What has African cultural studies done for you lately? Autobiographical and global Considerations of a floating signifier

Abstract: This essay poses and attempts to answer the central question, “what does African cultural studies do?” It takes an autobiographical approach to address the genealogy, status quo and the potential future of the floating signifier that is African Cultural Studies. It unpacks and multiplies African cultural studies and contextualizes it as a form of African studies and as both interventionist in and contributory to transnational cultural studies. African cultural studies marginality in the global discourse is rearticulated as both a positioning of disempowerment on the one hand and one of generative and insurgent politics on the other. Stressing the need for continental and diasporic Africans to self-identify issues to be addressed (in place Eurocentric, imposed preoccupations), the essay identifies as examples the always already complex nature of identity and belonging (and the irony of emergent zenophobia); continental and diasporic relations that trouble the taken for grantedness of what constitutes Africa(ns), and queer Africa in the face of institutionalized homophobia. Whether local nativist or globally engaged approaches are taken, the essay concludes, African cultural studies ought to be self-reflexively, dedicated not only to doing cultural studies but to what the doing of African cultural studies does for Africa(ns) and for transnational cultural studies

Introduction : contemporary orientations in African cultural studies

Abstract: This paper offers a glimpse of work generated by the 2014 John Douglas Taylor conference on ‘Contemporary Orientations in African Cultural Studies’. The conference generated a number of inquiries into the time and place of contemporary African cultural work, many of which theorized beyond the frameworks that postcolonial and globalization studies frequently offer. Under the shifting paradigms of cultural studies, the work of this conference, as well as the current project, moves away from reading the African everyday as exclusively a construction out of a series of colonial histories and relationalities, or global cultural flows. In line with Jean and John Comaroffs’ Theory From the South, this issue is instead dedicated to relocating the global centres from which cultural studies emanates and positing African work’s challenge to normative zones of cultural critique. ‘Contemporary orientations’ attempts to relocate the time and space of critique in African studies, but it resists the gesture to posit a stable trajectory through which time moves. Rather, the terms of the contemporary and the orientation depend on how they are read in relation to a multitude of other temporalities, orientations, and objects

ZiFiT (Zinc Finger Targeter): an updated zinc finger engineering tool

ZiFiT (Zinc Finger Targeter) is a simple and intuitive web-based tool that provides an interface to identify potential binding sites for engineered zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) in user-supplied DNA sequences. In this updated version, ZiFiT identifies potential sites for ZFPs made by both the modular assembly and OPEN engineering methods. In addition, ZiFiT now integrates additional tools and resources including scoring schemes for modular assembly, an interface with the Zinc Finger Database (ZiFDB) of engineered ZFPs, and direct querying of NCBI BLAST servers for identifying potential off-target sites within a host genome. Taken together, these features facilitate design of ZFPs using reagents made available to the academic research community by the Zinc Finger Consortium. ZiFiT is freely available on the web without registration at http://bindr.gdcb.iastate.edu/ZiFiT/

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011

Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements are presented of production properties and couplings of the recently discovered Higgs boson using the decays into boson pairs, H →γ γ, H → Z Z∗ →4l and H →W W∗ →lνlν. The results are based on the complete pp collision data sample recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 25 fb−1. Evidence for Higgs boson production through vector-boson fusion is reported. Results of combined fits probing Higgs boson couplings to fermions and bosons, as well as anomalous contributions to loop-induced production and decay modes, are presented. All measurements are consistent with expectations for the Standard Model Higgs boson

Measurement of the top quark-pair production cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at \sqrt{s}=7\TeV

A measurement of the production cross-section for top quark pairs(\ttbar) in $pp$ collisions at \sqrt{s}=7 \TeV is presented using data recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider. Events are selected in two different topologies: single lepton (electron $e$ or muon $\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least four jets, and dilepton ($ee$, $\mu\mu$ or $e\mu$) with large missing transverse energy and at least two jets. In a data sample of 2.9 pb-1, 37 candidate events are observed in the single-lepton topology and 9 events in the dilepton topology. The corresponding expected backgrounds from non-\ttbar Standard Model processes are estimated using data-driven methods and determined to be $12.2 \pm 3.9$ events and $2.5 \pm 0.6$ events, respectively. The kinematic properties of the selected events are consistent with SM \ttbar production. The inclusive top quark pair production cross-section is measured to be \sigmattbar=145 \pm 31 ^{+42}_{-27} pb where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second systematic. The measurement agrees with perturbative QCD calculations.Comment: 30 pages plus author list (50 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, CERN-PH number and final journal adde

Measurement of the top quark pair cross section with ATLAS in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV using final states with an electron or a muon and a hadronically decaying τ lepton

A measurement of the cross section of top quark pair production in proton-proton collisions recorded with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is reported. The data sample used corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.05 fb -1. Events with an isolated electron or muon and a τ lepton decaying hadronically are used. In addition, a large missing transverse momentum and two or more energetic jets are required. At least one of the jets must be identified as originating from a b quark. The measured cross section, σtt-=186±13(stat.)±20(syst.)±7(lumi.) pb, is in good agreement with the Standard Model prediction

Measurement of the flavour composition of dijet events in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper describes a measurement of the flavour composition of dijet events produced in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV using the ATLAS detector. The measurement uses the full 2010 data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 39 pb−1. Six possible combinations of light, charm and bottom jets are identified in the dijet events, where the jet flavour is defined by the presence of bottom, charm or solely light flavour hadrons in the jet. Kinematic variables, based on the properties of displaced decay vertices and optimised for jet flavour identification, are used in a multidimensional template fit to measure the fractions of these dijet flavour states as functions of the leading jet transverse momentum in the range 40 GeV to 500 GeV and jet rapidity |y|<2.1. The fit results agree with the predictions of leading- and next-to-leading-order calculations, with the exception of the dijet fraction composed of bottom and light flavour jets, which is underestimated by all models at large transverse jet momenta. The ability to identify jets containing two b-hadrons, originating from e.g. gluon splitting, is demonstrated. The difference between bottom jet production rates in leading and subleading jets is consistent with the next-to-leading-order predictions

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN