Post-Truth: An Alumni Economist’s Perspective

Drawing upon 50 years as an academic economist, this lecture to alumni of SOAS’s Department of Economics reflects upon the continual ‘post-truth’ aspects of mainstream economics, ranging over its substantive, if shifting, content, and its treatment of methodology and interdisciplinarity. It draws upon a wide range of theory, empirical analysis, policy and anecdote to highlight both the need for alternatives and the continuing, even increased, failure of the mainstream to engage with criticism and alternatives

What happens to ART-eligible patients who do not start ART? Drop out between screening and ART initiation: a cohort study in Karonga, Malawi

BACKGROUND: Routine ART programme statistics generally only provide information about individuals who start treatment. We aimed to investigate the outcome of those who are eligible but do not start ART in the Malawi programme, factors associated with this dropout, and reasons for not starting treatment, in a prospective cohort study.METHODS: Individuals having a first screening visit at the ART clinic at Karonga District Hospital, northern Malawi, between September 2005 and July 2006 were interviewed. Study follow-up to identify treatment outcomes was conducted at the clinic and in the community. Logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with dropout before ART initiation among participants identified as clinically eligible for ART.RESULTS: 88 participants eligible for ART at their first screening visit (out of 633, 13.9%) defaulted before starting ART. Participants with less education, difficulties in dressing, a more delayed ART initiation appointment, and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) < 22 cm were significantly less likely to have visited the clinic subsequently. Thirty-five (58%) of the 60 participants who defaulted and were tracked at home had died, 21 before their ART initiation appointment.CONCLUSIONS: MUAC and reported difficulties in dressing may provide useful screening indicators to identify sicker ART-eligible individuals at high risk of dropping out of the programme who might benefit from being brought back quickly or admitted to hospital for observation. Individuals with less education may need adapted health information at screening. Deaths of ART-eligible individuals occurring prior to ART initiation are not included in routine programme statistics. Considering all those who are eligible for ART as a denominator for programme indicators would help to highlight this vulnerable group, in order to identify new opportunities for further improving ART programmes

A monument to the player: Preserving a landscape of socio-cultural capital in the transitional MMORPG

This is the pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the links below - Copyright @ 2012 Taylor & Francis LtdMassively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) produce dynamic socio-ludic worlds that nurture both culture and gameplay to shape experiences. Despite the persistent nature of these games, however, the virtual spaces that anchor these worlds may not always be able to exist in perpetuity. Encouraging a community to migrate from one space to another is a challenge now facing some game developers. This paper examines the case of Guild Wars® and its “Hall of Monuments”, a feature that bridges the accomplishments of players from the current game to the forthcoming sequel. Two factor analyses describe the perspectives of 105 and 187 self-selected participants. The results reveal four factors affecting attitudes towards the feature, but they do not strongly correlate with existing motivational frameworks, and significant differences were found between different cultures within the game. This informs a discussion about the implications and facilitation of such transitions, investigating themes of capital, value perception and assumptive worlds. It is concluded that the way subcultures produce meaning needs to be considered when attempting to preserve the socio-cultural landscape

Chaos and Complexity of quantum motion

The problem of characterizing complexity of quantum dynamics - in particular of locally interacting chains of quantum particles - will be reviewed and discussed from several different perspectives: (i) stability of motion against external perturbations and decoherence, (ii) efficiency of quantum simulation in terms of classical computation and entanglement production in operator spaces, (iii) quantum transport, relaxation to equilibrium and quantum mixing, and (iv) computation of quantum dynamical entropies. Discussions of all these criteria will be confronted with the established criteria of integrability or quantum chaos, and sometimes quite surprising conclusions are found. Some conjectures and interesting open problems in ergodic theory of the quantum many problem are suggested.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures, final version, at press in J. Phys. A, special issue on Quantum Informatio

To move or to evolve: contrasting patterns of intercontinental connectivity and climatic niche evolution in “Terebinthaceae” (Anacardiaceae and Burseraceae)

