Intermittent Presumptive Treatment for Malaria

A better understanding of the pharmacodynamics of intermittent presumptive treatment, says White, will guide more rational policymakin

The Discovery of a Second Luminous Low Mass X-ray Binary in the Globular Cluster M15

We report an observation by the Chandra X-ray Observatory of 4U2127+119, the X-ray source identified with the globular cluster M15. The Chandra observation reveals that 4U2127+119 is in fact two bright sources, separated by 2.7". One source is associated with AC211, the previously identified optical counterpart to 4U2127+119, a low mass X-ray binary (LMXB). The second source, M15-X2, is coincident with a 19th U magnitude blue star that is 3.3" from the cluster core. The Chandra count rate of M15-X2 is 2.5 times higher than that of AC211. Prior to the 0.5" imaging capability of Chandra the presence of two so closely separated bright sources would not have been resolved. The optical counterpart, X-ray luminosity and spectrum of M15-X2 are consistent with it also being an LMXB system. This is the first time that two LMXBs have been seen to be simultaneously active in a globular cluster. The discovery of a second active LMXB in M15 solves a long standing puzzle where the properties of AC211 appear consistent with it being dominated by an extended accretion disk corona, and yet 4U2127+119 also shows luminous X-ray bursts requiring that the neutron star be directly visible. The resolution of 4U2127+119 into two sources suggests that the X-ray bursts did not come from AC211, but rather from M15-X2. We discuss the implications of this discovery for understanding the origin and evolution of LMXBs in GCs as well as X-ray observations of globular clusters in nearby galaxies.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap J Letter

The spread of antimalarial drug resistance: A mathematical model with practical implications for ACT drug policies

Most malaria-endemic countries are implementing a change in antimalarial drug policy to artemisinin combination therapy (ACT). The impact of different drug choices and implementation strategies is uncertain. A comprehensive model was constructed incorporating important epidemiological and biological factors and used to illustrate the spread of resistance in low and high transmission settings. The model predicts robustly that in low transmission settings drug resistance spreads faster than in high transmission settings, and that in low transmission areas ACTs slows the spread of drug resistance to a partner drug, especially at high coverage rates. This effect decreases exponentially with increasing delay in deploying the ACT and decreasing rates of coverage. A major obstacle to achieving the benefits of high coverage is the current cost of the drugs. This argues strongly for a global subsidy to make ACTs generally available and affordable in endemic areas

At War with Zola

This lecture was presented at the 13th Annual Conference of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes by Nicholas White (University of Cambridge). © 2015 Nicholas White

L'ètica de Plató

Introducció al pensament ètic de Plató

Journeys around Maupassant: Destination and Designation in French Naturalist Fiction

Nicholas White’s article leads the reader into the ambiguities of metaphorical spaces. When looking at texts by male authors (including Maupassant, Zola, Huysmans, Flaubert) and their complex notions of travel, White sees travel writing as dramatising ‘the challenge to imaginative writing to take the readers where they have not been’. Challenging an alleged ‘lack of alterity’ in local journeys (Tzvetan Todorov), White considers ‘the very charm of alterity’ in nineteenth century writing. Maupassant’s story En voyage (1882) serves as an example of rising doubts about the ‘feasibility of travel writing in general’. White argues that the matter of writing is more important than the journey itself, both when looking at this text, which suggests that the process of telling is more significant than the story told, and when looking at Bel-Ami, in which male adventures are brought to the reader by a female voice. However, following Todorov, White argues, that ideological self-awareness in literary analysis should aim at avoiding the temptations of metaphoricity which conflate journeys and writings. At the same time, the etymology of the term ‘metaphor’ in which concepts of displacement and reference collapse renders the ‘resistance to the metaphorical potential of travel’ ambiguous. The paper shows how concepts of ‘fictionalised journeys’ or ‘travel writing’ infiltrated each other in the nineteenth century. Zola’s images of Paris in L’Assommoir, for instance, make the very alterity of a geographically and socially segregated city visible. Here journeys beyond the tourist trail confront the travellers with the unfamiliar realm of alangue du peuple and undermine any possibility of a panoramic authority. Realist as well as naturalist narratives which aim to guide through a ‘novelistic universe’ set out to see everything, like contemporary guidebooks; both share, as White argues, an ‘epistemological fantasy of total knowledge’. Decadent aesthetics, in contrast, purveying pleasure through words and their connotations, undercut such referential functions. Thus their evocation of exoticism should not be conflated with the fetishization of maps, found in realist and naturalist accounts, when, for instance, Emma Bovary’s journeys on the map are represented as a ‘delirium of desire’. Here, White argues, it is the ‘tyranny of metaphor’, which cuts the woman off from the ‘realm of male adventure’. White presents Hennique’s L’Accident de Monsieur Hébert(Monsieur Hébert's Accident) as another journey through the mind, in which map reading comes close to madness. Questions about the ‘ways in which language maps’ are raised by Zola’s tale Pot-Bouille (Pot Luck). Reflections on the ‘interplay of private and public scenarios’ conclude the paper. A comparative reading of different scenarios in nineteenth-century carriages follows the gaze of, amongst others, Flaubert, Maupassant and Zola. However, confronted with Maupassant’s ‘reworking’ of a ‘set sex scene’, the reader might wonder how ‘fantasies of knowledge’ can overcome scepticism about referentiality as well as doubts about the feasibility of ‘seducing readers who are not party to the events’. Here the very interplay between forms of ‘bourgeois imagination about the dangers of travel’ and ‘set’ generic conventions of representation, triggers off the question, does Maupassant’s carriage really take us somewhere we have not been before

Recent advances in self-assembled amidinium and guanidinium frameworks

The amidinium and guanidinium groups are strong and potentially directional hydrogen bond donors that have proven useful in anion recognition and solution phase self-assembly, and more recently in the synthesis of supramolecular frameworks. This Frontier article gives a background to the use of these groups in framework synthesis, describes recent advances in the field, and looks to future directions in this area.Australian Research Council for financial support (Discovery Early Career Research Award, DE170100200)

Britain: Using Bonds to Fight Wars and Become World Leaders

The purpose of this (poster and ) paper is to discuss how Britain unknowingly created a disruptive innovation in the form of bonds which ultimately shaped how debt markets function today. With the implementation of the first government bond by Britain, many countries followed suit, and it played a key role in war victories. Without the up-front capital, Britain might not have won the wars they did and in turn become the world leader that they were. The evolution of the bond and debt markets as a whole posed challenges for the world, with the collapse of economies and the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Concerns surrounding debt are that countries as well as individuals can become over-leveraged where they will be unable to pay back their debts when the time arrives. With this in mind, countries and people have learned more about how to balance financing with paying up-front. Through the history explained below it is apparent that we must continue to monitor our debt levels, and while we must use debt to our advantage, we must do so in moderation to avoid catastrophe as seen in the past

Science at the Goddard Space Flight Center

The Sciences and Exploration Directorate of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is the largest Earth and space science research organization in the world. Its scientists advance understanding of the Earth and its life-sustaining environment, the Sun, the solar system, and the wider universe beyond. Researchers in the Sciences and Exploration Directorate work with engineers, computer programmers, technologists, and other team members to develop the cutting-edge technology needed for space-based research. Instruments are also deployed on aircraft, balloons, and Earth's surface. I will give an overview of the current research activities and programs at GSFC including the James Web Space Telescope (JWST), future Earth Observing programs, experiments that are exploring our solar system and studying the interaction of the Sun with the Earth's magnetosphere