1,574 research outputs found
Social niche construction and evolutionary transitions in individuality.
Social evolution theory conventionally takes an externalist explanatory stance, treating observed cooperation as explanandum and the positive assortment of cooperative behaviour as explanans. We ask how the circumstances bringing about this positive assortment arose in the first place. Rather than merely push the explanatory problem back a step, we move from an externalist to an interactionist explanatory stance, in the spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists. We develop a theory of 'social niche construction' in which we consider biological entities to be both the subject and object of their own social evolution. Some important cases of the evolution of cooperation have the side-effect of causing changes in the hierarchical level at which the evolutionary process acts. This is because the traits (e.g. life-history bottlenecks) that act to align the fitness interests of particles (e.g. cells) in a collective can also act to diminish the extent to which those particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance, while augmenting the extent to which collectives of such particles (e.g. multicellular organisms) are bearers of heritable fitness variance. In this way, we can explain upward transitions in the hierarchical level at which the Darwinian machine operates in terms of particle-level selection, even though the outcome of the process is a collective-level selection regime. Our theory avoids the logical and metaphysical paradoxes faced by other attempts to explain evolutionary transitions
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A multi-wavelength analysis of active regions and sunspots by comparison of automatic detection algorithms
YesThe launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in early 2010 has provided the solar
physics community with the most detailed view of the Sun to date. However, this presents new
challenges for the analysis of solar data. Currently,
SDO sends over 1 terabyte of data per day back to Earth and methods for fast and reliable analysis are
more important than ever. This article details four algorithms developed separately at the Universities
of Bradford and Glasgow, the
Royal Observatory of Belgium and Trinity College Dublin for the purposes of automated detection of
solar active regions (ARs) and sunspots at different levels of the solar atmosphere
Clarivate listed nursing journals in 2020: what they publish and how they measure use of social media
Objectives
To investigate what the most common types of articles that nursing journals purport to publish are and what they actually publish. And to investigate the extent to which academic nursing journals listed by Clarivate track alternative metrics.
Methods
Journals included in the nursing Journal Citation Report (JCR) journal category in 2019 described as nursing were identified and considered suitable for inclusion in the analysis. Instructions for authors were reviewed online and mention of each type of article is identified. The tables of contents of each issue of each journal published during 2019 were examined and the types of articles published were extracted to a spreadsheet into permitted article types and published articles. Likewise, the use of alternative metrics by each journal was extracted to a spreadsheet. Pearson's and Spearman's correlation analysis was applied to investigate the relationship between articles permitted and articles published.
Results
In the 2020 JCR, 123 journals were listed. The most common article type permitted was original research (n = 117), followed by review papers (n = 116), and discussion papers (n = 63). Original research (n = 7045); review papers (n = 1268); discussion papers (n = 1225); editorials (n = 793) and commentaries (n = 776) were the most commonly published categories of the article. Of journals examined, 108 (96.8%) tracked mentions on social media and the Altmetric score was most commonly used (75%). There was a strong correlation (r = 0.73; P = 0.002) between the numbers of articles permitted and published and a strong correlation (ρ = 0.86; P < 0.001) in terms of the rankings of the permitted and published articles.
