We develop a method for recovering the global density distribution of the ancient Galactic stellar halo prior to disk formation, based on the present orbits of metal-poor stars observed in the solar neighborhood. The method relies on the adiabatic invariance of the action integrals of motion for the halo population during the slow accumulation of a disk component, subsequent to earlier halo for...

BACKGROUND Podoconiosis (endemic non-filarial elephantiasis) is a chronic, non-infectious disease resulting from exposure of bare feet to red-clay soil in tropical highlands. This study examined lay beliefs about three under-researched aspects of podoconiosis patients' care: explanatory models, health-seeking behaviours and self-care. METHODS In-depth interviews and focus group discussions we...

Between the second, third and fourth centuries the Christian Church produced biographies chronicling the pious undertakings of monks. These hagiographies borrowed from preexisting Greek biographies to distinguish the Christian monk from the pagan holy man. Patricia Cox Miller’s Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man demonstrates how hagiographers adaptation of Greek biographies...

In her article, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklo...

We present new observations of the gravitational lens (GL) system B1600+434, strongly suggesting that the lens is an edge-on spiral galaxy. These observations are used to constrain the mass model of the system, in particular the oblateness and velocity dispersion of the dark matter halo around the lensing galaxy. From an analytical model we find a lower limit on the halo oblate-ness q halo = (c...

Accurate phase-space coordinates (three components of position and velocity) of individual stars are rapidly becoming available with current and future resolved star surveys. These data will enable the computation of the full three-dimensional orbits of tens of thousands of stars in the Milky Way’s stellar halo. We demonstrate that the analysis of stellar halo orbits in frequency space can be u...

In purchase situations where attribute information is either missing or difficult to judge, a well-known “rule of thumb” consumers use to form evaluations is the halo effect. The psychology literature has widely considered the halo to reflect consumers’ inability to discriminate between different attributes and have therefore labeled it as the “halo error” or the “logical error.” The objective ...