Generalized classes of continuous symmetries in two-mode Dicke models

K.E.B. and J.K. acknowledge support from EPSRC program “TOPNES” (EP/I031014/1).As recently realized experimentally [Léonard et al., Nature 543 , 87 (2017)], one can engineer models with continuous symmetries by coupling two cavity modes to trapped atoms, via a Raman pumping geometry. Considering specifically cases where internal states of the atoms couple to the cavity, we show an extended range of parameters for which continuous symmetry breaking can occur, and we classify the distinct steady states and time-dependent states that arise for different points in this extended parameter regime.PostprintPeer reviewe

Prenatal exposure to insecticides and weight trajectories among South African children in the VHEMBE birth cohort

DATA AVAILABLITY STATEMENT : Access to data and computing may be discussed by contacting the corresponding author.BACKGROUND : Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) or pyrethroid insecticides are sprayed inside dwellings for malaria vector control, resulting in high exposure to millions of people, including pregnant women. These chemicals disrupt endocrine function and may affect child growth. To our knowledge, few studies have investigated the potential impact of prenatal exposure to DDT or pyrethroids on growth trajectories. METHODS : We investigated associations between gestational insecticide exposure and child growth trajectories in the Venda Health Examination of Mothers, Babies and their Environment, a birth cohort of 751 children born between 2012 and 2013 in South Africa. Based on child weight measured at follow-up and abstracted from medical records, we modeled weight trajectories from birth to 5 years using SuperImposition, Translation and Rotation, which estimated two child-specific parameters: size (average weight) and tempo (age at peak weight velocity). We estimated associations between peripartum maternal concentrations of serum DDT, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene, or urinary pyrethroid metabolites and SuperImposition, Translation and Rotation parameters using marginal structural models. RESULTS : We observed that a 10-fold increase in maternal concentrations of the pyrethroid metabolite trans-3-(2,2,-dicholorvinyl)-2,2-dimethyl-cyclopropane carboxylic acid was associated with a 21g (95% confidence interval = −40, −1.6) smaller size among boys but found no association among girls (Pinteraction = 0.07). Estimates suggested that pyrethroids may be associated with earlier tempo but were imprecise. We observed no association with serum DDT or dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene. CONCLUSIONS : Inverse associations between pyrethroids and weight trajectory parameters among boys are consistent with hypothesized disruption of androgen pathways and with our previous research in this population, and support the endocrine-disrupting potential of pyrethroids in humans.The VHEMBE study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; a Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Health and Epidemiology; a Doctoral Award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Santé, with prior fund- ing from McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine.hj2023School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH)UP Centre for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP CSMC

Promotion of access to essential medicines for Non-Communicable Diseases: Practical implications of the UN Political Declaration

Access to medicines and vaccines to prevent and treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is unacceptably low worldwide. In the 2011 UN political declaration on the prevention and control of NCDs, heads of government made several commitments related to access to essential medicines, technologies, and vaccines for such diseases. 30 years of experience with policies for essential medicines and 10 years of scaling up of HIV treatment have provided the knowledge needed to address barriers to long-term effective treatment and prevention of NCDs. More medicines can be acquired within existing budgets with efficient selection, procurement, and use of generic medicines. Furthermore, low-income and middle-income countries need to increase mobilisation of domestic resources to cater for the many patients with NCDs who do not have access to treatment. Existing initiatives for HIV treatment offer useful lessons that can enhance access to pharmaceutical management of NCDs and improve adherence to long-term treatment of chronic illness; policy makers should also address unacceptable inequities in access to controlled opioid analgesics. In addition to off-patent medicines, governments can promote access to new and future on-patent medicinal products through coherent and equitable health and trade policies, particularly those for intellectual property. Frequent conflicts of interest need to be identified and managed, and indicators and targets for access to NCD medicines should be used to monitor progress. Only with these approaches can a difference be made to the lives of hundreds of millions of current and future patients with NCDs

One file to share them all: Using the COMBINE Archive and the OMEX format to share all information about a modeling project

Background: With the ever increasing use of computational models in the biosciences, the need to share models and reproduce the results of published studies efficiently and easily is becoming more important. To this end, various standards have been proposed that can be used to describe models, simulations, data or other essential information in a consistent fashion. These constitute various separate components required to reproduce a given published scientific result. Results: We describe the Open Modeling EXchange format (OMEX). Together with the use of other standard formats from the Computational Modeling in Biology Network (COMBINE), OMEX is the basis of the COMBINE Archive, a single file that supports the exchange of all the information necessary for a modeling and simulation experiment in biology. An OMEX file is a ZIP container that includes a manifest file, listing the content of the archive, an optional metadata file adding information about the archive and its content, and the files describing the model. The content of a COMBINE Archive consists of files encoded in COMBINE standards whenever possible, but may include additional files defined by an Internet Media Type. Several tools that support the COMBINE Archive are available, either as independent libraries or embedded in modeling software. Conclusions: The COMBINE Archive facilitates the reproduction of modeling and simulation experiments in biology by embedding all the relevant information in one file. Having all the information stored and exchanged at once also helps in building activity logs and audit trails. We anticipate that the COMBINE Archive will become a significant help for modellers, as the domain moves to larger, more complex experiments such as multi-scale models of organs, digital organisms, and bioengineering.Comment: 3 figures, 1 tabl

The Joint IOC (of UNESCO) and WMO collaborative effort for met-ocean services

The Joint Committee for Oceanography and Marine Meteorology (JCOMM), a joint technical commission of IOC of UNESCO and WMO, has devised a coordination mechanism for the fit-for-purpose delivery of an end-to-end system, from ocean observations to met-ocean operational services. This paper offers a complete overview of the activities carried out by JCOMM and the status of the achievements up to 2017. The JCOMM stakeholders are the WMO Members and the IOC Member States, their research and operational Institutions, which mandated JCOMM to devise an international strategy to advance toward the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The three activity areas, namely the Observation Program Area-OPA, the Data Management Program Area-DMPA and the Services and Forecasting Services Program Area-SFSPA have established several expert teams to contribute to the international coordination. OPA is organized in observing networks connected with different observing technologies, DMPA organizes the overall near-real time and delayed mode data assembly and delivery methodology and architecture and the SFSPA coordinates the met-ocean services stemming out of observations and data management. The future developments should strengthen the coordination in the three program areas considering the inclusion of new and emergent observing technologies, the interoperability of met-ocean data assembly centers and the establishment of efficient research to operations protocols, as well as better fit-for-purpose customized services for the public and private sectors

Igbo-English intrasentential codeswitching and the Matrix Language Frame model

This paper uses data from Igbo-English intrasentential codeswitching involving mixed nominal expressions to test the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model. The MLF model is one of the most highly influential frameworks used in the study of grammatical aspects of codeswitching. Three principles associated with it, the Matrix Language Principle, the Asymmetry Principle and the Uniform Structure Principle, were tested on data collected from informal conversations by educated adult Igbo-English bilinguals resident in Port Harcourt. The results of the analyses suggest general support for the three principles and for identifying Igbo-English as a “classic” case of codeswitching

Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands

Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands

Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands

Diversity in African languages: Selected papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands