Lesbian brides: post-queer popular culture

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of lesbian representations in European and North American popular culture, particularly within television drama and broader celebrity culture. The abundance of “positive” and “ordinary” representations of lesbians is widely celebrated as signifying progress in queer struggles for social equality. Yet, as this article details, the terms of the visibility extended to lesbians within popular culture often a rm ideals of hetero-patriarchal, white femininity. Focusing on the visual and narrative registers within which lesbian romances are mediated within television drama, this article examines the emergence of what we describe as “the lesbian normal.” Tracking the ways in which the lesbian normal is anchored in a longer history of “the normal gay,” it argues that the lesbian normal is indicative of the emergence of a broader post-feminist and post-queer popular culture, in which feminist and queer struggles are imagined as completed and belonging to the past. Post-queer popular culture is depoliticising in its e ects, diminishing the critical potential of feminist and queer politics, and silencing the actually existing conditions of inequality, prejudice, and stigma that continue to shape lesbian lives

Medial perirhinal cortex disambiguates confusable objects

Our brain disambiguates the objects in our cluttered visual world seemingly effortlessly, enabling us to understand their significance and to act appropriately. The role of anteromedial temporal structures in this process, particularly the perirhinal cortex, is highly controversial. In some accounts, the perirhinal cortex is necessary for differentiating between perceptually and semantically confusable objects. Other models claim that the perirhinal cortex neither disambiguates perceptually confusable objects nor plays a unique role in semantic processing. One major hurdle to resolving this central debate is the fact that brain damage in human patients typically encompasses large portions of the anteromedial temporal lobe, such that the identification of individual substructures and precise neuroanatomical locus of the functional impairments has been difficult. We tested these competing accounts in patients with Alzheimer's disease with varying degrees of atrophy in anteromedial structures, including the perirhinal cortex. To assess the functional contribution of each anteromedial temporal region separately, we used a detailed region of interest approach. From each participant, we obtained magnetic resonance imaging scans and behavioural data from a picture naming task that contrasted naming performance with living and non-living things as a way of manipulating perceptual and semantic confusability; living things are more similar to one another than non-living things, which have more distinctive features. We manually traced neuroanatomical regions of interest on native-space cortical surface reconstructions to obtain mean thickness estimates for the lateral and medial perirhinal cortex and entorhinal cortex. Mean cortical thickness in each region of interest, and hippocampal volume, were submitted to regression analyses predicting naming performance. Importantly, atrophy of the medial perirhinal cortex, but not lateral perirhinal cortex, entorhinal cortex or hippocampus, significantly predicted naming performance on living relative to non-living things. These findings indicate that one specific anteromedial temporal lobe region—the medial perirhinal cortex—is necessary for the disambiguation of perceptually and semantically confusable objects. Taken together, these results support a hierarchical account of object processing, whereby the perirhinal cortex at the apex of the ventral object processing system is required to bind properties of not just perceptually, but also semantically confusable objects together, enabling their disambiguation from other similar objects and thus comprehension. Significantly, this model combining a hierarchical object processing architecture with a semantic feature statistic account explains why category-specific semantic impairments for living things are associated with anteromedial temporal lobe damage, and pinpoints the root of this syndrome to perirhinal cortex damag

From Perception to Conception: How Meaningful Objects Are Processed over Time

To recognize visual objects, our sensory perceptions are transformed through dynamic neural interactions into meaningful representations of the world but exactly how visual inputs invoke object meaning remains unclear. To address this issue, we apply a regression approach to magnetoencephalography data, modeling perceptual and conceptual variables. Key conceptual measures were derived from semantic feature-based models claiming shared features (e.g., has eyes) provide broad category information, while distinctive features (e.g., has a hump) are additionally required for more specific object identification. Our results show initial perceptual effects in visual cortex that are rapidly followed by semantic feature effects throughout ventral temporal cortex within the first 120 ms. Moreover, these early semantic effects reflect shared semantic feature information supporting coarse category-type distinctions. Post-200 ms, we observed the effects along the extent of ventral temporal cortex for both shared and distinctive features, which together allow for conceptual differentiation and object identification. By relating spatiotemporal neural activity to statistical feature-based measures of semantic knowledge, we demonstrate that qualitatively different kinds of perceptual and semantic information are extracted from visual objects over time, with rapid activation of shared object features followed by concomitant activation of distinctive features that together enable meaningful visual object recognitio

Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning During Spoken Word Processing.

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in (distinctiveness/sharedness) and likelihood of co-occurrence (correlational strength)--determine conceptual activation. To test these claims, we investigated the role of distinctiveness/sharedness and correlational strength in speech-to-meaning mapping, using a lexical decision task and computational simulations. Responses were faster for concepts with higher sharedness, suggesting that shared features are facilitatory in tasks like lexical decision that require access to them. Correlational strength facilitated responses for slower participants, suggesting a time-sensitive co-occurrence-driven settling mechanism. The computational simulation showed similar effects, with early effects of shared features and later effects of correlational strength. These results support a general-to-specific account of conceptual processing, whereby early activation of shared features is followed by the gradual emergence of a specific target representation.This work was supported by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator grant (under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013/ ERC Grant agreement no 249640) to LKT, and a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship and Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Fellowship to KIT. We thank Ken McRae and colleagues for making their property norm data available. We are very grateful to George Cree and Chris McNorgan for providing us with the MikeNet implementation of their model.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cogs.1223

