Coolidge against the world: Peace, prosperity, and foreign policy in the 1920s

The common narrative of the 1920s is either to largely ignore the nation during this time and the men who presided over it or to simply dismiss the decade as a time of isolationism and Republican failure and the three presidents as corrupt, lazy, silent, or incompetent. The problems of the more typical narratives are most starkly shown in the realm of foreign policy. A more thorough examination of the role of President Calvin Coolidge and the American nation in that area reveals something very different. Because, if we approach those years as a “historical way station on the road to the New Deal” and Coolidge’s Presidency as years of inaction then we will miss much of the reality of not only Coolidge’s thoughts and actions while President, but also this nation’s deep and complex level of global interaction that occurred during those interwar years. The best way to challenge the normal narrative is granting even greater voice to President Calvin Coolidge himself. He wrote and delivered hundreds of speeches during his political career, presidential or otherwise. Through his presidential speeches we see not inaction and inactivity, but thoughtful and prudent action and an expectation of other men in his administration to do their jobs. Instead of a United States cut off from the world, hoarding her wealth, ignoring pleas for help, and sitting alone in isolation, we are provided glimpses of global and regional cooperation, the expansion of international trade, and the desire to create peace separately from political entanglements like the League of Nations. These visions of President Coolidge and American foreign policy in the 1920s should change the way we think about and teach the period

Highest weights for truncated shifted Yangians and product monomial crystals

Truncated shifted Yangians are a family of algebras which are natural quantizations of slices in the affine Grassmannian. We study the highest weight representations of these algebras. In particular, we conjecture that the possible highest weights for these algebras are described by product monomial crystals, certain natural subcrystals of Nakajima's monomials. We prove this conjecture in type A. We also place our results in the context of symplectic duality and prove a conjecture of Hikita in this situation.Comment: 57 page

Yangians and quantizations of slices in the affine Grassmannian

We study quantizations of transverse slices to Schubert varieties in the affine Grassmannian. The quantization is constructed using quantum groups called shifted Yangians --- these are subalgebras of the Yangian we introduce which generalize the Brundan-Kleshchev shifted Yangian to arbitrary type. Building on ideas of Gerasimov-Kharchev-Lebedev-Oblezin, we prove that a quotient of the shifted Yangian quantizes a scheme supported on the transverse slices, and we formulate a conjectural description of the defining ideal of these slices which implies that the scheme is reduced. This conjecture also implies the conjectural quantization of the Zastava spaces for PGL(n) of Finkelberg-Rybnykov.Comment: 37 pages; v2, slightly strengthened Theorem 2.

Lie algebra actions on module categories for truncated shifted Yangians

We develop a theory of parabolic induction and restriction functors relating modules over Coulomb branch algebras, in the sense of Braverman-Finkelberg-Nakajima. Our functors generalize Bezrukavnikov-Etingof's induction and restriction functors for Cherednik algebras, but their definition uses different tools. After this general definition, we focus on quiver gauge theories attached to a quiver $\Gamma$. The induction and restriction functors allow us to define a categorical action of the corresponding symmetric Kac-Moody algebra $\mathfrak{g}_{\Gamma}$ on category $\mathcal O$ for these Coulomb branch algebras. When $\Gamma$ is of Dynkin type, the Coulomb branch algebras are truncated shifted Yangians and quantize generalized affine Grassmannian slices. Thus, we regard our action as a categorification of the geometric Satake correspondence. To establish this categorical action, we define a new class of "flavoured" KLRW algebras, which are similar to the diagrammatic algebras originally constructed by the second author for the purpose of tensor product categorification. We prove an equivalence between the category of Gelfand-Tsetlin modules over a Coulomb branch algebra and the modules over a flavoured KLRW algebra. This equivalence relates the categorical action by induction and restriction functors to the usual categorical action on modules over a KLRW algebra.Comment: 66 pages, version 2: many corrections, improved treatment of GK dimension, 71 page

