How is Death Penalty Used in China?

Strike hard Campaigns. The Views of the People and of the Elite. Comments on the interplay between penal populism, leadership from the front and human rights. To what extent are hard strike campaigns formed as penal populism in the provinces or as a result of leadership from the front centrally. The hard strike campaigns in the future. (Preliminary Symposium Program for The first Oslo international Symposium on Death penalty in Asia)published_or_final_versio

The "bad" and the "sick": medicalizing deviance in China

Session IConrad and Schneider’s now classical work on the historical transformation of definitions of deviance from ‘badness’ to ‘sickness’ is relevant for the situation in China today, although with some modifications. The weakly founded medical/psychiatric profession and the strong political/ideological discourse in China leads to a strange combination of medicalization and moralization, even criminalization. The ‘sick’ are often equated with the ‘bad,’ and ‘sickness’ is seen as a secondary sign of ‘badness.’ The pan-moralist tradition of ancient China seems to be closely combined with the Communist era’s strong belief in political-ideological correctness, and its strong belief in social engineering. My previous research on crime and deviance in China in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be confirmed by today’s discourse, although there are new moral panics and new forms of medical-moralistic definitions of deviance in contemporary China. Still, the categories of deviance are very much socially constructed entities closely related to the moral-political order of present day China. In this paper, I will use three cases to underline my argument. First, the type of deviance I call ‘majority deviance,’ related to the case of the prejudice and dangers associated with the only-child. My second example has to do with what I term the ‘wayward girl’ and the moral panics concerning so-called zaolian – or ‘premature love’ among young girls. The third example is the new panic surrounding ‘internet addiction disorder’ or IAD. While the ‘disco’ and the ‘dance hall’ were the sites of disorder in the 1980s and 90s, the wangba – or ‘internet bar’ – is now seen as the most dangerous site of crime and deviance.postprintThe International Conference on Disease and Crime: Social Pathologies and the New Politics of Health, Hong Kong, China, 18-19 April 2011

Monte Carlo simulations of dissipative quantum Ising models

The dynamical critical exponent $z$ is a fundamental quantity in characterizing quantum criticality, and it is well known that the presence of dissipation in a quantum model has significant impact on the value of $z$. Studying quantum Ising spin models using Monte Carlo methods, we estimate the dynamical critical exponent $z$ and the correlation length exponent $\nu$ for different forms of dissipation. For a two-dimensional quantum Ising model with Ohmic site dissipation, we find $z \approx 2$ as for the corresponding one-dimensional case, whereas for a one-dimensional quantum Ising model with Ohmic bond dissipation we obtain the estimate $z \approx 1$.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Physical Review

Criticality of compact and noncompact quantum dissipative Z4Z_4 models in (1+1)(1+1) dimensions

Using large-scale Monte Carlo computations, we study two versions of a $(1+1)D$ $Z_4$-symmetric model with Ohmic bond dissipation. In one of these versions, the variables are restricted to the interval $[0,2\pi>$, while the domain is unrestricted in the other version. The compact model features a completely ordered phase with a broken $Z_4$ symmetry and a disordered phase, separated by a critical line. The noncompact model features three phases. In addition to the two phases exhibited by the compact model, there is also an intermediate phase with isotropic quasi-long-range order. We calculate the dynamical critical exponent $z$ along the critical lines of both models to see if the compactness of the variable is relevant to the critical scaling between space and imaginary time. There appears to be no difference between the two models in that respect, and we find $z\approx1$ for the single phase transition in the compact model as well as for both transitions in the noncompact model

Quantum criticality in spin chains with non-ohmic dissipation

We investigate the critical behavior of a spin chain coupled to bosonic baths characterized by a spectral density proportional to $\omega^s$, with $s>1$. Varying $s$ changes the effective dimension $d_\text{eff} = d + z$ of the system, where $z$ is the dynamical critical exponent and the number of spatial dimensions $d$ is set to one. We consider two extreme cases of clock models, namely Ising-like and U(1)-symmetric ones, and find the critical exponents using Monte Carlo methods. The dynamical critical exponent and the anomalous scaling dimension $\eta$ are independent of the order parameter symmetry for all values of $s$. The dynamical critical exponent varies continuously from $z \approx 2$ for $s=1$ to $z=1$ for $s=2$, and the anomalous scaling dimension evolves correspondingly from $\eta \gtrsim 0$ to $\eta = 1/4$. The latter exponent values are readily understood from the effective dimensionality of the system being $d_\text{eff} \approx 3$ for $s=1$, while for $s=2$ the anomalous dimension takes the well-known exact value for the 2D Ising and XY models, since then $d_{\rm{eff}}=2$. A noteworthy feature is, however, that $z$ approaches unity and $\eta$ approaches 1/4 for values of $s < 2$, while naive scaling would predict the dissipation to become irrelevant for $s=2$. Instead, we find that $z=1,\eta=1/4$ for $s \approx 1.75$ for both Ising-like and U(1) order parameter symmetry. These results lead us to conjecture that for all site-dissipative $Z_q$ chains, these two exponents are related by the scaling relation $z = \text{max} {(2-\eta)/s, 1}$. We also connect our results to quantum criticality in nondissipative spin chains with long-range spatial interactions.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

