Ockham's Razor: The Discovery of Neptune

The discovery of Neptune in September 1846 is a good example of scientific rationality but it has proven to be surprisingly difficult to explain how this is so from the perspective of Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and several other commentators who have been influenced by these thinkers. I try briefly to explain how to avoid these difficulties and understand the achievement of the astronomers who predicted the location of the new planet, Urbain J. J. Leverrier and John Couch Adams.

Occam's razor in minimally invasive pituitary surgery: tailoring the endoscopic endonasal uninostril trans-sphenoidal approach to sella turcica.

BACKGROUND: Since the introduction of the endoscopic endonasal approaches in the field of skull base surgery during the last two decades, several variants of the sella turcica endoscopic surgery have been described. The aim of this study is to provide a stepwise description of one of these variants in a minimally invasive/maximally efficient perspective. METHOD: For the majority of our sella turcica pathologies, we have progressively adopted a uninostril endoscopic approach that is very conservative towards the nasal mucosa with a very limited mucosal incision, resection of the vomer and allowing an almost ad integrum sellar floor reconstruction, without compromising the efficacy and completeness of both surgical oncologic and endocrine targets. CONCLUSION: The uninostril trans-sphenoidal endoscopic endonasal approach to sella turcica is tailored to ally maximal efficiency and minimal invasiveness.

Swift's razor

The razors, knives and “tools for cutting” that appear so often in Jonathan Swift’s writings represent linguistic instruments for the performance of speech acts. Swift often imagines them being deployed for some identifiable purpose, typically the discouragement of “fools” or “knaves” by anatomization. Their sharpness is associated with linguistic acuity, and specifically with the refinement, keenness and power of Swift’s own writing. The focus of this article, however, is on another set of associations that Swift attaches to his blades. They tend also to involve ideas of latency, divagation, bluntness, and misappropriation.

Inclusive search for supersymmetry using razor variables in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

An inclusive search is presented for new heavy particle pairs produced in √s=7 TeV proton-proton collisions at the LHC using 4.7±0.1 fb -1 of integrated luminosity. The selected events are analyzed in the 2D razor space of MR, an event-by-event indicator of the heavy particle mass scale, and R, a dimensionless variable related to the missing transverse energy. The third-generation sector is probed using the event heavy-flavor content. The search is sensitive to generic supersymmetry models with minimal assumptions about the superpartner decay chains. No excess is observed in the number of events beyond that predicted by the standard model. Exclusion limits are derived in the CMSSM framework as well as for simplified models. Within the CMSSM parameter space considered, gluino masses up to 800 GeV and squark masses up to 1.35 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level depending on the model parameters. The direct production of pairs of top or bottom squarks is excluded for masses as high as 400 GeV. © 2013 CERN.

Search for supersymmetry with razor variables in pp collisions at root s=7 TeV

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Search for supersymmetry using razor variables in events with b-tagged jets in pp collisions at root s=8 TeV

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Razor Thin Win: The 1972 Constitution Ballot, Campaign, Ratification & the Courts -- Mae Nan (Robinson) Ellingson & Mick McKeon “In the Crucible of Change”

