Did the Sephardic Jews Speak Ladino?

The term ‘Ladino’ has been used by some scholars in reference to the language spoken by the Sephardic Jews. Sometimes it has been used in reference to the language spoken by the Jews in Medieval Spain while at other times scholars have used this term in reference to the language spoken by the Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire in the centuries following their exile from Spain. Both definitions are listed in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española, but is the term accurately defined? This article examines modern and historic uses of the term ‘ladino’ and suggests amending the dictionary to better reflect the particular nuances of this term. It also examines the differences between the terms ‘ladino’ and ‘judeoespañol’ (Judeo-Spanish) and clarifies their proper uses

Deconfinement and Chiral Restoration in Hot and Dense Matter

We propose a picture that the chiral phase transition at zero quark mass and the deconfinement transition at infinite quark mass are continuously connected. This gives a simple interpretation on the coincidence of the pseudo-critical temperatures observed in lattice QCD. We discuss a possible dynamical mechanism behind the simultaneous crossovers and show the results in a model study.Comment: Contributed to the XXII International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory (Lattice2004(nonzero)), Batavia, Illinois, Jun 21-26, 200

Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish: Common Considerations for the English Translator of Two Peripheral Lects

In the natural order of language development orality precedes literary production, but elements of the oral tradition do often appear in literature. In this presentation I will look at orality in some Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish texts to see how the study of these two lects together may better inform the translator. Though both are lects of Spanish-speaking communities in the diaspora, Judeo-Spanish and Spanglish may, at first glance, seem to have little else in common. The former is a dying tongue spoken predominantly in Israel. Though the literary tradition in Judeo-Spanish dates back centuries, language preservationists are now in a race against the clock to collect its folktales and oral tradition in writing while the population slowly dwindles. Spanglish, on the other hand, is gaining ever more prestige and attention. While early written evidence of Spanish-English code-switching appeared in personal correspondence in the mid-19th century, the lect had been largely confined to the oral sphere until the late 1990s. The emergence of music and literature in Spanglish marked a turning point for the lect as it began to appear not only as a nod to Hispanic-American culture in an otherwise English or Spanish text, but as main lect of the entirety of the texts. Despite these differences, from the perspective of the English translator of these texts there is a great deal of similarities, particularly insofar as the role that orality plays in the literature of these communities. Rather than isolating each lect, the translator can benefit greatly when considering both when deciding how to translate the work from its position in the periphery of the Spanish literary sphere into English

Topological Mechanics from Supersymmetry

In topological mechanics, the identification of a mechanical system's rigidity matrix with an electronic tight-binding model allows to infer topological properties of the mechanical system, such as the occurrence of `floppy' boundary modes, from the associated electronic band structure. Here we introduce an approach to systematically construct topological mechanical systems by an exact supersymmetry (SUSY) that relates the bosonic (mechanical) and fermionic (e.g. electronic) degrees of freedom. As examples we discuss mechanical analogues of the Kitaev honeycomb model and of a second-order topological insulator with floppy corner modes. Our SUSY construction naturally defines hitherto unexplored topological invariants for bosonic (mechanical) systems, such as bosonic Wilson loop operators that are formulated in terms of a SUSY-related fermionic Berry curvature.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Non-perturbative formulation of the static color octet potential

By dressing Polyakov lines with appropriate functionals of the gauge fields, we construct observables describing a fundamental representation static quark-antiquark pair in the singlet, adjoint and average channels of SU(N) pure gauge theory. Each of the potentials represents a gauge invariant eigenvalue of the Hamiltonian. Numerical simulations are performed for SU(2) in 2+1 dimensions. The adjoint channel is found to be repulsive at small and confining at large separations, suggesting the existence of a metastable (N^2-1)-plet bound state. For small distances and temperatures above the deconfinement transition, the leading order perturbative prediction for the ratio of singlet and adjoint potentials is reproduced by the lattice data.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

