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Since 1980 Iraq passed through various wars and conflicts including Iraq-Iran war, Saddam Hussein’s the Anfals and Halabja campaigns against the Kurds and the killing campaigns against Shiite in 1986, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the Gulf war in 1990, Iraq war in 2003 and the fall of Saddam, the conflicts and chaos in the transmission of power after the death of Saddam, and the war against ISIS . All these wars left severe impacts in most households in Iraq; on women and children in particular.
The consequences of such long wars could be observed in all sectors including economic, social, cultural and religious sectors. The social structure, norms and attitudes are intensely affected. Many women specifically divorced women found them-selves in challenging different difficulties such as social as well as economic situations. Thus the divorced women in Iraqi Kurdistan are the focus of this research.
Considering the fact that there is very few empirical researches on this topic, a constructivist grounded theory methodology (CGT) is viewed as reliable in order to come up with a comprehensive picture about the everyday life of divorced women in Iraqi Kurdistan. Data collected in Sulaimani city in Iraqi Kurdistan. The work of Kathy Charmaz was chosen to be the main methodological context of the research and the main data collection method was individual intensive narrative interviews with divorced women.
Women generally and divorced women specifically in Iraqi Kurdistan are living in a patriarchal society that passing through many changes due to the above mentioned wars among many other factors. This research is trying to study the everyday life of divorced women in such situations and the forms of social insecurity they are experiencing. The social institutions starting from the family as a very significant institution for women to the governmental and non-governmental institutions that are working to support women, and the copying strategies, are in focus in this research. The main research argument is that the family is playing ambivalent roles in divorced women’s life. For instance, on one side families are revealed to be an essential source of security to most respondents, on the other side families posed also many threats and restrictions on those women. This argument supported by what called by Suad joseph "the paradox of support and suppression" . Another important finding is that the stat institution(laws , constitutions ,Offices of combating violence against woman and family) are supporting women somehow and offering them protection from the insecurities but it is clear that the existence of the laws does not stop the violence against women in Iraqi Kurdistan, As explained by Pateman because the laws /the contract is a sexual-social contract that upholds the sex rights of males and grants them more privileges than females. The political instability, Tribal social norms also play a major role in influencing the rule of law.
It is noteworthy to refer that analyzing the interviews in this research showed that in spite that divorced women living in insecurities and facing difficulties but most of the respondents try to find a coping strategies to tackle difficult situations and to deal with the violence they face; these strategies are bargaining, sometimes compromising or resisting …etc. Different theories used to explain these coping strategies such as bargaining with patriarchy. Kandiyoti who stated that women living under certain restraints struggle to find way and strategies to enhance their situations. The research finding also revealed that the western liberal feminist view of agency is limited this is agree with Saba Mahmood and what she explained about Muslim women agency. For my respondents, who are divorced women, their agency reveals itself in different ways, in resisting or compromising with or even obeying the power of male relatives, and the normative system in the society. Agency is also explained the behavior of women contacting formal state institutions in cases of violence like the police or Offices of combating violence against woman and family.
Women’s exposure to sexualized TV, self-objectification, and consideration of cosmetic surgery
(2022)
Public Policy Relevance Statement TV is full of content presenting women in a sexualized way, with a focus on their sexual appearance and appeal to others. We found that across an age spectrum from 15 to 72 years, the more women watched sexualized TV, the more concerned they were about their body; a link between watching sexualized TV and considering cosmetic surgery was found only for women above the age of 31. Adding to the evidence documenting negative consequences of sexualized media use on young women's body image, this study is a first indicator that these might also apply to women across a broader age spectrum. <br /> Extensive research has documented links between sexualized media use and body image concerns. Previous findings are based largely on female adolescents or young adults, although objectification theory predicts changes of body image concerns with age. Therefore, the current study investigated the link of sexualized TV exposure (STE) with self-objectification and consideration of cosmetic surgery within the framework of objectification theory in a sample of 519 female participants between the age of 15 and 72 (M = 39.43 years). Participants completed measures of STE, appearance-ideal internalization, valuing appearance over competence, body surveillance, and consideration of cosmetic surgery. Structural equation modeling revealed that STE was indirectly linked with consideration of cosmetic surgery via valuing appearance over competence and body surveillance. Age was negatively related to internalization, valuing appearance over competence, and body surveillance, but did not moderate the links between STE and body image. Older women scored lower on the body-related variables, but the associations between STE and self-objectification were the same across the age spectrum. STE predicted consideration of cosmetic surgery only for women over 31 years of age. Implications concerning the role of age in linking sexualized media to self-objectification are discussed.
