Africans and the Two Great Wars: A General Overview

Historically, the World Wars represented different realities for the different countries, nay nations and peoples that participated in them. Just recently, in their online daily weekday newsletter, The Morning, of September 10, 2021 a New York Times writer, David Leonhardt, observed, inter alia, that for America, “World War II helped spark the creation of the modern middle class and cemented the so-called American Century.”1 Leonhardt’s assertion are in the positive realm. For Africans, who were still subject peoples to the European powers that colonized them when both World Wars were waged, the story of the realities that they represented is most complicated, especially if it is viewed critically. Even then, any critical assessment of the two wars vis-a-vis Africa and its peoples will reveal that such a complicated story is a part of the extensive trajectory of the exploitation of the continent, its vast resources, and peoples by the former. This article and the Special Issue of the Journal of Asian and African Studies where it’s published, crack open a dedicated discourse on Africans and the World Wars by a select list of scholars who contributed articles to the Special Issue.

Cracking the Ether

This chapter explores the earliest artist-led pirate TV project, PKP-TV, as an example of how squatter tactics were applied to the media. The illegal channel, which was created by the artists Maarten Ploeg (né van der Ploeg), Peter Klashorst, and Rogier van der Ploeg, made it its mission to crack open the closed medium of television. PKP and pirate cable TV in the Netherlands are situated within a longer history of both alternative TV projects internationally—such as the Videofreex and TVTV—as well as video and film-based artworks shown on television both in the Netherlands and abroad. Artist-led pirate television in the Netherlands, like squatters in urban space, cracked open the media space of television and created temporary autonomous platforms.

Effect of Underload Cycles on Oxide-Induced Crack Closure Development in Cr-Mo Low-Alloy Steel

Underload cycles with small load amplitudes below the fatigue crack growth threshold are dominantly considered as insignificant cycles without any influence on fatigue lifespan of engineering structural components. However, this paper shows that in some cases these underload cycles can retard the consequent crack propagation quite significantly. This phenomenon is a consequence of oxide-induced crack closure development during cyclic loading below the threshold. The experimentally described effect of fatigue crack growth retardation was supported by measurement of the width and the thickness of the oxide debris layer using the EDS technique and localized FIB cuts, respectively. Both the retardation effect and the amount of oxide debris were larger for higher number and larger amplitudes of the applied underload cycles. Crack closure measurement revealed a gradual increase of the closure level during underload cycling. Specimens tested in low air humidity, as well as specimens left with the crack open for the same time as that needed for application of the underload cycles, revealed no retardation effect. The results can improve our understanding of environmental effects on fatigue crack propagation and understanding the differences between the results of laboratory testing and the fatigue lives of components in service.

Neural representation of words within phrases: Temporal evolution of color-adjectives and object-nouns during simple composition

In language, stored semantic representations of lexical items combine into an infinitude of complex expressions. While the neuroscience of composition has begun to mature, we do not yet understand how the stored representations evolve and morph during composition. New decoding techniques allow us to crack open this very hard question: we can train a model to recognize a representation in one context or time-point and assess its accuracy in another. We combined the decoding approach with magnetoencephalography recorded during a picture naming task to investigate the temporal evolution of noun and adjective representations during speech planning. We tracked semantic representations as they combined into simple two-word phrases, using single words and two-word lists as non-combinatory controls. We found that nouns were generally more decodable than adjectives, suggesting that noun representations were stronger and/or more consistent across trials than those of adjectives. When training and testing across contexts and times, the representations of isolated nouns were recoverable when those nouns were embedded in phrases, but not so if they were embedded in lists. Adjective representations did not show a similar consistency across isolated and phrasal contexts. Noun representations in phrases also sustained over time in a way that was not observed for any other pairing of word class and context. These findings offer a new window into the temporal evolution and context sensitivity of word representations during composition, revealing a clear asymmetry between adjectives and nouns. The impact of phrasal contexts on the decodability of nouns may be due to the nouns’ status as head of phrase—an intriguing hypothesis for future research.

Laboratory experiments on secondary ice production upon free falling drizzle droplets observed by high speed video and thermal imaging

<p>During the freezing of supercooled drizzle droplets, the ice shell forms at the droplet surface and propagates inwards, causing a pressure rise in the droplet core. If the pressure exceeds the mechanical stability of the ice shell, the shell can crack open and eject secondary ice particles or cause the full disintegration of the ice shell leading to droplet shattering. Recent in-cloud observations and modeling studies have suggested the importance of secondary ice production upon shattering of freezing drizzle droplets. The details of this process are poorly understood and the number of secondary ice particles produced during freezing remains to be quantified.</p><p>Here we present insight into experiments with freezing drizzle droplets levitated in electrodynamic balance under controlled conditions with respect to temperature, humidity and airflow velocity. Individual droplets are exposed to a flow of cold air from below, simulating free fall conditions. The freezing process is observed with high-speed video microscopy and a high-resolution infrared thermal measuring system. We show the observed frequencies for various events associated with the production of secondary ice particles during freezing for pure water droplets and aqueous solution of analogue sea salt droplets (300 µm in diameter) and report a strong enhancement of the shattering probability as compared to our previous study (Lauber et al., 2018) conducted in stagnant air. Analysis of pressure release events recorded by high-resolution infrared thermography suggest that pressure release events associated with the possible ejection of secondary ice particles occur far more frequent than previously quantified with observations by high speed video microscopy only.</p><p> </p><p>Lauber, A., A. Kiselev, T. Pander, P. Handmann, and T Leisner (2018). “Secondary Ice Formation during Freezing of Levitated Droplets”, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 75, pp. 2815–2826. </p>

