Sceloporus orcutti

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

John Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury: Four short talks

Four talks on Keynes in relation to the Bloomsbury Group: I. Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury (Craufurd Goodwin); II. Keynes as Policy Advisor (E. Roy Weintraub); III. Keynes and Economics (Kevin D. Hoover); IV. Keynes and Hayek (Bruce Caldwell). The talks were delivered as part of roundtable discussion on John Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury, the inaugural event of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University, and were held in conjunction with Vision and Design: A Year of Bloomsbury, a campus-wide interdisciplinary program surrounding an exhibition of Bloomsbury art at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art

Characteristics of EGRET Blazars in the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS)

We examine the radio properties of EGRET-detected blazars observed as part of the VLBA Imaging and Polarimetry Survey (VIPS). VIPS has a flux limit roughly an order of magnitude below the MOJAVE survey and most other samples that have been used to study the properties of EGRET blazars. At lower flux levels, radio flux density does not directly correlate with gamma-ray flux density. We do find that the EGRET-detected blazars tend to have higher brightness temperatures, greater core fractions, and possibly larger than average jet opening angles. A weak correlation is also found with jet length and with polarization. All of the well-established trends can be explained by systematically larger Doppler factors in the gamma-ray loud blazars, consistent with the measurements of higher apparent velocities found in monitoring programs carried out at radio frequencies above 10 GHz.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

Conditional Sampling for Max-Stable Processes with a Mixed Moving Maxima Representation

This paper deals with the question of conditional sampling and prediction for the class of stationary max-stable processes which allow for a mixed moving maxima representation. We develop an exact procedure for conditional sampling using the Poisson point process structure of such processes. For explicit calculations we restrict ourselves to the one-dimensional case and use a finite number of shape functions satisfying some regularity conditions. For more general shape functions approximation techniques are presented. Our algorithm is applied to the Smith process and the Brown-Resnick process. Finally, we compare our computational results to other approaches. Here, the algorithm for Gaussian processes with transformed marginals turns out to be surprisingly competitive.Comment: 35 pages; version accepted for publication in Extremes. The final publication is available at http://link.springer.co

Breast cancer management and outcome according to surgeon's affiliation: a population-based comparison adjusted for patient's selection bias

Background Studies have reported that breast cancer (BC) units could increase the quality of care but none has evaluated the efficacy of alternative options such as private BC networks, which is our study objective. Patients and methods We included all 1404 BC patients operated in the public unit or the private network and recorded at the Geneva Cancer Registry between 2000 and 2005. We compared quality indicators of care between the public BC unit and the private BC network by logistic regression and evaluated the effect of surgeon's affiliation on BC-specific mortality by the Cox model adjusting for the propensity score. Results Both the groups had high care quality scores. For invasive cancer, histological assessment before surgery and axillary lymph node dissection when indicated were less frequent in the public sector (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 0.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.3-0.7, and OR: 0.4, 95% CI 0.2-0.8, respectively), while radiation therapy after breast-conserving surgery was more frequent (OR: 2.5, 95% CI 1.4-4.8). Surgeon affiliation had no substantial effect on BC-specific mortality (adjusted hazard ratio (HR): 0.8, 95% CI 0.5-1.4). Conclusions This study suggests that private BC networks could be an alternative to public BC units with both structures presenting high quality indicators of BC care and similar BC-specific mortalit

Near-Infrared Photometry and Radio Continuum Study of the Massive Star Forming Regions IRAS 21413+5442 and IRAS 21407+5441

IRAS 21413+5442 and IRAS 21407+5441 are two massive star forming regions of high luminosity, likely associated with each other. Near-infrared photometry on these two IRAS sources was performed at UKIRT using the UFTI under excellent seeing conditions yielding an angular resolution of $\sim$ 0.5 arcsec. Our results reveal details of stellar content to a completeness limit (90%) of J = 18.5, H = 18.0, and K = 17.5 mag in the two regions. In IRAS 21413+5442, we identify a late O type star, having large (H-K) color, to be near the centre of the CO jets observed by earlier authors. The UKIRT images reveal in IRAS 21407+5441, a faint but clear compact HII region around a central high - intermediate mass star cluster. We have detected a number of sources with large (H-K) color which are not detected in J band. We also present the GMRT radio continuum map at 1.28 GHz covering the entire region surrounding the two star forming clouds. The radio continuum fluxes are used to estimate the properties of HII regions which seem to support our near-IR photometric results. Based on our radio continuum map and the archival MSX 8.2 $\mu$m image, we show that the two IRAS sources likely belong to the same parent molecular cloud and conjecture that a high mass star of large IR colors, present in between the two sources, might have triggered star formation in this region. However one can not rule out the alternative possibility that Star A could be a nearby foreground star.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

On the non-abelian Brumer-Stark conjecture and the equivariant Iwasawa main conjecture

We show that for an odd prime p, the p-primary parts of refinements of the (imprimitive) non-abelian Brumer and Brumer-Stark conjectures are implied by the equivariant Iwasawa main conjecture (EIMC) for totally real fields. Crucially, this result does not depend on the vanishing of the relevant Iwasawa mu-invariant. In combination with the authors' previous work on the EIMC, this leads to unconditional proofs of the non-abelian Brumer and Brumer-Stark conjectures in many new cases.Comment: 33 pages; to appear in Mathematische Zeitschrift; v3 many minor updates including new title; v2 some cohomological arguments simplified; v1 is a revised version of the second half of arXiv:1408.4934v

Voluntary Exercise Reduces Alzheimer’s-like Pathology After Inflammation in Mice

Current global statistics estimate that 44.4 million people are afflicted with dementia, and that 50%-75% of these patients suffer from Alzheimer’s disease (AD; Prince et al. 2013). AD, a progressive disorder categorized by neuronal and behavioral deterioration, is the 6th leading cause of death in America (Alz facts and figure 2012). One hallmark pathology of AD is the presence of amyloid-beta (Aβ) in the brain, which can limit cell-to-cell communication, leading to cognitive deficits, and neuronal cell death. Although the exact origins of this disease still remain unknown, one possible catalyst of AD pathology is inflammation. Our lab has previously shown that 7 consecutive peripheral injections of a bacterial mimetic led to systemic inflammation, increased levels of Ab in the brain, and cognitive dysfunction (Kahn et al., 2012; Weintraub et al., 2013). Currently there are very few effective treatments that diminish AD symptomology. One documented way to decrease inflammation without the use of pharmaceuticals is through regular physical exercise (Cho et al., 2003; Cotman & Berchtold, 2002; Cotman et al., 2007). The present study tested the hypothesis that voluntary exercise would decrease the level of brain Ab following inflammation. Interestingly, we found that two weeks of voluntary wheel running after inflammation led to a reduction of Ab when compared to sedentary recovery. These results indicate that exercise may be an effective modality to reduce AD-like pathology, and that these effects appear to be facilitated by higher versus lower levels of exercise, as measured by total distance run