The public's acceptance of novel vaccines during a pandemic: a focus group study and its application to influenza H1N1

As influenza H1N1 spreads around the world, health officials are considering the development and use of a new vaccine to protect the public and help control the outbreak. Acceptance of novel vaccines during health crises, however, is influenced by perceptions of a range of risks, including the risk of infection, risk of becoming severely ill or dying if infected, as well as the risk of serious side and long-term effects of the vaccine. A study on 11 focus groups was conducted with the public in Vancouver, Canada in 2006 and 2007 to explore how people assess these risks and how these assessments relate to their willingness to use novel vaccines in a pandemic. Concerns about using new vaccines during a pandemic differ from concerns about using established products in a non-crisis situation. Participants were hesitant to use novel vaccines because of a low perception of the early risk of infection in a pandemic, coupled with the many uncertainties that surround new vaccines and the emerging infectious disease, and owing to the concern that unsafe pharmaceuticals may be rushed to market during a health crisis. Understanding the public´s assessment of the risks related to, and willingness to use, novel vaccines during a pandemic can help officials promote disease-control measures in ways that improve the likelihood of acceptance by the public and may increase uptake of an H1N1 vaccine

The smallest refrigerators can reach maximal efficiency

We investigate whether size imposes a fundamental constraint on the efficiency of small thermal machines. We analyse in detail a model of a small self-contained refrigerator consisting of three qubits. We show analytically that this system can reach the Carnot efficiency, thus demonstrating that there exists no complementarity between size and efficiency.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figure. v2: published versio

Deploying homeland security technology

The success of each depends on how efficiently they implement new technologies. Although the White House and the Congress have responded swiftly to the events of September 11, 2001, the long-term security of our Nation, and thus the success of the newly created Department of Homeland Security, will depend in a substantial way on the efficiency with which technologies relevant to homeland security are created and, more importantly, deployed. The purpose of this paper is to assess the Administration's revealed understanding of the innovation process, which underlies the creation of new homeland security technology, and attendant factors that relate to the efficiency with which the new technology is deployed. By -revealed understanding‖ we are referring to the written word, namely what is outlined in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and related documents. Certainly, the Act, and related document s from t he Whit e House, are only init ial templates that frame activities to come. But, as the Brookings Institution's (2002, p. i) early assessment of the Department 's organizat ion, and t he Depart ment 's organization is fundamentally related to its ability to provide incentives for the creation and deployment of homeland security technology, -... while it is possible to revisit or even reverse organizational decisions at a later stage, it is far better to get it right the first time.‖ The Department of Homeland Security will be charged with four primary tasks. The new agency will [1] control our borders and prevent terrorists and explosives from entering our country. It will [2] work with state and local authorities to respond quickly and effectively to emergencies. It will [3] bring together our best scientists to develop technologies that detect biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, and to discover the drugs and treatments to best protect our citizens. And this new department will [4] review intelligence and law enforcement information from all agencies of government, and produce a single daily picture of threats against our homeland. An emphasis on homeland security technology One of the first policy institutes to offer an opinion on homeland security was the Heritage Foundation (2002). 2 Its report, Defending the American Homeland, recommended four well conceived priorities: protecting the Nation's infrastructures, strengthening civil defense, improving intelligence and law enforcement, and military operations to combat terrorism

Structure, stability, and mobility of small Pd clusters on the stoichiometric and defective TiO2_2 (110) surfaces

We report on the structure and adsorption properties of Pd$_n$ ($n=1-4$) clusters supported on the rutile TiO$_2$ (110) surfaces with the possible presence of a surface oxygen vacancy or a subsurface Ti-interstitial atom. As predicted by the density functional theory, small Pd clusters prefer to bind to the stoichiometric titania surface or at sites near subsurface Ti-interstitial atoms. The adsorption of Pd clusters changes the electronic structure of the underlying surface. For the surface with an oxygen vacancy, the charge localization and ferromagnetic spin states are found to be largely attenuated owing to the adsorption of Pd clusters. The potential energy surfaces of the Pd monomer on different types of surfaces are also reported. The process of sintering is then simulated via the Metropolis Monte Carlo method. The presence of oxygen vacancy likely leads to the dissociation of Pd clusters. On the stoichiometric surface or surface with Ti-interstitial atom, the Pd monomers tend to sinter into larger clusters, whereas the Pd dimer, trimer and tetramer appear to be relatively stable below 600 K. This result agrees with the standard sintering model of transition metal clusters and experimental observations.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figure

