"Could Charm (\& τ\tau) Transitions be the `Poor Princesses' of Deeper Understanding of Fundamental Dynamics?" -- or -- "Finding Novel Forces?"

We know that `our' Universe consists of `known' matter only $\sim$ 4.5\%: our understanding is incomplete seeing directly in neutrino oscillations (never mind about `other' Universes). Charm quarks had great impact on our understanding of known matter. QCD is the only local quantum field theory to describe strong forces. We can learn novel lessons about strong dynamics by measuring rates around the thresholds of $[\bar Q Q]$ states with $Q = b, c$. Furthermore they give us gateways for New Dynamics (ND), where we have to go from `accuracy' to `precision' eras. Finally we can connect with $\tau$ transitions and -- maybe -- with dark matter. Charm dynamics acts as a bridge between the worlds of light flavor hadrons with the heavy one, namely beauty hadrons. Finding {\em regional asymmetries} in many-body final states could be a `game changer'. There are several different `roads' to get closer to our goals: experiments act as gatekeepers like Super-tau-charm-factories, Super-beauty-factories and/or Super-$Z^0$-factories -- and deeper thinking about symmetries.Comment: 46 pages, 7 figures, 1 table; Dedicated to Timothy O'Meara, a mathematician \& the first lay Provost of the University of Notre Dame du Lac: without him \& his vision the University of Notre Dame du Lac would not be even close what it is now; e.g., he opened Notre Dame's academic and cultural door to China.

Parton--Hadron Duality in B Meson Decays

We summarize the current view on Parton-Hadron duality as it applies to B meson decays. It is emphasized that an OPE treatment is essential for properly formulating duality and its limitations. Duality violations are unlikely to become the limiting factor in describing semileptonic B width vis-a-vie higher order corrections. The consistent extraction of the b quark mass from B production and decays provides a striking example of the theoretical control achieved.Comment: Contribution to the CKM workshop, held at CERN, Geneva, Feb.15.-18.2002, LaTeX, 13 pages, 2 figure

B_s Mixing and B Hadron Lifetimes at CDF

We present the CDF results using 1.0 fb^{-1} of data on the mixing frequency measurement in the B_s system and the lifetime measurements of several B hadrons. We obtain \Delta m_s=17.77 +- 0.1 +- 0.07 ps^{-1} and c\tau(\Lambda_b)=473.8 +- 23.1 +- 3.5 \mu m. The later one is more than 3 sigma above the world average, but in reasonable agreement with HQE calculations.Comment: submitted to EPS2007 proceeding