25,979 research outputs found
Are We There Yet? : Reflections on the Success of the Environment Law Movement in Ontario
In this short article, the author explores the history of the environmental law movement in Canada and explains how this history has affected many of the environmental laws and trends today. With a focus on Ontario, the author reports back from a round table discussion held in Toronto in early 2008. Some of Canada\u27s leading environmental lawyers, as well as many of the pioneers of the environmental law movement, reflected at the round table on the extent to which their aspirations for strong, effective environmental laws have been met and how much more remains to be done. While we are not there yet, much has been accomplished. More importantly, a new generation of environmental lawyers has taken up the challenge of those early pioneers, and promises to advocate for environmental laws and policies that will ensure a safe and healthy environment for future generations
Are We There Yet? : Reflections on the Success of the Environment Law Movement in Ontario
In this short article, the author explores the history of the environmental law movement in Canada and explains how this history has affected many of the environmental laws and trends today. With a focus on Ontario, the author reports back from a round table discussion held in Toronto in early 2008. Some of Canada\u27s leading environmental lawyers, as well as many of the pioneers of the environmental law movement, reflected at the round table on the extent to which their aspirations for strong, effective environmental laws have been met and how much more remains to be done. While we are not there yet, much has been accomplished. More importantly, a new generation of environmental lawyers has taken up the challenge of those early pioneers, and promises to advocate for environmental laws and policies that will ensure a safe and healthy environment for future generations
Sleeping patents: any reason to wake up?
Patents are typically characterized as very valuable assets for firms. Nevertheless, there are many patents in a firm's portfolio that are actually never used. In this paper, we claim that there is a relationship between a firm's decision to use or not to use a patent and the characteristics of the underlying invention. We characterize patent use according to the sleeping or non-sleeping character of the patents in the firm's portfolio. We characterize the underlying invention along different dimensions captured by the patent, i.e. importance, strategic fit, scope and innovativeness. We perform an empirical analysis on a set of patent-active firms in the chemicals industry that trade some of their patents through what is currently the only website specialized in firm technology transfer through the Internet, yet2.com. We use The NBER Patent Citations Data File to obtain information about the patents granted to these firms. Our results suggest that sleeping patents are more innovative, broader and no less important than their counterparts. We conclude that such patents are worth waking up, especially when the underlying invention is applicable to business areas far away from the patentholder's strategic core. These results suggest that there is potential for markets for technology to develop.Patents; innovativeness;
Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI)
We present the Young Exoplanet Transit Initiative (YETI), in which we use
several 0.2 to 2.6m telescopes around the world to monitor continuously young
(< 100 Myr), nearby (< 1 kpc) stellar clusters mainly to detect young
transiting planets (and to study other variability phenomena on time-scales
from minutes to years). The telescope network enables us to observe the targets
continuously for several days in order not to miss any transit. The runs are
typically one to two weeks long, about three runs per year per cluster in two
or three subsequent years for about ten clusters. There are thousands of stars
detectable in each field with several hundred known cluster members, e.g. in
the first cluster observed, Tr-37, a typical cluster for the YETI survey, there
are at least 469 known young stars detected in YETI data down to R=16.5 mag
with sufficient precision of 50 milli-mag rms (5 mmag rms down to R=14.5 mag)
to detect transits, so that we can expect at least about one young transiting
object in this cluster. If we observe 10 similar clusters, we can expect to
detect approximately 10 young transiting planets with radius determinations.
The precision given above is for a typical telescope of the YETI network,
namely the 60/90-cm Jena telescope (similar brightness limit, namely within
+/-1 mag, for the others) so that planetary transits can be detected. For
planets with mass and radius determinations, we can calculate the mean density
and probe the internal structure. We aim to constrain planet formation models
and their time-scales by discovering planets younger than 100 Myr and
determining not only their orbital parameters, but also measuring their true
masses and radii, which is possible so far only by the transit method. Here, we
present an overview and first results. (Abstract shortened)Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, AN accepted 2011 June 1
Supersymmetric type-III seesaw: lepton flavour violating decays and dark matter
We study a supersymmetric version of the seesaw mechanism type-III. The model
consists of the MSSM particle content plus three copies of 24 superfields. The
fermionic part of the SU(2) triplet contained in the 24 is responsible for the
type-III seesaw, which is used to explain the observed neutrino masses and
mixings. Complete copies of 24 are introduced to maintain gauge coupling
unification. These additional states change the beta functions of the gauge
couplings above the seesaw scale. Using mSUGRA boundary conditions we calculate
the resulting supersymmetric mass spectra at the electro-weak scale using full
2-loop renormalization group equations. We show that the resulting spectrum can
be quite different compared to the usual mSUGRA spectrum. We discuss how this
might be used to obtain information on the seesaw scale from mass measurements.
Constraints on the model space due to limits on lepton flavour violating decays
are discussed. The main constraints come from the bounds on the decay mu to e
and gamma but there are also regions where the decay tau to mu and gamma gives
stronger constraints. We also calculate the regions allowed by the dark matter
constraint. For the sake of completeness, we compare our results with those for
the supersymmetric seesaw type-II and, to some extent, with type-I.Comment: 32 pages, 16 eps figures. One ref. added; small changes in tex
Detailed Spectral Modeling of a 3-D Pulsating Reverse Detonation Model: Too Much Nickel
We calculate detailed NLTE synthetic spectra of a Pulsating Reverse
Detonation (PRD) model, a novel explosion mechanism for Type Ia supernovae.
While the hydro models are calculated in 3-D, the spectra use an angle averaged
hydro model and thus some of the 3-D details are lost, but the overall average
should be a good representation of the average observed spectra. We study the
model at 3 epochs: maximum light, seven days prior to maximum light, and 5 days
after maximum light. At maximum the defining Si II feature is prominent, but
there is also a prominent C II feature, not usually observed in normal SNe Ia
near maximum. We compare to the early spectrum of SN 2006D which did show a
prominent C II feature, but the fit to the observations is not compelling.
Finally we compare to the post-maximum UV+optical spectrum of SN 1992A. With
the broad spectral coverage it is clear that the iron-peak elements on the
outside of the model push too much flux to the red and thus the particular PRD
realizations studied would be intrinsically far redder than observed SNe Ia. We
briefly discuss variations that could improve future PRD models.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Ap
Constraints on the rare tau decays from mu --> e gamma in the supersymmetric see-saw model
It is now a firmly established fact that all family lepton numbers are
violated in Nature. In this paper we discuss the implications of this
observation for future searches for rare tau decays in the supersymmetric
see-saw model. Using the two loop renormalization group evolution of the soft
terms and the Yukawa couplings we show that there exists a lower bound on the
rate of the rare process mu --> e gamma of the form BR(mu --> e gamma) > C
BR(tau --> mu gamma) BR(tau --> e gamma), where C is a constant that depends on
supersymmetric parameters. Our only assumption is the absence of cancellations
among the high-energy see-saw parameters. We also discuss the implications of
this bound for future searches for rare tau decays. In particular, for large
regions of the mSUGRA parameter space, we show that present B-factories could
discover either tau --> mu gamma or tau --> e gamma, but not both.Comment: 39 pages, 7 figures. Typos corrected, references adde
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