2. Pandemics and epidemics

‘Pandemics and epidemics’ starts by looking at the conventional picture of the history of plague which divides it into three long pandemics, each of them made up of a series of separate but closely connected epidemics, in particular places, extending over centuries. The ‘Plague of Justinian’, the ‘Black Death’, and the epidemics in India and China in the late 1800s are useful case studies. How do plagues appear and disappear? The European defences against plague in the early modern period included quarantine precautions. Quarantine created protective thresholds which reduced the risk of plague retaining its hold across the whole European mainland.

Influence of anisotropy, tilt and pairing of Weyl nodes: the Weyl semimetals TaAs, TaP, NbAs and NbP

By means of ab initio band structure methods and model Hamiltonians we investigate the electronic, spin and topological properties of four monopnictides crystallizing in bct structure. We show that the Weyl bands around a WP W1 or W2 possess a strong anisotropy and tilt of the accompanying Dirac cones. These effects are larger for W2 nodes than for W1 ones. The node tilts and positions in energy space significantly influence the DOS of single-particle Weyl excitations. The node anisotropies destroy the conventional picture of (anti)parallel spin and wave vector of a Weyl fermion. This also holds for the Berry curvature around a node, while the monopole charges are independent as integrated quantities. The pairing of the nodes strongly modifies the spin texture and the Berry curvature for wave vectors in between the two nodes. Spin components may change their orientation. Integrals over planes perpendicular to the connection line yield finite Zak phases and winding numbers for planes between the two nodes, thereby indicating the topological character. Graphical abstract

Viability of slow-roll inflation in light of the non-zero k min measured in the cosmic microwave background power spectrum

Slow-roll inflation may simultaneously solve the horizon problem and generate a near scale-free fluctuation spectrum P ( k ). These two processes are intimately connected via the initiation and duration of the inflationary phase. But a recent study based on the latest Planck release suggests that P ( k ) has a hard cut-off, k min ≠ 0 , inconsistent with this conventional picture. Here, we demonstrate quantitatively that most—perhaps all—slow-roll inflationary models fail to accommodate this minimum cut-off. We show that the small parameter ϵ must be ≳ 0.9 throughout the inflationary period to comply with the data, seriously violating the slow-roll approximation. Models with such an ϵ predict extremely red spectral indices, at odds with the measured value. We also consider extensions to the basic picture (suggested by several earlier workers) by adding a kinetic-dominated or radiation-dominated phase preceding the slow-roll expansion. Our approach differs from previously published treatments principally because we require these modifications not only to fit the measured fluctuation spectrum but also simultaneously to fix the horizon problem. We show, however, that even such measures preclude a joint resolution of the horizon problem and the missing correlations at large angles.

Comments on ‘Type II migration strikes back – an old paradigm for planet migration in discs’ by Scardoni et al.

ABSTRACT In the conventional view of type II migration, a giant planet migrates inward in the viscous velocity of the accretion disc in the so-called disc-dominate case. Recent hydrodynamic simulations, however, showed that planets migrate with velocities much faster than the viscous one in massive discs. Such fast migration cannot be explained by the conventional picture. Scardoni et al. has recently argued this new picture. By carrying out similar hydrodynamic simulations, they found that the migration velocity slows down with time and eventually reaches the prediction by the conventional theory. They interpreted the fast migration as an initial transient one and concluded that the conventional type II migration is realized after the transient phase. We show that the migration velocities obtained by Scardoni et al. are consistent with the previous simulations even in the transient phase that they proposed. We also find that the transient fast migration proposed by Scardoni et al. is well described by a new model of Kanagawa, Tanaka & Szuszkiewicz. The new model can appropriately describe significant inward migration during the initial transient phase that Scardoni et al. termed. Hence, we conclude that the time variation of the transient migration velocity is due to the changes of the orbital radius of the planet and its background surface density during the migration.

Authoritarian Amendments: Legislative Institutions as Intraexecutive Constraints in Post-Soviet Russia

Why are executive bills sometimes amended significantly in authoritarian legislatures? Bill change clashes with the conventional picture of parliaments in nondemocracies as “rubber stamp” bodies. Recent work challenging the “rubber stamp” model suggests that cases of amendment are the result of legislator influence. This article proposes an alternative argument: Amendment can result from intraexecutive policy-making processes, unresolved in the prelegislative, cabinet-level stage. Factionalised executives can use legislative institutions to help overcome information asymmetries, as well as the commitment and monitoring problems involved in collective decision making. The article evaluates this alternative account using a combination of statistical and case-study analyses, drawing on both cross-national and fine-grained data from contemporary Russia. The findings contribute to our knowledge of authoritarian legislatures, policy-making processes in nondemocracies, and Russian politics.

