Double power series method for approximating cosmological perturbations

We introduce a double power series method for finding approximate analytical solutions for systems of differential equations commonly found in cosmological perturbation theory. The method was set out, in a non-cosmological context, by Feshchenko, Shkil' and Nikolenko (FSN) in 1966, and is applicable to cases where perturbations are on sub-horizon scales. The FSN method is essentially an extension of the well known Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) method for finding approximate analytical solutions for ordinary differential equations. The FSN method we use is applicable well beyond perturbation theory to solve systems of ordinary differential equations, linear in the derivatives, that also depend on a small parameter, which here we take to be related to the inverse wave-number. We use the FSN method to find new approximate oscillating solutions in linear order cosmological perturbation theory for a flat radiation-matter universe. Together with this model's well known growing and decaying M\'esz\'aros solutions, these oscillating modes provide a complete set of sub-horizon approximations for the metric potential, radiation and matter perturbations. Comparison with numerical solutions of the perturbation equations shows that our approximations can be made accurate to within a typical error of 1%, or better. We also set out a heuristic method for error estimation. A Mathematica notebook which implements the double power series method is made available online.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables. Mathematica notebook available from Github at https://github.com/AndrewWren/Double-power-series.gi

Reviewer-coerced citation: Case report, update on journal policy and suggestions for future prevention

A case was recently brought to the journal’s attention regarding a reviewer who had requested a large number of citations to their own papers as part of their review. After investigation of their most recent reviews, we found that in every review this reviewer requested an average of 35 citations be added, ∼90\% of which were to their own papers and the remainder to papers that both cited them extensively and mentioned them by name in the title. The reviewer’s phrasing strongly suggested that inclusion of these citations would influence their recommendation to the editor to accept or reject the paper. The reviewer was unable to provide a satisfactory justification for these requests and Bioinformatics has therefore banned them as a reviewer. Our investigation also suggests that the reviewer has behaved similarly in reviewing for other journals. This case has alerted us to how the peer-review system is vulnerable to unethical behavior, and prompted us to clarify the journal’s policy on when it is appropriate for reviewers to request citations to their own work, and to suggest how some of the current weak points in the peer-review system can be mitigated, so that this behavior can be detected more quickly and efficiently

Leadership and the Liberal Arts: Achieving the Promise of a Liberal Education

A collection of essays by presidents of prominent liberal arts colleges and leading intellectuals who reflect on the meaning of educating individuals for leadership and how it can be accomplished in ways consistent with the missions of liberal arts institutions. Edited by faculty from the Jepson School for Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, the Jepson Studies in Leadership series will reflect the school\u27s broad-based, liberal arts approach to the study of leadership. The Jepson School has faculty representatives from the disciplines of English literature, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, public administration, religious studies, and organizational leadership. No other school or program is better situated to provide a multidisciplinary perspective on this important topic.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1020/thumbnail.jp

Leadership and the Liberal Arts: Achieving the Promise of a Liberal Education

A collection of essays by presidents of prominent liberal arts colleges and leading intellectuals who reflect on the meaning of educating individuals for leadership and how it can be accomplished in ways consistent with the missions of liberal arts institutions. Edited by faculty from the Jepson School for Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, the Jepson Studies in Leadership series will reflect the school\u27s broad-based, liberal arts approach to the study of leadership. The Jepson School has faculty representatives from the disciplines of English literature, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, public administration, religious studies, and organizational leadership. No other school or program is better situated to provide a multidisciplinary perspective on this important topic.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1020/thumbnail.jp

The International Library of Leadership

The International Library of Leadership brings together in one place the most significant writings on leadership, the process by which groups, organizations, and societies seek to satisfy their needs and achieve their objectives. Volume 1 focuses on classic discussions of perennial leadership issues including the moral purpose of leadership, the nature of legitimate authority, and the role of followers. Volume 2 turns to investigations of leadership in the modern era and makes available the seminal social scientific works that inaugurated the modern theories of leadership. Volume 3 builds upon the analyses of power, culture, and gender in the first two volumes to address current ethical, democratic, and international challenges of leadership.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1002/thumbnail.jp

Can an evolutionary perspective shed light on maternal abuse of children?

Although the theory of evolution lies at the heart of contemporary biology, its influence on the study of child psychology and psychiatry has been limited. In earlier work we have argued that evolutionary thinking has much of value for clinicians. Here, we explore the possible significance of evolutionary theory for understanding child abuse by mothers, particularly neglect, emotional abuse and physical abuse. We draw on the research of anthropologists, primatologists and evolutionary theorists to make predictions about the environmental circumstances under which one would expect such abuse to be more prevalent. We discuss how in modern, Western cultures there is less understanding of the circumstances that may influence, even predispose, a mother to limit her emotional and material commitment to an infant or child. We use four short vignettes of clinical cases and one longer case description to illustrate the insights offered to clinicians by an evolutionary approach. We see our work both as contributing to greater understanding of these matters and as facilitating more compassionate models of care and intervention for women in such circumstances

RAPTOR observations of delayed explosive activity in the high-redshift gamma-ray burst GRB 060206

The RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) system at Los Alamos National Laboratory observed GRB 060206 starting 48.1 minutes after gamma-ray emission triggered the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) on-board the Swift satellite. The afterglow light curve measured by RAPTOR shows a spectacular re-brightening by ~1 mag about 1 h after the trigger and peaks at R ~ 16.4 mag. Shortly after the onset of the explosive re-brightening the OT doubled its flux on a time-scale of about 4 minutes. The total R-band fluence received from GRB 060206 during this episode is 2.3e-9 erg/cm2. In the rest frame of the burst (z = 4.045) this yields an isotropic equivalent energy release of ~0.7e50 erg in just a narrow UV band 130 +/- 22 nm. We discuss the implications of RAPTOR observations for untriggered searches for fast optical transients and studies of GRB environments at high redshift.Comment: Submitted to ApJ Letter

Bioimage informatics: a new category in Bioinformatics

The last two decades have witnessed great advances in biological tissue labeling and automated microscopic imaging that, in turn, have revolutionized how biologists visualize molecular, sub-cellular, cellular, and super-cellular structures and study their respective functions. Tremendous volumes of multi-dimensional bioimaging data are now being generated in almost every branch of biology. How to interpret such image datasets in a quantitative, objective, automatic and efficient way has become a major challenge in current computational biology. Bioimage informatics methods have begun to turn image data into useful biological knowledge (Peng, 2008; Swedlow, et al., 2009; Shamir, et al., 2010; Danuser, 2011). The essential methods of bioimage informatics involve largescale bioimage generation, visualization, analysis and management. Bioimage informatics also encompasses both hypothesis- and datadriven exploratory approaches, with an emphasis on how to generat