CAPITALISM, KINSHIP, AND FRAUD The Case of Bernie Madoff

Investment broker Bernie Madoff ran what is still considered the largest Ponzi scheme in history, defrauding thousands of investors over a 20-year period of more than $20 billion. He worked his game almost entirely through kinship connections—relatives, friends of relatives, and relatives of friends. The relationship between kinship and capitalism has drawn renewed attention by anthropologists, part of a broader effort to rethink capitalism not as a free-standing ‘economy’ but as deeply embedded in a wide range of social relations. In this article I use the Madoff case to illustrate, and develop further, several aspects of the kinship/capitalism connection. I also consider briefly the boundary between fraud and ‘legitimate’ capitalism, which many economic historians consider a fuzzy boundary at best

First results from dynamical chirally improved fermions

We simulate Quantum Chromodynamics in four Euclidean dimensions with two (degenerate mass) flavors of dynamical quarks. The Dirac operator is the so-called chirally improved operator that has been studied so far in quenched calculations. We now present results of an implementation with the Hybrid Monte Carlo (HMC) algorithm including stout smearing. Our results are from an 8^3x16 lattice with tadpole improved Luescher-Weisz gauge action. We present our estimate of the lattice spacing, the pi and rho meson masses and evidence for tunneling between different topological sectors.Comment: LaTeX [PoS], 6 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables, talk presented at Lattice 2005 (chiral fermions

Formulation and optimization of the energy-based blended quasicontinuum method

We formulate an energy-based atomistic-to-continuum coupling method based on blending the quasicontinuum method for the simulation of crystal defects. We utilize theoretical results from Van Koten and Luskin [32] and Ortner and Van Koten [24] to derive optimal choices of approximation parameters (blending function and finite element grid) for microcrack and di-vacancy test problems and confirm our analytical predictions in numerical tests

Implementing Hybrid Monte Carlo with stout-smeared chirally improved Dirac operators

We discuss our implementation of dynamical Ginsparg-Wilson type fermions using a stout-smeared chirally improved Dirac operator. Such operators have been studied extensively in quenched calculations within the Bern-Graz-Regensburg (BGR) collaboration. Here we discuss the development and testing of the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm with this Dirac operator. We study the chiral properties of this operator in a dynamical setup, comparing, e.g., the spectra of the operator for the dynamical and quenched cases. We then discuss quantitative features of the algorithm like autocorrelation and performance.Comment: LaTeX [PoS], 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, poster presented at Lattice 2005 (chiral fermions

Evolution of induced axial magnetization in a two-component magnetized plasma

In this paper, the evolution of the induced axial magnetization due to the propagation of an electromagnetic (em) wave along the static background magnetic field in a two-component plasma has been investigated using the Block equation. The evolution process induces a strong magnetic anisotropy in the plasma medium, depending nonlinearly on the incident wave amplitude. This induced magnetic anisotropy can modify the dispersion relation of the incident em wave, which has been obtained in this paper. In the low frequency Alfven wave limit, this dispersion relation shows that the resulting phase velocity of the incident wave depends on the square of the incident wave amplitude and on the static background magnetic field of plasma. The analytical results are in well agreement with the numerically estimated values in solar corona and sunspots.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Relativistic photoelectron spectra in the ionization of atoms by elliptically polarized light

Relativistic tunnel ionization of atoms by intense, elliptically polarized light is considered. The relativistic version of the Landau-Dykhne formula is employed. The general analytical expression is obtained for the relativistic photoelectron spectra. The most probable angle of electron emission, the angular distribution near this angle, the position of the maximum and the width of the energy spectrum are calculated. In the weak field limit we obtain the familiar non-relativistic results. For the case of circular polarization our analytical results are in agreement with recent derivations of Krainov [V.P. Krainov, J. Phys. B, {\bf 32}, 1607 (1999)].Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Journal of Physics

The Nonlinear Debye-Onsager Relaxation Effect in Weakly Ionized Plasmas

A weakly ionized plasma under the influence of a strong electric field is considered. Supposing a local Maxwellian distribution for the electron momenta the plasma is described by hydrodynamic equations for the pair distribution functions. These equations are solved and the relaxation field is calculated for an arbitrary field strength. It is found that the relaxation effect becomes lower with increasing strength of the electrical field.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

A geometrical angle on Feynman integrals

A direct link between a one-loop N-point Feynman diagram and a geometrical representation based on the N-dimensional simplex is established by relating the Feynman parametric representations to the integrals over contents of (N-1)-dimensional simplices in non-Euclidean geometry of constant curvature. In particular, the four-point function in four dimensions is proportional to the volume of a three-dimensional spherical (or hyperbolic) tetrahedron which can be calculated by splitting into birectangular ones. It is also shown that the known formula of reduction of the N-point function in (N-1) dimensions corresponds to splitting the related N-dimensional simplex into N rectangular ones.Comment: 47 pages, including 42 pages of the text (in plain Latex) and 5 pages with the figures (in a separate Latex file, requires axodraw.sty) a note and three references added, minor problem with notation fixe