationary ELM-free regime, seen at lower densities and values of $q_{95}$; and the ELMy regime, seen at low density, moderate $q_{95}$, and specialized plasma shape. The parameter space in which these regimes occur at 7.8 T is consistent with lower magnetic field experience. Pressure pedestal height at 7.8 T is compared to EPED \cite{snyder2009development, snyder2011first} predictions, and a scaling law for EDA density pedestal height developed between 4.5 and 6.0 T is updated to include fields from 2.7 T to 7.8 T. Overall, this analysis increases confidence in the use of low magnetic field experience to predict some elements of high magnetic field tokamak behavior

On the ρ∗ scaling of intrinsic rotation in C-Mod plasmas with edge transport barriers

Changes in the core intrinsic toroidal rotation velocity following L- to H- and L- to I-mode transitions have been investigated in Alcator C-Mod tokamak plasmas. The magnitude of the co-current rotation increments is found to increase with the pedestal temperature gradient and q95, and to decrease with toroidal magnetic field. These results are captured quantitatively by a model of fluctuation entropy balance which gives the Mach number Mi∼=ρ∗/2Ls/LT∼∇Tq95/BT in an ITG turbulence dominant regime. The agreement between experiment and theory gives confidence for extrapolation to future devices in similar operational regimes. Core thermal Mach numbers of ∼0.07 and ∼0.2 are expected for ITER and ARC, respectively