Dragon-kings: mechanisms, statistical methods and empirical evidence

This introductory article presents the special Discussion and Debate volume "From black swans to dragon-kings, is there life beyond power laws?" published in Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics in May 2012. We summarize and put in perspective the contributions into three main themes: (i) mechanisms for dragon-kings, (ii) detection of dragon-kings and statistical tests and (iii) empirical evidence in a large variety of natural and social systems. Overall, we are pleased to witness significant advances both in the introduction and clarification of underlying mechanisms and in the development of novel efficient tests that demonstrate clear evidence for the presence of dragon-kings in many systems. However, this positive view should be balanced by the fact that this remains a very delicate and difficult field, if only due to the scarcity of data as well as the extraordinary important implications with respect to hazard assessment, risk control and predictability.Comment: 20 page

History of clinical transplantation

How transplantation came to be a clinical discipline can be pieced together by perusing two volumes of reminiscences collected by Paul I. Terasaki in 1991-1992 from many of the persons who were directly involved. One volume was devoted to the discovery of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), with particular reference to the human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) that are widely used today for tissue matching.1 The other focused on milestones in the development of clinical transplantation.2 All the contributions described in both volumes can be traced back in one way or other to the demonstration in the mid-1940s by Peter Brian Medawar that the rejection of allografts is an immunological phenomenon.3,4 © 2008 Springer New York

Information and digital literacies; a review of concepts

A detailed literature reviewing, analysing the multiple and confusing concepts around the ideas of information literacy and digital literacy at the start of the millennium. The article was well-received, and is my most highly-cited work, with over 1100 citations

Development of a novel system for in-situ repair of aeroengine airfoil via pulsed laser ablation

A novel system for performing in-situ micro-machining of aero-engines for repair applications is proposed in this paper. Using Pulsed Laser Ablation (PLA) as material removal technique, surface cracks caused by foreign objects colliding with airfoils are removed by performing a layer-by-layer micro-machining in the area surrounding the damaged zone. Compared to conventional repair performed by micro-grinding, our invasive PLA system demonstrates a similar level of performance, evaluated from the point of view of fatigue strength in the high cycle (>107) regime. The follow-up fractographic and metallurgical analysis, indicated that although some microstructural characteristics are different between the repair methods, the incurred surface damage is limited in magnitude to a thin surface layer (<30 μm) and the influence on fatigue life is comparable. In the last section, a novel prototype system is presented which allows performing the PLA repair in-situ by use of a miniaturized laser scanning head coupled with a flexible mechanical deployment arm. The system has been successfully tested inside a Roll-Royce Trent jet engine; effectively this proves the possibility of performing in-situ laser micro-machining inside complex mechanical systems such as aero-engines, without the need for complex/expensive disassembly

Finding Maximal Pairs with Bounded Gap

Brodal GS, Lyngsø RB, Pedersen CNS, Stoye J. Finding Maximal Pairs with Bounded Gap. In: Proc. of CPM 1999. LNCS. Vol 1645. 1999: 134-149