Approximation,Mad Men and the Death of JFK

In this article I take the US television series Mad Men (2007—present) as an exemplary ‘approximation’, a term I adopt to signal the way in which certain texts construct a changeable, fluid ‘truth’ resulting from collisions, exchange and dialectical argument. Approximations are layered, their formal layerings mirroring a layered, multifaceted argument. Mad Men integrates and represents real historical events within a fictional setting, and act that suggests that an event or action can never be finished, fixed and not open to reassessment. Specifically, this article examines ‘The Grown Ups’, Episode 12 of Season 3, which charts the events of 22 November 1963, the day Kennedy was assassinated. Although we might be able to bring to mind the images and conspiracy theories that have been made available since (such Abraham Zapruder’s 8 mm home movie footage of the assassination), these images were not available at the time. Mad Men as a series always strives to represent its historical milieu as authentically as possible, so the characters re-enact 22 November 1963 as authentically as possible by watching only what was on television that day (the news bulletin, Walter Kronkite’s announcement that Kennedy is dead). The contemporary backdrop to these events, including the resonances of ‘9/11’ through Mad Men, inform and collide with the authenticity on the screen.     

An enigmatic long-lasting gamma-ray burst not accompanied by a bright supernova

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are short, intense flashes of soft gamma-rays coming from the distant Universe. Long-duration GRBs (those lasting more than approximately 2 s) are believed to originate from the deaths of massive stars, mainly on the basis of a handful of solid associations between GRBs and supernovae. GRB 060614, one of the closest GRBs discovered, consisted of a 5-s hard spike followed by softer, brighter emission that lasted for approximately 100 s (refs 8, 9). Here we report deep optical observations of GRB 060614 showing no emerging supernova with absolute visual magnitude brighter than M(V) = -13.7. Any supernova associated with GRB 060614 was therefore at least 100 times fainter, at optical wavelengths, than the other supernovae associated with GRBs. This demonstrates that some long-lasting GRBs can either be associated with a very faint supernova or produced by different phenomena.     

黏土中静压沉桩离心模型

采用西澳大学室内鼓轮式离心机,在预先固结的高岭黏土中开展不同离心力场(50g,125g及250g,g为重力加速度)条件下的模型压桩试验、T-bar试验和静力触探试验,分析了模型桩在贯入过程、静置稳定过程中桩身径向应力(σr)的变化规律,并对后期桩体拉伸载荷阶段的径向应力变化值(△σr)及桩侧摩阻力变化情况行了探讨,揭示了在不同超固结比(OCRs)黏土中静压桩侧摩阻力的演变特性.在此基础上,通过两种经验公式方法对桩侧摩承载力进行了预测计算和对比分析.研究结果表明:沉桩过程中桩端相对高度(h/B)对桩身径向应力的发展变化有很大的影响,桩身不同位置(h/B)的总径向应力对同一贯入深度而言,存在桩侧径向应力退化现象;基于静力触探试验提出的经验方法,能有效考虑静力触探锥端阻力(qt)和桩端相对高度(h/B)因素的影响,将其应用于黏土沉桩时桩侧摩阻力的预测,可取得与试验实测结果较吻合的结果.研究成果对软土地区静压桩施工与承载力设计具有一定的工程指导意义.     

Digenic inheritance of severe insulin resistance in a human pedigree

Impaired insulin action is a key feature of type 2 diabetes and is also found, to a more extreme degree, in familial syndromes of insulin resistance. Although inherited susceptibility to insulin resistance may involve the interplay of several genetic loci, no clear examples of interactions among genes have yet been reported. Here we describe a family in which five individuals with severe insulin resistance, but no unaffected family members, were doubly [corrected] heterozygous with respect to frameshift/premature stop mutations in two unlinked genes, PPARG and PPP1R3A these encode peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma, which is highly expressed in adipocytes, and protein phosphatase 1, regulatory subunit 3, the muscle-specific regulatory subunit of protein phosphatase 1, which are centrally involved in the regulation of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, respectively. That mutant molecules primarily involved in either carbohydrate or lipid metabolism can combine to produce a phenotype of extreme insulin resistance provides a model of interactions among genes that may underlie common human metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes.     

Chromosome aberrations induced by daunomycin in human leucocyte cultures,with the apparent synergistic effect of arginine

Zusammenfassung Das Antibiotikum und Zytostatikum Daunomycin induziert beträchtliche Chromosomenaberrationen in menschlichen Leukozyten in der Konzentration von 0,02 µg/cm³. Dieser Effekt wird durch Zusatz von Arginin zur Zellkultur wesentlich verstärkt, und die Aberrationen werden auch qualitativ verändert. Es ist nicht bekannt, wie Daunomycin und Arginine aufeinander einwirken.     

An unexpectedly rapid decline in the X-ray afterglow emission of long gamma-ray bursts

'Long' gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are commonly accepted to originate in the explosion of particularly massive stars, which give rise to highly relativistic jets. Inhomogeneities in the expanding flow result in internal shock waves that are believed to produce the gamma-rays we see. As the jet travels further outward into the surrounding circumstellar medium, 'external' shocks create the afterglow emission seen in the X-ray, optical and radio bands. Here we report observations of the early phases of the X-ray emission of five GRBs. Their X-ray light curves are characterised by a surprisingly rapid fall-off for the first few hundred seconds, followed by a less rapid decline lasting several hours. This steep decline, together with detailed spectral properties of two particular bursts, shows that violent shock interactions take place in the early jet outflows.     

Localization of the malignant hyperthermia susceptibility locus to human chromosome 19q12-13.2

Malignant hyperthermia (MH) is an inherited human skeletal muscle disorder and is one of the main causes of death due to anaesthesia. The reported incidence of MH varies from 1 in 12,000 in children to 1 in 40,000 in adults. MH is triggered in susceptible people by all commonly used inhalational anaesthetics; it is characterized by a profoundly accelerated muscle metabolism, contractures, hyperthermia and tachycardia. Susceptibility to MH (MHS) is predicted by contracture tests on muscle tissue obtained by biopsy. An almost identical disorder known as porcine MH exists in pigs. The genetics of the porcine syndrome have been extensively studied; the locus controlling expression of porcine MH is genetically linked to the glucose phosphate isomerase locus (GPI). In man, GPI has been mapped to the q12-13.2 region of chromosome 19 (refs 10-12). We have now investigated genetic linkage in several extended Irish pedigrees in which MHS is segregating as an autosomal dominant trait. Here we show linkage between MHS and DNA markers from the GPI region of human chromosome 19 with a maximum log likelihood ratio (lod score) of 5.65 at the CYP2A locus. These results indicate that human and porcine MH are most probably due to mutations in homologous genes, and also provide a potentially accurate and noninvasive method of diagnosis for MHS.