7,799 research outputs found
The Colombian conflict: a description of a mental health program in the Department of Tolima.
Colombia has been seriously affected by an internal armed conflict for more than 40 years affecting mainly the civilian population, who is forced to displace, suffers kidnapping, extortion, threats and assassinations. Between 2005 and 2008, Médecins Sans Frontières-France provided psychological care and treatment in the region of Tolima, a strategic place in the armed conflict. The mental health program was based on a short-term multi-faceted treatment developed according to the psychological and psychosomatic needs of the population. Here we describe the population attending during 2005-2008, in both urban and rural settings, as well as the psychological treatment provided during this period and its outcomes.We observed differences between the urban and rural settings in the traumatic events reported, the clinical expression of the disorders, the disorders diagnosed, and their severity. Although the duration of the treatment was limited due to security reasons and access difficulties, patient condition at last visit improved in most of the patients. These descriptive results suggest that further studies should be conducted to examine the role of short-term psychotherapy, adapted specifically to the context, can be a useful tool to provide psychological care to population affected by an armed conflict
A short review of "DGP Specteroscopy"
In this paper we provide a short review of the main results developed in
hep-th/0604086. We focus on linearised vacuum perturbations about the
self-accelerating branch of solutions in the DGP model. These are shown to
contain a ghost in the spectrum for any value of the brane tension. We also
comment on hep-th/0607099, where some counter arguments have been presented.Comment: Minor typos correcte
Stealth Acceleration and Modified Gravity
We show how to construct consistent braneworld models which exhibit late time
acceleration. Unlike self-acceleration, which has a de Sitter vacuum state, our
models have the standard Minkowski vacuum and accelerate only in the presence
of matter, which we dub ``stealth-acceleration''. We use an effective action
for the brane which includes an induced gravity term, and allow for an
asymmetric set-up. We study the linear stability of flat brane vacua and find
the regions of parameter space where the set-up is stable. The 4-dimensional
graviton is only quasi-localised in this set-up and as a result gravity is
modified at late times. One of the two regions is strongly coupled and the
scalar mode is eaten up by an extra symmetry that arises in this limit. Having
filtered the well-defined theories we then focus on their cosmology. When the
graviton is quasi-localised we find two main examples of acceleration. In each
case, we provide an illustrative model and compare it to LambdaCDM.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figure
Braneworld holography in Gauss-Bonnet gravity
We investigate holography on an (n-1)-dimensional brane embedded in a
background of AdS black holes, in n-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We
demonstrate that for a critical brane near the AdS boundary, the Friedmann
equation corresponds to that of the standard cosmology driven by a CFT dual to
the AdS bulk. We show that there is no holographic description for non-critical
branes, or when the brane is further away from the AdS boundary. We then derive
a Cardy-Verlinde formula for the dual CFT on the critical brane near the
boundary. This gives us insight into the remarkable correspondence between
Cardy-Verlinde formulae and Friedmann equations in Einstein gravity.Comment: 24 pages, no figures; references added, minor changes, version to
appear in CQ
Product CFTs, gravitational cloning, massive gravitons and the space of gravitational duals
The question of graviton cloning in the context of the bulk/boundary
correspondence is considered. It is shown that multi-graviton theories can be
obtained from products of large-N CFTs. No more than one interacting massless
graviton is possible. There can be however, many interacting massive gravitons.
This is achieved by coupling CFTs via multi-trace marginal or relevant
perturbations. The geometrical structure of the gravitational duals of such
theories is that of product manifolds with their boundaries identified. The
calculational formalism is described and the interpretation of such theories is
discussed.Comment: Latex, 25 pages. (v2) Minor corrections and references adde
Chemo-Archaeological Downsizing in a Hierarchical Universe: Impact of a Top Heavy IGIMF
We make use of a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation to investigate the
origin of the observed correlation between [a/Fe] abundance ratios and stellar
mass in elliptical galaxies. We implement a new galaxy-wide stellar initial
mass function (Top Heavy Integrated Galaxy Initial Mass Function, TH-IGIMF) in
the semi-analytic model SAG and evaluate its impact on the chemical evolution
of galaxies. The SFR-dependence of the slope of the TH-IGIMF is found to be key
to reproducing the correct [a/Fe]-stellar mass relation. Massive galaxies reach
higher [a/Fe] abundance ratios because they are characterized by more top-heavy
IMFs as a result of their higher SFR. As a consequence of our analysis, the
value of the minimum embedded star cluster mass and of the slope of the
embedded cluster mass function, which are free parameters involved in the
TH-IGIMF theory, are found to be as low as 5 solar masses and 2, respectively.
A mild downsizing trend is present for galaxies generated assuming either a
universal IMF or a variable TH-IGIMF. We find that, regardless of galaxy mass,
older galaxies (with formation redshifts > 2) are formed in shorter time-scales
(< 2 Gyr), thus achieving larger [a/Fe] values. Hence, the time-scale of galaxy
formation alone cannot explain the slope of the [a/Fe]-galaxy mass relation,
but is responsible for the big dispersion of [a/Fe] abundance ratios at fixed
stellar mass.We further test the hyphothesis of a TH-IGIMF in elliptical
galaxies by looking into mass-to-light ratios, and luminosity functions. Models
with a TH-IGIMF are also favoured by these constraints. In particular,
mass-to-light ratios agree with observed values for massive galaxies while
being overpredicted for less massive ones; this overprediction is present
regardless of the IMF considered.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables. (Comments most welcome). Summited to
MNRA
Exact braneworld cosmology induced from bulk black holes
We use a new, exact approach in calculating the energy density measured by an
observer living on a brane embedded in a charged black hole spacetime. We find
that the bulk Weyl tensor gives rise to non-linear terms in the energy density
and pressure in the FRW equations for the brane. Remarkably, these take exactly
the same form as the ``unconventional'' terms found in the cosmology of branes
embedded in pure AdS, with extra matter living on the brane. Black hole driven
cosmologies have the benefit that there is no ambiguity in splitting the
braneword energy momentum into tension and additional matter. We propose a new,
enlarged relationship between the two descriptions of braneworld cosmology. We
also study the exact thermodynamics of the field theory and present a
generalised Cardy-Verlinde formula in this set up.Comment: 17 pages, no figures; v3: Minor change, References added, Version to
appear in CQ
Gauss-Bonnet brane-world cosmology without -symmetry
We consider a single 3-brane situated between two bulk spacetimes that posses
the same cosmological constant, but whose metrics do not posses a
-symmetry. On each side of the brane, the bulk is a solution to
Gauss-Bonnet gravity. This asymmetry modifies junction conditions, and so new
terms arise in the Friedmann equation. If these terms become dominant, these
behave cosmological constant at early times for some case, and might remove the
initial singularity for other case. However, we show that these new terms can
not become dominant ones under usual conditions when our brane is outside an
event horizon. We also show that any brane-world scenarios of this type revert
to a -symmetric form at late times, and hence rule out certain proposed
scenarios.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; Minor typos corrected. References added. V3:
Numerical errors are corrected. Fig.1 and Fig.3 are replaced. V4: published
versio
Towards a covariant model for cosmic self-acceleration
An explicitly covariant formulation is presented of a modified DGP scenario
proposed recently [1], to avoid the instability of the self-accelerating
branch. It is based on the introduction of a bulk scalar field with appropriate
non-minimal coupling to the bulk Einstein-Hilbert term. The method is general
and may be applied to other models as well.Comment: 10 pages, no figures; v2: version published in JHE
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