Sandra Bland at the cross: A womanist reading of Mark 15:40-47

How do women who lack power and privilege experience the cross? How do women who lack power and privilege view privileged men at the cross? How do such questions probe issues of Jesus’s death in the Markan passion narrative? This article employs a womanist hermeneutic of “gazing” to interpret differently the complexity of women in close proximity to death while interrogating one particular woman’s close proximity to death in contemporary memory: Sandra Bland. Particularly, a womanist hermeneutic of gazing coupled with a womanist hermeneutic of suspicion provides a liberating space for nuanced engagement with the women who gaze upon Jesus’s crucifixion from afar. Recognizing specifically that the Gospel of Mark uses the Greek word βλέπω ( blepō) to identify “seeing” as a metaphor for belief, how does a womanist understanding of the Greek term θεωρέω ( theōreō, which the gospel writer uses sparingly) crack open the text for contemporary audiences? Engaging issues of power, privilege, and death in relationship to the “gaze” of Mark 15:40-47, this article highlights that the women who attempt to anoint Jesus’s body in the Markan narrative, because of their gender in the highly charged testosterone environment of a militarized imperial execution, have more “skin in the game,” different from the privileged position of men in the text. What happens when women are confronted with men who exhibit high levels of masculine testosterone and masculine identity? Like Sandra Bland, they are closer to death. Accordingly, thinking through the women who go to anoint Jesus with contemporary women today means that women who are often closer to death must continue the analytical work of “gazing”, as found in Mark 15:47 to the point that returning the “gaze” produces change for those closest to death (e.g., black and brown bodies close to militarized imperial violence).

Neural representation of words within phrases: Temporal evolution of color-adjectives and object-nouns during simple composition

ABSTRACTIn language, stored representations of lexical items combine into an infinitude of complex expressions. While the neuroscience of composition has begun to mature, we do not yet understand how the stored representations evolve and morph during composition. New decoding techniques allow us to crack open this very hard question: we can train a model to recognize a representation in one context or time-point and assess its accuracy in another. We combined the decoding approach with magnetoencephalography recorded during a picture naming task to investigate the temporal evolution of noun and adjective representations during speech planning. We tracked word representations as they combined into simple two-word phrases, using single words and two-word lists as non-combinatory controls. We found that nouns were generally more decodable than adjectives, suggesting that noun representations were stronger and/or more consistent across trials than those of adjectives. When training and testing across contexts and times, the representations of isolated nouns were recoverable when those nouns were embedded in phrases, but not so if they were embedded in lists. Adjective representations did not show a similar consistency across isolated and phrasal contexts. Noun representations in phrases also sustained over time in a way that was not observed for any other pairing of word class and context. These findings offer a new window into the temporal evolution and context sensitivity of word representations during composition, revealing a clear asymmetry between adjectives and nouns. The impact of phrasal contexts on the decodability of nouns may be due to the nouns’ status as head of phrase—an intriguing hypothesis for future research.

Making music, making language

This article reframes how the making of music by minoritized bilingual Latinxchildren is interrelated to their languaging and their literacies’ performances.Taking a translanguaging approach, musicking/languaging/performing literacies are described here as holistic critical meaning-making processes. Focusing on the process by which students make meaning of texts, and not simply on the output or product of such meaning-making, this article shows how a music education programme based on El Sistema and designed for social change transforms minoritized children’s critical sense of their positions and subjectivities as producers of language and literacies. Through music education, long considered only an enrichment activity from which language minoritized students are often excluded, bilingual Latinx children are able to crack open a vision for themselves and others as competent, dignified, and valid meaning-makers—as performers of complex acts of language and literacies.

Improved Method for Fracture Toughness Testing Using Compliance Method for High Toughness Materials

In order to ensure the integrity of structures such as gas turbines and nuclear power plants, the materials used should have excellent toughness. Especially in the case of nuclear piping materials applied to leak before break (LBB) design, high toughness materials are used to meet the stringent fracture toughness criteria and integrity must be verified through static J-R curve testing using the compliance method, one of the measurement techniques for fracture toughness. The measured and estimated values for the crack extension length during the test should also match, within a certain tolerance. However, in the case of materials with high toughness, rotation of the specimen becomes significant, because the test is performed until the crack open displacement (COD) is relatively large to ensure sufficient crack extension. In this case, it is not easy to satisfy these conditions due to the rotational effect on the specimen. Even though ASTM E1820 suggests a method for correcting the crack length for the rotational effect on these specimens, it has been found that there are substantial differences for high toughness materials. To solve this problem, a new crack length correction formula considering the rotation effect is proposed. Through analysis of the data from J-R curve testing with this proposed method, it was confirmed that the accuracy of crack extension length estimation is improved compared to the existing method. The proposed method well explains the variation of crack extension length due to rotation and is suitable as a correction equation for rotation of compact tension specimens.