Pandemic Flu and the Potential for U.S. Economic Recession: A State-by-State Analysis

Considers how a severe health pandemic outbreak could impact the United States economy and delineates the potential financial loss each state could face

TQFT's and gerbes

We generalize the notion of parallel transport along paths for abelian bundles to parallel transport along surfaces for abelian gerbes using an embedded Topological Quantum Field Theory (TQFT) approach. We show both for bundles and gerbes with connection that there is a one-to-one correspondence between their local description in terms of locally-defined functions and forms and their non-local description in terms of a suitable class of embedded TQFT's.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol4/agt-4-14.abs.htm

The geometric realization of a simplicial Hausdorff space is Hausdorff

It is shown that the thin geometric realization of a simplicial Hausdorff space is Hausdorff. This proves a famous claim by Graeme Segal that the thin geometric realisation of a simplicial k-space is a k-space.Comment: 19 page

The body in the library: adventures in realism

This essay looks at two aspects of the virtual ‘material world’ of realist fiction: objects encountered by the protagonist and the latter’s body. Taking from Sartre two angles on the realist pact by which readers agree to lend their bodies, feelings, and experiences to the otherwise ‘languishing signs’ of the text, it goes on to examine two sets of first-person fictions published between 1902 and 1956 — first, four modernist texts in which banal objects defy and then gratify the protagonist, who ends up ready and almost able to write; and, second, three novels in which the body of the protagonist is indeterminate in its sex, gender, or sexuality. In each of these cases, how do we as readers make texts work for us as ‘an adventure of the body’