Negative spaces of Mumuye figure sculpture – style and ethnicity

Revisiting the attribution of figures to Mumuye, provides us with an opportunity to think about the effects of ethnic labelling on our appreciation of "precontemporary African art." By virtue of not being typical, extreme cases throw more general issues into sharp relief. The mismatch between the renown and the documentation of precontemporary Mumuye art has few parallels. Mumuye figures are celebrated as icons of African sculpture by the institutions and personnel of what we have grown accustomed to call the ‘artworld’, one that encompasses museums, galleries and auction houses; publications on Mumuye ethnography, language and history in what, for convenience, we can contrast as the ‘ethnoworld’ continue to draw upon research undertaken a half century ago or earlier. Artworld and ethnoworld discourses have diverged, even about fundamental questions of identity. What is the relationship, for instance, between the ethnoworld’s understanding of Mumuye ethnicity and the artworld’s use of the ethnic adjectice in ‘Mumuye style’? A handful of Mumuye objects were collected before the Nigerian Civil war (1967–1970) during which most of those the artworld would consider ‘authentic’ left the country. This emptying of the local reservoirs has created a negative space that invites efforts at repair, not least because, like other markets, the art market abhors a vacuum. Understanding the histories of precontemporary Mumuye artworks requires careful methodology and a realistic acceptance of the likely limits of knowledge. Scholarly attention continues to find value in existing documentation, though with necessarily diminishing returns. Interesting insights have also been derived from parts of the overall assemblage of artworks attributed to the Mumuye. If the artworld took lead responsibility for a catalogue raisonné that reassembled the decade-long outflow from the late 1960s this would enable a more systematic approach to what are currently piecemeal attempts to map formal resemblances in artworks

Probing for Dynamics of Dark-Energy in Mass Varying Neutrinos: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation and Large Scale Structure

We present cosmological perturbation theory in neutrino probe interacting dark-energy models, and calculate cosmic microwave background anisotropies and matter power spectrum. In these models, the evolution of the mass of neutrinos is determined by the quintessence scalar field, which is responsible for the cosmic acceleration today. We consider several types of scalar field potentials and put constraints on the coupling parameter between neutrinos and dark energy. Assuming the flatness of the universe, the constraint we can derive from the current observation is $\sum m_{\nu} < 0.87 eV$ at the 95 % confidence level for the sum over three species of neutrinos.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, Present in conferences COSPA-2006, NEPSE-2007 and Yong-Pyung APCTP-200

Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc.: Nude Dancing and the First Amendment Question

Erotic dancers Gayle Sutro, Carla Johnson, and Darlene Miller can no longer dance nude in Indiana. In Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc. the United States Supreme Court held that Indiana\u27s prohibition of nude dancing did not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court\u27s holding ended years of controversy and debate over Indiana\u27s public indecency statute. In 1979, in State v. Baysinger, the Indiana Supreme Court held that Indiana\u27s public indecency statute could be used to prohibit nude dancing. The court stated that the statute could not prohibit some larger forms of expression involving the communication of ideas. The court concluded, however, that nude dancing was mere conduct without ,the expression of ideas. Since Baysinger the Indiana Court of Appeals has struggled with the constitutional issues surrounding nude dancing. In 1990 the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit considered the application of the Indiana public indecency statute to nude dancing in Miller v. Civil City of South Bend.\u27 The Miller decision contained six separate opinions, revealing a court sharply divided on the basis of legal analysis as well as personal opinions and cultural views. The majority held that non-obscene nude dancing, performed as entertainment, is expression entitled to limited First Amendment protection.\u27 The majority suggested that the Indiana legislature could regulate nude dancing for reasons unrelated to the suppression of free expression. The court, however, found that the public indecency statute\u27s total ban on this protected activity was unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court, in Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., reversed the Seventh Circuit. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote the plurality opinion, joined by Justices O\u27Connor and Kennedy. Chief Justice Rehnquist conceded that nude dancing is expressive conduct that falls within the outer perimeters of the First Amendment.\u27 Nonetheless, he determined that the Indiana statute\u27s prohibition of nude dancing was clearly within the State\u27s constitutional power.\u27 In reaching this decision, Chief Justice Rehnquist applied the four-part test announced in United States v. O\u27Brien and concluded that Indiana\u27s substantial governmental interest in promoting morality and protecting societal order justified the application of the statute to this expressive activity. He reasoned that the public indecency statute was unrelated to the suppression of free expression and only incidentally infringed upon the protected activity at issue.\u2

Speed of Sound in the Mass Varying Neutrinos Scenario

We discuss about the speed of sound squared in the Mass Varying Neutrinos scenario (MaVaNs). Recently, it was argued that the MaVaNs has a catastrophic instability which is the emergence of an imaginary speed of sound at the non-relativistic limit of neutrinos. As the result of this instability, the neutrino-acceleron fluid cannot act as the dark energy. However, it is found that the speed of sound squared in the neutrino-acceleron fluid could be positive in our model. We examine the speed of sound in two cases of the scalar potential. One is the small fractional power-law potential and another is the logarithmic one. The power-law potential model with the right-handed neutrinos gives a stable one.Comment: 17 pages, References added, minor modification

Embedding the Texture of the Neutrino Mass Matrix into the MaVaNs Scenario

We have embedded the texture of the neutrino mass matrix with three families into the MaVaNs scenario. We take the power-law potential of the acceleron field and a typical texture of active neutrinos, which is derived by the D_4 symmetry and predicts the maximal mixing of the atmospheric neutrino and the vanishing U_{e3}. The effect of couplings among the dark fermion and active neutrinos are studied by putting the current cosmological data and the terrestrial neutrino experimental data. It is found that the neutrino flavor mixings evolve as well as the neutrino masses. Especially, U_{e3} develops into the non-vanishing one and \theta_{atm} deviates from the maximal mixing due to couplings among the dark fermion and active neutrinos.Comment: Sections 3 and 4 are changed and one table is added. 16pages and 2 figure

Neutrino Models of Dark Energy

I consider a scenario proposed by Fardon, Nelson and Weiner where dark energy and neutrinos are connected. As a result, neutrino masses are not constant but depend on the neutrino number density. By examining the full equation of state for the dark sector, I show that in this scenario the dark energy is equivalent to having a cosmological constant, but one that "runs" as the neutrino mass changes with temperature. Two examples are examined that illustrate the principal feautures of the dark sector of this scenario. In particular, the cosmological constant is seen to be negligible for most of the evolution of the Universe, becoming inportant only when neutrinos become non-relativistic. Some speculations on features of this scenario which might be present in a more realistic theory are also presented.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Added comments on why FNW scenario always leads to a running cosmological constant and a few references. To be published in Phys. Rev.

The Higgs portal and an unified model for dark energy and dark matter

We examine a scenario where the Higgs boson is coupled to an additional singlet scalar field which we identify with a quintessence field. We show that this results in an unified picture of dark matter and dark energy, where dark energy is the zero-mode classical field rolling the usual quintessence potential and the dark matter candidate is the quantum excitation (particle) of the field, which is produced in the universe due to its coupling to the Higgs boson.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. New references and acknowledgment adde