'Oot o' the World and into the Langholm' : A critical introduction to Hugh MacDiarmid's 'The Muckle Toon' with text, commentary and glossary

The present study grew out of a conviction that the poems written for the Muckle Toon volume of Clann Albann - Hugh MacDiarmid’s abandoned opus of the early nineteen thirties - are too intricately interrelated to be understood in isolation from each other. My aims were to arrange the poems of The Muckle Toon in a manner suggestive of MacDiarmid's unity of purpose in planning and composing that unfinished work, and to relate their themes and techniques both to his earlier and later development and to modern poetic practice generally. I have hoped thereby to clarify the shape of his career, the most widely accepted view of which rests upon an inadequate appreciation of the poetry of the early thirties. Volume One comprises a critical introduction to The Muckle Toon. The biographical opening chapter centres on the poet’s youth in ’the Muckle Toon o' the Langholm’, and on the background to his imaginative concern with the place in maturity. Chapter Two, the most wide-ranging in my study, discusses questions relating to language and meaning in MacDiarmid's work which must be explored if the position of The Muckle Toon in his career is to be understood. Chapter Three examines the poetry with regard to structure, symbol, prosody, and language, while Chapter Four is concerned with the subject-matter of The Muckle Toon. This last chapter also argues for the continuity of MacDiarmid's development by demonstrating that the early Shetland poetry embodies a critical response to, and a partial fulfilment of, the Clann Albann scheme. Volume Two includes the text of The Muckle Toon, supplemented by related items drawn from the range of MacDiarmid's output in poetry ana prose, a critical and explanatory Commentary, and a Glossary. Reasons for including the 'related items’ are given in A Note on the Text

Optimization of the leak conductance in the squid giant axon

We report on a theoretical study showing that the leak conductance density, \GL, in the squid giant axon appears to be optimal for the action potential firing frequency. More precisely, the standard assumption that the leak current is composed of chloride ions leads to the result that the experimental value for \GL is very close to the optimal value in the Hodgkin-Huxley model which minimizes the absolute refractory period of the action potential, thereby maximizing the maximum firing frequency under stimulation by sharp, brief input current spikes to one end of the axon. The measured value of \GL also appears to be close to optimal for the frequency of repetitive firing caused by a constant current input to one end of the axon, especially when temperature variations are taken into account. If, by contrast, the leak current is assumed to be composed of separate voltage-independent sodium and potassium currents, then these optimizations are not observed.Comment: 9 pages; 9 figures; accepted for publication in Physical Review

Enhanced signal of astrophysical tau neutrinos propagating through Earth

Earth absorbs \nue and \numu of energies above about 100 TeV. As is well-known, although \nutau will also disappear through charged-current interactions, the \nutau flux will be regenerated by prompt tau decays. We show that this process also produces relatively large fluxes of secondary \nube and \nubmu, greatly enhancing the detectability of the initial \nutau. This is particularly important because at these energies \nutau is a significant fraction of the expected astrophysical neutrino flux, and only a tiny portion of the atmospheric neutrino flux.Comment: Four pages, two inline figure

Reporting guideline and clinical trial registration adherence in nephrology journals: Results of a preliminary systematic review

Background: Clinicians rely on relevant, high-quality research to inform their decisions regarding patient care. This research is held to a higher standard when journals implement reporting guidelines and clinical trial registration into article submission requirements. Due to the small number of nephrology journals — and the growing yet still limited research in the field — it is of the utmost importance for these journals to apply stringent guidelines to ensure the publication of limited bias and high quality research. However, the extent of reporting guideline adoption and clinical trial registration policies among nephrology journals is unknown. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the recommendation or requirement of reporting guidelines and clinical trial registration in nephrology journals.Methods: The 2021 Scopus CiteScore Tool was used to identify 62 journals in the “Nephrology” subcategory. In a masked, duplicate fashion, we examined the “Instructions for Authors'' webpage of each included journal to determine whether the following reporting guidelines — outlined by the Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of health Research (EQUATOR) Network — were recommended or required: PRISMA, CONSORT, PRISMA-P, STARD, TRIPOD, MOOSE, ARRIVE, CHEERS, QUOROM, STROBE, CARE, SRQR, SPIRIT, and COREQ. Clinical trial registration statements were investigated in a similar fashion. Journal statements were documented as “Not mentioned”, “Recommended”, “Required”, or “Does Not Require”. Stata 17.0 was used to analyze the data. To minimize bias, all journals were contacted to confirm their accepted article types.Results: The most frequently mentioned guidelines were CONSORT, STROBE, and PRISMA. Of the 62 nephrology journals investigated, CONSORT was required by 11 (18%) and recommended by 34 (55%) journals. Furthermore, STROBE was required by 7 (11%) and recommended by 27 (44%) journals, and PRISMA was required by 8 (13%) and recommended by 18 (29%) journals. The least frequently mentioned guidelines were QUOROM (0/62, 0%), PRISMA-P (24/60, 40%), and MOOSE (26/62, 42%). Finally, 32 (52%) of journals required and 19 (31%) of journals recommended clinical trial registration.Discussion: These findings illuminate the variable adoption of reporting guidelines and inconsistent clinical trial registration policies across nephrology journals. We recommend that journal editors in this field require more author adherence to guidelines to improve the quality of research submitted to and published by their journals

Current cosmological bounds on neutrino masses and relativistic relics

We combine the most recent observations of large-scale structure (2dF and SDSS galaxy surveys) and cosmic microwave anisotropies (WMAP and ACBAR) to put constraints on flat cosmological models where the number of massive neutrinos and of massless relativistic relics are both left arbitrary. We discuss the impact of each dataset and of various priors on our bounds. For the standard case of three thermalized neutrinos, we find an upper bound on the total neutrino mass sum m_nu < 1.0 (resp. 0.6) eV (at 2sigma), using only CMB and LSS data (resp. including priors from supernovae data and the HST Key Project), a bound that is quite insensitive to the splitting of the total mass between the three species. When the total number of neutrinos or relativistic relics N_eff is left free, the upper bound on sum m_nu (at 2sigma, including all priors) ranges from 1.0 to 1.5 eV depending on the mass splitting. We provide an explanation of the parameter degeneracy that allows larger values of the masses when N_eff increases. Finally, we show that the limit on the total neutrino mass is not significantly modified in the presence of primordial gravitational waves, because current data provide a clear distinction between the corresponding effects.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure