Asexuals negotiate the 'onslaught of the heteronormative'

Although theorising and research about asexuality have increased in the past decade, there has been minimal attention given to the emotional impact that living in a hetero- and amatonormative cultural context has on those who identify as asexual. In this paper, I address this research gap through an exploration of the ‘work that emotions do (Sara Ahmed) in the everyday lives of asexuals. The study is based on 15 individual interviews with self-identified asexuals living in Aotearoa New Zealand. One participant in the study used the phrase, ‘the onslaught of the heteronormative’ to describe how he experienced living as an aromantic identified asexual in a hetero- and amato-normative society. In this paper I consider what it means and feels like to experience aspects of everyday life as an ‘onslaught’. In particular, I look at some participants’ talk about experiencing sadness, loss, anger and/or shame as responses to/effects of hetero- and amato-normativity. However, I suggest that these are not only ‘negative’ emotional responses but that they might also be productive in terms of rethinking and disrupting hetero- and amato-normativity

Acceleration of Radiative Decay of Photon Counts With Increasing Numbers of Measurement Units: A Potential Large Scale Negative Zeno Effect That Matches With Lorentz Contraction and Photon Acceleration Durations

The reverse Zeno effect whereby an unstable quantum state associated with radiative decay is accelerated by frequent measurements was demonstrated experimentally for numbers of spontaneous photons in a 3 m3 hyperdark chamber during the 60 s following a burst of applied photons. Numbers of photon counts were measured from one digital photomultiplier unit when either 1 (the reference) or 2, 3, or 4 units were measuring simultaneously. There was a median decrease of 50 photons per s with the addition of each additional simultaneous measurement by another unit. The energy was ~ 10-17 J per s and is equivalent to a wavelength of 10 nm. This quantity is equivalent to the energy of one neuron in the human brain displaying its upper limit (~1 kHz).  The results suggest that this increment of energy may be a standard quantity that reflects the numbers of measurements by similar photoelectric currents to the decay of a single photon burst. The approximately 30 to 40 s required for the decay of photons per unit to inflect towards asymptote is consistent with the solution for the Lorentz contraction for the shift in electron mass-energy (10-17 J) with a wavelength of ~10 nm. The 30 to 40 s value is a solution for several applications to novel calculations involving fundamental parameters within the structure of space-time

Current reservoirs in the simple exclusion process

We consider the symmetric simple exclusion process in the interval $[-N,N]$ with additional birth and death processes respectively on $(N-K,N]$, $K>0$, and $[-N,-N+K)$. The exclusion is speeded up by a factor $N^2$, births and deaths by a factor $N$. Assuming propagation of chaos (a property proved in a companion paper "Truncated correlations in the stirring process with births and deaths") we prove convergence in the limit $N\to \infty$ to the linear heat equation with Dirichlet condition on the boundaries; the boundary conditions however are not known a priori, they are obtained by solving a non linear equation. The model simulates mass transport with current reservoirs at the boundaries and the Fourier law is proved to hold

Secretion of ligninolytic enzymes and mineralization of 14C-ring-labeled synthetic lignin by 3 Phlebia tremellosa strains

Production of ligninolytic enzymes by three strains of the white rot fungus Phlebia tremellosa (syn. Merulius tremellosus) was studied in bioreactor cultivation under nitrogen-limiting conditions. The Mn(II) concentration of the growth medium strongly affected the secretion patterns of lignin peroxidase and laccase. Two major lignin peroxidase isoenzymes were expressed in all strains. In addition, laccase and glyoxal oxidase were purified and characterized in one strain of P. tremellosa. In contrast, manganese peroxidase was not found in fast protein liquid chromatography profiles of extracellular proteins under either low (2.4 µM) or elevated (24 and 120 µM) Mn(II) concentrations. However, H2O2- and Mn-dependent phenol red-oxidizing activity was detected in cultures supplemented with higher Mn(II) levels. Mineralization rates of 14C-ring-labelled synthetic lignin (i.e., dehydrogenation polymerizate) by all strains under a low basal Mn(II) level were similar to those obtained for Phanerochaete chrysosporium and Phlebia radiata. A high manganese concentration repressed the evolution of 14CO2 even when a chelating agent, sodium malonate, was included in the medium

Lignin peroxidases, manganese peroxidases, and other ligninolytic enzymes produced by Phlebia radiata during solid-state fermentation of wheat-straw

The white rot fungus Phlebia radiata 79 (ATCC 64658) produces lignin peroxidase (LiP), manganese peroxidase (MnP), glyoxal oxidase (GLOX), and laccase in the commonly used glucose low-nitrogen liquid medium. However, the enzymes which this fungus utilizes for selective removal of lignin during degradation of different lignocellulosic substrates have not been studied before. Multiple forms of LiP, MnP, GLOX, and laccase were purified from P. radiata culture extracts obtained after solid-state fermentation of wheat straw. However, the patterns of extracellular lignin-modifying enzymes studied were different from those of the enzymes usually found in liquid cultures of P. radiata. Three LiP isoforms were purified. The major LiP isoform from solid-state cultivation was LiP2. LiP3, which has usually been described as the major isoenzyme in liquid cultures, was not expressed during straw fermentation. New MnP isoforms have been detected in addition to the previously reported MnPs. GLOX was secreted in rather high amounts simultaneously with LiP during the first 2 weeks of growth. GLOX purified from P. radiata showed multiple forms, with pIs ranging from 4.0 to 4.6 and with a molecular mass of ca. 68 kDa

Doing it differently: Engaging interview participants with imaginative variation

Imaginative variation was identified by Husserl (1936/1970) as a phenomenological technique for the purpose of elucidating the manner in which phenomena appear to consciousness. Briefly, by engaging in the phenomenological reduction and using imaginative variation, phenomenologists are able to describe the experience of consciousness, having stepped outside of the natural attitude through the epochē. Imaginative variation is a stage aimed at explicating the structures of experience, and is best described as a mental experiment. Features of the experience are imaginatively altered in order to view the phenomenon under investigation from varying perspectives. Husserl argued that this process will reveal the essences of an experience, as only those aspects that are invariant to the experience of the phenomenon will not be able to change through the variation. Often in qualitative research interviews, participants struggle to articulate or verbalise their experiences. The purpose of this article is to detail a radical and novel way of using imaginative variation with interview participants, by asking the participants to engage with imaginative variation, in order to produce a rich and insightful experiential account of a phenomenon. We will discuss how the first author successfully used imaginative variation in this way in her study of the erotic experience of bondage, discipline, dominance & submission, and sadism & masochism (BDSM), before considering the usefulness of this technique when applied to areas of study beyond sexuality

Anomalous fluctuations for a perturbed Hamiltonian system with exponential interactions

A one-dimensional Hamiltonian system with exponential interactions perturbed by a conservative noise is considered. It is proved that energy superdiffuses and upper and lower bounds describing this anomalous diffusion are obtained.FCTEgid