A Conversation with Philippe Descola

The distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola has worked among the Jivaroan Achuar in Ecuador’s Amazon region, since the mid-1970s. Author of numerous influential books and publications, he holds a professorship at the Collège de France and is also Directeur d’études and Directeur du Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris

An extended space approach for particle Markov chain Monte Carlo methods

In this paper we consider fully Bayesian inference in general state space models. Existing particle Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms use an augmented model that takes into account all the variable sampled in a sequential Monte Carlo algorithm. This paper describes an approach that also uses sequential Monte Carlo to construct an approximation to the state space, but generates extra states using MCMC runs at each time point. We construct an augmented model for our extended space with the marginal distribution of the sampled states matching the posterior distribution of the state vector. We show how our method may be combined with particle independent Metropolis-Hastings or particle Gibbs steps to obtain a smoothing algorithm. All the Metropolis acceptance probabilities are identical to those obtained in existing approaches, so there is no extra cost in term of Metropolis-Hastings rejections when using our approach. The number of MCMC iterates at each time point is chosen by the used and our augmented model collapses back to the model in Olsson and Ryden (2011) when the number of MCMC iterations reduces. We show empirically that our approach works well on applied examples and can outperform existing methods.Comment: 35 pages, 2 figures, Typos corrected from Version

Stable Flags and the Riemann-Hilbert Problem

We tackle the Riemann-Hilbert problem on the Riemann sphere as stalk-wise logarithmic modifications of the classical R\"ohrl-Deligne vector bundle. We show that the solutions of the Riemann-Hilbert problem are in bijection with some families of local filtrations which are stable under the prescribed monodromy maps. We introduce the notion of Birkhoff-Grothendieck trivialisation, and show that its computation corresponds to geodesic paths in some local affine Bruhat-Tits building. We use this to compute how the type of a bundle changes under stalk modifications, and give several corresponding algorithmic procedures.Comment: 39 page

Como os cães sonham

Sob a rubrica de uma "antropologia da vida", procuro expandir o alcance da etnografia para além dos limites humanos. Com base na pesquisa com os Runa da Alta Amazônia equatoriana e focando em propósitos heurísticos, em um dilema etnológico a respeito de como interpretar os sonhos dos cães, examino as relações, íntimas e intensas, que os Runa possuem com outras formas de vida. Enquadramentos analíticos forjados a partir do que é exclusivo dos humanos (língua, cultura, sociedade e história) ou, alternativamente, o que os humanos geralmente compartilham com os animais, são inadequados para essa tarefa. Por contraste, me volto para uma compreensão incorporada e emergente da semiose – que trata signos como inerentes à vida e não apenas restritos aos humanos -, assim como para uma apreciação às preocupações amazônicas sobre os pontos de vista habitados pelos selves não-humanos, movendo a antropologia para além “do humano”, tanto analiticamente quanto como objeto de estudo

Oclusión intestinal en una paciente portadora de un Feocromocitoma no diagnosticado: Manejo anestésico

El feocromocitoma es un tumor productor de catecolaminas que procede de las células cromafines del sistema nervioso simpático que puede causar hipertensión severa entre otros trastornos sistémicos. Pueden ser esporádicos o encontrarse asociados a varias enfermedades genéticas: neoplasia endocrina múltiple tipo 2, enfermedad de von Hippel-Lindau, neurofibromatosis de tipo 1 y paraganglioma familiar. Cuando un paciente en el que se sospecha la presencia de un feocromocitoma se presenta con una ugencia quirúrgica representa un gran desafío para el anestesiólogo, ya que en esta situación la mortalidad aumenta notablemente. Presentamos el caso de una paciente que resultó ser portadora de un feocromocitoma, integrando un síndrome MEN 2b con masas suprarrenales bilaterales que se presentó en la urgencia con una oclusión intestinal con una crisis hipertensiva severa con edema agudo de pulmón

Systematic generation of finite-range atomic basis sets for linear-scaling calculations

Basis sets of atomic orbitals are very efficient for density functional calculations but lack a systematic variational convergence. We present a variational method to optimize numerical atomic orbitals using a single parameter to control their range. The efficiency of the basis generation scheme is tested and compared with other schemes for multiple zeta basis sets. The scheme shows to be comparable in quality to other widely used schemes albeit offering better performance for linear-scaling computations

Follicular thyroglobulin (TG) suppression of thyroid-restricted genes involves the apical membrane asialoglycoprotein receptor and TG phosphorylation.

Follicular thyroglobulin (TG) decreases expression of the thyroid-restricted transcription factors, thyroid transcription factor (TTF)-1, TTF-2, and Pax-8, thereby suppressing expression of the sodium iodide symporter, thyroid peroxidase, TG, and thyrotropin receptor genes (Suzuki, K., Lavaroni, S., Mori, A., Ohta, M., Saito, J., Pietrarelli, M., Singer, D. S., Kimura, S., Katoh, R., Kawaoi, A. , and Kohn, L. D. (1997) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 95, 8251-8256). The ability of highly purified 27, 19, or 12 S follicular TG to suppress thyroid-restricted gene expression correlates with their ability to bind to FRTL-5 thyrocytes and is inhibited by a specific antibody to the thyroid apical membrane asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGPR), which is related to the ASGPR of liver cells. Phosphorylating serine/threonine residues of TG, by autophosphorylation or protein kinase A, eliminates TG suppression and enhances transcript levels of the thyroid-restricted genes 2-fold in the absence of a change in TG binding to the ASGPR. Follicular TG suppression of thyroid-restricted genes is thus mediated by the ASPGR on the thyrocyte apical membrane and regulated by a signal system wherein phosphorylation of serine/threonine residues on the bound ligand is an important component. These data provide a hitherto unsuspected role for the ASGPR in transcriptional signaling, aside from its role in endocytosis. They establish a functional role for phosphorylated serine/threonine residues on the TG molecule