Stem cell therapy for end stage COPD: a cautionary tale of direct-to-consumer advertising

A critical appraisal and clinical application of Weiss DJ, Casaburi R, Flannery R, LeRoux-Williams M, Tashkin DP. A placebo-controlled, randomized trial of mesenchymal stem cells in COPD. Chest. 2013;143(6):1590-1598. doi: 10.1378/chest.12-209

Updating Claims in Bankruptcy Problems

We reexamine the consistency axiom in bankruptcy problems and propose arguments in favor of an alternative definition of a reduced problem. The classical definition updates the size of the estate while keeping agents' claims unaffected. Instead, we suggest updating agents' claims along with the estate. The resulting consistency axiom characterizes the well-known Random Arrival rule as the unique bilaterally consistent extension of the Contested Garment rule to many agents. We also establish that our definition of a reduced bankruptcy problem corresponds to the definition of a reduced TU game proposed in Hart & Mas-Colell (Econometrica, 1989).

Solution to a combinatorial puzzle arising from Mayer's theory of cluster integrals

Mayer's theory of cluster integrals allows one to write the partition function of a gas model as a generating function of weighted graphs. Recently, Labelle, Leroux and Ducharme have studied the graph weights arising from the one-dimensional hard-core gas model and noticed that the sum of the weights over all connected graphs with $n$ vertices is $(-n)^{n-1}$. This is, up to sign, the number of rooted Cayley trees on $n$ vertices and the authors asked for a combinatorial explanation. The main goal of this article is to provide such an explanation.Comment: 9 page

The Universal Alliance of All Peoples : Romantic Socialists, the Human Family, and the Defense of Empire during the July Monarchy, 1830-1848

This article documents the procolonial rhetoric among romantic socialists in France during the July Monarchy (1830-48), demonstrating its pervasiveness. It argues that these years must be highlighted as key to the transition from eighteenth-century universalist ideas of humanity toward taxonomies of national, racial, and sexual difference that underpinned the rationale of empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. It explores the views on colonialism espoused by socialists such as Etienne Cabet, Pierre Leroux, Constantin Pecqueur, and Jean Reynaud; situates them in the broad socialist consensus on empire; and demonstrates the relationship between these men\u27s socialism and their colonialism. Further, it contextualizes their advocacy for colonialism in relation to contemporary debates about the abolition of slavery and free trade. Finally, it demonstrates the coexistence of universalist and particularist language in romantic socialist discourse on colonial expansion and its importance to the developing logic of the mission civilisatrice

SEM-EDS analyses of small craters in stardust aluminium foils: implications for the Wild-2 dust distribution

Implications for the Wild-2 dust distribution of the statistical results obtained by SEM-EDS from nearly 300 impact craters on aluminium foils of the Stardust sample tray assembly

A mathematical model for Tsunami generation using a conservative velocity-pressure hyperbolic system

By using the Hugoniot curve in detonics as a Riemann invariant of a velocity-pressure model, we get a conservative hyperbolic system similar to the Euler equations. The only differences are the larger value of the adiabatic constant (= 8.678 instead of 1.4 for gas dynamics) and the mass density replaced by a strain density depending on the pressure. The model is not homogeneous since it involves a gravity and a friction term. After the seismic wave reaches up the bottom of the ocean, one gets a pressure wave propagating toward the surface, which is made of a frontal shock wave followed by a regular decreasing profile. Since this regular profile propagates faster than the frontal shock waves, the amplitude of the pressure wave is strongly reduced when reaching the surface. Only in the case of a strong earth tremor the residual pressure wave is still sufficient to generate a water elevation with a sufficient wavelengths enable to propagate as a SaintVenant water wave and to become a tsunami when reaching the shore. We describe the construction of the model and the computation of the wave profile and discuss about the formation or not of a wave