Wood is used for many applications because of its excellent mechanical properties, relative abundance and as it is a renewable resource. However, its wider utilization as an engineering material is limited because it swells and shrinks upon moisture changes and is susceptible to degradation by microorganisms and/or insects. Chemical modifications of wood have been shown to improve dimensional stability, water repellence and/or durability, thus increasing potential service-life of wood materials. However current treatments are limited because it is difficult to introduce and fix such modifications deep inside the tissue and cell wall. Within the scope of this thesis, novel chemical modification methods of wood cell walls were developed to improve both dimensional stability and water repellence of wood material. These methods were partly inspired by the heartwood formation in living trees, a process, that for some species results in an insertion of hydrophobic chemical substances into the cell walls of already dead wood cells, In the first part of this thesis a chemistry to modify wood cell walls was used, which was inspired by the natural process of heartwood formation. Commercially available hydrophobic flavonoid molecules were effectively inserted in the cell walls of spruce, a softwood species with low natural durability, after a tosylation treatment to obtain “artificial heartwood”. Flavonoid inserted cell walls show a reduced moisture absorption, resulting in better dimensional stability, water repellency and increased hardness. This approach was quite different compared to established modifications which mainly address hydroxyl groups of cell wall polymers with hydrophilic substances. In the second part of the work in-situ styrene polymerization inside the tosylated cell walls was studied. It is known that there is a weak adhesion between hydrophobic polymers and hydrophilic cell wall components. The hydrophobic styrene monomers were inserted into the tosylated wood cell walls for further polymerization to form polystyrene in the cell walls, which increased the dimensional stability of the bulk wood material and reduced water uptake of the cell walls considerably when compared to controls. In the third part of the work, grafting of another hydrophobic and also biodegradable polymer, poly(ɛ-caprolactone) in the wood cell walls by ring opening polymerization of ɛ-caprolactone was studied at mild temperatures. Results indicated that polycaprolactone attached into the cell walls, caused permanent swelling of the cell walls up to 5%. Dimensional stability of the bulk wood material increased 40% and water absorption reduced more than 35%. A fully biodegradable and hydrophobized wood material was obtained with this method which reduces disposal problem of the modified wood materials and has improved properties to extend the material’s service-life. Starting from a bio-inspired approach which showed great promise as an alternative to standard cell wall modifications we showed the possibility of inserting hydrophobic molecules in the cell walls and supported this fact with in-situ styrene and ɛ-caprolactone polymerization into the cell walls. It was shown in this thesis that despite the extensive knowledge and long history of using wood as a material there is still room for novel chemical modifications which could have a high impact on improving wood properties.
