Reply To "Comment on 'Quantum String Seal Is Insecure' "

In Phys. Rev. A. 76, 056301 (2007), He claimed that the proof in my earlier paper [Phys. Rev. A 75, 012327 (2007)] is insufficient to conclude the insecurity of all quantum string seals because my measurement strategy cannot obtain non-trivial information on the sealed string and escape detection at the same time. Here, I clarify that our disagreement comes from our adoption of two different criteria on the minimum amount of information a quantum string seal can reveal to members of the public. I also point out that He did not follow my measurement strategy correctly.Comment: 2 page

Spatial pattern formation in chemical and biological systems

One of the central issues in developmental biology is the formation of spatial pattern in the embryo. A number of theories have been proposed to account for this phenomenon. The most widely studied is reaction diffusion theory, which proposes that a chemical pre-pattern is first set up due to a system of reacting and diffusing chemicals, and cells respond to this pre-pattern by differentiating accordingly. Such patterns, known as Turing structures, were first identified in chemical systems only recently. This article reviews the application of reaction diffusion theory to chemical systems and then considers a number of biological applications

TopicViz: Semantic Navigation of Document Collections

When people explore and manage information, they think in terms of topics and themes. However, the software that supports information exploration sees text at only the surface level. In this paper we show how topic modeling -- a technique for identifying latent themes across large collections of documents -- can support semantic exploration. We present TopicViz, an interactive environment for information exploration. TopicViz combines traditional search and citation-graph functionality with a range of novel interactive visualizations, centered around a force-directed layout that links documents to the latent themes discovered by the topic model. We describe several use scenarios in which TopicViz supports rapid sensemaking on large document collections

Abolishing by-elections to fill vacancies in the legislative council

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Duff on the Legitimacy of Punishment of Socially Deprived Offenders

Duff offered an argument for the conclusion that just or legitimate punishment of socially deprived offenders in our unjust society is impossible. One of the claims in his argument is that our courts have the standing to blame an offender only if our polity has the right to do so since our courts are acting as the representatives of, or to use the exact phrases by Duff, "in the name of", or "on behalf of", the whole polity. In this paper I will challenge that claim. I will argue that the courts can be seen as acting, not on behalf of the whole polity, but only on behalf of a subset of its citizens, namely, the just citizens (i. e. the citizens who cannot be seen to have wronged the deprived offenders). © 2012 The Author(s).published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 25 May 201

Analysis of Two-Body Decays of Charmed Baryons Using the Quark-Diagram Scheme

We give a general formulation of the quark-diagram scheme for the nonleptonic weak decays of baryons. We apply it to all the decays of the antitriplet and sextet charmed baryons and express their decay amplitudes in terms of the quark-diagram amplitudes. We have also given parametrizations for the effects of final-state interactions. For SU(3) violation effects, we only parametrize those in the horizontal $W$-loop quark diagrams whose contributions are solely due to SU(3)-violation effects. In the absence of all these effects, there are many relations among various decay modes. Some of the relations are valid even in the presence of final-state interactions when each decay amplitude in the relation contains only a single phase shift. All these relations provide useful frameworks to compare with future experiments and to find out the effects of final-state interactions and SU(3) symmetry violations.Comment: 28 pages, 20 Tables in landscape form, 4 figures. Main changes are: (i) some errors in the Tables and in the relations between the quark-diagram amplitudes of this paper and those of Ref.[10] are corrected, (ii) improvements are made in the presentation so that comparisons with previous works and what have been done to include SU(3) breaking and final-state interactions are more clearly stated; to appear in the Physical Review

Exclusive Hadronic D Decays to eta' and eta

Hadronic decay modes $D^0\to(\bar K^0, \bar K^{*0})\eta,\eta'$ and $(D^+,D_s^+)\to(\pi^+,\rho^+)\eta,\eta'$ are studied in the generalized factorization approach. Form factors for $(D,D_s^+)\to(\eta,\eta')$ transitions are carefully evaluated by taking into account the wave function normalization of the eta and eta'. The predicted branching ratios are generally in agreement with experiment except for $D^0\to\bar K^0\eta', D^+\to\pi^+\eta$ and $D_s^+\to\rho^+\eta'$; the calculated decay rates for the first two decay modes are too small by an order of magnitude. We show that the weak decays $D^0\to K^-\pi^+$ and $D^+\to K^+\bar K^0$ followed by resonance-induced final-state interactions (FSI), which are amenable technically, are able to enhance the branching ratios of $D^0\to\bar K^0\eta'$ and $D^+\to\pi^+\eta$ dramatically without affecting the agreement between theory and experiment for $D^0\to\bar K^0\eta$ and $D^+\to\pi^+\eta'$. We argue that it is difficult to understand the observed large decay rates of $D_s^+\to \rho^+\eta'$ and $\rho^+\eta$ simultaneously; FSI, W-annihilation and the production of excess eta' from gluons are not helpful in this regard. The large discrepancy between the factorization hypothesis and experiment for the ratio of $D_s^+\to\rho^+ \eta'$ and $D_s^+\to\eta' e^+\nu$ remains as an enigma.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Form factors for D to eta and eta' transitions are slightly change