The Data Life Aquatic

   This paper assesses data consumers’ perspectives on the interoperable and re-usable aspects of the FAIR Data Principles. Taking a domain-specific informatics approach, ten oceanographers were asked to think of a recent search for data and describe their process of discovery, evaluation, and use. The interview schedule, derived from the FAIR Data Principles, included questions about the interoperability and re-usability of data. Through this critical incident technique, findings on data interoperability and re-usability give data curators valuable insights into how real-world users access, evaluate, and use data. Results from this study show that oceanographers utilize tools that make re-use simple, with interoperability seamless within the systems used. The processes employed by oceanographers present a good baseline for other domains adopting the FAIR Data Principles.&nbsp

Spatial and temporal stability of weed patches in cereal fields under direct drilling and harrow tillage

The adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) techniques by farmers is changing the dynamics of weed communities in cereal fields and so potentially their spatial distribution. These changes can challenge the use of site-specific weed control, which is based on the accurate location of weed patches for spraying. We studied the effect of two types of CA (direct drilling and harrow-tilled to 20 cm) on weed patches in a three-year survey in four direct-drilled and three harrow-tilled commercial fields in Catalonia (North-eastern Spain). The area of the ground covered by weeds (hereafter called “weed cover”) was estimated at 96 to 122 points measured in each year in each field, in 50 cm × 50 cm quadrats placed in a 10 m × 10 m grid in spring. Bromus diandrus, Lolium rigidum, and Papaver rhoeas were the main weed species. The weed cover and degree of aggregation for all species varied both between and within fields, regardless of the kind of tillage. Under both forms of soil management all three were aggregated in elongated patterns in the direction of traffic. Bromus was generally more aggregated than Lolium, and both were more aggregated than Papaver. Patches were stable over time for only two harrow-tilled fields with Lolium and one direct-drilled field with Bromus, but not in the other fields. Spatial stability of the weeds was more pronounced in the direction of traffic. Herbicide applications, crop rotation, and traffic seem to affect weed populations strongly within fields, regardless of the soil management. We conclude that site-specific herbicides can be applied to control these species because they are aggregated, although the patches would have to be identified afresh in each season.This research was funded by the Spanish National Program (project: AGL2010-22084-C02-0). A.E.M. was funded by the Institute Strategic Programme (ISP) grants, “Soils to Nutrition” (S2N) grant number BBS/E/C/000I0330, and the joint Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) ISP grant “Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems” (ASSIST) grant number BBS/E/C/000I0100, using facilities funded by the BBSRC

Detection and quantitation of HPV in genital and oral tissues and fluids by real time PCR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) remain a serious world health problem due to their association with anogenital/oral cancers and warts. While over 100 HPV types have been identified, a subset is associated with malignancy. HPV16 and 18 are the most prevalent oncogenic types, while HPV6 and 11 are most commonly responsible for anogenital warts. While other quantitative PCR (qPCR) assays detect oncogenic HPV, there is no single tube assay distinguishing the most frequent oncogenic types and the most common types found in warts.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A Sybr Green-based qPCR assay was developed utilizing degenerate primers to the highly conserved HPV E1 theoretically detecting any HPV type. A single tube multiplex qPCR assay was also developed using type-specific primer pairs and TaqMan probes that allowed for detection and quantitation of HPV6,11,16,18. Each HPV type was detected over a range from 2 × 10¹to 2 × 10⁶copies/reaction providing a reliable method of quantitating type-specific HPV in 140 anogenital/cutaneous/oral benign and malignant specimens. 35 oncogenic and low risk alpha genus HPV types were detected. Concordance was detected in previously typed specimens. Comparisons to the gold standard detected an overall sensitivity of 89% (95% CI: 77% - 96%) and specificity of 90% (95%CI: 52% - 98%).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>There was good agreement between the ability of the qPCR assays described here to identify HPV types in malignancies previously typed using standard methods. These novel qPCR assays will allow rapid detection and quantitation of HPVs to assess their role in viral pathogenesis.</p