The Motivations Behind Westerners’ Obsession with the Islamic Veil

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with countless images of Islamic terrorism, violence, and danger, it is not surprising that we have come to associate all aspects of Islamic society with malevolence. This destructive way of thinking has impacted the way we—as Westerners— think about, portray, and perceive Muslim men and women. While Muslim men are often depicted as hostile, cruel, and savage-like, on the other hand, Muslim women are usually depicted as powerless, obedient, and docile. These stereotypical representations of Muslim men and women have harmful consequences—consequences that not only promote Western ignorance, but also tarnish the mindsets of individuals, encouraging a shallow, one-dimensional view of Muslim women as oppressed. Consequently, every aspect of Muslim women’s lives, including what they wear, has been analyzed and manipulated by Westerners in order to serve as evidence to explain Muslim women’s oppression. For this reason, according to Westerners, Muslim women wearing the hijab (veil covering the head) have become a symbol of Muslim women’s oppression, ultimately preventing Muslim women from escaping their religion. As a result, Western media has tended to focus on the veil, often linking it with Muslim women’s oppression. Interestingly, however, Westerners’ obsession with the veil has not been a recent occurrence. In fact, Westerners’ infatuation with the veil and rendering of it as a tool of Muslim women’s oppression arose during the colonial period and was used as part of colonial discourse in order to serve the purposes and goals of Westerners—the goal of taking over the lands of the Muslim world to impose their own culture and values. For these very same reasons, the West is currently still using the veil for neocolonial purposes; however, recently, there have been attempts by Muslim women to reappropriate the meaning of the hijab in order to challenge Western stereotypes and misconstruals of the symbol of the veil. [excerpt

Interpreting Trust: Abstract and Personal Trust for People Who Need Interpreters to Access Services

This article looks at the political and conceptual process of trust drawing on a research project exploring the experiences of people who speak little English and thus need interpreters in order to access services. We examine posited solidarity/diversity tensions in the politicisation of notions of general social trust, and debates about the process of trust, including distinctions between abstract and personal trust, the role of familiarity, and the concept of 'active trust', as well as challenges to the functional link between interpretation and expectation in trust. We address the increasing professionalisation of interpreting service provision based on abstract trust, and use case studies to illustrate the complexity of the articulation of trust in interpreters, often involving personal trust, as well as strategies for managing distrust. We conclude that, while trust may be a personal praxis, it takes place in a particular socio-political context that involves asymmetrical relations that focus on particular, minority ethnic, groups.Interpreters, Professionalisation, Solidarity/diversity, Trust

Forward-Backward Asymmetry as a Discovery Tool for Z' Bosons at the LHC

The Forward-Backward Asymmetry (AFB) in Z' physics is commonly only perceived as the observable which possibly allows one to interpret a Z' signal by distinguishing different models of such (heavy) spin-1 bosons. In this paper, we examine the potential of AFB in setting bounds on or even discovering a Z' boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and show that it might be a powerful tool for this purpose. We analyse two different scenarios: Z' bosons with a narrow and wide width, respectively. We find that, in the first case, the significance of the AFB search can be comparable with that of the bump search usually adopted by the experimental collaborations; however, being a ratio of (differential) cross sections the AFB has the advantage of reducing systematical errors. In the second case, the AFB search can win over the bump search in terms of event shape, as the structure of the AFB distribution as a function of the invariant mass of the reconstructed Z'boson could nail down the new broad resonance much better than the event counting strategy usually adopted in such cases.Comment: 27 pages, 17 figure

A Collection of Middle Level Reading Interventions Categorized Based on Specific Criteria

Students lack literacy skills while entering the middle level grades, where reading is used as a tool for learning, rather than consistently taught through explicit instruction on the components of literacy. Reading interventions give students additional support and opportunities to improve their reading skills. This project argues for those intervention programs to be chosen based on specific qualities that are shown through research to make learning during interventions more impactful. The framework for this project works with the idea that learning is a social and cultural interaction, where collaboration, word play, student interests, and learning environment will allow students to improve. The product provides helpful information on several reading intervention programs that can be used with students at the middle level, which is accessible to teachers, literacy coaches, and reading interventionists who are planning to work with striving readers

