On the Nochka-Chen-Ru-Wong Proof of Cartan's Conjecture

In 1982-83, E. Nochka proved a conjecture of Cartan on defects of holomorphic curves in $\Bbb P^n$ relative to a possibly degenerate set of hyperplanes. This was further explained by W. Chen in his 1987 thesis, and subseqently simplified by M. Ru and P.-M. Wong in 1991. The proof involved assigning weights to the hyperplanes. This paper provides a mild simplification of the proof of the construction of the weights, by construing the ``Nochka diagram'' of Ru and Wong as a convex hull.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Reorganized to reflect the submitted version; added a reference to a paper of Nochk

How Much Does Money Matter in a Direct Democracy?

The fine-structure splitting of quantum confined InxGa1-x Nexcitons is investigated using polarization-sensitive photoluminescence spectroscopy. The majority of the studied emission lines exhibits mutually orthogonal fine-structure components split by 100-340 mu eV, as measured from the cleaved edge of the sample. The exciton and the biexciton reveal identical magnitudes but reversed sign of the energy splitting.Original Publication:Supaluck Amloy, Y T Chen, K F Karlsson, K H Chen, H C Hsu, C L Hsiao, L C Chen and Per-Olof Holtz, Polarization-resolved fine-structure splitting of zero-dimensional InxGa1-xN excitons, 2011, PHYSICAL REVIEW B, (83), 20, 201307.http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.83.201307Copyright: American Physical Societyhttp://www.aps.org

Final Exam: A Surgeon\u27s Reflections on Mortality (Book Review)

Book review of: Pauline W. Chen, M.D., Final Exam: A Surgeon\u27s Reflections on Mortality (Vintage Books), 1997. Reviewed February 2011 by Harvey Fenigsohn