The Relation of the Intestinal Cell Surface to Vitamin B₁₂ Absorption

I have tried to indicate that it is now possible to separate out events occurring at the surface of intestinal absorptive cells. Previous work has shown that intestinal brush borders contain diverse enzymatic activity and that the surface of the intestinal cell is a site for active glucose accumulation. Furthermore, brush border and microvillous membrane preparations now provide direct evidence that intrinsic factor acts at the intestinal cell surface. These studies directly support the concept that a specific receptor for the IF-B₁₂ complex is located on the surface of ileal, but not jejunal absorptive cells. Studies with antibodies against pure preparations of microvillous membranes verify the existence of this receptor and provide an approach to its further localization and characterization

On complex surfaces diffeomorphic to rational surfaces

In this paper we prove that no complex surface of general type is diffeomorphic to a rational surface, thereby completing the smooth classification of rational surfaces and the proof of the Van de Ven conjecture on the smooth invariance of Kodaira dimension.Comment: 34 pages, AMS-Te

Numerical solution to the hermitian Yang-Mills equation on the Fermat quintic

We develop an iterative method for finding solutions to the hermitian Yang-Mills equation on stable holomorphic vector bundles, following ideas recently developed by Donaldson. As illustrations, we construct numerically the hermitian Einstein metrics on the tangent bundle and a rank three vector bundle on P^2. In addition, we find a hermitian Yang-Mills connection on a stable rank three vector bundle on the Fermat quintic.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figure

Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers' Brief

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous

Exotic Differentiable Structures and General Relativity

We review recent developments in differential topology with special concern for their possible significance to physical theories, especially general relativity. In particular we are concerned here with the discovery of the existence of non-standard (``fake'' or ``exotic'') differentiable structures on topologically simple manifolds such as $S^7$, \R and $S^3\times {\bf R^1}.$ Because of the technical difficulties involved in the smooth case, we begin with an easily understood toy example looking at the role which the choice of complex structures plays in the formulation of two-dimensional vacuum electrostatics. We then briefly review the mathematical formalisms involved with differentiable structures on topological manifolds, diffeomorphisms and their significance for physics. We summarize the important work of Milnor, Freedman, Donaldson, and others in developing exotic differentiable structures on well known topological manifolds. Finally, we discuss some of the geometric implications of these results and propose some conjectures on possible physical implications of these new manifolds which have never before been considered as physical models.Comment: 11 pages, LaTe

Experimental implementation of a quantum optical state comparison amplifier

We present an experimental demonstration of a practical nondeterministic quantum optical amplification scheme that employs two mature technologies, state comparison and photon subtraction, to achieve amplification of known sets of coherent states with high fidelity. The amplifier uses coherent states as a resource rather than single photons, which allows for a relatively simple light source, such as a diode laser, providing an increased rate of amplification. The amplifier is not restricted to low amplitude states. With respect to the two key parameters, fidelity and the amplified state production rate, we demonstrate significant improvements over previous experimental implementations, without the requirement of complex photonic components. Such a system may form the basis of trusted quantum repeaters in nonentanglement-based quantum communications systems with known phase alphabets, such as quantum key distribution or quantum digital signatures