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I am grateful to the members of the Beaumont Medical Club for their kindness in inviting me to give the Carmalt Lecture on a historical theme. As a surgeon I could repeat what the French painter Ingres used to say to the people who praised him for his pictures: "I am not interested in painting; what I really like is to play the violin." My violin, that is, my source of relaxation and rest, is h...

In the frame of the SISPyr project the feasibility of an Earthquake Early Warning system (EEW) covering Pyrenees is being studied. First of all, the analysis of the existing seismic stations shows that the SISPyr realtime network may be used as a base of a Pyrenean EEW despite that some difficulties exist to its implementation that should be solved. The exploration of an important Pyrenean wave...

This initiative applies to a specific group of scholars – those working on post-baccalaureate degrees. The Riecker Fund will annually finance one or two University of Michigan graduate students, who may engage in research in one of two ways: They may join one of the Center’s own ongoing project teams, or they may work with advisors within their own academic disciplines. Either way, the Fund, an...

We discuss some of the cosmological consequences of a late-time ( z 5 lo3) phase transition which produces light domain walls. The observed peculiar velocity field of the Universe and the observed isotropy of the microwave background radiation severely constrain the wall surface density (= a) in such a scenario: Go 5 10-4H~ (Ho is the present value of the Hubble parameter). The most interesting...

A comprehensive review and study of the rich dinosaur track record of the Tremp Formation in the southern Pyrenees of Spain (Southwestern Europe) shows a unique succession of footprint localities prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event. A description of some 30 new tracksites and data on sedimentary environments, track occurrence and preservation, ichnology and chronostratigraphy are ...

We assemble a few remarks on the supergravity solution of hep-th/0007191, whose UV asymptotic form was previously found in hep-th/0002159. First, by normalizing the R-R fluxes, we compare the logarithmic flow of couplings in supergravity with that in field theory, and find exact agreement. We also write the 3-form field strength G3 = F3 − τH3 present in the solution in a manifestly SO(4) invari...