A Revolution in Disguise: The European Citizens' Initiative

The European Citizens' Initiative is a feature of the Treaty of Lisbon that many people have as yet to discover. However, even though it has often been criticized as being a kind of bogus participation that is no more than a placebo, it may well change the European Union, for it contains the seeds of a European public sphere and European parties. In this respect the initiative has already been a success

Consistent matter couplings for Plebanski gravity

We develop a scheme for the minimal coupling of all standard types of tensor and spinor field matter to Plebanski gravity. This theory is a geometric reformulation of vacuum general relativity in terms of two-form frames and connection one-forms, and provides a covariant basis for various quantization approaches. Using the spinor formalism we prove the consistency of the newly proposed matter coupling by demonstrating the full equivalence of Plebanski gravity plus matter to Einstein--Cartan gravity. As a byproduct we also show the consistency of some previous suggestions for matter actions.Comment: 20 page

Finsler geometric extension of Einstein gravity

We construct gravitational dynamics for Finsler spacetimes in terms of an action integral on the unit tangent bundle. These spacetimes are generalizations of Lorentzian metric manifolds which satisfy necessary causality properties. A coupling procedure for matter fields to Finsler gravity completes our new theory that consistently becomes equivalent to Einstein gravity in the limit of metric geometry. We provide a precise geometric definition of observers and their measurements, and show that the transformations by means of which different observers communicate form a groupoid that generalizes the usual Lorentz group. Moreover, we discuss the implementation of Finsler spacetime symmetries. We use our results to analyze a particular spacetime model that leads to Finsler geometric refinements of the linearized Schwarzschild solution.Comment: 39 pages, 4 figures, journal references adde

Inflation from String/M-Theory Compactification?

We present some exact scalar potentials for the dimensionally reduced theory and examine the possibility of obtaining accelerating 4d cosmology from String/M-theory, more generally, hyperbolic and flux compactification. In the hyperbolic case, even in the zero-flux limit, the scalar potential is positive for the 4d effective theory as required to get an accelerating universe, and thereby evading the ``no-go theorem'' given for static internal space. When we turn on the gauge fields as source terms at the cosmological background with potential V\propto exp(-2c\phi), we find eternally accelerating cosmologies when the 4d space-time is flat and c\geq 1, or hyperbolic and 1<c<\sqrt{2}.Comment: 3 pp. espcrc2.sty. Minor typos corrected and Ref. added. To appear in proceedings of Lattice 2003 (Gravity), Tsukuba, Japan, July 200

Applied genetics of tilapias

This paper reviews the successes and failures of genetic experiments on tilapias and points to various characteristics of tilapias, which require improvement for increased yields.Tilapia culture, Genetics, Aquaculture techniques Tilapia, Sarotherodon

Local spacetime effects on gyroscope systems

We give a precise theoretical description of initially aligned sets of orthogonal gyroscopes which are transported along different paths from some initial point to the same final point in spacetime. These gyroscope systems can be used to synchronize separated observers' spatial frames by free fall along timelike geodesics. We find that initially aligned gyroscope systems, or spatial frames, lose their synchronization due to the curvature of spacetime and their relative motion. On the basis of our results we propose a simple experiment which enables observers to determine locally whether their spacetime is described by a rotating Kerr or a non-rotating Schwarzschild metric.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, journal references adde

Brans-Dicke geometry

We reveal the non-metric geometry underlying omega-->0 Brans-Dicke theory by unifying the metric and scalar field into a single geometric structure. Taking this structure seriously as the geometry to which matter universally couples, we show that the theory is fully consistent with solar system tests. This is in striking constrast with the standard metric coupling, which grossly violates post-Newtonian experimental constraints.Comment: 8 pages, v2 with additional comment and reference