Stellar Polarimetry: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

On the final day of the Stellar Polarimetry conference, participants split up into three "breakout sessions" to discuss the future of the field in the areas of instrumentation, upcoming opportunities, and community priorities. This contribution compiles the major recommendations arising from each breakout session. We hope that the polarimetric community will find these ideas useful as we consider how to maintain the vitality of polarimetry in the coming years.Comment: 7 pages, published in proceedings of "Stellar Polarimetry: From Birth to Death" (Madison, WI, June 2011

Industrial Policy and Renewable Energy: Trade Conflicts

Governments use industrial policy to promote the development of new industries and the creation and adoption of new technologies. Such policy involves subsidies granted to producers and consumers, usually for the purpose of correcting a market failure. Concerning renewable energies such as wind energy and solar energy, China, the United States, and the European Union provide extensive support to producers and consumers. This support has resulted in trade frictions among these nations. This paper discusses the relationship between industrial policy and trade disputes in renewable energy

What are the indications for evaluating a patient with cough for pertussis?

Pertussis should be considered in infants with apnea or severe coughing illnesses of any duration, and in older children or adults with prolonged cough (eg, longer than 2 weeks), especially if accompanied by inspiratory whoop or household exposure to a prolonged cough illness (strength of recommendation [SOR]: B, based on consecutive cohort studies with poor reference standards). Coughing paroxysms, posttussive vomiting, and absence of fever, while typical of pertussis, are of little help in distinguishing it from other causes of prolonged coughing illnesses (SOR: B, based on consecutive cohort studies with poor reference standards)

Geometric structures on negatively curved groups and their subgroups

In this thesis, we investigate two explicit families of geometric structures that occur on hy- perbolic groups. After recalling some introductory material, we begin by giving an overview of the theory of special cube complexes, with a particular focus on properties of subgroups of hyperbolic special groups. We then describe an explicit algorithm, based on Stallings’ notion of folding for graphs, to construct a local isometry between cube complexes that represents the inclusion of a subgroup H ⊂ G , and show that this terminates if and only if the subgroup is quasiconvex. This provides a potential method by which quasiconvexity for various sub- groups could be verified. In the second part of the thesis, we investigate another family of geometric structures: negatively curved simplicial complexes. We show that groups satisfying a “uniform” C′(1/6) small cancellation condition have such a structure, and then move on to prove a gluing theo- rem (with cyclic edge groups) for these complexes. Using this theorem, we extend the family of groups known to be CAT(−1) to include hyperbolic limit groups, hyperbolic graphs of free groups with cyclic edge groups, and more generally hyperbolic groups whose JSJ components are 2-dimensionally CAT(−1)

Motor unit number estimation, isometric strength, and electromyographic measures in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Pathologic progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) results from motor neuron death, while the clinical expression also reflects the compensatory effects of collateral reinnervation consequent to lower motor neuron loss. In a cross-sectional study of ALS subjects, we made comparisons between motor unit number estimation (MUNE) values and several measures reflecting collateral reinnervation, including isometric strength, compound muscle action potential (CMAP) amplitude, surface motor unit action potential (S-MUAP) amplitude, fiber density (FD), macro-EMG potential amplitude, turns-to-amplitude (T/A) ratio, and amplitude and recruitment pattern of low threshold voluntary motor units in elbow flexor muscles. Before comparisons were made, testretest reproducibility of these measures was assessed in ALS subjects, and is highest for isometric strength, and lower but similar for EMG measures. When the effects of multiple comparisons are considered, borderline significant correlations are found between MUNE values and isometric strength. Neither MUNE values nor isometric strength are significantly correlated with macro-EMG amplitude, FD, T/A ratio, or amplitude and recruitment rate of low threshold voluntary motor units. There are significant correlations of CMAP and S-MUAP with MUNE values, but these are statistical artifacts with no independent interpretation. We conclude that collateral reinnervation prevents isometric strength and EMG measures from accurately reflecting lower motor neuron death in ALS. MUNE measurements are better suited to provide insight into the true natural history of the disease process and may be clinically useful to follow progression and response in drug trials. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50155/1/880161111_ftp.pd

Who does not gain weight? Prevalence and predictors of weight maintenance in young women

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the prevalence and predictors of weight maintenance over time in a large sample of young Australian women. DESIGN: This population study examined baseline and 4 y follow-up data from the cohort of young women participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women\u27s Health. SUBJECTS: A total of 8726 young women aged 18-23 y at baseline. MEASURES: Height, weight and body mass index (BMI); physical activity; time spent sitting; selected eating behaviours (eg dieting, disordered eating, takeaway food consumption); cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption; parity; and sociodemographic characteristics. RESULTS: Only 44% of the women reported their BMI at follow-up to be within 5% of their baseline BMI (maintainers); 41% had gained weight and 15% had lost weight. Weight maintainers were more likely to be in managerial or professional occupations; to have never married; to be currently studying; and not to be mothers. Controlling for sociodemographic factors, weight maintainers were more likely to be in a healthy weight range at baseline, and to report that they spent less time sitting, and consumed less takeaway food, than women who gained weight. CONCLUSIONS: Fewer than half the young women in this community sample maintained their weight over this 4 y period in their early twenties. Findings of widespread weight gain, particularly among those already overweight, suggest that early adulthood, which is a time of significant life changes for many women, may be an important time for implementing strategies to promote maintenance of healthy weight. Strategies which encourage decreased sitting time and less takeaway food consumption may be effective for encouraging weight maintenance at this life stage.<br /

Investigating planet formation in circumstellar disks: CARMA observations of RY Tau and DG Tau

(Abridged) We present CARMA observations of the thermal dust emission from the circumstellar disks around the young stars RYTau and DGTau at wavelengths of 1.3mm and 2.8mm. The angular resolution of the maps is as high as 0.15arcsec, or 20AU at the distance of the Taurus cloud, which is a factor of 2 higher than has been achieved to date at these wavelengths. The unprecedented detail of the resulting disk images enables us to address three important questions related to the formation of planets. (1) What is the radial distribution of the circumstellar dust? (2) Does the dust emission show any indication of gaps that might signify the presence of (proto-)planets? (3) Do the dust properties depend on the orbital radius? We find that modeling the disk surface density in terms of either a classical power law or the similarity solution for viscous disk evolution, reproduces the observations well. The 1.3mm image from RYTau shows two peaks separated by 0.2arcsec with a decline in the dust emission toward the stellar position, which is significant at about 2-4sigma. For both RYTau and DGTau, the dust emission at radii larger than 15 AU displays no significant deviation from an unperturbed viscous disk model. In particular, no radial gaps in the dust distribution are detected. Under reasonable assumptions, we exclude the presence of planets more massive than 5 Jupiter masses orbiting either star at distances between about 10 and 60 AU. The radial variation of the dust opacity slope, beta, was investigated by comparing the 1.3mm and 2.8mm observations. We find mean values of beta of 0.5 and 0.7 for DGTau and RYTau respectively. Variations in beta are smaller than 0.7 between 20 and 70 AU. These results confirm that the circumstellar dust throughout these disks differs significantly from dust in the interstellar medium.Comment: ApJ in press