Conclusions
There is a relationship between the most frequently permitted article types and those published, especially for the most frequent categories of both. Original articles, review papers, and discussion papers are the backbone of academic publishing in nursing with original articles vastly outweighing review and discussion papers. Most Clarivate listed journals now use some method of tracking alternative metrics indicating how seriously publishers take their social media profiles
Pinch Technique and the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism
In this paper we take the first step towards a non-diagrammatic formulation
of the Pinch Technique. In particular we proceed into a systematic
identification of the parts of the one-loop and two-loop Feynman diagrams that
are exchanged during the pinching process in terms of unphysical ghost Green's
functions; the latter appear in the standard Slavnov-Taylor identity satisfied
by the tree-level and one-loop three-gluon vertex. This identification allows
for the consistent generalization of the intrinsic pinch technique to two
loops, through the collective treatment of entire sets of diagrams, instead of
the laborious algebraic manipulation of individual graphs, and sets up the
stage for the generalization of the method to all orders. We show that the task
of comparing the effective Green's functions obtained by the Pinch Technique
with those computed in the background field method Feynman gauge is
significantly facilitated when employing the powerful quantization framework of
Batalin and Vilkovisky. This formalism allows for the derivation of a set of
useful non-linear identities, which express the Background Field Method Green's
functions in terms of the conventional (quantum) ones and auxiliary Green's
functions involving the background source and the gluonic anti-field; these
latter Green's functions are subsequently related by means of a Schwinger-Dyson
type of equation to the ghost Green's functions appearing in the aforementioned
Slavnov-Taylor identity.Comment: 45 pages, uses axodraw; typos corrected, one figure changed, final
version to appear in Phys.Rev.
Expansion for the solutions of the Bogomolny equations on the torus
We show that the solutions of the Bogomolny equations for the Abelian Higgs
model on a two-dimensional torus, can be expanded in powers of a quantity
epsilon measuring the departure of the area from the critical area. This allows
a precise determination of the shape of the solutions for all magnetic fluxes
and arbitrary position of the Higgs field zeroes. The expansion is carried out
to 51 orders for a couple of representative cases, including the unit flux
case. We analyse the behaviour of the expansion in the limit of large areas, in
which case the solutions approach those on the plane. Our results suggest
convergence all the way up to infinite area.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, slightly revised version as published in JHE
Dynamical aspects of mean field plane rotators and the Kuramoto model
The Kuramoto model has been introduced in order to describe synchronization
phenomena observed in groups of cells, individuals, circuits, etc... We look at
the Kuramoto model with white noise forces: in mathematical terms it is a set
of N oscillators, each driven by an independent Brownian motion with a constant
drift, that is each oscillator has its own frequency, which, in general,
changes from one oscillator to another (these frequencies are usually taken to
be random and they may be viewed as a quenched disorder). The interactions
between oscillators are of long range type (mean field). We review some results
on the Kuramoto model from a statistical mechanics standpoint: we give in
particular necessary and sufficient conditions for reversibility and we point
out a formal analogy, in the N to infinity limit, with local mean field models
with conservative dynamics (an analogy that is exploited to identify in
particular a Lyapunov functional in the reversible set-up). We then focus on
the reversible Kuramoto model with sinusoidal interactions in the N to infinity
limit and analyze the stability of the non-trivial stationary profiles arising
when the interaction parameter K is larger than its critical value K_c. We
provide an analysis of the linear operator describing the time evolution in a
neighborhood of the synchronized profile: we exhibit a Hilbert space in which
this operator has a self-adjoint extension and we establish, as our main
result, a spectral gap inequality for every K>K_c.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur
Androgen Deprivation Therapy Potentiates the Efficacy of Vascular Targeted Photodynamic Therapy of Prostate Cancer Xenografts
WST11 vascular targeted photodynamic therapy (VTP) is a local ablation approach relying upon rapid, free radical-mediated destruction of tumor vasculature. A phase III trial showed that VTP significantly reduced disease progression when compared with active surveillance in patients with low-risk prostate cancer. The aim of this study was to identify a druggable pathway that could be combined with VTP to improve its efficacy and applicability to higher risk prostate cancer tumors. Transcriptome analysis of VTP-treated tumors (LNCaP-AR xenografts) was used to identify a candidate pathway for combination therapy. The efficacy of the combination therapy was assessed in mice bearing LNCaP-AR or VCaP tumors. Gene set enrichment analysis identifies the enrichment of androgen-responsive gene sets within hours after VTP treatment, suggesting that the androgen receptor (AR) may be a viable target in combination with VTP. We tested this hypothesis in mice bearing LNCaP-AR xenograft tumors by using androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), degarelix, in combination with VTP. Compared with either ADT or VTP alone, a single dose of degarelix in concert with VTP significantly inhibited tumor growth. A sharp decline in serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) confirmed AR inhibition in this group. Tumors treated by VTP and degarelix displayed intense terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling staining 7 days after treatment, supporting an increased apoptotic frequency underlying the effect on tumor inhibition. Improvement of local tumor control following androgen deprivation combined with VTP provides the rationale and preliminary protocol parameters for clinical trials in patients presented with locally advanced prostate cancer.
