This paper studies the long term evolution of planetary systems containing shortperiod planets, including the effects of tidal circularization, secular excitation of eccentricity by companion planets, and stellar damping. For planetary systems subject to all of these effects, analytic solutions (or approximations) are presented for the time evolution of the semi-major axes and eccentricities. S...

The problem of Stoneley waves in a non-homogeneous orthotropic elastic medium under the influence of gravity was studied recently by Abd-Alla and Ahmed [A.M. Abd-Alla, S.M. Ahmed, Stoneley waves and Rayleigh waves in a non-homogeneous orthotropic elastic medium under the influence of gravity, Appl. Math. Comput. 135 (2003) 187-200], who derived the secular equation of the wave in the implicit f...

In previous papers [1,2] relating to the concept of Combined Gravitational Action (CGA) we have established the CGA-theoretical foundations as an alternative gravity theory that already allowed us to resolve -in its contextsome unexpected and defiant problems occurred inside and outside the Solar System like, e.g., the anomalous Pioneer 10’s deceleration; the observed secular increase of the As...

The President's Council on Bioethics has addressed the moral status of human preembryos in its reports on stem cell research and human therapeutic cloning. Although the Council has been criticized for being hand-picked to favor the right-to-life viewpoint concerning human preembryos, it has embraced the idea that the right-to-life position should be defended in secular terms. This is an importa...

If there is such a 'post-secular' milieu, mindset, or thesis, it will need to furnish its own interpretation of the 'world' in ways distinct from those championed by the secular. Indeed an essential aspect of the 'secular' is how it has interpreted the 'world' (kosmos) as the 'space, time, and age' (Latin saecularis) in which things come into presence clearly, neutrally, and obviously. This pap...

Bernard S. Jackson has rightly warned that while it is tempting to analyze Jewish law in terms of secular theories of jurisprudence, the success of such a project is not guaranteed. For while there are correspondences between Jewish law and positivism, Jewish law and natural law theory, Jewish law and social contract theory – there is no systematic correspondence and indeed, there are points of...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Assessment of bone marrow is most commonly performed qualitatively in the spine or other large long bones. The craniofacial bones are less ideal for bone marrow analysis because of the relatively small bone marrow volume. Because patients with SCD often undergo repeated brain imaging to evaluate for cerebral vaso-occlusive disease, quantitative assessment of craniofacial ...

OBJECTIVES We investigated the secular trend in white blood cell (WBC) count and the relationship between WBC count and mortality between 1958 and 2002. BACKGROUND The WBC count is a clinical marker of inflammation and a strong predictor of mortality. Limited data exist on the WBC count secular trend and the relationship between WBC and mortality. METHODS One thousand eighty-three women and...

BACKGROUND Evidence from a number of countries in Europe and North America point towards the secular declining trend in menarcheal age with considerable spatial variations over the past two centuries. Similar trends were reported in several developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, data corroborating any secular trend in the menarcheal age of the Indian population remai...

We assessed how much of the observed decline in the prevalence of trachoma in a district of Western Nepal was due to an antibiotic treatment program and how much to an underlying secular trend outside of the program. Although antibiotic treatments clearly have an effect at 6 months, we were unable to show that this effect persisted at 12 months; in fact, long-term gains may be due to a secular ...