Customer selection within competitive consumable commodity markets : an investigation of the video cassette, DVD, high definition video markets

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-28).Proper product design plays in important role in the success within a marketplace. In order for a product to succeed within a competitive consumable commodity market, the product must focus on specific attributes. This paper examines three historical case studies - the video cassette, the DVD, and the high definition markets. Through these three examples, trends amongst product features, consumer knowledge, brand, and the quality of technology were explored. To further examine what influences consumers' decision within a consumable commodity market a survey was designed to evaluate consumer choice. The survey consisted of a fictitious product that shares many of the same traits as a consumable commodity device. Correlation amongst the data was examined to help discern what might drive such markets. While numerous factors were observed within this study, the most significant results were observed regarding consumer knowledge and technology's role. Consumers tended to pick the products which they felt were most useful. Such a choice often did not correspond to the technologically superior product. As such, within a competitive consumable commodity market, it is important to design a product to focus on features that the consumers believe to be the most valuable.by Alexander F. St. Claire.S.B

Applications and props: the impact on engagement and understanding

Problems based on applications or objects were added into a first year pure module in gaps where real-life problems were missing. Physical props were incorporated within the teaching sessions where it was possible. The additions to the module were the utilities problem whilst studying planar graphs, data storage when looking at number bases, RSA encryption after modular arithmetic and the Euclidean algorithm, as well as molecules and the mattress problem when looking at group theory. The physical objects used were tori, molecule models and mini mattresses. Evaluation was carried out through a questionnaire to gain the students' opinions of these additions and their general views of applications. Particular attention was paid to the effect on engagement and understanding

A mixed-methods exploration of non-attendance at diabetes appointments using peer researchers

Background Non‐attendance at diabetes appointments is costly to the health service and linked with poorer patient outcomes. Objective Peer researchers aimed to conduct interviews and survey people who miss appointments about their beliefs and perceptions regarding their diabetes and diabetes appointments. Design A mixed‐methods cross‐sectional design with interviews conducted by peer researchers with diabetes and a questionnaire was used. Setting and participants Peer researchers conducted semi‐structured telephone interviews in one health board in Scotland with ten people who had missed diabetes appointments. A further 34 people who had missed appointments completed a questionnaire. The study was informed by two psychological theories (the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Self‐Regulation Model), and interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. Results Interviewees planned to attend appointments but practical barriers, low perceived value of appointments and the feeling that diabetes had little impact upon their lives’ emerged as key reasons for missing appointments. Questionnaire data supported these findings and showed that respondents perceived diabetes to have only mildly serious consequence and cause limited concern and emotional impact. Participants’ understanding of their condition and perceptions of personal control and treatment control were low. Gender, perceived behavioural control and emotional representations were significantly associated with the number of appointments missed in the previous year. Conclusions These findings highlight the importance of psychological variables in predicting non‐attendance at diabetes appointments and provide avenues for how non‐attendance might be tackled

MHF1–2/CENP-S-X performs distinct roles in centromere metabolism and genetic recombination

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Complementarity of Forward-Backward Asymmetry for discovery of Z' bosons at the Large Hadron Collider

The Forward-Backward Asymmetry (AFB) in Z' physics is commonly only thought of as an observable which possibly allows one to profiling a Z' signal by distinguishing different models embedding such (heavy) spin-1 bosons. In this brief review, we examine the potential of AFB in setting bounds on or even discovering a Z' at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and proof that it might be a powerful tool for this purpose. We analyse two different scenarios: Z's with a narrow and wide width, respectively. We find that, in both cases, AFB can complement the conventional searches in accessing Z' signals traditionally based on cross section measurements only.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1504.0316