Natural disasters and the issue of responsibility for the victim states

Dr C. Chatterjee considers whether natural disasters are an entirely national phenomenon, or if their effects can be minimised by concerted international action. Article published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Monopole confinement by flux tube

We revisit Nambu's model of quark confinement by a tube of magnetic flux, with two additional features. The quarks are taken to be magnetic monopoles external to the tube, which seal the ends, and are also taken to be fermions. This ensures that the model is inconsistent unless there are at least two species of fermions being confined.Comment: 7pp; brief additions relating monopole strength to winding number, and discussion on length of stable flux tube; one reference adde

Spherical collapse of a heat conducting fluid in higher dimensions without horizon

We consider a scenario where the interior spacetime,described by a heat conducting fluid sphere is matched to a Vaidya metric in higher dimensions.Interestingly we get a class of solutions, where following heat radiation the boundary surface collapses without the appearance of an event horizon at any stage and this happens with reasonable properties of matter field.The non-occurrence of a horizon is due to the fact that the rate of mass loss exactly counterbalanced by the fall of boundary radius.Evidently this poses a counter example to the so-called cosmic censorship hypothesis.Two explicit examples of this class of solutions are also given and it is observed that the rate of collapse is delayed with the introduction of extra dimensions.The work extends to higher dimensions our previous investigation in 4D.Comment: 6 page

An Overview of Inside-Out Planet Formation

The Kepler-discovered Systems with Tightly-packed Inner Planets (STIPs), typically with several planets of Earth to super-Earth masses on well-aligned, sub-AU orbits may host the most common type of planets, including habitable planets, in the Galaxy. They pose a great challenge for planet formation theories, which fall into two broad classes: (1) formation further out followed by inward migration; (2) formation in situ, in the very inner regions of the protoplanetary disk. We review the pros and cons of these classes, before focusing on a new theory of sequential in situ formation from the inside-out via creation of successive gravitationally unstable rings fed from a continuous stream of small (~cm-m size) "pebbles," drifting inward via gas drag. Pebbles first collect at the pressure trap associated with the transition from a magnetorotational instability (MRI)-inactive ("dead zone") region to an inner, MRI-active zone. A pebble ring builds up that begins to dominate the local mass surface density of the disk and spawns a planet. The planet continues to grow, most likely by pebble accretion, until it becomes massive enough to isolate itself from the accretion flow via gap opening. This reduces the local gas density near the planet, leading to enhanced ionization and a retreat of the dead zone inner boundary. The process repeats with a new pebble ring gathering at the new pressure maximum associated with this boundary. We discuss the theory's predictions for planetary masses, relative mass scalings with orbital radius, and minimum orbital separations, and their comparison with observed systems. Finally, we discuss open questions, including potential causes of diversity of planetary system architectures, i.e., STIPs versus Solar System analogs.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in proceedings of XXIXth IAU GA Focus Meeting 1 - Dynamical Problems in Extrasolar Planets Science, eds. A. Morbidelli et a