On Lattice QCD with Many Flavors

We discuss the confining and chiral-symmetry breaking properties of QCD with a large number of flavors $N_f$. In a Monte Carlo simulation of QCD with $N_f =16$ staggered fermions, we find clear evidence of a first order bulk phase transition which separates phases with broken and unbroken chiral symmetry. This is consistent with extrapolations of earlier studies with smaller $N_f$, and is also as expected from general arguments. Thus, even when the perturbative renormalization group flow has a new infrared stable fixed point near the origin, lattice artifacts induce chiral symmetry breaking, and presumably confinement, at sufficiently strong coupling.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, figures part of the LaTeX fil

Splicing repression allows the gradual emergence of new Alu-exons in primate evolution

Alu elements are retrotransposons that frequently form new exons during primate evolution. Here, we assess the interplay of splicing repression by hnRNPC and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) in the quality control and evolution of new Alu-exons. We identify 3100 new Alu-exons and show that NMD more efficiently recognises transcripts with Alu-exons compared to other exons with premature termination codons. However, some Alu-exons escape NMD, especially when an adjacent intron is retained, highlighting the importance of concerted repression by splicing and NMD. We show that evolutionary progression of 3’ splice sites is coupled with longer repressive uridine tracts. Once the 3’ splice site at ancient Alu-exons reaches a stable phase, splicing repression by hnRNPC decreases, but the exons generally remain sensitive to NMD. We conclude that repressive motifs are strongest next to cryptic exons and that gradual weakening of these motifs contributes to the evolutionary emergence of new alternative exons

The Cost of Multiple Large Shareholders

Previous research argues that large noncontrolling shareholders enhance firm value because they deter expropriation by the controlling shareholder. We propose that the conflicting incentives faced by large shareholders may induce a nonlinear relationship between the relative size of large shareholdings and firm value. Consistent with this prediction, we present evidence that there are costs to having a second (and third) largest shareholder, especially when the largest shareholdings are similar in size. Our results are robust to various relative size proxies, firm performance measures, model specifications, and potential endogeneity issues

Asymptotic Behavior of the Correlator for Polyakov Loops

The asymptotic behavior of the correlator for Polyakov loop operators separated by a large distance $R$ is determined for high temperature QCD. It is dominated by nonperturbative effects related to the exchange of magnetostatic gluons. To analyze the asymptotic behavior, the problem is formulated in terms of the effective field theory of QCD in 3 space dimensions. The Polyakov loop operator is expanded in terms of local gauge-invariant operators constructed out of the magnetostatic gauge field, with coefficients that can be calculated using resummed perturbation theory. The asymptotic behavior of the correlator is $\exp(-MR)/R$, where $M$ is the mass of the lowest-lying glueball in $(2+1)$-dimensional QCD. This result implies that existing lattice calculations of the Polyakov loop correlator at the highest temperatures available do not probe the true asymptotic region in $R$.Comment: 10 pages, NUHEP-TH-94-2

Scaling and Asymptotic Scaling in the SU(2) Gauge Theory

We determine the critical couplings for the deconfinement phase transition in $SU(2)$ gauge theory on $N_\tau \times N_\sigma^3$ lattices with $N_\tau = 8$ and 16 and $N_\sigma$ varying between 16 and 48. A comparison with string tension data shows scaling of the ratio $T_c / \sqrt{\sigma}$ in the entire coupling regime $\beta =2.30-2.75$, while the individual quantities still exhibit large scaling violations. We find $T_c / \sqrt{\sigma}=0.69(2)$. We also discuss in detail the extrapolation of $T_c / Lambda_{\rm{\bar{M} \bar{S}}}$ and $\sqrt{\sigma} / Lambda_{\rm{\bar{M}\bar{S}}}$ to the continuum limit. Our result, which is consistent with the above ratio, is $T_c / Lambda_{\rm{\bar{M}\bar{S}}} = 1.23(11)$ and $\sqrt{\sigma} / Lambda_{\rm{\bar{M}\bar{S}}} = 1.79(12)$. We also comment upon corresponding results for $SU(3)$ gauge theory and four flavour QCD.Comment: 27 pages with 9 postscript figures included. Plain TeX file (needed macros are included). BI-TP 92-26, FSU-SCRI-92-103, HLRZ-92-39 (Quote of UKQCD string tension, and accordingly Figs. 5 and 7a, plus a few typo's corrected.