Global Fits of the CKM Matrix

We report upon the present status of global fits to Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures invited talk presented at EPS conference, Aachen July 17-2

URBAN ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

As cities in the developing world grow, their poor residents are being deprived of services, especially water, sewer, and solid waste collection, that can only be purchased expensively in private markets. But the inadequate provision of urban environmental services is not inevitable. A lack of will in this respect is partly due to an ambivalent attitude toward city growth and a widespread feeling that rural-urban migration is excessive. Provision of optimal urban environmental services is also expensive. While the budget problems are exacerbated by foolish pricing policies and cost inefficiencies, it may not be feasible for developing countries to provide all urban residents with optimal service levels. There are many ways to provide basic services to poor residents.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Discrete Breathers in One-Dimensional Diatomic Granular Crystals

We report the experimental observation of discrete breathers in a one-dimensional diatomic granular crystal composed of compressed elastic beads that interact via Hertzian contact. We first characterize their effective linear spectrum both theoretically and experimentally. We then illustrate theoretically and numerically the modulational instability of the lower edge of the optical band. This leads to the dynamical formation of long-lived breather structures, whose families of solutions we compute throughout the linear spectral gap. Finally, we observe experimentally such localized breathing modes with quantitative characteristics that agree with our numerical results.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

A Theory of Errors in Quantum Measurement

It is common to model random errors in a classical measurement by the normal (Gaussian) distribution, because of the central limit theorem. In the quantum theory, the analogous hypothesis is that the matrix elements of the error in an observable are distributed normally. We obtain the probability distribution this implies for the outcome of a measurement, exactly for the case of 2x2 matrices and in the steepest descent approximation in general. Due to the phenomenon of `level repulsion', the probability distributions obtained are quite different from the Gaussian.Comment: Based on talk at "Spacetime and Fundamental Interactions: Quantum Aspects" A conference to honor A. P. Balachandran's 65th Birthda

Dispersed Trading and the Prevention of Market Failure: The Case of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange

With augmented demands on power grids resulting in longer and larger blackouts combined with heightened concerns of terrorist attacks, trading institutions and policy makers have widened their search for systems that avoid market failure during these disturbing events. We provide insight into this issue by examining trading behavior at the Copenhagen Stock Exchange during a major blackout. We find that although market quality declined, markets remained functional and some price discovery occurred during the blackout period suggesting that the NOREX structure of interlinked trading systems combined with widely dispersed trading locations may be a viable means of protection against market failure during massive power disruptions or terrorist attacks.Power failure; Fragmented markets; Market failure;

Monomial integrals on the classical groups

This paper presents a powerfull method to integrate general monomials on the classical groups with respect to their invariant (Haar) measure. The method has first been applied to the orthogonal group in [J. Math. Phys. 43, 3342 (2002)], and is here used to obtain similar integration formulas for the unitary and the unitary symplectic group. The integration formulas turn out to be of similar form. They are all recursive, where the recursion parameter is the number of column (row) vectors from which the elements in the monomial are taken. This is an important difference to other integration methods. The integration formulas are easily implemented in a computer algebra environment, which allows to obtain analytical expressions very efficiently. Those expressions contain the matrix dimension as a free parameter.Comment: 16 page