Book Review: Evil

In contrast to traditional systems of thought which regarded evil as a supernatural force that explained human misfortune, Michel Wieviorka develops a sociological analysis of evil phenomena. His aim is to explain evil, to reveal its social, political, and cultural sources, and to clarify the processes through which the present–day forms of evil – terrorism, violence, racism, and active hatred – are constituted. Jo Taylor finds that in this highly topical and engaging book

Effect of Carbon Monoxide-Releasing Molecule-3 on the Severity of Endothelial Dysfunction Due to Elevation of Hydrostatic Pressure in an In Vitro Model of Compartment Syndrome

Compartment syndrome (CS) is a surgical emergency caused by elevated pressure within a closed osseofascial compartment. It leads to microvascular dysfunction, limiting oxygen and nutrient delivery, gas exchange, resulting in cellular anoxia, muscle necrosis and cell death. Currently, the only effective treatment is surgical fasciotomy. Recently, carbon monoxide (CO) delivered via carbon monoxide releasing molecule-3 (CORM-3) has been shown to improve microvascular perfusion and convey anti-inflammatory benefits in animal models of CS. The contribution of elevated hydrostatic pressure (EHP) to the pathophysiology of CS was examined in an in vitro model of CS. We found that EHP led to increased oxidative stress, apoptosis and structural changes within the human vascular endothelial cells; application of CORM-3 diminished the magnitude of these detrimental responses. The data suggest that CORM-3 provides beneficial effects by preventing endothelial activation while preserving endothelial integrity, making CORM-3 an excellent potential adjunct pharmacological therapeutic in CS

High-energy pulses and phase-resolved spectra by inverse Compton emission in the pulsar striped wind - Application to Geminga

(abridged) Although discovered 40 years ago, the emission mechanism responsible for the observed pulsar radiation remains unclear. However, the high-energy pulsed emission is usually explained in the framework of either the polar cap or the outer gap model. The purpose of this work is to study the pulsed component, that is the light-curves as well as the spectra of the high-energy emission, above 10 MeV, emanating from the striped wind model. Gamma rays are produced by scattering off the soft cosmic microwave background photons on the ultrarelativistic leptons flowing in the current sheets. We compute the time-dependent inverse Compton emissivity of the wind, in the Thomson regime, by performing three-dimensional numerical integration in space over the whole striped wind. The phase-dependent spectral variability is then calculated as well as the change in pulse shape when going from the lowest to the highest energies. Several light curves and spectra of inverse Compton radiation with phase resolved dependence are presented. We apply our model to the well-known gamma-ray pulsar Geminga. We are able to fit the EGRET spectra between 10 MeV and 10 GeV as well as the light curve above 100 MeV with good accuracy.Comment: Accepted by A&

The resonance amplitude associated with the Gamow states

The Gamow states describe the quasinormal modes of quantum systems. It is shown that the resonance amplitude associated with the Gamow states is given by the complex delta function. It is also shown that under the near-resonance approximation of neglecting the lower bound of the energy, such resonance amplitude becomes the Breit-Wigner amplitude. This result establishes the precise connection between the Gamow states, Nakanishi's complex delta function and the Breit-Wigner amplitude. In addition, this result provides another theoretical basis for the phenomenological fact that the almost-Lorentzian peaks in cross sections are produced by intermediate, unstable particles

Dynamic Appointment Scheduling

This paper considers appointment scheduling in a setting in which at every client arrival the schedule of all future clients can be adapted. Starting our analysis with an explicit treatment of the case of exponentially distributed service times, we then develop a phase-type-based approach to also cover cases in which the service times' squared coefficient of variation differs from 1. The approach relies on dynamic programming, with the state information being the number of clients waiting, the elapsed service time of the client in service, and the number of clients still to be scheduled. Numerical evaluation of the dynamic programming procedure poses computational challenges; we point out how we have succeeded in overcoming these. The use of dynamic schedules is illustrated through a set of numerical experiments, showing (i) the effect of wrongly assuming exponentially distributed service times, and (ii) the gains (over static schedules, that is) achieved by rescheduling