Boost operators in Coulomb-gauge QCD: the pion form factor and Fock expansions in phi radiative decays
In this article we rederive the Boost operators in Coulomb-Gauge Yang-Mills
theory employing the path-integral formalism and write down the complete
operators for QCD. We immediately apply them to note that what are usually
called the pion square, quartic... charge radii, defined from derivatives of
the pion form factor at zero squared momentum transfer, are completely blurred
out by relativistic and interaction corrections, so that it is not clear at all
how to interpret these quantities in terms of the pion charge distribution. The
form factor therefore measures matrix elements of powers of the QCD boost and
Moeller operators, weighted by the charge density in the target's rest frame.
In addition we remark that the decomposition of the eta' wavefunction in
quarkonium, gluonium, ... components attempted by the KLOE collaboration
combining data from phi radiative decays, requires corrections due to the
velocity of the final state meson recoiling against a photon. This will be
especially important if such decompositions are to be attempted with data from
J/psi decays.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
A multiwavelength study of the supernova remnant G296.8-0.3
We report XMM-Newton observations of the Galactic supernova remnant
G296.8-0.3, together with complementary radio and infrared data. The spatial
and spectral properties of the X-ray emission, detected towards G296.8-0.3, was
investigated in order to explore the possible evolutionary scenarios and the
physical connexion with its unusual morphology detected at radio frequencies.
G296.8-0.3 displays diffuse X-ray emission correlated with the peculiar radio
morphology detected in the interior of the remnant and with the shell-like
radio structure observed to the northwest side of the object. The X-ray
emission peaks in the soft/medium energy range (0.5-3.0 keV). The X-ray
spectral analysis confirms that the column density is high (NH \sim 0.64 x
10^{22} cm^{-2}) which supports a distant location (d>9 kpc) for the SNR. Its
X-ray spectrum can be well represented by a thermal (PSHOCK) model, with kT
\sim 0.86 keV, an ionization timescale of 6.1 x 10^{10} cm^{-3} s, and low
abundance (0.12 Z_sun). The 24 microns observations show shell-like emission
correlated with part of the northwest and southeast boundaries of the SNR. In
addition a point-like X-ray source is also detected close to the geometrical
center of the radio SNR. The object presents some characteristics of the
so-called compact central objects (CCO). Its X-ray spectrum is consistent with
those found at other CCOs and the value of NH is consistent with that of
G296.8-0.3, which suggests a physical connexion with the SNR.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc
Theory of unitarity bounds and low energy form factors
We present a general formalism for deriving bounds on the shape parameters of
the weak and electromagnetic form factors using as input correlators calculated
from perturbative QCD, and exploiting analyticity and unitarity. The values
resulting from the symmetries of QCD at low energies or from lattice
calculations at special points inside the analyticity domain can beincluded in
an exact way. We write down the general solution of the corresponding Meiman
problem for an arbitrary number of interior constraints and the integral
equations that allow one to include the phase of the form factor along a part
of the unitarity cut. A formalism that includes the phase and some information
on the modulus along a part of the cut is also given. For illustration we
present constraints on the slope and curvature of the K_l3 scalar form factor
and discuss our findings in some detail. The techniques are useful for checking
the consistency of various inputs and for controlling the parameterizations of
the form factors entering precision predictions in flavor physics.Comment: 11 pages latex using EPJ style files, 5 figures; v2 is version
accepted by EPJA in Tools section; sentences and figures improve
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