Cosmological billiards and oxidation

We show how the properties of the cosmological billiards provide useful information (spacetime dimension and $p$-form spectrum) on the oxidation endpoint of the oxidation sequence of gravitational theories. We compare this approach to the other available methods: $GL(n,R)$ subgroups and the superalgebras of dualities.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the 27th Johns Hopkins Workshop and in the Proceedings of the 36th International Symposium Ahrenshoop; v2: minor error correcte

Democracy, Inequality and the Environment when Citizens can Mitigate Privately or Act Collectively

We study the political economy of the environment in autocratic, weak and strong democracies when individuals can either mitigate the health consequences of domestic pollution privately or reduce pollution collectively through public policy. The setting is that of a small open economy in which incomes depend importantly on trade in dirty goods, where income inequality and the degree to which ordinary citizens exert voice in each dimension of the policy process distinguishes elites and ordinary citizens. The recognition that the health consequences of pollution can be dealt with privately at a cost adds an important dimension to the analysis of the political economy of environmental regulation, especially for an open economy. When private mitigation is feasible, inequality of incomes leads to an unequal distribution of the health burden of pollution (in accordance with the epidemiologic evidence), thus polarizing the interests of citizens in democracies and of ordinary citizens and elites in non-democratic regimes. Inequality in the willingness to bear the cost of private mitigation in turn interacts with the pollution costs and income benefits of trade in dirty goods to further polarize interests concerning both environmental stringency and the regulation of trade openness. In this context, we show how the eco-friendliness ranking of different political regimes varies with the cost of private mitigation and with the extent of income inequality, tending to converge when mitigation costs are high, and even producing a ranking reversal between democracies and autocracies, and between weak and strong democracies, when costs lie in an intermediate range.pollution, environmental regulation, private mitigation, income inequality, democracy, trade, welfare, collective choice, political economy

Prevention of urinary tract infection in spinal cord-injured patients: safety and efficacy of a weekly oral cyclic antibiotic (WOCA) programme with a 2 year follow-up--an observational prospective study.

POPULATION: Spinal cord injury (SCI) patients with neurogenic bladder have an increased risk for symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI). Recurrent UTI requires multiple courses of antibiotic therapy, markedly increasing the incidence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. METHODS: During an observational prospective study, we determined the safety and efficacy of a weekly oral cyclic antibiotic (WOCA) regimen to prevent UTI in SCI adult patients with neurogenic bladder undergoing clean intermittent catheterization. The WOCA regimen consisted of the alternate administration of an antibiotic once per week over a period of at least 2 years. The antibiotics chosen were efficient for UTI, well tolerated and with low selection pressure. RESULTS: There was a significant decrease in antimicrobial consumption linked to the dramatic decrease in the incidence of UTI. Before intervention, there were 9.4 symptomatic UTIs per patient-year, including 197 episodes of febrile UTI responsible for 45 hospitalizations. Under the WOCA regimen there were 1.8 symptomatic UTIs per patient-year, including 19 episodes of febrile UTI. No severe adverse events and no new cases of colonization with MDR bacteria were reported. CONCLUSIONS: In this prospective, observational pilot study a novel approach to the prevention and treatment of UTI in SCI was investigated. Our study shows the benefit of WOCA in preventing UTI in SCI patients

Influence of temperature on the infrared spectrum of the coronene molecule

Laboratory experiments were performed to study the temperature dependence of the absorption spectrum of the coronene molecule (C24H12), believed to be representative of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) molecules present in the interstellar medium. The main results is that both line positions and total intensities are almost unchanged when varying the temperature so that the spectrum is mostly temperature independent in the explored range, supporting the modeling of the IR emission originally made by Leger and Puget where room temperature was used in the calculations. In the structure of the band shape, small temperature correlated changes are observed. Qualitative arguments are given to interpret them

Determinants of Voluntary Organizations’ Attention on Facebook: The Case of Norwegian Voluntary Organizations

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