Beyond the challenge of crafting a new state Constitution that empowered the people and modernized and opened up state and local government in Montana, the Constitutional Convention delegates, as they signed the final document, looked forward to the arduous task of getting it ratified by the electorate in a short ten week period between the end of the convention on March 24 and the ratification election of June 6, 1972. While all 100 delegates signed the draft Constitution, not all supported its adoption. But the planning about how to get it adopted went back to the actions of the Convention itself, which carefully crafted a ballot that kept “hot political issues” from potentially killing the entire document at the polls. As a result, three side issues were presented to the electorate on the ballot. People could vote for or against those side issues and still vote to ratify the entire document. Thus, the questions of legalizing gambling, having a unicameral legislature and retaining the death penalty were placed separately on the ballot (gambling passed, as did the retention of the death penalty, but the concept of a one-house legislature was defeated). Once the ballot structure was set, delegates who supported the new Constitution organized a grassroots, locally focused effort to secure ratification – thought hampered by a MT Supreme Court decision on April 28 that they could not expend $45,000 in public monies that they had set aside for voter education. They cobbled together about $10,000 of private money and did battle with the established political forces, led by the MT Farm Bureau, MT Stockgrowers’ Assn. and MT Contractors Assn., on the question of passage. Narrow passage of the main document led to an issue over certification and a Montana Supreme Court case challenging the ratification vote. After a 3-2 State Supreme Court victory, supporters of the Constitution then had to defend the election results again before the federal courts, also a successful effort. Montana finally had a new progressive State Constitution that empowered the people, but the path to it was not clear and simple and the win was razor thin. The story of that razor thin win is discussed in this chapter by the two youngest delegates to the 1972 Constitutional Convention, Mae Nan Ellingson of Missoula and Mick McKeon, then of Anaconda. Both recognized “Super Lawyers in their later professional practices were also significant players in the Constitutional Convention itself and actively participated in its campaign for ratification. As such, their recollections of the effort provide an insider’s perspective of the struggle to change Montana for the better through the creation and adoption of a new progressive state Constitution “In the Crucible of Change.” Mae Nan (Robinson) Ellingson was born Mae Nan Windham in Mineral Wells, TX and graduated from Mineral Wells High School in 1965 and Weatherford College in Weatherford, TX in 1967. Mae Nan was the youngest delegate at the 1972 Convention from Missoula. She moved to Missoula in 1967 and received her BA in Political Science with Honors from the University of MT in 1970. She was a young widow known by her late husband’s surname of Robinson while attending UM graduate school under the tutelage of noted Professor Ellis Waldron when he persuaded her to run for the Constitutional Convention. Coming in a surprising second in the delegate competition in Missoula County she was named one of the Convention’s “Ten Outstanding Constitutional Convention Delegates,” an impressive feat at such a young age. She was 24 at the time, the youngest person to serve at the ConCon, and one of 19 women out of 100 delegates. In the decade before the Convention, there were never more than three women Legislators in any session, usually one or two. She was a member of the American Association of University Women, a Pi Sigma Alpha political science honorary, and a Phi Alpha Theta historical honorary. At the Convention, she led proposals for the state's bill of rights, particularly related to equal rights for women. For years, Ellingson kept a copy of the preamble to the Constitution hanging in her office; while all the delegates had a chance to vote on the wording, she and delegate Bob Campbell are credited with the language in the preamble. During the convention, she had an opportunity that opened the door to her later career as an attorney. A convention delegate suggested to her that she should go to law school. Several offered to help, but at the time she couldn't go to school. Her mom had died in Texas, and she ended up with a younger brother and sister to raise in Missoula. She got a job teaching, but about a year later, intrigued with the idea of pursuing the law as a career, she called the man back to ask about the offer. Eventually another delegate, Dave Drum of Billings, sponsored her tuition at the UM School of Law. After receiving her JD with Honors (including the Law Review and Moot Court) from the UM Law School Ellingson worked for the Missoula city attorney's office for six years (1977-83), and she took on landmark projects. During her tenure, Missoula became the first city to issue open space bonds, a project that introduced her to Dorsey & Whitney. The city secured its first easement on Mount Sentinel, and it created the trail along the riverfront with a mix of playing fields and natural vegetation. She also helped develop a sign ordinance for the city of Missoula. She ended up working as bond counsel for Dorsey & Whitney, and she opened up the firm's full-fledged Missoula office after commuting a couple of years to its Great Falls office. She was a partner at Dorsey Whitney, working there from 1983 until her retirement in 2012. The area of law she practiced there is a narrow specialty - it requires knowledge of constitutional law, state and local government law, and a slice of federal tax law - but for Ellingson it meant working on great public projects – schools, sewer systems, libraries, swimming pools, ire trucks. At the state level, she helped form the Montana Municipal Insurance Authority, a pooled insurance group for cities. She's shaped MT’s tax increment law, and she was a fixture in the MT Legislature when they were debating equal rights. As a bond lawyer, though, Ellingson considers her most important work for the state to be setting up the Intercap Program that allowed local governments to borrow money from the state at a low interest rate. She has been a frequent speaker at the League of Cities and Towns, the Montana Association of Counties, and the Rural Water Users Association workshops on topics related to municipal finance, as well as workshops sponsored by the DNRC, the Water and Sewer Agencies Coordination Team, and the Montana State University Local Government Center. In 2002, she received an outstanding service award from the Montana Rural Water Users Association. In addition to being considered an expert on Montana state and constitutional law, local government law and local government finance, she is a frequent teacher at the National Association of Bond Lawyers (NABL) Fundamentals of Municipal Bond Law Seminar and the NABL Bond Attorney’s Workshop. For over 30 years Mae Nan has participated in the drafting of legislation in Montana for state and local finance matters. She has served on the Board of Directors of NABL, as Chairman of its Education Committee, was elected as an initial fellow in 1995 to the American College of Bond Counsel, and was recognized as a Super Lawyer in the Rocky Mountain West. Mae Nan was admitted to practice before the MT and US Supreme Courts, was named one of “America’s Leading Business Lawyers” by Chambers USA (Rank 1), a Mountain States Super Lawyer in 2007 and is listed in Best Lawyers in America; she is a member and former Board Member of NABL, a Fellow of the American College of Bond Counsel and a member of the Board of Visitors of the UM Law School. Mae Nan is also a philanthropist who serves on boards and applies her intelligence to many organizations, such as the Missoula Art Museum. [Much of this biography was drawn from a retirement story in the Missoulian and the Dorsey Whitney web site.] Mick McKeon, born in Anaconda in 1946, is a 4th generation Montanan whose family roots in this state go back to the 1870’s. In 1968 he graduated from Notre Dame with a BA in Communications and received a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Montana Law School in 1971. Right after graduating from law school, Mick was persuaded by his father, longtime State Senator Luke McKeon, and his uncle, Phillips County Attorney Willis McKeon, to run for delegate to Montana’s Constitutional Convention and was elected to represent Deer Lodge, Philipsburg, Powell, and part of Missoula Counties. Along with a coalition of delegates from Butte and Anaconda, he fought through the new Constitution to eliminate the legal strangle hold, often called “the copper collar,” that corporate interests -- the Anaconda Company and its business & political allies -- had over state government for nearly 100 years. The New York Times called Montana’s Constitutional Convention a “prairie revolution.” After helping secure the ratification of the new Constitution, Mick began his practice of law in Anaconda where he engaged in general practice for nearly 20 years. Moving to Butte in 1991, Mick focused has practice in personal injury law, representing victims of negligence and corporate wrongdoing in both Montana district courts and federal court. As such, he participated in some of the largest cases in the history of the state. In 1992 he and his then law partner Rick Anderson obtained a federal court verdict of $11.5 million -- the largest verdict in MT for many years. Mick’s efforts on behalf of injured victims have been recognized by many legal organizations and societies. Recently, Mick was invited to become a member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers - 600 of the top lawyers in the world. Rated as an American Super Lawyer, he has continuously been named one of the Best Lawyers in America, and an International Assn. of Trial Lawyers top 100 Trial Lawyer. In 2005, he was placed as one of Montana’s top 4 Plaintiff’s lawyers by Law Dragon. Mick is certified as a civil trial specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and has the highest rating possible from Martindale-Hubble. Mick was awarded the Montana Trial Lawyers Public Service Award and provided pro bono assistance to needy clients for his entire career. Mick’s law practice, which he now shares with his son Michael, is limited to representing individuals who have been injured in accidents, concentrating on cases against insurance companies, corporations, medical providers and hospitals. Mick resides in Butte with his wife Carol, a Butte native. Mick, Carol, Michael and another son, Matthew, who graduated from Dartmouth College and was recently admitted to the Montana bar, enjoy as much of their time together in Butte and at their place on Flathead Lake.

