Personalizing the experience : the emergence of yoga therapy

textYoga has recently been a subject of some media attention, both positive and negative. Some people advocate it for its mental and physical benefits, but others are also concerned that it might cause or lead to injury, particularly in the Western world where it's commonly seen primarily as a form of exercise. Yoga therapy emerged in part because of such concerns. Though people have used yoga to aid in health and wellness for as long as the practice has existed, the idea of yoga therapy being its own specialized field is relatively new. Yoga therapists hope to personalize the experience of yoga by working with people with various mental and physical conditions and giving them customized programs. Using quotes from professionals and people with personal yoga experience, this article explores the roots of yoga therapy, yoga itself: its praises, criticisms, science and a small sample of its plentiful history. It also addresses the definition of yoga therapy, specialties in the field, its professional organization and possibilities for the future. The question of whether yoga therapy can gain credibility and become a reliable healthcare resource has not yet been answered, though there are those who say their own personal experiences are enough to convince them one way or the other. In any case, yoga and all its various forms of practice likely won't disappear anytime soon.Journalis

The Radio-to-Submillimeter Flux Density Ratio of Galaxies as a Measure of Redshift

We re-examine the technique of determining the redshifts of galaxies from the ratio of the submillimeter-to-radio continuum flux densities based on a recently published catalog of 850~$\mu$m sources. We derived the expected variation of this ratio as a function of redshift incorporating the expected average luminosity and the spectral energy distribution (SED) of dust emission and the radio continuum. We find that the existing data for most of the high redshift (z \gtsim 1) sources correspond to our new calculation. Amongst the well-identified sources, there is none with an index significantly higher than predicted. Sources which have an index lower than predicted are either within the error zone or much lower, the latter presumably having AGN-dominated radio-continuum emission. We find the median redshift to be $\sim 2$, which is consistent with that deduced by previous work ($\sim 3$) within the error. We also discuss the various systematic effects that can affect the accuracy of the redshift estimate. We examine other methods of redshift estimation, like photometric ratio in the submillimeter and locating the peak of the SED in the rest system of the objects. We conclude that while the various methods are helpful in identifying high-redshift objects and making a crude estimate of the redshift, they are not, at present, accurate enough for a detailed study of redshift distribution of the submillimeter galaxies.Comment: 6 pages LaTeX, PASJ in pres

Structure of Stationary Photodissociation Fronts

The structure of stationary photodissociation fronts is revisited. H_2 self- shielding is discussed, including the effects of line overlap. We find that line overlap is important for N(H_2) > 10^{20} cm^{-2}. We compute multiline UV pumping models, and compare these with simple analytic approximations for the effects of self-shielding. The overall fluorescent efficiency of the photodissociation front is obtained for different ratios of chi/n_H (where chi characterizes the intensity of the incident UV) and different dust extinction laws. The dust optical depth tau_{pdr} to the point where 50% of the H is molecular is found to be a simple function of a dimensionless quantity phi_0 depending on chi/n_H, the rate coefficient for H_2 formation on grains, and the UV dust opacity. The fluorescent efficiency of the PDR also depends primarily on phi_0 for chi<3000 and n_H<10^4 cm^{-3}; for stronger radiation fields and higher densities radiative and collisional depopulation of vibrationally-excited levels interferes with the radiative cascade. The emission spectrum from the PDR is essentially independent of the color temperature $T_{color}$ of the incident UV for T_{color}>10^4K, but shows some sensitivity to the v-J distribution of newly-formed H_2. The 1-0S(1)/2-1S(1) and 2-1S(1)/6-4Q(1) intensity ratios, the ortho/para ratio, and the rotational temperature in the $v$=1 and $v$=2 levels are computed as functions of the temperature and density, for different values of chi and n_H. We apply our models to the reflection nebula NGC 2023. We are best able to reproduce the observations with models having chi=5000, n_H=10^5 cm^{-3}.Comment: 50 pages, 24 eps figures, uses aaspp4.sty . To appear in Ap.

Whitham Deformations of Seiberg-Witten Curves for Classical Gauge Groups

Gorsky et al. presented an explicit construction of Whitham deformations of the Seiberg-Witten curve for the $SU(N+1)$ \calN = 2 SUSY Yang-Mills theory. We extend their result to all classical gauge groups and some other cases such as the spectral curve of the $A^{(2)}_{2N}$ affine Toda Toda system. Our construction, too, uses fractional powers of the superpotential $W(x)$ that characterizes the curve. We also consider the $u$-plane integral of topologically twisted theories on four-dimensional manifolds $X$ with $b_2^{+}(X) = 1$ in the language of these explicitly constructed Whitham deformations and an integrable hierarchy of the KdV type hidden behind.Comment: latex, 39pp, no figure; some more comments and references on integrable systems are added, and many typos are correcte