Events at Physics |
Events on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
- Chaos & Complex Systems Seminar
- Gender, power and peacemaking in Africa
- Time: 12:05 pm
- Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
- Speaker: Aili Mari Tripp, UW Departments of Political Science and Women's Studies
- Abstract: The presentation will look at why almost all post-conflict countries in Africa have double the rates of legislative representation of women compared with countries that have not undergone conflict. Moreover, these countries tend to have been more open to passing legislation and making constitutional changes relating to women's rights. In my talk, I explain why Rwanda has the highest rates of legislative representation of women in the world (49% of all seats are held by women) and why Liberia has the first elected woman president in Africa. The talk examines how and why the end of major civil conflicts, especially since the 1990s from South Africa to Namibia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia and Sierra Leone, opened up new opportunities for women activists. I discuss the broader international context of these changes, changing gender relations during civil war, and the role of women1s movements. The talk is based on both comparative research across Africa as well as fieldwork in Uganda, Liberia and Angola.
- Astronomy Colloquium
- The SWIFT Bat Hard X-ray Survey- A New Window on the Local AGN Universe
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 6515 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Richard Mushotsky, Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
- Abstract: The Swift Burst and Transient telescope (BAT) has surveyed the entire sky for the last 3.5 years obtaining the first sensitive all sky survey of the 14-195 keV sky. At high galactic latitudes the vast majority of the detected sources are AGN. Since hard x-rays penetrate all but Compton thick obscuring material (Column densities of 1.6E24 atms/cm2) this survey is unbiased with respect to obscuration, host galaxy type, optical , radio or IR properties. We will present results on the broad band x-ray properties, the nature of the host galaxies, the luminosity function and will discuss a few of the optical, IR and x-ray results in detail.<br>
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