The Ready Materials for Another World: Frontier, Security, and the Hindustan-Tibet Road in the 19th century Northwestern Himalaya

This article examines the different ways in which the British conceived of and configured the northwestern Himalaya in the mid-19th century. It focuses on the proposal, construction, and justification of the Hindustan-Tibet Road from the late 1840s through to the 1860s. By examining this particular episode in British frontier formation, I hope to show that the pacific perception of this “natural frontier” region allowed for a plurality of configurations that would not be possible on the more contested and violent imperial fronts. Only when this region was integrated into a conceptually unified frontier did it become subsumed into a larger imperial security rubric—and once again became considered insecure

did2s: Two-Stage Difference-in-Differences

Recent work has highlighted the difficulties of estimating difference-in-differences models when the treatment is adopted at different times for different units. This article introduces the R package did2s which implements the estimator introduced in Gardner (2022). The article provides an approachable review of the underlying econometric theory and introduces the syntax for the function did2s. Further, the package introduces functions, event_study and plot_event_study, which uses a common syntax to implement all of the modern event-study estimator

The stochastic order of probability measures on ordered metric spaces

The general notion of a stochastic ordering is that one probability distribution is smaller than a second one if the second attaches more probability to higher values than the first. Motivated by recent work on barycentric maps on spaces of probability measures on ordered Banach spaces, we introduce and study a stochastic order on the space of probability measures $\mathcal{P}(X)$, where $X$ is a metric space equipped with a closed partial order, and derive several useful equivalent versions of the definition. We establish the antisymmetry and closedness of the stochastic order (and hence that it is a closed partial order) for the case of a partial order on a Banach space induced by a closed normal cone with interior. We also consider order-completeness of the stochastic order for a cone of a finite-dimensional Banach space and derive a version of the arithmetic-geometric-harmonic mean inequalities in the setting of the associated probability space on positive matrices.Comment: 25 page

Patterns of genomic and phenomic diversity in wine and table grapes.

Grapes are one of the most economically and culturally important crops worldwide, and they have been bred for both winemaking and fresh consumption. Here we evaluate patterns of diversity across 33 phenotypes collected over a 17-year period from 580 table and wine grape accessions that belong to one of the world's largest grape gene banks, the grape germplasm collection of the United States Department of Agriculture. We find that phenological events throughout the growing season are correlated, and quantify the marked difference in size between table and wine grapes. By pairing publicly available historical phenotype data with genome-wide polymorphism data, we identify large effect loci controlling traits that have been targeted during domestication and breeding, including hermaphroditism, lighter skin pigmentation and muscat aroma. Breeding for larger berries in table grapes was traditionally concentrated in geographic regions where Islam predominates and alcohol was prohibited, whereas wine grapes retained the ancestral smaller size that is more desirable for winemaking in predominantly Christian regions. We uncover a novel locus with a suggestive association with berry size that harbors a signature of positive selection for larger berries. Our results suggest that religious rules concerning alcohol consumption have had a marked impact on patterns of phenomic and genomic diversity in grapes

A Candidate Brightest Proto-Cluster Galaxy at z = 3.03

We report the discovery of a very bright (m_R = 22.2) Lyman break galaxy at z = 3.03 that appears to be a massive system in a late stage of merging. Deep imaging reveals multiple peaks in the brightness profile with angular separations of ~0.''8 (~25 h^-1 kpc comoving). In addition, high signal-to-noise ratio rest-frame UV spectroscopy shows evidence for ~5 components based on stellar photospheric and ISM absorption lines with a velocity dispersion of sigma ~460 km s^-1 for the three strongest components. Both the dynamics and high luminosity, as well as our analysis of a LCDM numerical simulation, suggest a very massive system with halo mass M ~ 10^13 M_solar. The simulation finds that all halos at z = 3 of this mass contain sub-halos in agreement with the properties of these observed components and that such systems typically evolve into M ~ 10^14 M_solar halos in groups and clusters by z = 0. This discovery provides a rare opportunity to study the properties and individual components of z ~ 3 systems that are likely to be the progenitors to brightest cluster galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ApJ Letter

Design of TKR Tibial Insert for Bowlegged Gait

One of the causes associated with total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is abnormal gait. In these gait cases, however, the TKR does not solve the ultimate issue because abnormal gait still occurs, and similar excessive forces still occur on the knee. It is likely that the TKR will experience accelerated wear, and the individual may have to undergo a second TKR sometime in the future. For our purposes, bowleggedness is either the external rotation of the hip or excessive varus of the knee. It was hypothesized that the inability to internally rotate the hip increases adduction moment and medial compartment stresses. In order to test this hypothesis, we created an analytical model to determine forces and moments at the knee. Results supported our hypothesis. In attempt to decrease the elevated stresses in the medial compartment, we created several models which modified the tibial plastic of the ADVANCE® Medial Pivot Knee. We performed stress analyses in ABAQUS and conducted experiments on each of the models. Based on our results we recommend the thickened anterior medial cusp implant for those with external rotation and the angled tray implant for those with varus deformity