Dams, Cows, and Vulnerable People: Anthropological Contributions to Sustainable Development

It is with considerable trepidation that I agreed to address so distinguished a gathering of development economists, theoreticians, and practitioners. I was enormously honoured when Professor Naqvi invited me to make this presentation, and at the same time impressed with my own temerity at having accepted. I am not an economist; at best, I contribute to the emerging discipline of economic anthropology, that subfield of anthropology that some have baptised as the “dismal science of the 20th century.” I locate my research within a subfield of that subfield, in a specifically development anthropology, making the claim that is still received in some quarters with only partial tolerance, that anthropologists–those curious people identified in the popular mind with the recovery and study of isolated people, bones, and potsherds–have also something useful to add to both the theory and praxis of development. As a self-conscious field of inquiry, development anthropology dates only from the last 20-25 years, though its roots can be found in the late 19th century, when scientists working for the United States Bureau of American Ethnology tried to understand the Ghost Dance, a great messianic movement that spread rapidly among subjugated Native Americans who were forced on to reservations by the government and in very large part deprived of the means of social and economic reproduction.

The therapeutic potential of a venomous lizard: the use of glucagon-like peptide-1 analogues in the critically ill

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a principal mediator of the postprandial insulinotropic response in health, has a half-life of minutes. The saliva of the Gila monster contains exendin-4, a structural analogue of human GLP-1, but with a much longer half-life. A synthetic preparation of exendin-4, exenatide, is suitable for human use and effectively lowers glucose in ambulant type 2 diabetic patients. When compared with insulin, exenatide therapy is associated with a reduction in hypoglycaemic episodes and postprandial glycaemic excursions in this group. Accordingly, GLP-1 analogues are appealing therapies for hyperglycaemia in the critically ill patient and warrant further study

Efficiency of a Brownian information machine

A Brownian information machine extracts work from a heat bath through a feedback process that exploits the information acquired in a measurement. For the paradigmatic case of a particle trapped in a harmonic potential, we determine how power and efficiency for two variants of such a machine operating cyclically depend on the cycle time and the precision of the positional measurements. Controlling only the center of the trap leads to a machine that has zero efficiency at maximum power whereas additional optimal control of the stiffness of the trap leads to an efficiency bounded between 1/2, which holds for maximum power, and 1 reached even for finite cycle time in the limit of perfect measurements.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Dynamic changes of the extracellular matrix after acute tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy

Funding Tenovus Scotland. Grant number G13/10.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

On Witten's Instability and Winding Tachyons

We investigate, from a spacetime perspective, some aspects of Horowitz's recent conjecture that black strings may catalyze the decay of Kaluza-Klein spacetimes into a bubble of nothing. We identify classical configurations that interpolate between flat space and the bubble, and discuss the energetics of the transition. We investigate the effects of winding tachyons on the size and shape of the barrier and find no evidence at large compactification radius that tachyons enhance the tunneling rate. For the interesting radii, of order the string scale, the question is difficult to answer due to the failure of the $\alpha^\prime$ expansion.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures, Late

Summertime cyclones over the Great Lakes Storm Track from 1860–2100: variability, trends, and association with ozone pollution

Prior work indicates that the frequency of summertime mid-latitude cyclones tracking across the Great Lakes Storm Track (GLST, bounded by: 70° W, 90° W, 40° N, and 50° N) are strongly anticorrelated with ozone (O₃) pollution episodes over the Northeastern United States (US). We apply the MAP Climatology of Mid-latitude Storminess (MCMS) algorithm to 6-hourly sea level pressure fields from over 2500 yr of simulations with the GFDL CM3 global coupled chemistry-climate model. These simulations include (1) 875 yr with constant 1860 emissions and forcings (Pre-industrial Control), (2) five ensemble members for 1860–2005 emissions and forcings (Historical), and (3) future (2006–2100) scenarios following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) and a sensitivity simulation to isolate the role of climate warming from changes in O₃ precursor emissions (RCP 4.5*). The GFDL CM3 Historical simulations capture the mean and variability of summertime cyclones traversing the GLST within the range determined from four reanalysis datasets. Over the 21st century (2006–2100), the frequency of summertime mid-latitude cyclones in the GLST decreases under the RCP 8.5 scenario and in the RCP 4.5 ensemble mean. These trends are significant when assessed relative to the variability in the Pre-industrial Control simulation. In addition, the RCP 4.5* scenario enables us to determine the relationship between summertime GLST cyclones and high-O₃ events (> 95th percentile) in the absence of emission changes. The summertime GLST cyclone frequency explains less than 10% of the variability in high-O₃ events over the Northeastern US in the model, implying that other factors play an equally important role in determining high-O₃ events

Local and Remote Mean and Extreme Temperature Response to Regional Aerosol Emissions Reductions

