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CSciBox: Artificial intelligence for age-depth modeling
Artificial intelligence (AI) provides major opportunities for scientific analysis. Automated reasoners can explore problem spaces quickly and alert practitioners to possibilities that they had not considered. As a case in point, we describe the CSciBox system. Working with data from a paleorecord, such as 14C dates from a sediment core (Fig. 1a) or 18O values from an ice core, CSciBox produces a set of age-depth models, plus a description of how each one was built and an assessment of its quality
Designed to fail : a biopolitics of British Citizenship.
Tracing a route through the recent 'ugly history' of British citizenship, this article advances two central claims. Firstly, British citizenship has been designed to fail specific groups and populations. Failure, it argues, is a design principle of British citizenship, in the most active and violent sense of the verb to design: to mark out, to indicate, to designate. Secondly, British citizenship is a biopolitics - a field of techniques and practices (legal, social, moral) through which populations are controlled and fashioned. This article begins with the 1981 Nationality Act and the violent conflicts between the police and black communities in Brixton that accompanied the passage of the Act through the British parliament. Employing Michel Foucault's concept of state racism, it argues that the 1981 Nationality Act marked a pivotal moment in the design of British citizenship and has operated as the template for a glut of subsequent nationality legislation that has shaped who can achieve citizenship. The central argument is that the existence of populations of failed citizens within Britain is not an accident of flawed design, but is foundational to British citizenship. For many 'national minorities' the lived realities of biopolitical citizenship stand in stark contradistinction to contemporary governmental accounts of citizenship that stress community cohesion, political participation, social responsibility, rights and pride in shared national belonging
Renormalization approach for quantum-dot structures under strong alternating fields
We develop a renormalization method for calculating the electronic structure
of single and double quantum dots under intense ac fields. The nanostructures
are emulated by lattice models with a clear continuum limit of the
effective-mass and single-particle approximations. The coupling to the ac field
is treated non-perturbatively by means of the Floquet Hamiltonian. The
renormalization approach allows the study of dressed states of the nanoscopic
system with realistic geometries as well arbitrary strong ac fields. We give
examples of a single quantum dot, emphasizing the analysis of the
effective-mass limit for lattice models, and double-dot structures, where we
discuss the limit of the well used two-level approximation.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
A classical explanation of quantization
In the context of our recently developed emergent quantum mechanics, and, in
particular, based on an assumed sub-quantum thermodynamics, the necessity of
energy quantization as originally postulated by Max Planck is explained by
means of purely classical physics. Moreover, under the same premises, also the
energy spectrum of the quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator is derived.
Essentially, Planck's constant h is shown to be indicative of a particle's
"zitterbewegung" and thus of a fundamental angular momentum. The latter is
identified with quantum mechanical spin, a residue of which is thus present
even in the non-relativistic Schroedinger theory.Comment: 20 pages; version accepted for publication in Foundations of Physic
To quantum mechanics through random fluctuations at the Planck time scale
We show that (in contrast to a rather common opinion) QM is not a complete
theory. This is a statistical approximation of classical statistical mechanics
on the {\it infinite dimensional phase space.} Such an approximation is based
on the asymptotic expansion of classical statistical averages with respect to a
small parameter Therefore statistical predictions of QM are only
approximative and a better precision of measurements would induce deviations of
experimental averages from quantum mechanical ones. In this note we present a
natural physical interpretation of as the time scaling parameter
(between quantum and prequantum times). By considering the Planck time as
the unit of the prequantum time scale we couple our prequantum model with
studies on the structure of space-time on the Planck scale performed in general
relativity, string theory and cosmology. In our model the Planck time is
not at all the {\it "ultimate limit to our laws of physics"} (in the sense of
laws of classical physics). We study random (Gaussian) infinite-dimensional
fluctuations for prequantum times and show that quantum mechanical
averages can be considered as an approximative description of such
fluctuations.Comment: Discussion on the possibility to go beyond Q
Cohort study of the impact of direct acting antiviral therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis C and decompensated cirrhosis
Background and Aims: All oral direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) effectively treat chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, but the benefits in advanced liver disease are unclear. We compared outcomes in treated and untreated patients with decompensated cirrhosis.
Methods: Patients with HCV and decompensated cirrhosis or at risk of irreversible disease were treated in an Expanded Access Programme (EAP) in 2014. Treatment, by clinician choice, was with sofosbuvir, ledipasvir or daclatasvir, with or without ribavirin. For functional outcome comparison, untreated patients with HCV and decompensated cirrhosis who were registered on a database 6 months before treatment was available were retrospectively studied. Primary endpoint was sustained virological response 12 weeks post antiviral treatment (treated cohort) and the secondary endpoint (both cohorts) was adverse outcomes (worsening in MELD score or serious adverse event) within 6 months.
Results: 467 patients received treatment (409 decompensated cirrhosis). Viral clearance was achieved in 381 patients (81.6%) â 209 from 231 (90.5%) with genotype 1 and 132 from 192 (68.8%) with genotype 3. MELD scores improved in treated patients (mean change -0.85) but worsened in untreated patients (mean + 0.75) (p65 or with low (<135 mmol/L) baseline serum sodium concentrations were least likely to benefit from therapy.
Conclusions: All oral DAAs effectively cured HCV in patients with advanced liver disease. Viral clearance was associated with improvement in liver function within 6 months compared to untreated patients. The longer term impact of HCV treatment in patients with decompensated cirrhosis remains to be determined
New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy
Big data and the mechanisms by which it is produced and disseminated introduce important changes in the ways information is generated and made relevant for organizations. Big data often represents miscellaneous records of the whereabouts of large and shifting online crowds. It is frequently agnostic, in the sense of being produced for generic purposes or purposes different from those sought by big data crunching. It is based on varying formats and modes of communication (e.g., texts, image and sound), raising severe problems of semiotic translation and meaning compatibility. Crucially, the usefulness of big data rests on their steady updatability, a condition that reduces the time span within which this data is useful or relevant. Jointly, these attributes challenge established rules of strategy making as these are manifested in the canons of procuring structured information of lasting value that addresses specific and long-term organizational objectives. The developments underlying big data thus seem to carry important implications for strategy making, and the data and information practices with which strategy has been associated. We conclude by placing the understanding of these changes within the wider social and institutional context of longstanding data practices and the significance they carry for management and organizations
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