Class Actions as Alternative Dispute Resolution

This article situates the action in ADR theory by viewing it as a hybrid process that draws on both the command and consensus portions of a rational dispute resolution continuum. Class action legislation does this in a number of ways, the most important being the scope it gives to courts to approve or disapprove class settlements that have been privately negotiated by defence and class counsel. The rationale is to protect the interests of absent class members and ensure that the legislative goals of class actions-access to justice, judicial economy and behaviour modification-are well served. Class actions can thereby render moot some of the private/public debate over settlement by taking disputes out of the purely private realm and placing them in the quasi-public realm. However, this places courts in an unaccustomed role and calls for the need for more empirical research on settlement quality to help judges evaluate negotiated outcomes. A recently completed study by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice is suggested as a model for fulfilling this research need in Canada. The article\u27s focus is comparative and Canadian, drawing on legislation and case law in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia

Homosexual prejudice: comparing self-report to perceived interaction

The purpose of this research was to determine the level of homosexual prejudice that existed in the sample population and to determine if there were differences in the way that high versus low prejudice individuals reacted to a situation in which they believed they would be working with an individual who was a homosexual. A questionnaire completed by 254 college students (69 male, 185 female) was used to determine their level of prejudice. At a later time, 53 students (25 males, 28 females) participated in a second phase where they believed that they would be interacting with a partner who was represented as either a homosexual or a neutral person by their belongings. Chi square analysis revealed that there was a significant difference in prejudice level in phase 1 by gender, political orientation, knowledge of homosexuality, and number of homosexual friends. An ANOVA determined that, in phase 2, prejudice level significantly affected the likelihood that you would want to be friends with the partner outside of the experiment

Magnetic QED

A non-Hermitian form of QED is presented which describes interacting Dirac monopoles. The theory is related by a canonical transformation to a model proposed by Milton. As in Hermitian QED an abelian gauge potential is coupled to a four-component fermion. Under proper Lorentz transformations and time-reversal the fermion field transforms like a Dirac spinor but has a non-standard parity transformation. This implements the property that magnetic charge, unlike electric charge, is parity-odd. A consequence of the non-Hermiticity is that there is an attractive force between identical charged particles, at least in the weakly coupled regime. This effect can be understood even at the classical level; a simple calculation of the force between classical Dirac monopoles is presented which shows that like charge monopoles attract and opposite charges repel.Comment: 8 page

Kurt Symanzik - a stable fixed point beyond triviality

In 1970 Kurt Symanzik proposed a "precarious" phi**4-theory with a negative quartic coupling constant as a valid candidate for an asymptotically free theory of strong interactions. Symanzik's deep insight in the non-trivial properties of this theory has been overruled since then by the Hermitian intuition of generations of scientists, who considered or consider this actually non-Hermitian highly important theory to be unstable. This short - certainly controversial - communication tries to shed some light on the historical and formalistic context of Symanzik's theory in order to sharpen our (quantum) intuition about non-perturbative theoretical physics between (non)triviality and asymptotic freedom.Comment: 6 pages, no figures, new style files, revised for typos, improved discussion, new references adde

D^+ \to K^- \p^+ \p^+ : the low-energy sector

An effective $SU(3)\times SU(3)$ chiral lagrangian, which includes scalar resonances, is used to describe the process D^+ \rar K^- \p^+ \p^+ at low-energies. Our main result is a set of five $S$-wave amplitudes, suited to be used in analyses of production data.Comment: Talk given at SCADRON 70 - Workshop on Scalar Mesons and Related Topics - Lisbon - February 200

On (non-Hermitian) Lagrangeans in (particle) physics and their dynamical generation

On the basis of a new method to derive the effective action the nonperturbative concept of "dynamical generation" is explained. A non-trivial, non-Hermitian and PT-symmetric solution for Wightman's scalar field theory in four dimensions is dynamically generated, rehabilitating Symanzik's precarious phi**4-theory with a negative quartic coupling constant as a candidate for an asymptotically free theory of strong interactions. Finally it is shown making use of dynamically generation that a Symanzik-like field theory with scalar confinement for the theory of strong interactions can be even suggested by experiment.Comment: 12 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Czech.J.Phys., revised with respect to obvious typo

