Nonmarket Valuations of Accidental Oil Spills: A Survey of Economic and Legal Principles

This paper presents an overview of legal and economic theories used to assess liability and damages for loss of nonmarket goods arising from an accidental oil spill. Several different economic methods used for quantifying values are discussed and critiqued. Also reviewed are the fundamental legal doctrines that permit individuals and public agencies to seek compensation for these damages. To illustrate the applicability of these economic and legal theories, two case studies arc presented and evaluated in terms of the principles presented earlier.Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Risk and Uncertainty,

Dirac parameters and topological phase diagram of Pb1-xSnxSe from magneto-spectroscopy

Pb1-xSnxSe hosts 3D massive Dirac fermions across the entire composition range for which the crystal structure is cubic. In this work, we present a comprehensive experimental mapping of the 3D band structure parameters of Pb1-xSnxSe as a function of composition and temperature. We cover a parameter space spanning the band inversion that yields its topological crystalline insulator phase. A non-closure of the energy gap is evidenced in the vicinity of this phase transition. Using magnetooptical Landau level spectroscopy, we determine the energy gap, Dirac velocity, anisotropy factor and topological character of Pb1-xSnxSe epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on BaF2 (111). Our results are evidence that Pb1-xSnxSe is a model system to study topological phases and the nature of the phase transition.Comment: Submitte

Sample clock offset compensation in the fifth-generation new radio downlink

In this paper, the authors investigate the issue of sampling clock offset (SCO) in fifth generation new radio systems. Due to the imperfect SCO estimation methods, the correction methods relying on the SCO estimation will not be perfect, so the proposed method directly corrects the effect of SCO without using any kind of estimation methods. Our method can work well in physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) and use reference signals as recommended by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) standards. Through system-level simulations, the obtained results show that the throughput of the system is improved where the gain difference between the proposed method and the case without SCO compensation arises to reach 25 % over tapped-line (TDL) channel

Molecular Imaging in Synthetic Biology, and Synthetic Biology in Molecular Imaging

Biomedical synthetic biology is an emerging field in which cells are engineered at the genetic level to carry out novel functions with relevance to biomedical and industrial applications. This approach promises new treatments, imaging tools, and diagnostics for diseases ranging from gastrointestinal inflammatory syndromes to cancer, diabetes, and neurodegeneration. As these cellular technologies undergo pre-clinical and clinical development, it is becoming essential to monitor their location and function in vivo, necessitating appropriate molecular imaging strategies, and therefore, we have created an interest group within the World Molecular Imaging Society focusing on synthetic biology and reporter gene technologies. Here, we highlight recent advances in biomedical synthetic biology, including bacterial therapy, immunotherapy, and regenerative medicine. We then discuss emerging molecular imaging approaches to facilitate in vivo applications, focusing on reporter genes for noninvasive modalities such as magnetic resonance, ultrasound, photoacoustic imaging, bioluminescence, and radionuclear imaging. Because reporter genes can be incorporated directly into engineered genetic circuits, they are particularly well suited to imaging synthetic biological constructs, and developing them provides opportunities for creative molecular and genetic engineering

Massive and massless Dirac fermions in Pb1-xSnxTe topological crystalline insulator probed by magneto-optical absorption

Dirac fermions in condensed matter physics hold great promise for novel fundamental physics, quantum devices and data storage applications. IV-VI semiconductors, in the inverted regime, have been recently shown to exhibit massless topological surface Dirac fermions protected by crystalline symmetry, as well as massive bulk Dirac fermions. Under a strong magnetic field (B), both surface and bulk states are quantized into Landau levels that disperse as B^1/2, and are thus difficult to distinguish. In this work, magneto-optical absorption is used to probe the Landau levels of high mobility Bi-doped Pb0.54Sn0.46Te topological crystalline insulator (111)-oriented films. The high mobility achieved in these thin film structures allows us to probe and distinguish the Landau levels of both surface and bulk Dirac fermions and extract valuable quantitative information about their physical properties. This work paves the way for future magnetooptical and electronic transport experiments aimed at manipulating the band topology of such materials.Comment: supplementary material included, to appear in Scientific Report

