1,082 research outputs found
Other Bandungs: Afro-Asian Internationalisms in the Early Cold War
This essay introduces a special issue focused on "Other Bandungs," which moves away from the focus on the high diplomacy of the 1955 Bandung conference to examine other conferences and gatherings across the Afro-Asian world. These gatherings speak to a broader participation of activists, intellectuals, cultural figures, and political leaders in the Afro-Asian moment. This collection thus disrupts hard divisions between state and non-state and warring Cold War blocs, while pointing to the changing social dynamics of internationalism in the Afro-Asian world. This essay points to the material dimensions enhancing and undermining transnational activity, from air travel and passport restrictions to the political economy of conference financing and Cold War patronage. Taken together, this essay frames these articles as an interconnected story of the multiple pulls of cultural and intellectual traffic in the post-colonial era.NWO016.Veni.195.487Colonial and Global Histor
Changes in growth of tropical forests: evaluating potential biases
Over the past century almost every ecosystem on Earth has come under the
influence of changes in atmospheric composition and climate caused by human activity.
Tropical forests are among the most productive and extensive ecosystems, and it has been
hypothesized that both the dynamics and biomass of apparently undisturbed, old-growth
tropical forests have been changing in response to atmospheric changes. Long-term forest
sample plots are a critical tool in detecting and monitoring such changes, and our recent
analysis of pan-tropical-forest plot data has suggested that the biomass of tropical forests
has been increasing, providing a modest negative feedback on the rate of accumulation of
atmospheric CO2. However, it has been argued that some of these old forest plot data sets
have significant problems in interpretation because of the use of nonstandardized methodologies.
In this paper we examine the extent to which potential field methodological errors may
bias estimates of total biomass change by detailed examination of tree-by-tree records from
up to 120 Neotropical plots to test predictions from theory. Potential positive biases on
measurements of biomass change include a bias in site selection, tree deformities introduced
by the measurement process, poor methodologies to deal with tree deformities or buttresses,
and nonrecording of negative growth increments. We show that, while it is important to
improve and standardize methodologies in current and future forest-plot work, any systematic
errors introduced by currently identified biases in past studies are small and calculable.
We conclude that most tropical-forest plot data are of useful quality, and that the evidence
does still weigh conclusively in favor of a recent increase of biomass in old-growth tropical
forests
Constraining slow-roll inflation with WMAP and 2dF
We constrain slow-roll inflationary models using the recent WMAP data
combined with data from the VSA, CBI, ACBAR and 2dF experiments. We find the
slow-roll parameters to be and . For inflation models
we find that at the 2 and levels,
indicating that the model is under very strong pressure from
observations. We define a convergence criterion to judge the necessity of
introducing further power spectrum parameters such as the spectral index and
running of the spectral index. This criterion is typically violated by models
with large negative running that fit the data, indicating that the running
cannot be reliably measured with present data.Comment: 8 pages RevTeX4 file with six figures incorporate
Future Directions in Parity Violation: From Quarks to the Cosmos
I discuss the prospects for future studies of parity-violating (PV)
interactions at low energies and the insights they might provide about open
questions in the Standard Model as well as physics that lies beyond it. I cover
four types of parity-violating observables: PV electron scattering; PV hadronic
interactions; PV correlations in weak decays; and searches for the permanent
electric dipole moments of quantum systems.Comment: Talk given at PAVI 06 workshop on parity-violating interactions,
Milos, Greece (May, 2006); 10 page
Changes in the immune landscape of TNBC after neoadjuvant chemotherapy: correlation with relapse
Introduction: Patients with high-risk, triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) often receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) alone or with immunotherapy. Various single-cell and spatially resolved techniques have demonstrated heterogeneity in the phenotype and distribution of macrophages and T cells in this form of breast cancer. Furthermore, recent studies in mice have implicated immune cells in perivascular (PV) areas of tumors in the regulation of metastasis and anti-tumor immunity. However, little is known of how the latter change during NAC in human TNBC or their impact on subsequent relapse, or the likely efficacy of immunotherapy given with or after NAC.
Methods: We have used multiplex immunofluorescence and AI-based image analysis to compare the immune landscape in untreated and NAC-treated human TNBCs. We quantified changes in the phenotype, distribution and intercellular contacts of subsets of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, and regulatory T cells (Tregs) in PV and non-PV various areas of the stroma and tumor cell islands. These were compared in tumors from patients who had either developed metastases or were disease-free (DF) after a three-year follow up period.
Results: In tumors from patients who remained DF after NAC, there was a marked increase in stromal CD163+ TAMs, especially those expressing the negative checkpoint regulator, T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 3 (TIM-3). Whereas CD4+ T cells preferentially located to PV areas in the stroma of both untreated and NAC-treated tumors, specific subsets of TAMs and Tregs only did so only after NAC. Distinct subsets of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells formed PV clusters with CD163+ TAMs and Tregs. These were retained after NAC.
Discussion: Quantification of stromal TIM-3+CD163+ TAMs in tumor residues after NAC may represent a new way of identifying patients at high risk of relapse. PV clustering of immune cells is highly likely to regulate the activation and function of T cells, and thus the efficacy of T cell-based immunotherapies administered with or after NAC
Gravitational Lensing at Millimeter Wavelengths
With today's millimeter and submillimeter instruments observers use
gravitational lensing mostly as a tool to boost the sensitivity when observing
distant objects. This is evident through the dominance of gravitationally
lensed objects among those detected in CO rotational lines at z>1. It is also
evident in the use of lensing magnification by galaxy clusters in order to
reach faint submm/mm continuum sources. There are, however, a few cases where
millimeter lines have been directly involved in understanding lensing
configurations. Future mm/submm instruments, such as the ALMA interferometer,
will have both the sensitivity and the angular resolution to allow detailed
observations of gravitational lenses. The almost constant sensitivity to dust
emission over the redshift range z=1-10 means that the likelihood for strong
lensing of dust continuum sources is much higher than for optically selected
sources. A large number of new strong lenses are therefore likely to be
discovered with ALMA, allowing a direct assessment of cosmological parameters
through lens statistics. Combined with an angular resolution <0.1", ALMA will
also be efficient for probing the gravitational potential of galaxy clusters,
where we will be able to study both the sources and the lenses themselves, free
of obscuration and extinction corrections, derive rotation curves for the
lenses, their orientation and, thus, greatly constrain lens models.Comment: 69 pages, Review on quasar lensing. Part of a LNP Topical Volume on
"Dark matter and gravitational lensing", eds. F. Courbin, D. Minniti. To be
published by Springer-Verlag 2002. Paper with full resolution figures can be
found at ftp://oden.oso.chalmers.se/pub/tommy/mmviews.ps.g
Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP
We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum
P(k) from over 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in
combination with WMAP and other data. Our results are consistent with a
``vanilla'' flat adiabatic Lambda-CDM model without tilt (n=1), running tilt,
tensor modes or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the
WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1 sigma constraints on the
Hubble parameter from h~0.74+0.18-0.07 to h~0.70+0.04-0.03, on the matter
density from Omega_m~0.25+/-0.10 to Omega_m~0.30+/-0.04 (1 sigma) and on
neutrino masses from <11 eV to <0.6 eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when
dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the
equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint
analysis of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive
consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis
techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the
physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using
different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the
assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the
measured age of the Universe tightens from t0~16.3+2.3-1.8 Gyr to
t0~14.1+1.0-0.9 Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running
tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many
constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from
SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted PRD version. SDSS data and ppt
figures available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/sdsspars.htm
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