The climatic implications of regional aerosol and precursor emissions reductions implemented to protect human health are poorly understood. We investigate the mean and extreme temperature response to regional changes in aerosol emissions using three coupled chemistryclimate models: NOAA GFDL CM3, NCAR CESM1, and NASA GISS-E2. Our approach contrasts a long present-day control simulation from each model (up to 400 years with perpetual year 2000 or 2005 emissions) with 14 individual aerosol emissions perturbation simulations (160240 years each). We perturb emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2) and/or carbonaceous aerosol within six world regions and assess the statistical significance of mean and extreme temperature responses relative to internal variability determined by the control simulation and across the models. In all models, the global mean surface temperature response (perturbation minus control) to SO2 and/or carbonaceous aerosol is mostly positive (warming) and statistically significant and ranges from +0.17 K (Europe SO2) to -0.06 K (US BC). The warming response to SO2 reductions is strongest in the US and Europe perturbation simulations, both globally and regionally, with Arctic warming up to 1 K due to a removal of European anthropogenic SO2 emissions alone; however, even emissions from regions remote to the Arctic, such as SO2 from India, significantly warm the Arctic by up to 0.5 K. Arctic warming is the most robust response across each model and several aerosol emissions perturbations. The temperature response in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes is most sensitive to emissions perturbations within that region. In the tropics, however, the temperature response to emissions perturbations is roughly the same in magnitude as emissions perturbations either within or outside of the tropics. We find that climate sensitivity to regional aerosol perturbations ranges from 0.5 to 1.0 K (W m(exp -2))(exp -1) depending on the region and aerosol composition and is larger than the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 in two of three models. We update previous estimates of regional temperature potential (RTP), a metric for estimating the regional temperature responses to a regional emissions perturbation that can facilitate assessment of climate impacts with integrated assessment models without requiring computationally demanding coupled climate model simulations. These calculations indicate a robust regional response to aerosol forcing within the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes, regardless of where the aerosol forcing is located longitudinally. We show that regional aerosol perturbations can significantly increase extreme temperatures on the regional scale. Except in the Arctic in the summer, extreme temperature responses largely mirror mean temperature responses to regional aerosol perturbations through a shift of the temperature distributions and are mostly dominated by local rather than remote aerosol forcing

The effect of exogenous glucagon-like peptide-1 on the glycaemic response to small intestinal nutrient in the critically ill: a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled cross over study

IntroductionHyperglycaemia occurs frequently in the critically ill, affects outcome adversely, and is exacerbated by enteral feeding. Furthermore, treatment with insulin in this group is frequently complicated by hypoglycaemia. In healthy patients and those with type 2 diabetes, exogenous glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) decreases blood glucose by suppressing glucagon, stimulating insulin and slowing gastric emptying. Because the former effects are glucose-dependent, the use of GLP-1 is not associated with hypoglycaemia. The objective of this study was to establish if exogenous GLP-1 attenuates the glycaemic response to enteral nutrition in patients with critical illness induced hyperglycaemia.MethodsSeven mechanically ventilated critically ill patients, not previously known to have diabetes, received two intravenous infusions of GLP-1 (1.2 pmol/kg/min) and placebo (4% albumin) over 270 minutes. Infusions were administered on consecutive days in a randomised, double-blind fashion. On both days a mixed nutrient liquid was infused, via a post-pyloric feeding catheter, at a rate of 1.5 kcal/min between 30 and 270 minutes. Blood glucose and plasma GLP-1, insulin and glucagon concentrations were measured.ResultsIn all patients, exogenous GLP-1 infusion reduced the overall glycaemic response during enteral nutrient stimulation (AUC30-270 min GLP-1 (2077 +/- 144 mmol/l min) vs placebo (2568 +/- 208 mmol/l min); P = 0.02) and the peak blood glucose (GLP-1 (10.1 +/- 0.7 mmol/l) vs placebo (12.7 +/- 1.0 mmol/l); P ConclusionsAcute, exogenous GLP-1 infusion markedly attenuates the glycaemic response to enteral nutrition in the critically ill. These observations suggest that GLP-1 and/or its analogues have the potential to manage hyperglycaemia in the critically ill.Trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry number: ACTRN12609000093280.Adam M. Deane, Marianne J. Chapman, Robert J.L. Fraser, Carly M. Burgstad, Laura K. Besanko and Michael Horowit

Numerical Study of Cosmic Censorship in String Theory

Recently Hertog, Horowitz, and Maeda have argued that cosmic censorship can be generically violated in string theory in anti-de Sitter spacetime by considering a collapsing bubble of a scalar field whose mass saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound. We study this system numerically and find that for various choices of initial data black holes form rather than naked singularities, implying that in these cases cosmic censorship is upheld.Comment: 16 pages, latex, 10 figures, uses JHEP.cls, v2: minor changes, version to be published in JHE