The medicalization of deviance in China

亞洲犯罪學學會Conference Theme: Asian Innovations in Criminology and Criminal JusticePart 5: Juvenile Delinquency and JusticeConrad and Schneider’s now classical work on the historical transformation of definitions of deviance from “badness” to “sickness” is relevant for the situation in China today, although with some modifications. The weakly founded medical/psychiatric profession and the strong political/ideological discourse in China leads to a strange combination of medicalization and moralization, even criminalization of deviance. The “sick” is often combined with the “bad”, and “sickness” is often seen as a secondary sign of “badness”. The pan-moralist tradition of ancient China seems to be closely combined with the Communist era’s strong belief in political-ideological correctness, and its strong belief in social engineering. It is interesting to note that my research on crime and deviance in China in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be confirmed by today’s discourse, although there are new moral panics and new forms of medical-moralistic definitions of deviance in China today. Still, the categories of deviance are very much socially constructed entities closely related to the moral-political order of present day China. I will use three cases to underline my argument. First, the type of deviance I call “majority deviance”, related to the case of the prejudice and dangers associated with the only-child. My second example has to do with what I term the “wayward girl” and the moral panics concerning so-called zaolian – or “premature love” among young girls. The third example is the new panic surrounding “internet addiction disorder” or IAD. While the “disco” and the “dance hall” were the sites of disorder in the 1980s and 90s, the wangba – or “internet bar” is now seen as the most dangerous site of crime and deviance.postprin

On eigenvalues of the Schr\"odinger operator with a complex-valued polynomial potential

In this paper, we generalize a recent result of A. Eremenko and A. Gabrielov on irreducibility of the spectral discriminant for the Schr\"odinger equation with quartic potentials. We consider the eigenvalue problem with a complex-valued polynomial potential of arbitrary degree d and show that the spectral determinant of this problem is connected and irreducible. In other words, every eigenvalue can be reached from any other by analytic continuation. We also prove connectedness of the parameter spaces of the potentials that admit eigenfunctions satisfying k>2 boundary conditions, except for the case d is even and k=d/2. In the latter case, connected components of the parameter space are distinguished by the number of zeros of the eigenfunctions.Comment: 23 page

Hummingbirds arrest their kidneys at night: diel variation in glomerular filtration rate in Selasphorus platycercus

© The Company of Biologists Ltd 2004Small nectarivorous vertebrates face a quandary. When feeding, they must eliminate prodigious quantities of water; however, when they are not feeding, they are susceptible to dehydration. We examined the role of the kidney in the resolution of this osmoregulatory dilemma. Broad-tailed hummingbirds (Selasphorus platycercus) displayed diurnal variation in glomerular filtration rate (GFR). During the morning, midday and evening, GFRs were 0.9±0.6, 1.8±0.4 and 2.3±0.5 ml h–1, respectively. At midday, GFR increased linearly with increased water intake. During the evening, hummingbirds decreased renal fractional water reabsorption linearly with increased water intake. Broad-tailed hummingbirds appeared to cease GFR at night (–0.1±0.2 ml h–1) and decreased GFR in response to short-term (~1.5 h) water deprivation. GFR seems to be very responsive to water deprivation in hummingbirds. Although hummingbirds and other nectarivorous birds can consume astounding amounts of water, a phylogenetically explicit allometric analysis revealed that their diurnal GFRs are not different from the expectation based on body mass.Bradley Hartman Bakken, Todd J. McWhorter, Ella Tsahar and Carlos Martínez del Ri

On eigenvalues of the Schr\"odinger operator with an even complex-valued polynomial potential

In this paper, we generalize several results of the article "Analytic continuation of eigenvalues of a quartic oscillator" of A. Eremenko and A. Gabrielov. We consider a family of eigenvalue problems for a Schr\"odinger equation with even polynomial potentials of arbitrary degree d with complex coefficients, and k<(d+2)/2 boundary conditions. We show that the spectral determinant in this case consists of two components, containing even and odd eigenvalues respectively. In the case with k=(d+2)/2 boundary conditions, we show that the corresponding parameter space consists of infinitely many connected components