Local quantum phase transition in YFe2Al10

A phase transition occurs when correlated regions of a new phase grow to span the system and the fluctuations within the correlated regions become long lived. Here, we present neutron scattering measurements showing that this conventional picture must be replaced in YFe2Al10, a compound that forms naturally very close to a T=0 quantum phase transition. Fully quantum mechanical fluctuations of localized moments are found to diverge at low energies and temperatures; however, the fluctuating moments are entirely without spatial correlations. Zero temperature order in YFe2Al10 is achieved by an entirely local type of quantum phase transition that may originate with the creation of the moments themselves.

Empire and Revolution

Edmund Burke (1730–1797) lived during one of the most extraordinary periods of world history. He grappled with the significance of the British Empire in India, fought for reconciliation with the American colonies, and was a vocal critic of national policy during three European wars. He also advocated reform in Britain and became a central protagonist in the great debate on the French Revolution. Drawing on the complete range of printed and manuscript sources, the book offers a vivid reconstruction of the major concerns of this outstanding statesman, orator, and philosopher. In restoring Burke to his original political and intellectual context, this book overturns the conventional picture of a partisan of tradition against progress and presents a multifaceted portrait of one of the most captivating figures in eighteenth-century life and thought. A boldly ambitious work of scholarship, this book challenges us to rethink the legacy of Burke and the turbulent era in which he played so pivotal a role.

Recognition of Anthracnose Injuries on Apple Surfaces using YOLOV 3-Dense

Plant ailment is one of the essential drivers of harvest yield decrease. With the advancement of PC vision and profound learning innovation, independent discovery of plant surface sore pictures gathered by optical sensors has become a significant research bearing for convenient yield ailment analysis. Right now, anthracnose injury identification strategy dependent on profound learning is proposed. Right off the bat, for the issue of lacking picture information brought about by the irregular event of apple illnesses, notwithstanding conventional picture expansion strategies, Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Network (CycleGAN) profound learning model is utilized right now achieve information increase. These strategies adequately enhance the decent variety of preparing information and give a strong establishment to preparing the identification model. Right now, the premise of picture information increase, thickly associated neural system (DenseNet) is used to streamline highlight layers of the YOLO-V3 model which have lower goals. DenseNet extraordinarily improves the usage of highlights in the neural system and upgrades the identification consequence of the YOLO-V3 model. It is checked in tests that the improved model surpasses Faster R-CNN with VGG16 NET, the first YOLO-V3 model, and other three cutting edge arranges in discovery execution, and it can understand continuous recognition. The proposed technique can be all around applied to the recognition of anthracnose injuries on apple surfaces in-plantations.

STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITENESS OF HADRON RESONANCES

The structure of the hadron resonances attracts much attention, in association with the recent observations of various exotic hadrons which do not fit well in the conventional picture. These findings urge us to consider various new configurations such as the multiquark states and the hadronic molecules. However, it is a subtle problem to define a proper classification scheme for the hadron structure, and the nonzero decay width of the hadron resonances makes the analysis complicated. In this paper, we summarize the recent developments in the studies of the structure of the hadron resonances, focusing on the notion of the compositeness in terms of the hadronic degrees of freedom.

Lady Audley’s Secret

It only rests with yourself to become Lady Audley, and the mistress of Audley Court.’ When beautiful young Lucy Graham accepts the hand of Sir Michael Audley, her fortune and her future look secure. But Lady Audley’s past is shrouded in mystery, and to Sir Michael’s nephew Robert, she is not all that she seems. When his good friend George Talboys suddenly disappears, Robert is determined to find him, and to unearth the truth. His quest reveals a tangled story of lies and deception, crime and intrigue, whose sensational twists turn the conventional picture of Victorian womanhood on its head. Can Robert’s darkest suspicions really be true? Lady Audley’s Secret was an immediate bestseller, and readers have enjoyed its thrilling plot ever since its first publication in 1862. This new edition explores Braddon’s portrait of her scheming heroine in the context of the nineteenth-century sensation novel and the lively, often hostile debates it provoked.