History on the Line: time as dimension

Boyd Davis’s work concerns representation, principally visual and spatial. This article discusses mapping historical time to a graphical surface, such as in timelines, focusing on the orientation of the time axis. Boyd Davis gained a £92K EPSRC grant to develop these inquiries into digital formats in 2012, and £70K from the Leverhulme Trust ending in 2010. It contrasts the paucity of intellectual debate on mapping time with the controversies over competing geographic projections, a dearth that Boyd Davis’s work is dedicated to correcting. The article proposes a research agenda derived from a synthesis of the literatures of cognitive science and gesture studies, revealing that the metaphorical direction of time differs between verbal and gestural usage, and to a lesser extent between cultures. It features original archive research into the emergence of modern chronographics in the mid-18th century, a shift from typographic, tabular layouts to truly graphical time-maps based on a changing model of time spawned by Descartes and Newton. Research into the timelines of Nicole Oresme (1350s) and Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg and Joseph Priestley (1750s) reveals their difficulties in finding the ‘right’ direction for time. Related work included a co-written paper for ‘Electronic Visualisation and the Arts’, London (2010), selected for the 2013 Springer book of best full papers (21 of c.160); a paper for the 26th ‘Computers and the History of Art’, London (2010); experimental work using virtual environments to represent historic time, a Leverhulme project co-led by Boyd Davis: two co-written articles for Computers & Education (2012); a chapter in Huang (ed.), Handbook of Human Centric Visualization (2013); a guest article for Joseph Priestley House Museum, PA, USA (2011); an invited talk on original research into French 18th-century contributions to chronographics, Centre de Recherches Texte/Image/Langage, Université de Bourgogne (2012); and a paper for ‘EVA2013’, London (2013)

Thermal production of ultrarelativistic right-handed neutrinos: Complete leading-order results

The thermal production of relativistic right-handed Majorana neutrinos is of importance for models of thermal leptogenesis in the early Universe. Right-handed neutrinos can be produced both by 1 2 decay or inverse decay and by 2 -> 2 scattering processes. In a previous publication, we have studied the production via 1 2 (inverse) decay processes. There we have shown that multiple scattering mediated by soft gauge boson exchange also contributes to the production rate at leading order, and gives a strong enhancement. Here we complete the leading order calculation by adding 2 -> 2 scattering processes involving either electroweak gauge bosons or third-generation quarks. We find that processes with gauge interactions give the most important contributions. We also obtain a new sum rule for the Hard Thermal Loop resummed fermion propagator.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures. Error in the matrix element for the (subdominant) subprocess with s-channel fermion exchange corrected. This changes the corresponding phase space integral and the constant c_V. Numerically it increases the total 2 -> 2 rate by about 2 percent and the complete rate by about 1 percent. The main results and conclusions are unaffecte

Thermal production of relativistic Majorana neutrinos: Strong enhancement by multiple soft scattering

The production rate of heavy Majorana neutrinos is relevant for models of thermal leptogenesis in the early Universe. In the high temperature limit the production can proceed via the 1 2 (inverse) decays which are allowed by the thermal masses. We consider new production mechanisms which are obtained by including additional soft gauge interactions with the plasma. We show that an arbitrary number of such interactions gives leading order contributions, and we sum all of them. The rate turns out to be smooth in the region where the 1 2 processes are kinematically forbidden. At higher temperature it is enhanced by a factor 3 compared to the 1 2 rate.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures; added references, added comments on 2 to 2 scattering processes, improved appearance of fig. 8, corrected typos; matches published versio

"Feed from the Service": Corruption and Coercion in the State-University Relations in Central Eurasia

Education in Central Eurasia has become one of the industries, most affected by corruption. Corruption in academia, including bribery, extortions, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, cheating, and plagiarism, is reflected in the region’s media and addressed in few scholarly works. This paper considers corruption in higher education as a product of interrelations between the government and academia. A substantial block of literature considers excessive corruption as an indicator of a weak state. In contrast to standard interpretations, this paper argues that in non-democratic societies corruption is used on a systematic basis as a mechanism of direct and indirect administrative control over higher education institutions. Informal approval of corrupt activities in exchange for loyalty and compliance with the regime may be used in the countries of Central Eurasia for the purposes of political indoctrination. This paper presents the concept of corruption and coercion in the state-university relations in Central Eurasia and outlines the model which incorporates this concept and the “feed from the service” approach. It presents implications of this model for the state-university relations and the national educational systems in Central Eurasia in general and offers some suggestions on curbing corruption

Recurrent Fusion Genes in Gastric Cancer: CLDN18-ARHGAP26 Induces Loss of Epithelial Integrity.

Genome rearrangements, a hallmark of cancer, can result in gene fusions with oncogenic properties. Using DNA paired-end-tag (DNA-PET) whole-genome sequencing, we analyzed 15 gastric cancers (GCs) from Southeast Asians. Rearrangements were enriched in open chromatin and shaped by chromatin structure. We identified seven rearrangement hot spots and 136 gene fusions. In three out of 100 GC cases, we found recurrent fusions between CLDN18, a tight junction gene, and ARHGAP26, a gene encoding a RHOA inhibitor. Epithelial cell lines expressing CLDN18-ARHGAP26 displayed a dramatic loss of epithelial phenotype and long protrusions indicative of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Fusion-positive cell lines showed impaired barrier properties, reduced cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix adhesion, retarded wound healing, and inhibition of RHOA. Gain of invasion was seen in cancer cell lines expressing the fusion. Thus, CLDN18-ARHGAP26 mediates epithelial disintegration, possibly leading to stomach H(+) leakage, and the fusion might contribute to invasiveness once a cell is transformed. Cell Rep 2015 Jul 14; 12(2):272-285