Impact of excess NOx emissions from diesel cars on air quality, public health and eutrophication in Europe

Diesel cars have been emitting four to seven times more NOx in on-road driving than in type approval tests. These ‘excess emissions’ are a consequence of deliberate design of the vehicle’s after-treatment system, as investigations during the ‘Dieselgate’ scandal have revealed. Here we calculate health and environmental impacts of these excess NOx emissions in all European countries for the year 2013. We use national emissions reported officially under the UNECE Convention for Long-range Transport of Atmospheric Pollutants and employ the EMEP MSC-W Chemistry Transport Model and the GAINS Integrated Assessment Model to determine atmospheric concentrations and resulting impacts. We compare with impacts from hypothetical emissions where light duty diesel vehicles are assumed to emit only as much as their respective type approval limit value or as little as petrol cars of the same age. Excess NO2 concentrations can also have direct health impacts, but these overlap with the impacts from particulate matter (PM) and are not included here. We estimate that almost 10 000 premature deaths from PM2.5 and ozone in the adult population (age >30 years) can be attributed to the NOx emissions from diesel cars and light commercial vehicles in EU28 plus Norway and Switzerland in 2013. About 50% of these could have been avoided if diesel limits had been achieved also in on-road driving; and had diesel cars emitted as little NOx as petrol cars, 80% of these premature deaths could have been avoided. Ecosystem eutrophication impacts (critical load exceedances) from the same diesel vehicles would also have been reduced at similar rates as for the health effects

General Aspects of PT-Symmetric and P-Self-Adjoint Quantum Theory in a Krein Space

In our previous work, we proposed a mathematical framework for PT-symmetric quantum theory, and in particular constructed a Krein space in which PT-symmetric operators would naturally act. In this work, we explore and discuss various general consequences and aspects of the theory defined in the Krein space, not only spectral property and PT symmetry breaking but also several issues, crucial for the theory to be physically acceptable, such as time evolution of state vectors, probability interpretation, uncertainty relation, classical-quantum correspondence, completeness, existence of a basis, and so on. In particular, we show that for a given real classical system we can always construct the corresponding PT-symmetric quantum system, which indicates that PT-symmetric theory in the Krein space is another quantization scheme rather than a generalization of the traditional Hermitian one in the Hilbert space. We propose a postulate for an operator to be a physical observable in the framework.Comment: 32 pages, no figures; explanation, discussion and references adde

Decadal evolution of ship emissions in China from 2004 to 2013 by using an integrated AIS-based approach and projection to 2040

Ship emissions contribute significantly to air pollution and pose health risks to residents of coastal areas in China, but the current research remains incomplete and coarse due to data availability and inaccuracy in estimation methods. In this study, an integrated approach based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) was developed to address this problem. This approach utilized detailed information from AIS and cargo turnover and the vessel calling number information and is thereby capable of quantifying sectoral contributions by fuel types and emissions from ports, rivers, coastal traffic and over-the-horizon ship traffic. Based upon the established methodology, ship emissions in China from 2004 to 2013 were estimated, and those to 2040 at 5-year intervals under different control scenarios were projected. Results showed that for the area within 200 nautical miles (Nm) of the Chinese coast, SO2, NOx, CO, PM10, PM2.5, hydrocarbon (HC), black carbon (BC) and organic carbon (OC) emissions in 2013 were 1010, 1443, 118, 107, 87, 67, 29 and 21 kt yr−1, respectively, which doubled over these 10 years. Ship sources contributed  ∼ 10 % to the total SO2 and NOx emissions in the coastal provinces of China. Emissions from the proposed Domestic Emission Control Areas (DECAs) within 12 Nm constituted approximately 40 % of the all ship emissions along the Chinese coast, and this percentage would double when the DECA boundary is extended to 100 Nm. Ship emissions in ports accounted for about one-quarter of the total emissions within 200 Nm, within which nearly 80 % of the emissions were concentrated in the top 10 busiest ports of China. SO2 emissions could be reduced by 80 % in 2020 under a 0.5 % global sulfur cap policy. In comparison, a similar reduction of NOx emissions would require significant technological change and would likely take several decades. This study provides solid scientific support for ship emissions control policy making in China. It is suggested to investigate and monitor the emissions from the shipping sector in more detail in the future