Pre-pandemic cognitive function and COVID-19 mortality:Prospective cohort study

Poorer performance on standard tests of pre-morbid cognitive function is related to an elevated risk of death from lower respiratory tract infections but the link with coronavirus (COVID‑19) mortality is untested. Participants in UK Biobank, aged 40 to 69 years at study induction (2006–10), were administered a reaction time test, an indicator of information processing speed, and also had their verbal-numeric reasoning assessed. Between April 1st and September 23rd 2020 there were 388 registry-confirmed deaths (138 women) ascribed to COVID-19 in 494,932 individuals (269,602 women) with a reaction time test result, and 125 such deaths (38 women) in the subgroup of 180,198 people (97,794 women) with data on verbal-numeric reasoning. In analyses adjusted for age, sex, and ethnicity, a one standard deviation slower reaction time was related to a higher rate of death from COVID-19 (hazard ratio; 95% confidence interval: 1.18; 1.09, 1.28), as was a one standard deviation disadvantage on the verbal-numeric reasoning test (1.32; 1.09, 1.59). While there was some attenuation in these relationships after adjustment for additional covariates which included socio-economic status and lifestyle factors, the two pre-pandemic indicators of cognitive function continued to be related to COVID-19 mortality

L'influence de cuivre sur la production des anticorps chez les moutons vaccinés contre l'entérotoxémie

Katitch Relja V., Batty I., Voukitchevitch Z. L’influence de cuivre sur la production des anticorps chez les Moutons vaccinés contre l’entérotoxémie. In: Bulletin de l'Académie Vétérinaire de France tome 118 n°9, 1965. pp. 453-455

Vacuum polarization radiative correction to the parity violating electron scattering on heavy nuclei

The effect of vacuum polarization on the parity violating asymmetry in the elastic electron-nucleus scattering is considered. Calculations are performed in the high-energy approximation with an exact account for the electric field of the nucleus. It is shown that the radiative correction to the parity violating asymmetry is logarithmically enhanced and the value of the correction is about -1%.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, REVTex

Geospatial analysis and living urban geometry

This essay outlines how to incorporate morphological rules within the exigencies of our technological age. We propose using the current evolution of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) technologies beyond their original representational domain, towards predictive and dynamic spatial models that help in constructing the new discipline of "urban seeding". We condemn the high-rise tower block as an unsuitable typology for a living city, and propose to re-establish human-scale urban fabric that resembles the traditional city. Pedestrian presence, density, and movement all reveal that open space between modernist buildings is not urban at all, but neither is the open space found in today's sprawling suburbs. True urban space contains and encourages pedestrian interactions, and has to be designed and built according to specific rules. The opposition between traditional self-organized versus modernist planned cities challenges the very core of the urban planning discipline. Planning has to be re-framed from being a tool creating a fixed future to become a visionary adaptive tool of dynamic states in evolution

The extended, relativistic hyperon star model

In this paper an equation of state of neutron star matter which includes strange baryons in the framework of Zimanyi and Moszkowski (ZM) model has been obtained. We concentrate on the effects of the isospin dependence of the equation of state constructing for the appropriate choices of parameters the hyperons star model. Numerous neutron star models show that the appearance of hyperons is connected with the increasing density in neutron star interiors. Various studies have indicated that the inclusion of delta meson mainly affects the symmetry energy and through this the chemical composition of a neutron star. As the effective nucleon mass contributes to hadron chemical potentials it alters the chemical composition of the star. In the result the obtained model of the star not only excludes large population of hadrons but also does not reduce significantly lepton contents in the star interior.Comment: 22 pages, revtex4, 13 figure

Unravelling the size distribution of social groups with information theory on complex networks

The minimization of Fisher's information (MFI) approach of Frieden et al. [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 60} 48 (1999)] is applied to the study of size distributions in social groups on the basis of a recently established analogy between scale invariant systems and classical gases [arXiv:0908.0504]. Going beyond the ideal gas scenario is seen to be tantamount to simulating the interactions taking place in a network's competitive cluster growth process. We find a scaling rule that allows to classify the final cluster-size distributions using only one parameter that we call the competitiveness. Empirical city-size distributions and electoral results can be thus reproduced and classified according to this competitiveness, which also allows to correctly predict well-established assessments such as the "six-degrees of separation", which is shown here to be a direct consequence of the maximum number of stable social relationships that one person can maintain, known as Dunbar's number. Finally, we show that scaled city-size distributions of large countries follow the same universal distribution