Quanpho Nano Imaging Lab

Un Magazine, #8.2, 2014

In a period in which we have accepted embraced the proliferation of imaging systems, our collective gaze is capable of traversing known space and time. From Hubble’s technicoloured explosions of distant nebulae to whatever those splatters are in the search for the Higgs boson. The idea that the world has almost been replaced by its double is not so unusual, and it leads to the notion that all that remains is to fill the holes in between these two extremes of inner and outer space. These holes in between are in fact being filled, and at an unprecedented rate, with image data generated voluntarily and involuntarily by individuals as they move through real and electronic space. It is difficult to imagine life without being imaged. The perception of a constant all-encompassing surveillance has generated a collective 'horror vacui', the world imagined has been gradually displaced by the world imaged. When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and its 239 passengers vanished, millions of people joined the largest ever search party through satellite services such as Tomnod, and found nothing but whitecaps on waves. This article discusses how without an image to 'know' this event, we remain suspended, without resolution.

2020

The experimental results of quantum physics were manipulated by empiricists to forward some philosophical notions, which are in conflict with common sense and religious convictions. Most seriously, the notion of observer-created reality questions the independent reality of subatomic particles and endows divine qualities on observers who presumably determine their status. Moreover, the seemingly spontaneous electronic transitions were used to shed light as to whether the universe has a stationary configuration. In this article, both notions are analysed in terms of the logical consistency of their arguments and the scientific approach they adopt. The same arguments are * PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Boston University, USA, in 1998. Dr. Mabrouk combines industrial experience at Lucent Technologies, USA, and Zarlink Semiconductors, Canada, with 35 years of academic experience teaching practical topics of Islamic law including at the International Islamic University M...

The Higgs particle has been detected a few years ago, that is what newspapers tell us. For many physicists, the Standard Model of particle physics has accomplished all the jobs. Or to put it simply: The game is over. Is it true? Then some physicists began to ask: can go beyond the Standard Model? Because the supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model has failed. If you feel that theoretical physics is becoming boring, you are not alone. Fortunately, there is good news: a new generation of physicists are doing table-top experiments in their basements. Can we expect new results later? 2 If so, what will the future of physics look like? This article discusses this question, starting with a blunt look at the relationship between mathematics and physical reality, written from the perspectives of a mathematician and a cosmologist.

Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 1996

The paper challenges the assumption, common amongst philosophers, that the reality described in the fundamental theories of microphysics is all the reality we have. It will be argued that this assumption is in fact incompatible with the nature of such theories. It will be shown further that the macro-world of three-dimensional bodies and of such qualitative structures as colour and sound can be treated scientifically on its own terms, which is to say not only from the perspective of psychology but also ontologically. A new sort of emergentist position will be defended, one which yields the basis of a method for describing the perceptually salient macroscopic world in mathematical terms. Broadly, it will be argued that the macroscopic world exists in virtue of certain specific sorts of boundary-patterns in the field of what is captured by the theories of microphysics.

Alternation, 1999

2005

Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 2019

Sociolinguistic stratification-the fact that language diversity is turned into inequality through processes of normative judgment-has been central in the development of modern sociolinguistics and has kept researchers' attention for many decades. The online-offline nexus in which we have learned to live and organize our social lives in online as well as offline spaces, each carrying different normative standards, has become a lab for manifest sociolinguistic restratification. An analysis of Donald Trump's orthographic errors on Twitter, and how such errors went viral, shows how multiple audiences apply very different indexical vectors to the errors, each of them iconicizing a more general set of perceived social and political divisions. The outcome is a complex, polycentric sociolinguistic system, far less stable than that imagined in earlier sociolinguistics. This system requires renewed attention.