Women in Resistance: Reporting the impact of IEEEWiEUFRNexhibition at Science and Tech Week at UFRN

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of UFRN, we have proposed an initiative by IEEE WiEUFRNat CIENTEC aiming to highlight the female contribution to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) degrees at UFRN over the last 60 years. The highlights were made through an exhibition, composed of four parts: I) description of renowned female icons and their contributions to the STEM areas. II) History of female participation in STEM courses at UFRN, through graphs showing the percentage of female students in the courses since its creation. III) #euexisto campaign: display of testimonials videos from current students of STEM courses explaining why they chose the course. IV) Tribute to female Lecturers: display all female lecturersnames that have taught in STEM courses at UFRN. As a result, the group paida tribute to those brilliant women and highlighted their contribution to STEM;acknowledged the current students and teachers of the courses; and helped raising awareness about the need to encourage the participation of women in these courses and in order to build a more diverse environment. Our main goal was raise awareness that the degrees of STEM had consistently less women than man and thus, our feminist group had a very important role to play in increasing those numbers. From the informal feedback we received, we believe our goal was achieved

VVV-WIT-07: another Boyajian's star or a Mamajek's object?

We report the discovery of VVV-WIT-07, an unique and intriguing variable source presenting a sequence of recurrent dips with a likely deep eclipse in July 2012. The object was found serendipitously in the near-IR data obtained by the VISTA Variables in the V\'ia L\'actea (VVV) ESO Public Survey. Our analysis is based on VVV variability, multicolor, and proper motion (PM) data. Complementary data from the VVV eXtended survey (VVVX) as well as archive data and spectroscopic follow-up observations aided in the analysis and interpretation of VVV-WIT-07. A search for periodicity in the VVV Ks-band light curve of VVV-WIT-07 results in two tentative periods at P~322 days and P~170 days. Colors and PM are consistent either with a reddened MS star or a pre-MS star in the foreground disk. The near-IR spectra of VVV-WIT-07 appear featureless, having no prominent lines in emission or absorption. Features found in the light curve of VVV-WIT-07 are similar to those seen in J1407 (Mamajek's object), a pre-MS K5 dwarf with a ring system eclipsing the star or, alternatively, to KIC 8462852 (Boyajian's star), an F3 IV/V star showing irregular and aperiodic dips in its light curve. Alternative scenarios, none of which is fully consistent with the available data, are also briefly discussed, including a young stellar object, a T Tauri star surrounded by clumpy dust structure, a main sequence star eclipsed by a nearby extended object, a self-eclipsing R CrB variable star, and even a long-period, high-inclination X-ray binary.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Dolan Shares Wit, Wisdom

Professor Emeritus Win Dolan captivates graduates

The Shortest Way to Modernity Is via the Margins: J.H. Prynne’s Later Poetry

In the essay an attempt is made to investigate the processes of construction and reconstruction of meaning in the later books of the Cambridge poet J.H. Prynne. It has been argued that his poetry disturbs the act of meaning-making in a ceaseless experimental reconnection of words taken from multifarious discourses, ranging from economics to theology. Yet, what appears striking in this poetry is the fact that these lyrics take their force from figurative meaning with which the words are endowed in the process of a poem’s unfolding. Prynne appears to compose his lyrics by juxtaposing words that in themselves (or sometimes in small clusters) do yield a meaning but together exude an aura of unintelligibility. We may see this process as aiming at the destruction of what might be posited as the centre of signification of the modern language by constantly dispersing the meaning to the fringes of understanding. The poems force the reader to look to the margins of their meaning in the sense that the signification of the entire lyric is an unstable composite of figurative meanings of this lyric’s individual words and phrases. To approach this poetry a need arises to read along the lines of what is here termed “fleeting assertion”; it is not that Prynne’s poems debar centre in favour of, for instance, Derridean freeplay but rather that they seek to ever attempt to erect a centre through the influx from the margins of signification. Therefore they call for strong interpretive assertions without which they veer close to an absurdity of incomprehension; however, those assertions must always be geared to accepting disparate significatory influxes. Indeed, interpretation becomes a desperate chase after “seeing anew” with language but, at the same time, a chase that must a priori come to terms with the fact that this new vision will forever remain in the making