3,297 research outputs found
The Union of Hearts Depicted: Gladstone, Home Rule and United Ireland
First paragraph: William Ewart Gladstone detested political cartoons. They embodied caricature, the exaggeration of a particular feature into a deformity to excite ridicule or hatred. Cartoons, Gladstone once pointed out, had not existed in ancient Greece. There the ideal of human beauty was so deeply cherished that its distortion was not tolerated. Yet cartoons did the statesman powerful service during his long career. Their very frequency consolidated his image as a popular politician, bringing out qualities such as courage and tenacity that he was happy to have publicised. Nowhere, however, did they advance his cause more than in Ireland after the introduction of Home Rule. The nationalist journal United Ireland, as the illustrations in this paper will show, gave currency to striking depictions of Gladstone; and they vividly portrayed the union of hearts between England and Ireland that he preached so persistently in the late 1880s. The purpose of this article is to examine a sample of the cartoons, but first they need to be placed in their context
Visualizing Rank Deficient Models: A Row Equation Geometry of Rank Deficient Matrices and Constrained-Regression
Situations often arise in which the matrix of independent variables is not of full column rank. That is, there are one or more linear dependencies among the independent variables. This paper covers in detail the situation in which the rank is one less than full column rank and extends this coverage to include cases of even greater rank deficiency. The emphasis is on the row geometry of the solutions based on the normal equations. The author shows geometrically how constrained-regression/generalized-inverses work in this situation to provide a solution in the face of rank deficiency
Resonant and anti-resonant frequency dependence of the effective parameters of metamaterials
We present a numerical study of the electromagnetic response of the
metamaterial elements that are usedto construct materials with negative
refractive index. For an array of split ring resonators (SRR) we find that the
resonant behavior of the effective magnetic permeability is accompanied by an
anti-resonant behavior of the effective permittivity. In addition, the
imaginary parts of the effective permittivity and permeability are opposite in
sign. We also observe an identical resonant versus anti-resonant frequency
dependence of the effective materials parameters for a periodic array of thin
metallic wires with cuts placed periodically along the length of the wire, with
roles of the permittivity and permeability reversed from the SRR case. We show
in a simple manner that the finite unit cell size is responsible for the
anti-resonant behavior
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Carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios of urine and faeces as novel nutritional biomarkers of meat and fish intake
Purpose
Meat and fish consumption are associated with changes in the risk of chronic diseases. Intake is mainly assessed using self-reporting, as no true quantitative nutritional biomarker is available. The measurement of plasma fatty acids, often used as an alternative, is expensive and time-consuming. As meat and fish differ in their stable isotope ratios, δ13C and δ15N have been proposed as biomarkers. However, they have never been investigated in controlled human dietary intervention studies.
Objective
In a short-term feeding study, we investigated the suitability of δ13C and δ15N in blood, urine and faeces as biomarkers of meat and fish intake.
Methods
The dietary intervention study (n = 14) followed a randomised cross-over design with three eight-day dietary periods (meat, fish and half-meat–half-fish). In addition, 4 participants completed a vegetarian control period. At the end of each period, 24-h urine, fasting venous blood and faeces were collected and their δ13C and δ15N analysed.
Results
There was a significant difference between diets in isotope ratios in faeces and urine samples, but not in blood samples (Kruskal–Wallis test, p < 0.0001). In pairwise comparisons, δ13C and δ15N were significantly higher in urine and faecal samples following a fish diet when compared with all other diets, and significantly lower following a vegetarian diet. There was no significant difference in isotope ratio between meat and half-meat–half-fish diets for blood, urine or faecal samples.
