Bookreview: The politics of life itself: biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. By Nikolas Rose. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2006. ISBN 9780691121918

525BookreviewThepolitics of life itself: biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-firstcentury. By Nikolas Rose. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2006.$25.95/£14.95. ISBN: 9780691121918SAGE Publications, Inc.2008DOI: 10.1177/14744740080150040708SimonReid-HenryQueen Mary, University of LondonInthe classic analyses of Foucault, the 18th and 19th centuries saw the emergenceof a biopolitical state, in which the very vitality of individual citizenscame to be the subject of systems of management (through state provision forhealth and welfare, for example). Such a politics centred on the human bodyis today being reconfigured, claims the sociologist Nikolas Rose, in his newbook The Politics of life itself. To summarize brutally, new ways of understandinglife have resulted in new forms of managing, shaping and contesting it. Thus,vital politics today, Rose suggests, `is concerned with our growing capacitiesto control, man- age, engineer, reshape, and modulate the very vital capacitiesof human beings as living crea- tures' (p. 3). There is much to admire inhis account of the forms that such a politics is taking, and I would encouragethe reader to engage with this work. But two aspects of Rose's account warrantbrief commentary. First, both life and politics are given, in my view, toonarrow a definition in this book. Central to what Rose seeks to analyse, forexample, is the emergence of a particular `style of thought' – drawingon Ludwig Fleck's phrase – based upon a shift in the scale at whichwe think to understand, act on, and act in relation to, human life: from aclinical gaze cen- tred upon the body, to a molecular gaze that understandslife at the level of its component526parts(sequences of nucleotide bases, transporter genes and the like). This approachis in many ways quite helpful, but to its detriment, I think, it emphasizesquestions of techno- logical novelty at the expense of questions about thedistribution and control of those novel systems, not to mention the socialinequalities from which they actively divert attention and in some cases maybe contributing towards. As in the very western biomedical practices the bookseeks to analyse, the infectious diseases, poverty and inequality that structurethe pol- itics of life for most of the world's population are given scanttreatment. This is not, in fair- ness, Rose's intention, but my point is thatit could have been. That it is not is indicative of a widening gap betweenthe literature on public health and the literature on biomedicine and thebiological sciences. Much is made in this book of the new choices and newresponsibil- ities facing the individual. There is considerable scope forsetting alongside this a fuller appre- ciation of how those choices are shapedby the often rather older and more mundane limits set by one's social andgeographical location. Second, there is a profusion of spatial metaphors andreasoning that I think geographers might usefully elaborate, contest and refine.There is something not just inherently but con- stitutively geographical aboutmany of the changes wrought by the life sciences and biomed- icine in particularthat Rose describes in this book and that many geographers are actively engagedin researching. In addition to using geography as a shorthand for thinkingabout the wider implications and distributional effects of these new technologies,therefore (Rose speaks for example of a `cartography of the future' in lieuof a `history of the present'), geograph- ical notions of space, place andscale might well be usefully brought to bear upon this emer- gent social andscholarly field

The Solar Neighborhood. XXVI. AP Col: The Closest (8.4 pc) Pre-Main-Sequence Star

We present the results of a multi-technique investigation of the M4.5Ve flare star AP Col, which we discover to be the nearest pre-main-sequence star. These include astrometric data from the CTIO 0.9m, from which we derive a proper motion of 342.0+/-0.5 mas yr^-1, a trigonometric parallax of 119.21+/-0.98 mas (8.39+/-0.07 pc), and photometry and photometric variability at optical wavelengths. We also provide spectroscopic data, including radial velocity (22.4+/-0.3 km s^-1), lithium Equivalent Width (EW) (0.28+/-0.02 A), H-alpha EW (-6.0 to -35 A), {\it vsini} (11+/-1 km s^-1), and gravity indicators from the Siding Spring 2.3-m WiFeS, Lick 3-m Hamilton echelle, and Keck-I HIRES echelle spectrographs. The combined observations demonstrate that AP Col is the closer of only two known systems within 10 pc of the Sun younger than 100 Myr. Given its space motion and apparent age of 12-50 Myr, AP Col is likely a member of the recently proposed ~40 Myr old Argus/IC 2391 association.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figure

