A Note on the Integral Formulation of Einstein's Equations Induced on a Braneworld

We revisit the integral formulation (or Green's function approach) of Einstein's equations in the context of braneworlds. The integral formulation has been proposed independently by several authors in the past, based on the assumption that it is possible to give a reinterpretation of the local metric field in curved spacetimes as an integral expression involving sources and boundary conditions. This allows one to separate source-generated and source-free contributions to the metric field. As a consequence, an exact meaning to Mach's Principle can be achieved in the sense that only source-generated (matter fields) contributions to the metric are allowed for; universes which do not obey this condition would be non-Machian. In this paper, we revisit this idea concentrating on a Randall-Sundrum-type model with a non-trivial cosmology on the brane. We argue that the role of the surface term (the source-free contribution) in the braneworld scenario may be quite subtler than in the 4D formulation. This may pose, for instance, an interesting issue to the cosmological constant problem.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in the General Relativity and Gravitation Journa

The genome sequence of the malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae

Anopheles gambiae is the principal vector of malaria, a disease that afflicts more than 500 million people and causes more than 1 million deaths each year. Tenfold shotgun sequence coverage was obtained from the PEST strain of A. gambiae and assembled into scaffolds that span 278 million base pairs. A total of 91% of the genome was organized in 303 scaffolds; the largest scaffold was 23.1 million base pairs. There was substantial genetic variation within this strain, and the apparent existence of two haplotypes of approximately equal frequency ("dual haplotypes") in a substantial fraction of the genome likely reflects the outbred nature of the PEST strain. The sequence produced a conservative inference of more than 400,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms that showed a markedly bimodal density distribution. Analysis of the genome sequence revealed strong evidence for about 14,000 protein-encoding transcripts. Prominent expansions in specific families of proteins likely involved in cell adhesion and immunity were noted. An expressed sequence tag analysis of genes regulated by blood feeding provided insights into the physiological adaptations of a hematophagous insect