Coefficients in powers of the log series

We determine the p-exponent in many of the coefficients in the power series (log(1+x)/x)^t, where t is any integer. In our proof, we introduce a variant of multinomial coefficients. We also characterize the power series x/log(1+x) by certain zero coefficients in its powers.Comment: 8 page

Call and response: Identity and witness in legitimating CSR

How do social actors adopt a path alien to their organizational environment and, against the odds, get that environment to accommodate them? This developmental paper sketches an approach to answering that question, building on evidence from a series of conferences of themes related to corporate social responsibility. We see these events as facilitating construction of an identity that shields the participants from backlash in a less than accommodating institutional setting. Drawing on the concept of witness in religious practice, it suggests that a purpose of the events is the ritual enactment of practices that reinforce that identity, providing protection against hostility in the work environment. This version of the paper concludes with indications of the direction of the development and a request for suggestion

A Simple Method for Computing Soliton Statistics

I provide an extremely simple argument that the kink-type solitons in certain theories are fermionic. The argument is based on the Witten index, but can in fact be used to determine soliton statistics in non-supersymmetric theories as well.Comment: 9 pages, harvmac, HWS-92/09. (Added substantial details in one section.

The Generalized Peierls Bracket

We first extend the Peierls algebra of gauge invariant functions from the space ${\cal S}$ of classical solutions to the space ${\cal H}$ of histories used in path integration and some studies of decoherence. We then show that it may be generalized in a number of ways to act on gauge dependent functions on ${\cal H}$. These generalizations (referred to as class I) depend on the choice of an ``invariance breaking term," which must be chosen carefully so that the gauge dependent algebra is a Lie algebra. Another class of invariance breaking terms is also found that leads to an algebra of gauge dependent functions, but only on the space ${\cal S}$ of solutions. By the proper choice of invariance breaking term, we can construct a generalized Peierls algebra that agrees with any gauge dependent algebra constructed through canonical or gauge fixing methods, as well as Feynman and Landau ``gauge." Thus, generalized Peierls algebras present a unified description of these techniques. We study the properties of generalized Peierls algebras and their pull backs to spaces of partial solutions and find that they may posses constraints similar to the canonical case. Such constraints are always first class, and quantization may proceed accordingly.Comment: 30 pages REVTEX, CGPG-93/8-5 (significant mistake in earlier version corrected

Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by Higher-Income Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”)

[Excerpt] To inform the policy debate, this report provides information relevant to proposals that would restrict the payment of unemployment benefits to individuals with high incomes. Three primary areas that may be of interest to lawmakers are addressed: (1) the current U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) opinion on means-testing UI benefits; (2) the potential number of people who would be affected by such proposals; and (3) policy considerations such as the potential savings associated with such proposals, particularly in terms of federal expenditures. The latter two issues are discussed because a small percentage (approximately 0.02%) of tax filers receiving unemployment benefit income had AGI of $1 million or more in tax year 2009 based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data

Methane, CFCs, and Other Greenhouse Gases

Our planet is continuously bathed in solar radiation. Although we who are confined to a fixed location on the globe experience day and night, the earth does not. It is always day in the sense that the sun is shining on half of the globe. Much of the incoming solar radiation, about 30%, is scattered back to space by clouds, atmospheric gases and particles, and objects on the earth. The remaining 70% is, therefore, absorbed mostly at the earth's surface. This absorbed radiation gives up its energy to whatever absorbed it, thereby causing its temperature to increase. Because solar radiation is absorbed continuously by the earth, it might be supposed that its temperature should continue to increase. It does not, of course, because the earth also emits radiation, the spectral distribution of which is quite different from that of the incoming solar radiation. The higher the earth's temperature, the more infrared radiation it emits. At a sufficiently high temperature, the total rate of emission of infrared radiation equals the rate of absorption of solar radiation. Radiative equilibrium has been achieved, although it is a dynamic equilibrium: absorption and emission go on continuously at equal rates. The temperature at which this occurs is called the radiative equilibrium temperature of the earth. This is an average temperature, not the temperature at any one location or at any one time. It is merely the temperature that the earth, as a blackbody, must have in order to emit as much radiant energy as the earth absorbs solar energy

The dangers of extremes

While extreme black hole spacetimes with smooth horizons are known at the level of mathematics, we argue that the horizons of physical extreme black holes are effectively singular. Test particles encounter a singularity the moment they cross the horizon, and only objects with significant back-reaction can fall across a smooth (now non-extreme) horizon. As a result, classical interior solutions for extreme black holes are theoretical fictions that need not be reproduced by any quantum mechanical model. This observation suggests that significant quantum effects might be visible outside extreme or nearly extreme black holes. It also suggests that the microphysics of such black holes may be very different from that of their Schwarzschild cousins.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 3rd place in 2010 Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competitio

Deep drilling into a Hawaiian volcano

Hawaiian volcanoes are the most comprehensively studied on Earth. Nevertheless, most of the eruptive history of each one is inaccessible because it is buried by younger lava flows or is exposed only below sea level. For those parts of Hawaiian volcanoes above sea level, erosion typically exposes only a few hundred meters of buried lavas (out of a total thickness of up to 10 km or more).Available samples of submarine lavas extend the time intervals of individual volcanoes that can be studied. However, the histories of individual Hawaiian volcanoes during most of their ~1-million-year passages across the zone of melt production are largely unknown