New neighbours: V. 35 DENIS late-M dwarfs between 10 and 30 parsecs

This paper reports updated results on our systematic mining of the DENIS database for nearby very cool M-dwarfs (M6V-M8V, 2.0<I-J<3.0, photometric distance within 30 pc), We calibrate the DENIS (M_I, I-J) colour-luminosity relationship from M dwarfs with well measured parallaxes (HIP, GCTP,...), obtaining distance errors for single dwarfs of 25%. Using proper motions measured on archive Schmidt plates for stars that meet the photometric selection criteria, we eliminate the giants by a Reduced Proper Motion cutoff, which is significantly more selective than a simple proper motion cutoff. Here we present new data for 62 red dwarf candidates selected over 5700 square degrees in the DENIS database. 26 of those originate in the 2100 square degrees analysed in Paper I, with improved parameters here, and 36 were found in 3600 additional square degrees. 25 of those are new nearby dwarfs. We determine from that sample of 62 stars a stellar density for 12.0<M_I<14.0 of 2.2(+-0.4)E-3 stars/pc^3/mag. This value is consistent with photometric luminosity functions measured from deeper and smaller-field observations, but not with the nearby star luminosity function. In addition we cross-identified the NLTT and DENIS catalogues to find 15 similar stars, in parts of the sky not yet covered by the colour-selected search.Comment: Accepted by Astronomy & astrophysics. 17 pages, 8 figure

The Hawaii Infrared Parallax Program. I. Ultracool Binaries and the L/T Transition

We present the first results from our high-precision infrared (IR) astrometry program at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. We measure parallaxes for 83 ultracool dwarfs (spectral types M6--T9) in 49 systems, with a median uncertainty of 1.1 mas (2.3%) and as good as 0.7 mas (0.8%). We provide the first parallaxes for 48 objects in 29 systems, and for another 27 objects in 17 systems, we significantly improve upon published results, with a median (best) improvement of 1.7x (5x). Three systems show astrometric perturbations indicative of orbital motion; two are known binaries (2MASSJ0518-2828AB and 2MASSJ1404-3159AB) and one is spectrally peculiar (SDSSJ0805+4812). In addition, we present here a large set of Keck adaptive optics imaging that more than triples the number of binaries with L6--T5 components that have both multi-band photometry and distances. Our data enable an unprecedented look at the photometric properties of brown dwarfs as they cool through the L/T transition. Going from \approxL8 to \approxT4.5, flux in the Y and J bands increases by \approx0.7 mag and \approx0.5 mag, respectively (the Y- and J-band "bumps"), while flux in the H, K, and L' bands declines monotonically. This wavelength dependence is consistent with cloud clearing over a narrow range of temperature, since condensate opacity is expected to dominate at 1.0--1.3 micron. Interestingly, despite more than doubling the near-IR census of L/T transition objects, we find a conspicuous paucity of objects on the color--magnitude diagram just blueward of the late-L/early-T sequence. This "L/T gap" occurs at MKO(J-H) = 0.1--0.3 mag, MKO(J-K) = 0.0--0.4 mag, and implies that the last phases of cloud evolution occur rapidly. Finally, we provide a comprehensive update to the absolute magnitudes of ultracool dwarfs as a function of spectral type using a combined sample of 314 objects.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. New arXiv posting includes 4 new parallaxes and an overall improvement in precision of 1.3x thanks to additional CFHT astrometry for many targets. All data compiled in this paper (and more) are available online: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~tdupuy/pl

Precision Astrometry of a Sample of Speckle Binaries and Multiples with the Adaptive Optics Facilities at the Hale and Keck II Telescopes

