The Colombian conflict: a description of a mental health program in the Department of Tolima.

Colombia has been seriously affected by an internal armed conflict for more than 40 years affecting mainly the civilian population, who is forced to displace, suffers kidnapping, extortion, threats and assassinations. Between 2005 and 2008, Médecins Sans Frontières-France provided psychological care and treatment in the region of Tolima, a strategic place in the armed conflict. The mental health program was based on a short-term multi-faceted treatment developed according to the psychological and psychosomatic needs of the population. Here we describe the population attending during 2005-2008, in both urban and rural settings, as well as the psychological treatment provided during this period and its outcomes.We observed differences between the urban and rural settings in the traumatic events reported, the clinical expression of the disorders, the disorders diagnosed, and their severity. Although the duration of the treatment was limited due to security reasons and access difficulties, patient condition at last visit improved in most of the patients. These descriptive results suggest that further studies should be conducted to examine the role of short-term psychotherapy, adapted specifically to the context, can be a useful tool to provide psychological care to population affected by an armed conflict

Resonance in Asymmetric Warped Geometry

We study the spectrum of an asymmetric warped braneworld model with different AdS curvatures on either side of the brane. In addition to the RS-like modes we find a resonance state. Its mass is proportional to the geometric mean of the two AdS curvature scales, while the difference between them determines the strength of the resonance peak. There is a complementarity between the RS zero-mode and the resonance: making the asymmetry stronger weakens the zero-mode but strengthens the resonance, and vice versa. We calculate numerically the braneworld gravitational potential and discuss the holographic correspondence for the asymmetric model.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures; v2 references with comments added; v3 two references added, JHEP versio

Ghosts in asymmetric brane gravity and the decoupled stealth limit

We study the spectrum of gravitational perturbations around a vacuum de Sitter brane in a 5D asymmetric braneworld model, with induced curvature on the brane. This generalises the stealth acceleration model proposed by Charmousis, Gregory and Padilla (CGP) which realises the Cardassian cosmology in which power law cosmic acceleration can be driven by ordinary matter. Whenever the bulk has infinite volume we find that there is always a perturbative ghost propagating on the de Sitter brane, in contrast to the Minkowski brane case analysed by CGP. We discuss the implication of this ghost for the stealth acceleration model, and identify a limiting case where the ghost decouples as the de Sitter curvature vanishes.Comment: 21 page

A short review of "DGP Specteroscopy"

In this paper we provide a short review of the main results developed in hep-th/0604086. We focus on linearised vacuum perturbations about the self-accelerating branch of solutions in the DGP model. These are shown to contain a ghost in the spectrum for any value of the brane tension. We also comment on hep-th/0607099, where some counter arguments have been presented.Comment: Minor typos correcte

Stealth Acceleration and Modified Gravity

We show how to construct consistent braneworld models which exhibit late time acceleration. Unlike self-acceleration, which has a de Sitter vacuum state, our models have the standard Minkowski vacuum and accelerate only in the presence of matter, which we dub ``stealth-acceleration''. We use an effective action for the brane which includes an induced gravity term, and allow for an asymmetric set-up. We study the linear stability of flat brane vacua and find the regions of parameter space where the set-up is stable. The 4-dimensional graviton is only quasi-localised in this set-up and as a result gravity is modified at late times. One of the two regions is strongly coupled and the scalar mode is eaten up by an extra symmetry that arises in this limit. Having filtered the well-defined theories we then focus on their cosmology. When the graviton is quasi-localised we find two main examples of acceleration. In each case, we provide an illustrative model and compare it to LambdaCDM.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure

Portable tool removes burrs from pipe and tubing

Portable tool cleanly removes burrs that remain on tubing when it is cut. It restores the cut end to its original configuration, and carries away all chips and pieces. This tool is used in places of limited access where a larger tool could not be used