Many angiosperm families are distributed pantropically, yet for any given continent little is known about which lineages are ancient residents or recent arrivals. Here we use a comprehensive sampling of the pantropical sister pair Anacardiaceae and Burseraceae to assess the relative importance of continental vicariance, long-distance dispersal and niche-conservatism in generating its distinctive pattern of diversity over time. Each family has approximately the same number of species and identical stem age, yet Anacardiaceae display a broader range of fruit morphologies and dispersal strategies and include species that can withstand freezing temperatures, whereas Burseraceae do not. We found that nuclear and chloroplast data yielded a highly supported phylogenetic reconstruction that supports current taxonomic concepts and time-calibrated biogeographic reconstructions that are broadly congruent with the fossil record. We conclude that the most recent common ancestor of these families was widespread and likely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous and that vicariance between Eastern and Western Hemispheres coincided with the initial divergence of the families. The tempo of diversification of the families is strikingly different. Anacardiaceae steadily accumulated lineages starting in the Late Cretaceous–Paleocene while the majority of Burseraceae diversification occurred in the Miocene. Multiple dispersal- and vicariance-based intercontinental colonization events are inferred for both families throughout the past 100 million years. However, Anacardiaceae have shifted climatic niches frequently during this time, while Burseraceae have experienced very few shifts between dry and wet climates and only in the tropics. Thus, we conclude that both Anacardiaceae and Burseraceae move easily but that Anacardiaceae have adapted more often, either due to more varied selective pressures or greater intrinsic lability

On the Cognition of States of Affairs

The theory of speech acts put forward by Adolf Reinach in his "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" of 1913 rests on a systematic account of the ontological structures associated with various different sorts of language use. One of the most original features of Reinach's account lies in hIs demonstration of how the ontological structure of, say, an action of promising or of commanding, may be modified in different ways, yielding different sorts of non-standard instances of the corresponding speech act varieties. The present paper is an attempt to apply this idea of standard and modified instances of ontological structures to the realm of judgement and cognition, and thereby to develop a Reinachian theory of how intentionality is mediated through language in acts of thinking and speaking

Spectral Shape of Relaxations in Silica Glass

Precise low-frequency light scattering experiments on silica glass are presented, covering a broad temperature and frequency range (9 GHz < \nu < 2 THz). For the first time the spectral shape of relaxations is observed over more than one decade in frequency. The spectra show a power-law low-frequency wing of the relaxational part of the spectrum with an exponent $\alpha$ proportional to temperature in the range 30 K < T < 200 K. A comparison of our results with those from acoustic attenuation experiments performed at different frequencies shows that this power-law behaviour rather well describes relaxations in silica over 9 orders of magnitude in frequency. These findings can be explained by a model of thermally activated transitions in double well potentials.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Largeness and SQ-universality of cyclically presented groups

Largeness, SQ-universality, and the existence of free subgroups of rank 2 are measures of the complexity of a finitely presented group. We obtain conditions under which a cyclically presented group possesses one or more of these properties. We apply our results to a class of groups introduced by Prishchepov which contains, amongst others, the various generalizations of Fibonacci groups introduced by Campbell and Robertson

Geophysical studies with laser-beam detectors of gravitational waves

The existing high technology laser-beam detectors of gravitational waves may find very useful applications in an unexpected area - geophysics. To make possible the detection of weak gravitational waves in the region of high frequencies of astrophysical interest, ~ 30 - 10^3 Hz, control systems of laser interferometers must permanently monitor, record and compensate much larger external interventions that take place in the region of low frequencies of geophysical interest, ~ 10^{-5} - 3 X 10^{-3} Hz. Such phenomena as tidal perturbations of land and gravity, normal mode oscillations of Earth, oscillations of the inner core of Earth, etc. will inevitably affect the performance of the interferometers and, therefore, the information about them will be stored in the data of control systems. We specifically identify the low-frequency information contained in distances between the interferometer mirrors (deformation of Earth) and angles between the mirrors' suspensions (deviations of local gravity vectors and plumb lines). We show that the access to the angular information may require some modest amendments to the optical scheme of the interferometers, and we suggest the ways of doing that. The detailed evaluation of environmental and instrumental noises indicates that they will not prevent, even if only marginally, the detection of interesting geophysical phenomena. Gravitational-wave instruments seem to be capable of reaching, as a by-product of their continuous operation, very ambitious geophysical goals, such as observation of the Earth's inner core oscillations.Comment: 29 pages including 8 figures, modifications and clarifications in response to referees' comments, to be published in Class. Quant. Gra