Quantile stochastic frontier models with endogeneity

In this paper, we extend Jradi et al. (2019). First, we use the asymmetric Laplace distribution which is a more reasonable assumption in quantile models. Second, we address the issue of statistical inference for the optimal quantile. Finally, we allow for endogeneity in quantile stochastic frontier models. The new formulation is implemented in a Bayesian framework using Markov Chain Monte Carlo. We employ the celebrated Philippine rice data as in Jradi et al. (2019). Jradi et al. (2019) did not provide efficiency measures which, in our framework, is straightforward to do

Antiferromagnetic phase of the gapless semiconductor V3Al

Discovering new antiferromagnetic compounds is at the forefront of developing future spintronic devices without fringing magnetic fields. The antiferromagnetic gapless semiconducting D03 phase of V3Al was successfully synthesized via arc-melting and annealing. The antiferromagnetic properties were established through synchrotron measurements of the atom-specific magnetic moments, where the magnetic dichroism reveals large and oppositely-oriented moments on individual V atoms. Density functional theory calculations confirmed the stability of a type G antiferromagnetism involving only two-third of the V atoms, while the remaining V atoms are nonmagnetic. Magnetization, x-ray diffraction and transport measurements also support the antiferromagnetism. This archetypal gapless semiconductor may be considered as a cornerstone for future spintronic devices containing antiferromagnetic elements.Comment: Accepted to Physics Review B on 02/23/1

A note on Gauge Theories Coupled to Gravity

We analyze the bound on gauge couplings $e\geq m/m_p$, suggested by Arkani-Hamed et.al. We show this bound can be derived from simple semi-classical considerations and holds in spacetime dimensions greater than or equal to four. Non abelian gauge symmetries seem to satisfy the bound in a trivial manner. We comment on the case of discrete symmetries and close by performing some checks for the bound in higher dimensions in the context of string theory.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, Late

Overlap properties of geometric expanders

The {\em overlap number} of a finite $(d+1)$-uniform hypergraph $H$ is defined as the largest constant $c(H)\in (0,1]$ such that no matter how we map the vertices of $H$ into $\R^d$, there is a point covered by at least a $c(H)$-fraction of the simplices induced by the images of its hyperedges. In~\cite{Gro2}, motivated by the search for an analogue of the notion of graph expansion for higher dimensional simplicial complexes, it was asked whether or not there exists a sequence $\{H_n\}_{n=1}^\infty$ of arbitrarily large $(d+1)$-uniform hypergraphs with bounded degree, for which $\inf_{n\ge 1} c(H_n)>0$. Using both random methods and explicit constructions, we answer this question positively by constructing infinite families of $(d+1)$-uniform hypergraphs with bounded degree such that their overlap numbers are bounded from below by a positive constant $c=c(d)$. We also show that, for every $d$, the best value of the constant $c=c(d)$ that can be achieved by such a construction is asymptotically equal to the limit of the overlap numbers of the complete $(d+1)$-uniform hypergraphs with $n$ vertices, as $n\rightarrow\infty$. For the proof of the latter statement, we establish the following geometric partitioning result of independent interest. For any $d$ and any $\epsilon>0$, there exists $K=K(\epsilon,d)\ge d+1$ satisfying the following condition. For any $k\ge K$, for any point $q \in \mathbb{R}^d$ and for any finite Borel measure $\mu$ on $\mathbb{R}^d$ with respect to which every hyperplane has measure $0$, there is a partition $\mathbb{R}^d=A_1 \cup \ldots \cup A_{k}$ into $k$ measurable parts of equal measure such that all but at most an $\epsilon$-fraction of the $(d+1)$-tuples $A_{i_1},\ldots,A_{i_{d+1}}$ have the property that either all simplices with one vertex in each $A_{i_j}$ contain $q$ or none of these simplices contain $q$