Conclusions
The results of this study show that urinary and faecal δ13C and δ15N are suitable candidate biomarkers for short-term meat and fish intake
Massless D-strings and moduli stabilization in type I cosmology
We consider the cosmological evolution induced by the free energy F of a gas
of maximally supersymmetric heterotic strings at finite temperature and weak
coupling in dimension D>=4. We show that F, which plays the role of an
effective potential, has minima associated to enhanced gauge symmetries, where
all internal moduli can be attracted and dynamically stabilized. Using the fact
that the heterotic/type I S-duality remains valid at finite temperature and can
be applied at each instant of a quasi-static evolution, we find in the dual
type I cosmology that all internal NS-NS and RR moduli in the closed string
sector and the Wilson lines in the open string sector can be stabilized. For
the special case of D=6, the internal volume modulus remains a flat direction,
while the dilaton is stabilized. An essential role is played by light D-string
modes wrapping the internal manifold and whose contribution to the free energy
cannot be omitted, even when the type I string is at weak coupling. As a
result, the order of magnitude of the internal radii expectation values on the
type I side is (lambda_I alpha')^{1/2}, where lambda_I is the ten-dimensional
string coupling. The non-perturbative corrections to the type I free energy can
alternatively be described as effects of "thermal E1-instantons", whose
worldsheets wrap the compact Euclidean time cycle.Comment: 39 pages, 1 figur
The role of dedicated instrumentation in total hip arthroplasty
Tissue-sparing surgery is a surgical strategy aimed to reduce tissue damage in joint replacement. This can be achieved by reducing soft tissue trauma, performing minimally invasive access routes and limiting bone removal with implantation of conservative prostheses. In order to facilitate mini-approaches, special instrumentation was developed to avoid impingement of the soft tissues and provide an easier and more correct placement of the components. We performed an analysis of the literature and a research of the instrumentation available today, to evaluate the actual utility of dedicated tools
Mechanisms of Class II correction induced by the crown Herbst appliance as a single-phase Class II therapy : 1 year follow-up
Background The objective of this study is to evaluate the skeletal and dentoalveolar effects of the crown Herbst appliance used alone for a single phase of therapy followed by a 1-year observation period. Methods Forty patients (mean age 13.6 ± 1.3 years) with a stable Class I occlusion 1 year following the treatment with the crown Herbst appliance were selected from a prospective sample of 180 consecutively treated Class II patients. No other appliances were used during treatment or during the follow-up period. The dentoskeletal changes were compared with a matched sample of untreated Class II subjects (mean age 13.9 ± 1.6 years). Lateral cephalograms were taken before treatment, after Herbst treatment (1 year), and after 1-year follow-up. Overcorrection was avoided intentionally. Results Treatment produced an increase in mandibular length, a decrease in ANB angle, and a restriction in the vertical growth of posterior maxilla. The maxillary molars moved backward and tipped distally. The lower incisors proclined markedly, and the upper incisors became retroclined. During the follow-up period, the changes primarily were dentoalveolar in nature, with marked rebound of the upper molars and lower incisors, resulting in some increases in overbite and overjet. Conclusions The occlusal correction of Class II malocclusion observed 1 year after the crown Herbst appliance as a single-phase therapy was achieved primary due to the dentoalveolar changes and only limited skeletal change occurred.publishersversionPeer reviewe
Behavioral Modernity and the Cultural Transmission of Structured Information: The Semantic Axelrod Model
Cultural transmission models are coming to the fore in explaining increases
in the Paleolithic toolkit richness and diversity. During the later
Paleolithic, technologies increase not only in terms of diversity but also in
their complexity and interdependence. As Mesoudi and O'Brien (2008) have shown,
selection broadly favors social learning of information that is hierarchical
and structured, and multiple studies have demonstrated that teaching within a
social learning environment can increase fitness. We believe that teaching also
provides the scaffolding for transmission of more complex cultural traits.
Here, we introduce an extension of the Axelrod (1997} model of cultural
differentiation in which traits have prerequisite relationships, and where
social learning is dependent upon the ordering of those prerequisites. We
examine the resulting structure of cultural repertoires as learning
environments range from largely unstructured imitation, to structured teaching
of necessary prerequisites, and we find that in combination with individual
learning and innovation, high probabilities of teaching prerequisites leads to
richer cultural repertoires. Our results point to ways in which we can build
more comprehensive explanations of the archaeological record of the Paleolithic
as well as other cases of technological change.Comment: 24 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to "Learning Strategies and Cultural
Evolution during the Paleolithic", edited by Kenichi Aoki and Alex Mesoudi,
and presented at the 79th Annual Meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology, Austin TX. Revised 5/14/1
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