Search for Higgs Boson Production Beyond the Standard Model Using the Razor Kinematic Variables in pp Collisions at √s=8 TeV and Optimization of Higgs Boson Identification Using a Quantum Annealer

In the first part of this thesis we search for beyond the Standard Model physics through the search for anomalous production of the Higgs boson using the razor kinematic variables. We search for anomalous Higgs boson production using proton-proton collisions at center of mass energy √s=8 TeV collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.8 fb^-1.

In the second part we present a novel method for using a quantum annealer to train a classifier to recognize events containing a Higgs boson decaying to two photons. We train that classifier using simulated proton-proton collisions at √s=8 TeV producing either a Standard Model Higgs boson decaying to two photons or a non-resonant Standard Model process that produces a two photon final state.

The production mechanisms of the Higgs boson are precisely predicted by the Standard Model based on its association with the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. We measure the yield of Higgs bosons decaying to two photons in kinematic regions predicted to have very little contribution from a Standard Model Higgs boson and search for an excess of events, which would be evidence of either non-standard production or non-standard properties of the Higgs boson. We divide the events into disjoint categories based on kinematic properties and the presence of additional b-quarks produced in the collisions. In each of these disjoint categories, we use the razor kinematic variables to characterize events with topological configurations incompatible with typical configurations found from standard model production of the Higgs boson.

We observe an excess of events with di-photon invariant mass compatible with the Higgs boson mass and localized in a small region of the razor plane. We observe 5 events with a predicted background of 0.54 ± 0.28, which observation has a p-value of 10^-3 and a local significance of 3.35σ. This background prediction comes from 0.48 predicted non-resonant background events and 0.07 predicted SM higgs boson events. We proceed to investigate the properties of this excess, finding that it provides a very compelling peak in the di-photon invariant mass distribution and is physically separated in the razor plane from predicted background. Using another method of measuring the background and significance of the excess, we find a 2.5σ deviation from the Standard Model hypothesis over a broader range of the razor plane.