Woodlands and steppes
(2018)
Based on fossil organism remains including plant macrofossils, charcoal, pollen, and invertebrates preserved in syngenetic deposits of the Batagay permafrost sequence in the Siberian Yana Highlands, we reconstructed the environmental history during marine isotope stages (MIS) 6 to 2. Two fossil assemblages, exceptionally rich in plant remains, allowed for a detailed description of the palaeo-vegetation during two climate extremes of the Late Pleistocene, the onset of the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the last interglacial. In addition, altogether 41 assemblages were used to outline the vegetation history since the penultimate cold stage of MIS 6. Accordingly, meadow steppes analogue to modern communities of the phytosociological order Festucetalia lenensis formed the primary vegetation during the Saalian and Weichselian cold stages. Cold-resistant tundra-steppe communities (Carici rupestris-Kobresietea bellardii) as they occur above the treeline today were, in contrast to more northern locations, mostly lacking. During the last interglacial, open coniferous woodland similar to modern larch taiga was the primary vegetation at the site. Abundant charcoal indicates wildfire events during the last interglacial. Zoogenic disturbances of the local vegetation were indicated by the presence of ruderal plants, especially by abundant Urtica dioica, suggesting that the area was an interglacial refugium for large herbivores. Meadow steppes, which formed the primary vegetation during cold stages and provided potentially suitable pastures for herbivores, were a significant constituent of the plant cover in the Yana Highlands also under the full warm stage conditions of the last interglacial. Consequently, meadow steppes occurred in the Yana Highlands during the entire investigated timespan from MIS 6 to MIS 2 documenting a remarkable environmental stability. Thus, the proportion of meadow steppe vegetation merely shifted in response to the respectively prevailing climatic conditions. Their persistence indicates low precipitation and a relatively warm growing season throughout and beyond the late Pleistocene. The studied fossil record also proves that modern steppe occurrences in the Yana Highlands did not establish as late as in the Holocene but instead are relicts of a formerly continuous steppe belt extending from Central Siberia to Northeast Yakutia during the Pleistocene. The persistence of plants and invertebrates characteristic of meadow steppe vegetation in interior Yakutia throughout the late Quaternary indicates climatic continuity and documents the suitability of this region as a refugium also for other organisms of the Pleistocene mammoth steppe including the iconic large herbivores. (C)2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
One of the core issues in psycholinguistic research concerns the relationship between word category information and verb-argument structure (e.g. transitivity) information of verbs in the process of sentence parsing. In two experiments (visual versus auditory presentation) using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we addressed this question by presenting sentences in which the critical word simultaneously realized both a word category and a transitivity violation. ERPs for sentences with both types of violation clustered with the patterns for sentences with a word category violation only, but were different from the patterns elicited by argument structure violations in isolation, since only the latter elicited an N400 ERP component. The finding that an argument structure violation evoked an N400 only if the phrase structure of the respective sentence was correct suggests that a successful integration of the word category information of a verb functionally precedes the application of its argument structure information. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of word frequency on eye movements during reading, but the precise timing of this influence has remained unclear. The fast priming paradigm was previously used to study influences of related versus unrelated primes on the target word. Here, we use this procedure to investigate whether the frequency of the prime word has a direct influence on eye movements during reading when the prime-target relation is not manipulated. We found that with average prime intervals of 32 ms readers made longer single fixation durations on the target word in the low than in the high frequency prime condition. Distributional analyses demonstrated that the effect of prime frequency on single fixation durations occurred very early, supporting theories of immediate cognitive control of eye movements. Finding prime frequency effects only 207 ms after visibility of the prime and for prime durations of 32 ms yields new time constraints for cognitive processes controlling eye movements during reading. Our variant of the fast priming paradigm provides a new approach to test early influences of word processing on eye movement control during reading.
Electrophysiological research using verbal response paradigms faces the problem of muscle artifacts that occur during speech production or in the period preceding articulation. In this context, this paper has two related aims. The first is to show how the nature of the first phoneme influences the alignment of the ERPs. The second is to further characterize the EEG signal around the onset of articulation, both in temporal and frequency domains. Participants were asked to name aloud pictures of common objects. We applied microstate analyses and time-frequency transformations of ERPs locked to vocal onset to compare the EEG signal between voiced and unvoiced labial plosive word onset consonants. We found a delay of about 40 ms in the set of stable topographic patterns for /b/ relative to /p/ onset words. A similar shift was observed in the power increase of gamma oscillations (30-50 Hz), which had an earlier onset for /p/ trials (similar to 150 ms before vocal onset). This 40-ms shift is consistent with the length of the voiced proportion of the acoustic signal prior to the release of the closure in the vocal responses. These results demonstrate that phonetic features are an important parameter affecting response-locked ERPs, and hence that the onset of the acoustic energy may not be an optimal trigger for synchronizing the EEG activity to the response in vocal paradigms. The indexes explored in this study provide a step forward in the characterization of muscle-related artifacts in electrophysiological studies of speech and language production.