The blazar S5 0014+813: a real or apparent monster?

The blazar S 5 0014 + 813 : a real or apparent monster ?

A strong hard X–ray luminosity from a blazar flags the presence of a very powerful jet. If the jet power is in turn related to the mass accretion rate, the most luminous hard X–ray blazars should pinpoint the largest accretion rates, and therefore the largest black hole masses. These ideas are confirmed by the Swift satellite observations of the blazar S5 0014+813, at the redshift z = 3.366. Sw...

Transnational crime in the Pacific Islands : real or apparent danger?

Transnational crime constitutes a challenge for even the most advanced industrial nations. The Pacific Islands are culturally, educationally and socially diverse, geographically isolated and sparsely populated. There is a degree of heterogeneity in their respective levels of governance, corruption and law enforcement capacity. Economic weaknesses and their impact upon infrastructure, poverty an...

Real or apparent ethnic differences in cellular adhesion molecule activity?

HLA, autoimmunity, and rheumatic heart disease. Apparent or real associations?

T he report of Ozkan et all in this issue of Circulation identifies HLA allelic associations with rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in a Turkish population, a population previously untested for HLA associations with RHD. Of interest, they report a significantly increased expression of B16, DR3, and DR7 in their patient sample. The increased expression of DR3 and DR7 alleles observed in their patien...

Radio to gamma-ray variability study of blazar S5 0716+714

We present the results of a series of radio, optical, X-ray, and γ-ray observations of the BL Lac object S50716+714 carried out between April 2007 and January 2011. The multifrequency observations were obtained using several groundand space-based facilities. The intense optical monitoring of the source reveals faster repetitive variations superimposed on a long-term variability trend on a time ...