In the second part of the thesis we transform the problem of training a classifier to distinguish events with a Higgs boson decaying to two photons from events with other sources of photon pairs into the Hamiltonian of a spin system, the ground state of which is the best classifier. We then use a quantum annealer to find the ground state of this Hamiltonian and train the classifier. We find that we are able to do this successfully in less than 400 annealing runs for a problem of median difficulty at the largest problem size considered. The networks trained in this manner exhibit good classification performance, competitive with the more complicated machine learning techniques, and are highly resistant to overtraining. We also find that the nature of the training gives access to additional solutions that can be used to improve the classification performance by up to 1.2% in some regions.

Effect of precracking method on K(Ic) results for medium-density polyethylene tested under cryogenic condition

The effect of different precracking methods on the results of linear elastic K(Ic) fracture toughness testing with medium-density polyethylene (MDPE) was investigated. Cryogenic conditions were imposed in order to obtain valid K(Ic) values from specimens of suitable size. Most conservative K(Ic) values were obtained by slow pressing a fresh razor blade at the notch root of the specimen. Due to the low deformation level imposed on the crack tip region, the slow pressing razor blade technique also produced less scatter in fracture toughness results. It has been shown that the slow stable crack growth preceding catastrophic brittle failure during K(Ic) tests in MOPE under cryogenic conditions should not be disregarded as it has relevant physical meaning and may affect the fracture toughness results. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Detectives with pimples: how teen noir is crossing the frontiers of the traditional noir films

In the last ten years, teen noir movies and series — such as Donnie Darko (2001), Brick (2005), or Veronica Mars (2004-2007) — have become increasingly popular among audiences, both in the USA and in Europe, and aroused the curiosity of critics. These teen noir adventures present darker themes and technical features that distinguish them from numerous productions aiming at young adults. Their narrative and aesthetic characteristics reinvent and subvert the tradition of classic noir movies of the forties and fifties, thus generating a sense of novelty. In this article, I focus my attention on Veronica Mars, a famous teen noir series, created by Rob Thomas, to examine: a) the teen noir themes; b) the new profile and role of the private investigator; c) the empowerment of girls/young women; d) razor-sharp dialogues; e) intertextual references to old- school noir movies. In order to do so, resort to the research of specialists in the field of neo noir, such as Mark Conrad, Foster Hirsch, or Roz Kaveney. My main goal is to prove that a new (sub)genre is slowly emerging and revivifying teen cinema.

Hepatitis C: sexual or intrafamilial transmission? Epidemiological and phylogenetic analysis of hepatitis C virus in 24 infected couples

The role of sexual or intrafamilial transmission of hepatitis C is controversial. A phylogenetic analysis was performed on the non-structural region 5B of the hepatitis C virus (NS5B-HCV). High percentages of homology (mean of 98.3%) were shown between the couples. Twenty (83.3%) of the 24 men but only two of the women (8.3%) reported having had sexually transmitted diseases during their lives. The risk factors for HCV acquisition were blood transfusion (10 couples), use of illegal injected drugs (17), use of inhalants (15), acupuncture (5) and tattoos (5). The shared use of personal hygiene items included toothbrushes between six couples (25%), razor blades between 16 (66.7%), nail clippers between 21 (87.5%) and manicure pliers between 14 (58.3%). The high degree of similarity of the hepatitis C virus genome supports the hypothesis of hepatitis C virus transmission between these couples. The shared use of personal hygiene items suggests the possibility of intrafamilial transmission of infection.

Tienda Web para PYME

Página web para una PYME dedicada a la venta física de productos. Este desarrollo se basa en la primera aproximación de esta empresa hacia una orientación en red, sirviendo de nexo de unión entre su actividad tradicional en un almacén y en una tienda convencional conjuntamente, y las posibilidades que ofrecen las tecnologías en la nube.

GPASens : Gestión y Planificación de Acciones de Sensibilización

Proyecto de aplicación web que permite gestionar la información de los eventos de las acciones de sensibilización de las organizaciones sociales y realizar un seguimiento a las entidades interesadas en acoger o participar en los eventos. También permite consultar la información de los eventos de las actividades en un mapa, definir los recursos y materiales necesarios y referenciar los diferentes documentos, vídeos, audios o imágenes relacionadas con los eventos.