Intimations of Immortality: The Ethics and Justice of Life Extending Therapies

We are all programmed to age and die, but maybe it doesn't have to be that way. If cells weren't programmed to age, if the telomeres, which govern the number of times a cell may divide, didn't shorten with each division, if our bodies could repair damage due to disease and aging from within, we would certainly live much longer and healthier lives. From all over the world, research is being reported, which, if it comes to fruition, would not only constitute major contributions to the treatment of disease but could in principle lead to the indefinite extension of life, to the extent perhaps that we would begin to think of people who had received such life- extending treatment as immortals

Future of Jets, Heavy Flavor, and EM Probes at RHIC and RHIC II

Exciting results from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have been presented at this Workshop. However, fundamental questions remain to be addressed in the future regarding whether the system is deconfined, chiral symmetry is restored, a color glass condensate exists in the initial state, and how the system evolves through eventual hadronization. Jets, heavy flavors and electromagnetic probes are sensitive to the initial high density stage of RHIC collisions, and should provide new insight. Significant additional capabilities will be added with a luminosity upgrade of RHIC (to RHIC II), upgrades of present detectors and a possible, new comprehensive detector at RHIC II.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, Proceedings of the 21st Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Breckenridge, Colorado, February 5--12, 200

Economic causes and consequences of migrations within the context of under-development in West Africa

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 6INTRODUCTION: In recent discussions of development and inequality in Africa, at least three positions can be identified concerning relationships between rural-urban migration and inequality. The most simplistic and journalistic view is that migrants come to the cities only to find unemployment and miserable living conditions. The story, as usually depicted, identifies the problem as misguided persistence in migrating explanations based on the inappropriateness of educational curricula, lures of brights lights, and misinformation. Despite little evidence to support this view, many African politicians have identified persistent migration as the cause of urban poverty and have attempted to stop the flow of migrants through exhortation, administrative controls, and coercion. Actions seem to have been based on the notion that the problems of urban poverty will disappear if only the poor... [TRUNCATED

EPIC Results from ALICE

An overview is presented of the recent heavy ion results from the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. These new results are placed in perspective with those from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider experiments.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, EPIC@LHC - International Workshop on Early Physics with Heavy Ion Collisions at the LHC; Published by American Institute of Physics (AIP) in the Conference Proceedings Series (2011

The Botswana National Migration Study: a conceptual framework

African Studies Center Working Paper No. 4