Using the adaptive optics facilities at the 200-in Hale and 10-m Keck II, we observed in the near infrared a sample of 12 binary and multiple stars and one open cluster. We used the near diffraction limited images of these systems to measure the relative separations and position angles between their components. In this paper, we investigate and correct for the influence of the differential chromatic refraction and chip distortions on our relative astrometric measurements. Over one night, we achieve an astrometric precision typically well below 1 miliarcsecond and occasionally as small as 40 microarcseconds. Such a precision is in principle sufficient to astrometrically detect planetary mass objects around the components of nearby binary and multiple stars. Since we have not had sufficiently large data sets for the observed sample of stars to detect planets, we provide the limits to planetary mass objects based on the obtained astrometric precision.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, to appear in MNRA

New neighbours: IV. 30 DENIS late-M dwarfs between 15 and 30 parsecs

We present 30 new nearby (d<30 pc) red dwarf candidates, with estimated spectral types M6 to M8. 26 were directly selected from the DENIS database, and another 4 were first extracted from the LHS catalogue and cross-identified with a DENIS counterpart. Their proper motions were measured on the MAMA measuring machine from plates spanning 13 to 48 years, and are larger than 0.1 arcsec/yr, ruling out the possibility that they are giants. Their distances were estimated from the DENIS colours and IR colour-magnitude relations and range between 15 and 30 pc.Comment: Accepted in Astronomy and Astrophysic

A spectroscopy study of nearby late-type stars, possible members of stellar kinematic groups

Nearby late-type stars are excellent targets for seeking young objects in stellar associations and moving groups. The origin of these structures is still misunderstood, and lists of moving group members often change with time and also from author to author. Most members of these groups have been identified by means of kinematic criteria, leading to an important contamination of previous lists by old field stars. We attempt to identify unambiguous moving group members among a sample of nearby-late type stars by studying their kinematics, lithium abundance, chromospheric activity, and other age-related properties. High-resolution echelle spectra ($R \sim 57000$) of a sample of nearby late-type stars are used to derive accurate radial velocities that are combined with the precise Hipparcos parallaxes and proper motions to compute galactic-spatial velocity components. Stars are classified as possible members of the classical moving groups according to their kinematics. The spectra are also used to study several age-related properties for young late-type stars, i.e., the equivalent width of the lithium Li~{\sc i} \space 6707.8 \space \AA \space line or the $R'_{\rm HK}$ index. Additional information like X-ray fluxes from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey or the presence of debris discs is also taken into account. The different age estimators are compared and the moving group membership of the kinematically selected candidates are discussed. From a total list of 405 nearby stars, 102 have been classified as moving group candidates according to their kinematics. i.e., only $\sim$ 25.2 \% of the sample. The number reduces when age estimates are considered, and only 26 moving group candidates (25.5\% of the 102 candidates) have ages in agreement with the star having the same age as an MG memberComment: 39 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy \& Astrophysic

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Cosmology from Galaxy Clusters Detected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

We present constraints on cosmological parameters based on a sample of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-selected galaxy clusters detected in a millimeter-wave survey by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The cluster sample used in this analysis consists of 9 optically-confirmed high-mass clusters comprising the high-significance end of the total cluster sample identified in 455 square degrees of sky surveyed during 2008 at 148 GHz. We focus on the most massive systems to reduce the degeneracy between unknown cluster astrophysics and cosmology derived from SZ surveys. We describe the scaling relation between cluster mass and SZ signal with a 4-parameter fit. Marginalizing over the values of the parameters in this fit with conservative priors gives sigma_8 = 0.851 +/- 0.115 and w = -1.14 +/- 0.35 for a spatially-flat wCDM cosmological model with WMAP 7-year priors on cosmological parameters. This gives a modest improvement in statistical uncertainty over WMAP 7-year constraints alone. Fixing the scaling relation between cluster mass and SZ signal to a fiducial relation obtained from numerical simulations and calibrated by X-ray observations, we find sigma_8 = 0.821 +/- 0.044 and w = -1.05 +/- 0.20. These results are consistent with constraints from WMAP 7 plus baryon acoustic oscillations plus type Ia supernoava which give sigma_8 = 0.802 +/- 0.038 and w = -0.98 +/- 0.053. A stacking analysis of the clusters in this sample compared to clusters simulated assuming the fiducial model also shows good agreement. These results suggest that, given the sample of clusters used here, both the astrophysics of massive clusters and the cosmological parameters derived from them are broadly consistent with current models.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Ap