Protostellar accretion traced with chemistry. High resolution C18O and continuum observations towards deeply embedded protostars in Perseus

Context: Understanding how accretion proceeds is a key question of star formation, with important implications for both the physical and chemical evolution of young stellar objects. In particular, very little is known about the accretion variability in the earliest stages of star formation. Aims: To characterise protostellar accretion histories towards individual sources by utilising sublimation and freeze-out chemistry of CO. Methods: A sample of 24 embedded protostars are observed with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in context of the large program "Mass Assembly of Stellar Systems and their Evolution with the SMA" (MASSES). The size of the C$^{18}$O emitting region, where CO has sublimated into the gas-phase, is measured towards each source and compared to the expected size of the region given the current luminosity. The SMA observations also include 1.3 mm continuum data, which are used to investigate whether a link can be established between accretion bursts and massive circumstellar disks. Results: Depending on the adopted sublimation temperature of the CO ice, between 20% and 50% of the sources in the sample show extended C$^{18}$O emission indicating that the gas was warm enough in the past that CO sublimated and is currently in the process of refreezing; something which we attribute to a recent accretion burst. Given the fraction of sources with extended C$^{18}$O emission, we estimate an average interval between bursts of 20000-50000 yr, which is consistent with previous estimates. No clear link can be established between the presence of circumstellar disks and accretion bursts, however the three closest known binaries in the sample (projected separations <20 AU) all show evidence of a past accretion burst, indicating that close binary interactions may also play a role in inducing accretion variability.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 21 pages, 13 figure

Cosmic Rays and Large Extra Dimensions

We have proposed that the cosmic ray spectrum "knee", the steepening of the cosmic ray spectrum at energy E \gsim 10^{15.5} eV, is due to "new physics", namely new interactions at TeV cm energies which produce particles undetected by the experimental apparatus. In this letter we examine specifically the possibility that this interaction is low scale gravity. We consider that the graviton propagates, besides the usual four dimensions, into an additional $\delta$, compactified, large dimensions and we estimate the graviton production in $p p$ collisions in the high energy approximation where graviton emission is factorized. We find that the cross section for graviton production rises as fast as $(\sqrt{s}/M_f)^{2+\delta}$, where $M_f$ is the fundamental scale of gravity in $4+\delta$ dimensions, and that the distribution of radiating a fraction $y$ of the initial particle's energy into gravitational energy (which goes undetected) behaves as $\delta y^{\delta -1}$. The missing energy leads to an underestimate of the true energy and generates a break in the {\sl inferred} cosmic ray spectrum (the "kne"). By fitting the cosmic ray spectrum data we deduce that the favorite values for the parameters of the theory are $M_f \sim 8$ TeV and $\delta =4$.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figur

Hadronic interactions, precocious unification, and cosmic ray showers at Auger energies

At Auger energies only model predictions enable us to extract primary cosmic ray features. The simulation of the shower evolution depends sensitively on the first few interactions, necessarily related to the quality of our understanding of high energy hadronic collisions. Distortions of the standard ``soft semi-hard'' scenario include novel large compact dimensions and a string or quantum gravity scale not far above the electroweak scale. Na\"{\i}vely, the additional degrees of freedom yield unification of all forces in the TeV range. In this article we study the influence of such precocious unification during atmospheric cascade developments by analyzing the most relevant observables in proton induced showers.Comment: 16 pages latex. 4 eps figure

Background and design of a qualitative study on globally responsible decision-making in civil engineering

Organizations that regulate civil engineering have been pressing for integration of 'global responsibility' into higher education curricula since around 2006, with a goal of achieving environmental sustainability and social justice. In an effort led by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE, 2007, 2009), a global vision for civil engineering was identified. Within the UK, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has been leading the way alongside non-governmental organizations (Bourn & Neal, 2008). Via the in-progress study reported here, a UK-based research team is now studying the effects of ACSE and ICE initiatives. The team seeks to benchmark how global responsibility is perceived and enacted in civil engineering in the UK today and how engineering graduates have learned about and experienced globally responsible decision-making. Findings will hold value for the global community, as achieving sustainability is crucial to humanity, and indeed all life on Earth

Parent-adolescent communication on adolescent sexual and reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa: a qualitative review and thematic synthesis

Background Improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health continues to be a global public health need. Effective parent–adolescent communication on sexual health issues has been cited as a factor that could influence adolescents towards adopting safer sexual behaviour. The current review synthesises qualitative literature to understand the nature and relevance of parent–adolescent sexual and reproductive health communication and the barriers to effective communication in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods We systematically searched and synthesised qualitative literature published between 1st January 1990 to December 2019 and searched from CINAHL, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Global Health, EMBASE, PubMed, and Google Scholar. We assessed the methodological quality of included studies using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist. We thematically analysed qualitative data from the included primary studies. Results Fifteen studies were included. Social and physiological events act as triggers for initiating discussions. Fear of personal, social, and economic consequences of high-risk sexual behaviours act as drivers for communication but also carry a negative framing which hinders open discussion. Lack of parental self-efficacy and cultural and religious norms create an uncomfortable environment leaving peers, media, teachers, and siblings as important and sometimes preferred sources of sexual health information. Conclusions While mothers recognise their own role in adolescent sexual and reproductive health and school-based interventions can act as useful prompts for initiating discussion, fathers are mainly absent from home-based dialogue. Fear dominates the narrative, and the needs of adolescents remain unarticulated