Balancing China. Bertelsmann Asia Policy Brief 03.05.2019

The looming superpower rivalry between the US and China has massive implications for Germany and its European partners. While Donald Trump is forcing Europeans to think outside the transatlantic box, it is Xi Jinping who is posing more fundamental challenges. Time to balance China’s i

Letter to Jane Claire Dirks Acknowledging Smithsonian Specimen Contributions

Many of the specimens collected by Jane Claire Dirks (later Jane Claire Dirks-Edmunds) went on to become part of her colleagues\u27 collections. In this letter, Paul Bartsch, Curator of the the Divisions of Mollusks and Cenozoic Invertebrates at the Smithsonian Institution, thanks Dirks for shells she sent to the museum

Phase-space geometry of the generalized Langevin equation

The generalized Langevin equation is widely used to model the influence of a heat bath upon a reactive system. This equation will here be studied from a geometric point of view. A dynamical phase space that represents all possible states of the system will be constructed, the generalized Langevin equation will be formally rewritten as a pair of coupled ordinary differential equations, and the fundamental geometric structures in phase space will be described. It will be shown that the phase space itself and its geometric structure depend critically on the preparation of the system: A system that is assumed to have been in existence for ever has a larger phase space with a simpler structure than a system that is prepared at a finite time. These differences persist even in the long-time limit, where one might expect the details of preparation to become irrelevant

Occipital nerve stimulation for headache disorders

Occipital nerve stimulation (ONS) was originally described in the treatment of occipital neuralgia. However, the spectrum of possible indications has expanded in recent years to include primary headache disorders, such as migraine and cluster headaches. Retrospective and some prospective studies have yielded encouraging results, and evidence from controlled clinical trials is emerging, offering hope for refractory headache patients. In this article we discuss the scientific rationale to use ONS to treat headache disorders, with emphasis on the trigeminocervical complex. ONS is far from a standardized technique at the moment and the recent literature on the topic is reviewed, both with respect to the procedure and its possible complications. An important way to move forward in the scientific evaluation of ONS to treat refractory headache is the clinical phenotyping of patients to identify patients groups with the highest likelihood to respond to this modality of treatment. This requires multidisciplinary assessment of patients. The development of ONS as a new treatment for refractory headache offers an exciting prospect to treat our most disabled headache patients. Data from ongoing controlled trials will undoubtedly shed new light on some of the unresolved questions

Multi-bubble nodal solutions for slightly subcritical elliptic problems in domains with symmetries

We study the existence of sign-changing solutions with multiple bubbles to the slightly subcritical problem -\Delta u=|u|^{2^*-2-\e}u \hbox{in}\Omega, \quad u=0 \hbox{on}\partial \Omega, where $\Omega$ is a smooth bounded domain in $\R^N$, $N\geq 3$, $2^*=\frac{2N}{N-2}$ and \e>0 is a small parameter. In particular we prove that if $\Omega$ is convex and satisfies a certain symmetry, then a nodal four-bubble solution exists with two positive and two negative bubbles

Statistical Relaxation in Closed Quantum Systems and the Van Hove-Limit

We analyze the dynamics of occupation probabilities for a certain type of design models by the use of two different methods. On the one hand we present some numerical calculations for two concrete interactions which point out that the occurrence of statistical dynamics depends on the interaction structure. Furthermore we show an analytical derivation for an infinite system that yields statistical behaviour for the average over the whole ensemble of interactions in the Van Hove-limit.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in European Physics Journal Special Topic

A hydrothermal vent mite (Halacaridae, Acari) with a new Corynophrya species (Suctoria, Ciliophora), description of the suctorian and its distribution on the halacarid mite

Copidognathus nautilei Bartsch, 1997, from a hydrothermal vent field of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at about 13 degrees N, 45 degrees W and 4090 m depth, was infested with the suctorian Corynophrya abyssalis n. sp., with up to 58 epizoans per mite. The new suctorian has a sacciform body with seven longitudinal ribs, a compact macronucleus and up to 40 non-retractile tentacles. The budding is exogenous. The systematic position of the new species and the genus Corynophrya is discussed, as well as infestation rates and sites of suctorians on their halacarid hosts