A characterization of dual quermassintegrals and the roots of dual steiner polynomials

For any $I\subset\mathbb{R}$ finite with $0\in I$, we provide a characterization of those tuples $(\omega_i)_{i\in I}$ of positive numbers which are dual querma\ss integrals of two star bodies. It turns out that this problem is related to the moment problem. Based on this relation we also get new inequalities for the dual querma\ss integrals. Moreover, the above characterization will be the key tool in order to investigate structural properties of the set of roots of dual Steiner polynomials of star bodies

The silicate absorption profile in the ISM towards the heavily obscured nucleus of NGC 4418

The 9.7-micron silicate absorption profile in the interstellar medium provides important information on the physical and chemical composition of interstellar dust grains. Measurements in the Milky Way have shown that the profile in the diffuse interstellar medium is very similar to the amorphous silicate profiles found in circumstellar dust shells around late M stars, and narrower than the silicate profile in denser star-forming regions. Here, we investigate the silicate absorption profile towards the very heavily obscured nucleus of NGC 4418, the galaxy with the deepest known silicate absorption feature, and compare it to the profiles seen in the Milky Way. Comparison between the 8-13 micron spectrum obtained with TReCS on Gemini and the larger aperture spectrum obtained from the Spitzer archive indicates that the former isolates the nuclear emission, while Spitzer detects low surface brightness circumnuclear diffuse emission in addition. The silicate absorption profile towards the nucleus is very similar to that in the diffuse ISM in the Milky Way with no evidence of spectral structure from crystalline silicates or silicon carbide grains.Comment: 7 Pages, 3 figures. MNRAS in pres

Mechanisms Mediating Pediatric Severe Asthma and Potential Novel Therapies

Although a rare disease, severe therapy-resistant asthma in children is a cause of significant morbidity and results in utilization of approximately 50% of health-care resources for asthma. Improving control for children with severe asthma is, therefore, an urgent unmet clinical need. As a group, children with severe asthma have severe and multiple allergies, steroid resistant airway eosinophilia, and significant structural changes of the airway wall (airway remodeling). Omalizumab is currently the only add-on therapy that is licensed for use in children with severe asthma. However, limitations of its use include ineligibility for approximately one-third of patients because of serum IgE levels outside the recommended range and lack of clinical efficacy in a further one-third. Pediatric severe asthma is thus markedly heterogeneous, but our current understanding of the different mechanisms underpinning various phenotypes is very limited. We know that there are distinctions between the factors that drive pediatric and adult disease since pediatric disease develops in the context of a maturing immune system and during lung growth and development. This review summarizes the current data that give insight into the pathophysiology of pediatric severe asthma and will highlight potential targets for novel therapies. It is apparent that in order to identify novel treatments for pediatric severe asthma, the challenge of undertaking mechanistic studies using age appropriate experimental models and airway samples from children needs to be accepted to allow a targeted approach of personalized medicine to be achieved

Isospin breaking in the nucleon mass and the sensitivity of β decays to new physics

We discuss the consequences of the approximate conservation of the vector and axial currents for the hadronic matrix elements appearing in β decay if nonstandard interactions are present. In particular, the isovector (pseudo)scalar charge gS(P) of the nucleon can be related to the difference (sum) of the nucleon masses in the absence of electromagnetic effects. Using recent determinations of these quantities from phenomenological and lattice QCD studies we obtain the accurate values gS=1.02(11) and gP=349(9) in the modified minimal subtraction scheme at μ=2  GeV. The consequences for searches of nonstandard scalar interactions in nuclear β decays are studied, finding for the corresponding Wilson coefficient εS=0.0012(24) at 90% C.L., which is significantly more stringent than current LHC bounds and previous low-energy bounds using less precise gS values. We argue that our results could be rapidly improved with updated computations and the direct calculation of certain ratios in lattice QCD. Finally, we discuss the pion-pole enhancement of gP, which makes β decays much more sensitive to nonstandard pseudoscalar interactions than previously thought

Wine tourism in Spain: The case of three wine regions

By far the main focus of contemporary wine tourism research has been in ‘New World’ regions, while it appears to be under development in much of the ‘Old World.’ The present study adds to this underdeveloped body of research in that it addresses a range of wine tourism development issues, across three prominent ‘Old World’ wine regions: La Mancha, La Rioja and Penedès. A total of 94 wineries participated in the study. Respondents’ answers and comments indicate that while many of the participating wineries are several generations, or centuries, old, wine tourism appears to be in its ‘tentative’ stages, that is, only starting to gain momentum. One positive aspect is that most participants (68.1%) indicated that their wineries are open to the public mainly to generate interest for their wine brands among visitors, while 61.7% use the cellar door to educate customers, thus demonstrating wineries’ longer-term strategy to ‘convert’ visitors to brand loyalty through wine tourism. Given the critical role tourism plays for Spain’s economy, with over 50 million visitors per year, these findings can have important implications for the long term sustainability of the wine industry in many of the nation’s wine regions

Bayesian additive regression trees for probabilistic programming

Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) is a non-parametric method to approximate functions. It is a black-box method based on the sum of many trees where priors are used to regularize inference, mainly by restricting trees' learning capacity so that no individual tree is able to explain the data, but rather the sum of trees. We discuss BART in the context of probabilistic programming languages (PPL), i.e., we present BART as a primitive that can be used as a component of a probabilistic model rather than as a standalone model. Specifically, we introduce the Python library PyMC-BART, which works by extending PyMC, a library for probabilistic programming. We showcase a few examples of models that can be built using PyMC-BART, discuss recommendations for the selection of hyperparameters, and finally, we close with limitations of our implementation and future directions for improvement.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figure

A Nexafs Study of Nitric Oxide Layers Adsorbed from a nitrite Solution onto a Pt(111) Surface

NO molecules adsorbed on a Pt(111) surface from dipping in an acidic nitrite solution are studied by near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (NEXAFS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), low energy electron diffraction (LEED) and scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) techniques. LEED patterns and STM images show that no long range ordered structures are formed after NO adsorption on a Pt(111) surface. Although the total NO coverage is very low, spectroscopic features in N K-edge and O K-edge absorption spectra have been singled out and related to the different species induced by this preparation method. From these measurements it is concluded that the NO molecule is adsorbed trough the N atom in an upright conformation. The maximum saturation coverage is about 0.3 monolayers, and although nitric oxide is the major component, nitrite and nitrogen species are slightly co-adsorbed on the surface. The results obtained from this study are compared with those previously reported in the literature for NO adsorbed on Pt(111) under UHV conditions