Population Differences in Death Rates in HIV-Positive Patients with Tuberculosis.

SETTING: Randomised controlled clinical trial of Mycobacterium vaccae vaccination as an adjunct to anti-tuberculosis treatment in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive patients with smear-positive tuberculosis (TB) in Lusaka, Zambia, and Karonga, Malawi. OBJECTIVE: To explain the difference in mortality between the two trial sites and to identify risk factors for death among HIV-positive patients with TB. DESIGN: Information on demographic, clinical, laboratory and radiographic characteristics was collected. Patients in Lusaka (667) and in Karonga (84) were followed up for an average of 1.56 years. Cox proportional hazard analyses were used to assess differences in survival between the two sites and to determine risk factors associated with mortality during and after anti-tuberculosis treatment. RESULTS: The case fatality rate was 14.7% in Lusaka and 21.4% in Karonga. The hazard ratio for death comparing Karonga to Lusaka was 1.47 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.9-2.4) during treatment and 1.76 (95%CI 1.0-3.0) after treatment. This difference could be almost entirely explained by age and more advanced HIV disease among patients in Karonga. CONCLUSION: It is important to understand the reasons for population differences in mortality among patients with TB and HIV and to maximise efforts to reduce mortality

A quantum group version of quantum gauge theories in two dimensions

For the special case of the quantum group $SL_q (2,{\bf C})\ (q= \exp \pi i/r,\ r\ge 3)$ we present an alternative approach to quantum gauge theories in two dimensions. We exhibit the similarities to Witten's combinatorial approach which is based on ideas of Migdal. The main ingredient is the Turaev-Viro combinatorial construction of topological invariants of closed, compact 3-manifolds and its extension to arbitrary compact 3-manifolds as given by the authors in collaboration with W. Mueller.Comment: 6 pages (plain TeX

A Quantitative Occam's Razor

This paper derives an objective Bayesian "prior" based on considerations of entropy/information. By this means, it produces a quantitative measure of goodness of fit (the "H-statistic") that balances higher likelihood against the number of fitting parameters employed. The method is intended for phenomenological applications where the underlying theory is uncertain or unknown. For example, it can help decide whether the large angle anomalies in the CMB data should be taken seriously. I am therefore posting it now, even though it was published before the arxiv existed.Comment: plainTeX, 16 pages, no figures. Most current version is available at http://www.physics.syr.edu/~sorkin/some.papers/ (or wherever my home-page may be

Sets Represented as the Length-n Factors of a Word

In this paper we consider the following problems: how many different subsets of Sigma^n can occur as set of all length-n factors of a finite word? If a subset is representable, how long a word do we need to represent it? How many such subsets are represented by words of length t? For the first problem, we give upper and lower bounds of the form alpha^(2^n) in the binary case. For the second problem, we give a weak upper bound and some experimental data. For the third problem, we give a closed-form formula in the case where n <= t < 2n. Algorithmic variants of these problems have previously been studied under the name "shortest common superstring"

Amplitude dynamics of charge density wave in LaTe3_3: theoretical description of pump-probe experiments

We formulate a dynamical model to describe a photo-induced charge density wave (CDW) quench transition and apply it to recent multi-probe experiments on LaTe$_3$ [A. Zong et al., Nat. Phys. 15, 27 (2019)]. Our approach relies on coupled time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations tracking two order parameters that represent the modulations of the electronic density and the ionic positions. We aim at describing the amplitude of the order parameters under the assumption that they are homogeneous in space. This description is supplemented by a three-temperature model, which treats separately the electronic temperature, temperature of the lattice phonons with stronger couplings to the electronic subsystem, and temperature of all other phonons. The broad scope of available data for LaTe$_3$ and similar materials as well as the synergy between different time-resolved spectroscopies allow us to extract model parameters. The resulting calculations are in good agreement with ultra-fast electron diffraction experiments, reproducing qualitative and quantitative features of the CDW amplitude evolution during the initial few picoseconds after photoexcitation.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures; this version is almost identical to the published version; comparing to the earlier arXiv submission, current version contains a new figure (Fig.10), and a broader discussion of theoretical results and approximation

Nudging or Fudging: The World Development Report 2015

The 2015 World Development Report, Mind Society and Behaviour (World Bank, 2015), seeks a redesign of development policy on the basis of insights emerging from behavioural economics. This paper offers a critical assessment of the Report across four dimensions. First, it situates the Report within the broader and evolving knowledge role of the Bank. Second, the paper locates the Report in the context of the evolution of economics as a discipline and how this informs the evolution of the Bank’s development economics. Third, the Report is critically assessed for its narrow take on behavioural economics itself. Finally, the practical significance of the promotion of behavioural economics is considered through reference to its use in interventions in health in general and in response to HIV/AIDS in particular. It is argued that the Report suggests a dramatic and flawed reduction of what development is about, in that it foregoes any analysis of the structural problems facing developing countries and fails to propose major reforms to tackle these