Biology and health inequality.

Intriguing parallels between civil servant and nonhuman primate hierarchies suggest that highly stratified societies foster health inequalities. Determining how social differences translate into chronic disease remains a challenge, but neuroendocrine pathways appear to play a role

Social inequalities and cardiovascular disease in South Asians

The epidemiological transition provides a temporal framework for thinking about the decline of infectious disease and the rise in cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.1 In Europe, the transition began in the late 19th century with improved sanitation and housing, and controls on food adulteration. Continuing public health measures such as vaccination2 contributed to the steep rise in life expectancy during the 20th century, paralleled by a sharp increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD). In South Asia, the epidemiological transition is taking place against a background of economic globalisation that has greatly increased the size of the urban poor and middle classes, at the same time leaving many millions to continue living on the land at subsistence level. Development is socially and regionally uneven, and so too are the common causes of morbidity and mortality. There is a double burden of disease in the countries of South Asia, characterised by a combination of pandemic infectious disease and high rates of cardiovascular disease. That India’s burden of coronary disease was approaching a similar magnitude to that of the established market economies was demonstrabed as long ago as 1990.

Tensor Product and Permutation Branes on the Torus

We consider B-type D-branes in the Gepner model consisting of two minimal models at k=2. This Gepner model is mirror to a torus theory. We establish the dictionary identifying the B-type D-branes of the Gepner model with A-type Neumann and Dirichlet branes on the torus.Comment: 26 page

Neutrino telescope modelling of Lorentz invariance violation in oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos

One possible feature of quantum gravity may be the violation of Lorentz invariance. In this paper, we consider one particular manifestation of the violation of Lorentz invariance, namely modified dispersion relations for massive neutrinos. We show how such modified dispersion relations may affect atmospheric neutrino oscillations. We then consider how neutrino telescopes, such as ANTARES, may be able to place bounds on the magnitude of this type of Lorentz invariance violation

An independent distance estimate to the AGB star R Sculptoris

For the carbon AGB star R Sculptoris, the uncertain distance significantly affects the interpretation of observations regarding the evolution of the stellar mass loss during and after the most recent thermal pulse. We aim to provide a new, independent measurement of the distance to R Sculptoris, reducing the absolute uncertainty of the distance estimate to this source. R Scl is a semi-regular pulsating star, surrounded by a thin shell of dust and gas created during a thermal pulse approximately 2000 years ago. The stellar light is scattered by the dust particles in the shell at a radius of 19 arcsec. The variation in the stellar light affects the amount of dust-scattered light with the same period and amplitude ratio, but with a phase lag that depends on the absolute size of the shell. We measured this phase lag by observing the star R Scl and the dust-scattered stellar light from the shell at five epochs between June - December 2017. By observing in polarised light, we imaged the shell in the plane of the sky, removing any uncertainty due to geometrical effects. The phase lag gives the absolute size of the shell, and together with the angular size of the shell directly gives the absolute distance to R Sculptoris. We measured a phase lag between the stellar variations and the variation in the shell of 40.0 +/- 4.0 days. The angular size of the shell is measured to be 19.1 arcsec +/- 0.7 arcsec. Combined, this gives an absolute distance to R Sculptoris of 361 +/- 44 pc. We independently determined the absolute distance to R Scl with an uncertainty of 12%. The estimated distance is consistent with previous estimates, but is one of the most accurate distances to the source to date. In the future, using the variations in polarised, dust-scattered stellar light, may offer an independent possibility to measure reliable distances to AGB stars.Comment: accepted by A&A, 8 pages, 8 figure