International Affairs and the Public Sphere

Most social scientists would like to believe that their profession contributes to solving pressing global problems. There is today no shortage of global problems that social scientists should study in depth: ethnic and religious conflict within and between states, the challenge of economic development, terrorism, the management of a fragile world economy, climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, the origins and impact of great power rivalries, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, just to mention a few. In this complex and contentious world, one might think that academic expertise about global affairs would be a highly valued commodity. One might also expect scholars of international relations to play a prominent role in public debates about foreign policy, along with government officials, business interests, representatives of special interest groups, and other concerned citizens. Yet the precise role that academic scholars of international affairs should play is not easy to specify. Indeed, there appear to be two conflicting ways of thinking about this matter. On the one hand, there is a widespread sense that academic research on global affairs is of declining practical value, either as a guide to policymakers or as part of broader public discourse about world affairs. On the other hand, closer engagement with the policy world and more explicit efforts at public outreach are not without their own pitfalls. Scholars who enter government service or participate in policy debates may believe that they are "speaking truth to power," but they run the risk of being corrupted or co-opted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the same individuals and institutions that they initially hoped to sway. The remainder of this essay explores these themes in greater detail.

A deep learning approach to diabetic blood glucose prediction

We consider the question of 30-minute prediction of blood glucose levels measured by continuous glucose monitoring devices, using clinical data. While most studies of this nature deal with one patient at a time, we take a certain percentage of patients in the data set as training data, and test on the remainder of the patients; i.e., the machine need not re-calibrate on the new patients in the data set. We demonstrate how deep learning can outperform shallow networks in this example. One novelty is to demonstrate how a parsimonious deep representation can be constructed using domain knowledge

A near-infrared study of the star forming region RCW 34

We report the results of a near-infrared imaging study of a $7.8 \times 7.8$ arcmin$^2$ region centered on the 6.7 GHz methanol maser associated with the RCW 34 star forming region using the 1.4m IRSF telescope at Sutherland. A total of 1283 objects were detected simultaneously in J, H, and K for an exposure time of 10800 seconds. The J-H, H-K two-colour diagram revealed a strong concentration of more than 700 objects with colours similar to what is expected of reddened classical T Tauri stars. The distribution of the objects on the K {\it vs} J-K colour-magnitude diagram is also suggestive that a significant fraction of the 1283 objects is lower mass pre-main sequence stars. We also present the luminosity function for the subset of about 700 pre-main sequence stars and show that it suggests ongoing star formation activity for about $10^7$ years. An examination of the spatial distribution of the pre-main sequence stars shows that the fainter (older) part of the population is more dispersed over the observed region and the brighter (younger) subset is more concentrated around the position of the O8.5V star. This suggests that the physical effects of the O8.5V star and the two early B-type stars on the remainder of the cloud out of which they formed, could have played a role in the onset of the more recent episode of star formation in RCW 34.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journa

Die immunologie van HIV

Some characteristics of HIV, a retrovirus which is the causative agent of AIDS, and the immune system, are discussed in this paper to help one understand the mechanism and development of this devastating viral infection. The conclusion of this paper is that a suitable vaccine or drug, if and whenever it becomes available, is not the answer to this fatal disease. The only solution is to be found in educating the youth to implement Scriptural values in their life styles