Discovery and characterisation of detached M-dwarf eclipsing binaries in the WFCAM Transit Survey

We report the discovery of 16 detached M-dwarf eclipsing binaries with J<16 mag and provide a detailed characterisation of three of them, using high-precision infrared light curves from the WFCAM Transit Survey (WTS). Such systems provide the most accurate and model-independent method for measuring the fundamental parameters of these poorly understood yet numerous stars, which currently lack sufficient observations to precisely calibrate stellar evolution models. We fully solve for the masses and radii of three of the systems, finding orbital periods in the range 1.5<P<4.9 days, with masses spanning 0.35-0.50 Msun and radii between 0.38-0.50 Rsun, with uncertainties of ~3.5-6.4% in mass and ~2.7-5.5% in radius. Close-companions in short-period binaries are expected to be tidally-locked into fast rotational velocities, resulting in high levels of magnetic activity. This is predicted to inflate their radii by inhibiting convective flow and increasing star spot coverage. The radii of the WTS systems are inflated above model predictions by ~3-12%, in agreement with the observed trend, despite an expected lower systematic contribution from star spots signals at infrared wavelengths. We searched for correlation between the orbital period and radius inflation by combining our results with all existing M-dwarf radius measurements of comparable precision, but we found no statistically significant evidence for a decrease in radius inflation for longer period, less active systems. Radius inflation continues to exists in non-synchronised systems indicating that the problem remains even for very low activity M-dwarfs. Resolving this issue is vital not only for understanding the most populous stars in the Universe, but also for characterising their planetary companions, which hold the best prospects for finding Earth-like planets in the traditional habitable zone.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figures, 16 tables, Accepted for publication in MNRA

Patient preferences and willingness-to-pay for a home or clinic based program of chronic heart failure management: findings from the which? trial

BACKGROUND Beyond examining their overall cost-effectiveness and mechanisms of effect, it is important to understand patient preferences for the delivery of different modes of chronic heart failure management programs (CHF-MPs). We elicited patient preferences around the characteristics and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a clinic or home-based CHF-MP. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A Discrete Choice Experiment was completed by a sub-set of patients (n = 91) enrolled in the WHICH? trial comparing home versus clinic-based CHF-MP. Participants provided 5 choices between hypothetical clinic and home-based programs varying by frequency of nurse consultations, nurse continuity, patient costs, and availability of telephone or education support. Participants (aged 71±13 yrs, 72.5% male, 25.3% NYHA class III/IV) displayed two distinct preference classes. A latent class model of the choice data indicated 56% of participants preferred clinic delivery, access to group CHF education classes, and lower cost programs (p<0.05). The remainder preferred home-based CHF-MPs, monthly rather than weekly visits, and access to a phone advice service (p<0.05). Continuity of nurse contact was consistently important. No significant association was observed between program preference and participant allocation in the parent trial. WTP was estimated from the model and a dichotomous bidding technique. For those preferring clinic, estimated WTP was ≈AU$9-20 per visit; however for those preferring home-based programs, WTP varied widely (AU$15-105). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE Patient preferences for CHF-MPs were dichotomised between a home-based model which is more likely to suit older patients, those who live alone, and those with a lower household income; and a clinic-based model which is more likely to suit those who are more socially active and wealthier. To optimise the delivery of CHF-MPs, health care services should consider their patients’ preferences when designing CHF-MPs.Jennifer A. Whitty, Simon Stewart, Melinda J. Carrington, Alicia Calderone, Thomas Marwick, John D. Horowitz, Henry Krum, Patricia M. Davidson, Peter S. Macdonald, Christopher Reid, Paul A. Scuffha