Rapid cultural adaptation can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation

Over the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not strong enough compared to migration to maintain persistent variation among groups when payoffs create multiple stable equilibria. We show that Lehmann et al. reach different conclusions because they have made different assumptions. We argue that the assumptions that underlie our models are more consistent with the empirical data on large-scale cultural variation in humans than those of Lehmann et al., and thus, our models provide a more plausible account of the cultural evolution of human cooperation in large groups

A combinatorial approach to knot recognition

This is a report on our ongoing research on a combinatorial approach to knot recognition, using coloring of knots by certain algebraic objects called quandles. The aim of the paper is to summarize the mathematical theory of knot coloring in a compact, accessible manner, and to show how to use it for computational purposes. In particular, we address how to determine colorability of a knot, and propose to use SAT solving to search for colorings. The computational complexity of the problem, both in theory and in our implementation, is discussed. In the last part, we explain how coloring can be utilized in knot recognition

Mobile Communication Signatures of Unemployment

The mapping of populations socio-economic well-being is highly constrained by the logistics of censuses and surveys. Consequently, spatially detailed changes across scales of days, weeks, or months, or even year to year, are difficult to assess; thus the speed of which policies can be designed and evaluated is limited. However, recent studies have shown the value of mobile phone data as an enabling methodology for demographic modeling and measurement. In this work, we investigate whether indicators extracted from mobile phone usage can reveal information about the socio-economical status of microregions such as districts (i.e., average spatial resolution < 2.7km). For this we examine anonymized mobile phone metadata combined with beneficiaries records from unemployment benefit program. We find that aggregated activity, social, and mobility patterns strongly correlate with unemployment. Furthermore, we construct a simple model to produce accurate reconstruction of district level unemployment from their mobile communication patterns alone. Our results suggest that reliable and cost-effective economical indicators could be built based on passively collected and anonymized mobile phone data. With similar data being collected every day by telecommunication services across the world, survey-based methods of measuring community socioeconomic status could potentially be augmented or replaced by such passive sensing methods in the future

Ab-initio study of BaTiO3 surfaces

We have carried out first-principles total-energy calculations of (001) surfaces of the tetragonal and cubic phases of BaTiO3. Both BaO-terminated (type I) and TiO2-terminated (type II) surfaces are considered, and the atomic configurations have been fully relaxed. We found no deep-gap surface states for any of the surfaces, in agreement with previous theoretical studies. However, the gap is reduced for the type-II surface, especially in the cubic phase. The surface relaxation energies are found to be substantial, i.e., many times larger than the bulk ferroelectric well depth. Nevertheless, the influence of the surface upon the ferroelectric order parameter is modest; we find only a small enhancement of the ferroelectricity near the surface.Comment: 8 pages, two-column style with 4 postscript figures embedded. Uses REVTEX and epsf macros. Also available at http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~dhv/preprints/index.html#pad_sur

Cultural longevity: Morin on cultural lineages

Morin has written a rich and valuable book. Its main aim is to isolate the factors involved in maintaining behavioural lineages over time, and to understand how these factors might interact. In doing so, it takes issue with the abstract and idealised models and arguments of dual-inheritance theorists, which are alleged in this account to rely on an overly simplistic notion of imitative learning. Morin’s book is full of ethnographic, anthropological, and psychological research, and there is much to commend in it. However, Morin’s arguments against the dual-inheritance theorists are less convincing when put under scrutiny, and his positive picture which includes appeals to ostensive communication, intrinsic appeal and cultural attraction has some difficulties. I argue that when we contrast dual-inheritance theorists and Morin, we find that there may be fewer differences and greater commonalities than Morin’s book might suggest.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9506-