The short-run dynamics of long-run inflation policy

An examination of the short- and long-term implications of an inflation policy on real output, using a method that allows structural interpretation of a simple VAR applied to a macroeconomic system that includes real output and inflation.Inflation (Finance) ; Monetary policy ; Gross national product

Cancer in Northern Ireland by 2002.

An estimate of cancer deaths and incidence for the years 1997 and 2002, taking account of current trends and population projections for Northern Ireland is presented below. These numbers will be of value to those planning services and, in particular, for those implementing the report "Cancer Services - Investing for the Future". Cancer deaths are expected to rise by almost 13% to 4056 by the year 2002. Marked rises are expected in the number of deaths from cancer of the lung, oesophagus, kidney, bladder and prostate with smaller rises in deaths from breast and pancreatic cancer. The fall in stomach cancer is expected to continue as is the trend of lower deaths from cervical cancer. Deaths from cancer of the colon and rectum are expected to remain static. Estimates of cancer incidence currently and for the years 1997 and 2002 are also included. The impact of tobacco use by the population, which poses a current and future serious threat to public health is highlighted

Near-equilibrium measurements of nonequilibrium free energy

A central endeavor of thermodynamics is the measurement of free energy changes. Regrettably, although we can measure the free energy of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium, typically all we can say about the free energy of a non-equilibrium ensemble is that it is larger than that of the same system at equilibrium. Herein, we derive a formally exact expression for the probability distribution of a driven system, which involves path ensemble averages of the work over trajectories of the time-reversed system. From this we find a simple near-equilibrium approximation for the free energy in terms of an excess mean time-reversed work, which can be experimentally measured on real systems. With analysis and computer simulation, we demonstrate the accuracy of our approximations for several simple models.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The correlation of VLF propagation variations with atmospheric planetary-scale waves

Variations in the received daytime phase of long distance, cesium-controlled, VLF transmission were compared to the height variations of the 10-mb isobaric surface during the first three months of 1965 and 1969. The VLF phase values are also compared to height variations of constant electron densities in the E-region and to variations of f-min which have been shown to be well correlated with planetary-scale variations in the stratosphere by Deland and Cavalieri (1973). The VLF phase variations show good correlation with these previous ionospheric measurements and with the 10-mb surfaces. The planetary scale waves in the stratosphere are shown to be travelling on the average eastward in 1965 and westward in 1969. These correlations are interpreted as due to the propagation of travelling planetary scale waves with westward tilted wave fronts. Upward energy transport due to the vertical structure of those waves is also discussed. These correlations provide further evidence for the coupling between the lower ionosphere at about 70 km altitude (the daytime VLF reflection height and the stratosphere, and they demonstrate the importance of planetary wave phenomena to VLF propagation

The length of time's arrow

An unresolved problem in physics is how the thermodynamic arrow of time arises from an underlying time reversible dynamics. We contribute to this issue by developing a measure of time-symmetry breaking, and by using the work fluctuation relations, we determine the time asymmetry of recent single molecule RNA unfolding experiments. We define time asymmetry as the Jensen-Shannon divergence between trajectory probability distributions of an experiment and its time-reversed conjugate. Among other interesting properties, the length of time's arrow bounds the average dissipation and determines the difficulty of accurately estimating free energy differences in nonequilibrium experiments

Transport Coefficients of Quark Gluon Plasma From Lattice Gauge Theory

Numerical results for the transport coefficients of quark gluon plasma are obtained by lattice simulations on on $16^3 \times 8$ lattice with the quench approximation where we apply the gauge action proposed by Iwasaki. The bulk viscosity is consistent with zero, and the shear viscosity is slightly smaller than the typical hadron masses. They are not far from the simple extrapolation on the figure of perturbative calculation in high temperature limit down to $T \sim T_{c}$. The gluon propagator in the confined and deconfined phases are also discussed.Comment: Quark Matter 97(talk at parallel session QCD) 4 pages in latex, 4 Postscript figure

Lifetime of a Disoriented Chiral Condensate

The lifetime of a disoriented chiral condensate formed within a heat bath of pions is calculated assuming temperatures and densities attainable at present and future heavy-ion colliders. A generalization of the reduction formula to include coherent states allows us to derive a formula for the decay rate. We predict the half-life to be between 4 and 7 fm/c, depending on the assumed pion density. We also calculate the lifetime in the presence of higher resonances and baryons, which shortens the lifetime by at most 20%.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, REVTeX, Eq. (3) modifie