14,595 research outputs found
The Global Health Law Trilogy: Towards a Safer, Healthier, and Fairer World
Global health advocates often turn to medicine and science for solutions to enduring health risks, but law is also a powerful tool. No state acting alone can ward off health threats that span borders, requiring international solutions. A trilogy of global health lawâthe WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, International Health Regulations (2005), and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Frameworkâstrives for a safer, healthier, and fairer world. This article critically reviews this global health law trilogy.
These international agreements are not well understood, and contain gaps in scope and enforceability. Moreover, major health concerns remain largely unregulated at the international level, such as non-communicable diseases, mental health, and injuries. The article promotes the lessons learned from 21st century international health law, which are that broad scope, robust compliance, inclusion of public and private actors, and sustainable financing are essential to success. It further explores the notion that in an age of nationalistic populism, collective action remains vital to ameliorate globalized health threats, helping realize the right to health.
Reforms to the âtrilogyâ of global health laws are necessary to assure success and provide a critical roadmap for the World Health Organizationâs next Director-General. The article concludes by calling on the new WHO D-G to take additional action toward a safer, healthier and fairer world by pushing for novel global health laws on major health hazards, including noncommunicable diseases, mental health and injuries, and new initiatives such as universal health care
H2 Formation on Interstellar Grains in Different Physical Regimes
An analysis of the kinetics of H2 formation on interstellar dust grains is
presented using rate equations. It is shown that semi-empirical expressions
that appeared in the literature represent two different physical regimes. In
particular, it is shown that the expression given by Hollenbach, Werner and
Salpeter [ApJ, 163, 165 (1971)] applies when high flux, or high mobility, of H
atoms on the surface of a grain, makes it very unlikely that H atoms evaporate
before they meet each other and recombine. The expression of Pirronello et al.\
[ApJ, 483, L131 (1997)] -- deduced on the basis of accurate measurements on
realistic dust analogue -- applies to the opposite regime (low coverage and low
mobility). The implications of this analysis for the understanding of the
processes dominating in the Interstellar Medium are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, MN styl
When the Milky Way turned off the lights: APOGEE provides evidence of star formation quenching in our Galaxy
Quenching, the cessation of star formation, is one of the most significant
events in the life cycle of galaxies. We show here the first evidence that the
Milky Way experienced a generalised quenching of its star formation at the end
of its thick disk formation 9 Gyr ago. Elemental abundances of stars
studied as part of the APOGEE survey reveal indeed that in less than 2
Gyr the star formation rate in our Galaxy dropped by an order-of-magnitude.
Because of the tight correlation between age and alpha abundance, this event
reflects in the dearth of stars along the inner disk sequence in the
[Fe/H]-[/Fe] plane. Before this phase, which lasted about 1.5 Gyr, the
Milky Way was actively forming stars. Afterwards, the star formation resumed at
a much lower level to form the thin disk. These events are very well matched by
the latest observation of MW-type progenitors at high redshifts. In late type
galaxies, quenching is believed to be related to a long and secular exhaustion
of gas. In our Galaxy, it occurred on a much shorter time scale, while the
chemical continuity before and after the quenching indicates that it was not
due to the exhaustion of the gas. While quenching is generally associated with
spheroids, our results show that it also occurs in galaxies like the Milky Way,
possibly when they are undergoing a morphological transition from thick to thin
disks. Given the demographics of late type galaxies in the local universe, in
which classical bulges are rare, we suggest further that this may hold true
generally in galaxies with mass lower than or approximately , where
quenching could be directly a consequence of thick disk formation. We emphasize
that the quenching phase in the Milky Way could be contemporaneous with, and
related to, the formation of the bar. We sketch a scenario on how a strong bar
may inhibit star formation.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Published versio
The low frequency components of the spectrum of wind-generated waves
This paper is concerned with the dynamical processes involved in the growth of the lower frequency spectral components of wind-generated waves. Some calculations of Miles (1960) are extended, leading to the concept of a transition frequency for a given fetch as the frequency above which energy is supplied to the waves by the instability (or sheltering) mechanism and below which it is supplied by the resonance mechanism...
Prospects for Mirage Mediation
Mirage mediation reduces the fine-tuning in the minimal supersymmetric
standard model by dynamically arranging a cancellation between anomaly-mediated
and modulus-mediated supersymmetry breaking. We explore the conditions under
which a mirage "messenger scale" is generated near the weak scale and the
little hierarchy problem is solved. We do this by explicitly including the
dynamics of the SUSY-breaking sector needed to cancel the cosmological
constant. The most plausible scenario for generating a low mirage scale does
not readily admit an extra-dimensional interpretation. We also review the
possibilities for solving the mu/Bmu problem in such theories, a potential
hidden source of fine-tuning.Comment: 14 page
Could the classical relativistic electron be a strange attractor?
We review the formulation of the problem of the electromagnetic
self-interaction of a relativistic charged particle in the framework of the
manifestly covariant classical mechanics of Stueckelberg, Horwitz and Piron.
The gauge fields of this theory, in general, cause the mass of the particle to
change. We show that the non-linear Lorentz force equation for the
self-interaction resulting from the expansion of the Green's function has
chaotic solutions. We study the autonomous equation for the off-shell particle
mass here, for which the effective charged particle mass achieves a macroscopic
average value determined by what appears to be a strange attractor.Comment: 19 pages PLain TeX, 1 page Captions, 18 figure (.eps files
Bridging the Spheres: Political and Personal Conversation in Public and Private Spaces
For some theorists, talk about politics is infrequent, difficult, divisive, and, to be efficacious, must proceed according to special rules in protected spaces. We, however, examined ordinary political conversation in common spaces, asking Americans how freely and how often they talked about 9 political and personal topics at home, work, civic organizations, and elsewhere. Respondents felt free to talk about all topics. Most topics were talked about most frequently at home and at work, suggesting that the electronic cottage is wired to the public sphere. Political conversation in most loci correlated significantly with opinion quality and political participation, indicating that such conversation is a vital component of actual democratic practice, despite the emphasis given to argumentation and formal deliberation by some normative theorists
The fabrication of reproducible superconducting scanning tunneling microscope tips
Superconducting scanning tunneling microscope tips have been fabricated with
a high degree of reproducibility. The fabrication process relies on sequential
deposition of superconducting Pb and a proximity-coupled Ag capping layer onto
a Pt/Ir tip. The tips were characterized by tunneling into both normal-metal
and superconducting films. The simplicity of the fabrication process, along
with the stability and reproducibility of the tips, clear the way for tunneling
studies with a well-characterized, scannable superconducting electrode.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX. Submitted to Rev. Sci. Instru
Plasmarings as dual black rings
We construct solutions to the relativistic Navier-Stokes equations that
describe the long wavelength collective dynamics of the deconfined plasma phase
of N=4 Yang Mills theory compactified down to d=3 on a Scherk-Schwarz circle
and higher dimensional generalisations. Our solutions are stationary, axially
symmetric spinning balls and rings of plasma. These solutions, which are dual
to (yet to be constructed) rotating black holes and black rings in
Scherk-Schwarz compactified AdS(5) and AdS(6), and have properties that are
qualitatively similar to those of black holes and black rings in flat five
dimensional supergravity.Comment: 40 pages, 40 figures. (v2) Correction to black brane equation of
state, additional reference
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