Should a clinical rotation in haematology be mandatory for undergraduate medical students?

Clinical rotations form the foundation of medical education. Medical students in the UK are offered conventional rotations such as cardiology, surgery and psychiatry as part of their curriculum, but a rotation of haematology is not currently compulsory. This article explores the benefits of a compulsory haematology rotation, and suggests recommendations for its implementation into UK medical school curricula

Weighing the universe with accelerators and detectors

Suppose the lightest superpartner (LSP) is observed at colliders, and WIMPs are detected in explicit experiments. We point out that one cannot immediately conclude that cold dark matter (CDM) of the universe has been observed, and we determine what measurements are necessary before such a conclusion is meaningful. We discuss the analogous situation for neutrinos and axions; in the axion case we have not found a way to conclude axions are the CDM even if axions are detected.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures; minor changes included and typos fixe

Partial constraint singularities in elastic rods

We present a unified classical treatment of partially constrained elastic rods. Partial constraints often entail singularities in both shapes and reactions. Our approach encompasses both sleeve and adhesion problems, and provides simple and unambiguous derivations of counterintuitive results in the literature. Relationships between reaction forces and moments, geometry, and adhesion energies follow from the balance of energy during quasistatic motion. We also relate our approach to the balance of material momentum and the concept of a driving traction. The theory is generalizable and can be applied to a wide array of contact, adhesion, gripping, and locomotion problems.Comment: edited tex

High bat (Chiroptera) diversity in the Early Eocene of India

The geographic origin of bats is still unknown, and fossils of earliest bats are rare and poorly diversified, with, maybe, the exception of Europe. The earliest bats are recorded from the Early Eocene of North America, Europe, North Africa and Australia where they seem to appear suddenly and simultaneously. Until now, the oldest record in Asia was from the Middle Eocene. In this paper, we report the discovery of the oldest bat fauna of Asia dating from the Early Eocene of the Cambay Formation at Vastan Lignite Mine in Western India. The fossil taxa are described on the basis of well-preserved fragments of dentaries and lower teeth. The fauna is highly diversified and is represented by seven species belonging to seven genera and at least four families. Two genera and five species are new. Three species exhibit very primitive dental characters, whereas four others indicate more advanced states. Unexpectedly, this fauna presents strong affinities with the European faunas from the French Paris Basin and the German Messel locality. This could result from the limited fossil record of bats in Asia, but could also suggest new palaeobiogeographic scenarios involving the relative position of India during the Early Eocene

Galilean type IIA backgrounds and a map

We obtain non-relativistic AdS4 X CP3 solutions with dynamical exponent 3 in type IIA string theory, both with and without Romans mass. The compactifications to four dimensions are found to describe Proca fields in anti-de Sitter spacetime. This leads us to conclude that the massive and massless IIA theories should be identified in four dimensions and the Romans mass should be identified with the `flux' along CP3 in a definite manner. From supergravity point of view, it is suggestive of some four-dimensional symmetry that rotates Romans mass into the flux along CP3. We also provide M-theory Galilean ABJM background which gives rise to the nonrelativistic type IIA solution.Comment: 10 pages;v2: major revisions, errors on supersymmetry corrected and references added; to be published in MPL