Lines, Circles, Planes and Spheres

Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^3$, no three collinear and not all coplanar. If at most $n-k$ are coplanar and $n$ is sufficiently large, the total number of planes determined is at least $1 + k \binom{n-k}{2}-\binom{k}{2}(\frac{n-k}{2})$. For similar conditions and sufficiently large $n$, (inspired by the work of P. D. T. A. Elliott in \cite{Ell67}) we also show that the number of spheres determined by $n$ points is at least $1+\binom{n-1}{3}-t_3^{orchard}(n-1)$, and this bound is best possible under its hypothesis. (By $t_3^{orchard}(n)$, we are denoting the maximum number of three-point lines attainable by a configuration of $n$ points, no four collinear, in the plane, i.e., the classic Orchard Problem.) New lower bounds are also given for both lines and circles.Comment: 37 page

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increase rage signaling to promote downstream cardiovascular remodeling

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat and the antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) is a globally used tool to combat AMR. There is little information on the views among Pakistani physicians regarding AMR and the benefits of hospital antimicrobial stewardship implementation. This study was designed to explore the physicians’ views about ASP. Methods: Qualitative face-to-face and telephonic interviews were conducted by using purposive sampling method with 22 physicians working in seven tertiary care public hospitals of Punjab, Pakistan. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative software was used, and a thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Three broad themes were identified: (1) the growing concern of antimicrobial resistance in Pakistan, (2) the role(s) of healthcare professionals in antibiotic prescribing, and (3) managing antibiotic resistance in hospitals. Inadequate resources, poor healthcare facilities, and insufficiently trained medical staff were the major hurdles in ASP implementation in Pakistan. Conclusions: Our study found a poor familiarity of hospital ASP among physicians working in public sector tertiary care teaching hospitals, and a number of distinct themes emerged during this study that could be helpful in establishing the concept of hospital ASP in Pakistan. Overall, physicians showed a positive attitude towards the enforcement of ASP in all healthcare settings, including teaching hospitals

Obliquity pacing of the western Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone over the past 282,000 years

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) encompasses the heaviest rain belt on the Earth. Few direct long-term records, especially in the Pacific, limit our understanding of long-term natural variability for predicting future ITCZ migration. Here we present a tropical precipitation record from the Southern Hemisphere covering the past 282,000 years, inferred from a marine sedimentary sequence collected off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea. Unlike the precession paradigm expressed in its East Asian counterpart, our record shows that the western Pacific ITCZ migration was influenced by combined precession and obliquity changes. The obliquity forcing could be primarily delivered by a cross-hemispherical thermal/pressure contrast, resulting from the asymmetric continental configuration between Asia and Australia in a coupled East Asian-Australian circulation system. Our finding suggests that the obliquity forcing may play a more important role in global hydroclimate cycles than previously thought

Children’s friendships in diverse primary schools: teachers and the processes of policy enactment

Drawing on data from a project exploring children's and adults’ friendships across social class and ethnic difference, this paper focuses on the enactment of national and institutional policy around children’s friendships as realized in three primary schools in diverse urban areas in London. Through a focus on the way in which social and emotional learning (SEL) and teachers’ understandings of children’s friendships seek to govern children’s friendship behaviours, we turn to Foucault’s work to explore how power shapes relations between policy frameworks and teachers’ practices, and between those who teach and those who are taught. We discuss the disciplinary potential of SEL and teachers’ ‘common sense’ understandings of children’s friendships, but conclude by noting possibilities for teachers to create spaces in which all children can safely explore the nature of friendships

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente