Political Asylum in the Ninth Circuit and the Case of Elias-Zacarias

During the height of the Central American civil wars of the 1980s, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals established liberal precedent for granting asylum under the Immigration and Nationality Act to deportable aliens who had been threatened for resisting government or guerrilla service in their native countries because of their political opinions (including neutrality), whether expressed, implied, or imputed to them by those who meant them harm. However, in INS v. Elias-Zacarias, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and stated that an asylum applicant\u27s political opinion may not be imputed to him by the actions of his alleged persecutors. In view of the Supreme Court\u27s decision, and the Ninth Circuit\u27s reaction to it in case law, this Article explores the viability of the doctrine of implied and imputed political opinion in asylum cases. The author finds that this doctrine remains problematic in our increasingly violent, Balkanized world

Insect Immunity: From Systemic to Chemosensory Organs Protection

Insects are confronted to a wide range of infectious microorganisms. Tissues in direct contact with the environment, such as olfactory organs, are particularly exposed to pathogens. We review here the immune mechanisms operating in insects to control infections. Experiments conducted on the model organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) have provided genetic evidence that insects rely on both cellular and humoral mechanisms to control infections. Once epithelial barriers have been breached, circulating or membrane-associated innate immunity receptors trigger signaling in the fat body and lead to secretion of high concentrations of antimicrobial peptides active on fungi and bacteria in the hemolymph. This induced response involves the evolutionarily conserved Toll and immune deficiency (IMD) signaling pathways, which promote nuclear translocation of transcription factors of the NF-κB family. In addition, different subsets of differentiated blood cells or hemocytes can neutralize bacteria, fungi or parasites by phagocytosis, production of microbicidal compounds, or encapsulation. An alternative to mount costly immune responses is to sense pathogens through chemosensory cues and avoid them. Interestingly, some families of molecules, including the Toll receptors, participate in both olfaction and immunity.Online ISBN 978-3-030-05165-

Dielectric strength of rigid urethane foam

Dielectric strength of rigid urethane foam for electronic packaging in space applicatio

Monopole Percolation in the Compact Abelian Higgs Model

We have studied the monopole-percolation phenomenon in the four dimensional Abelian theory that contains compact U(1) gauge fields coupled to unitary norm Higgs fields. We have determined the location of the percolation transition line in the plane $(\beta_g, \beta_H)$. This line overlaps the confined-Coulomb and the confined-Higgs phase transition lines, originated by a monopole-condensation mechanism, but continues away from the end-point where this phase transition line stops. In addition, we have determined the critical exponents of the monopole percolation transition away from the phase transition lines. We have performed the finite size scaling in terms of the monopole density instead of the coupling, because the density seems to be the natural parameter when dealing with percolation phenomena.Comment: 13 pages. REVTeX. 16 figs. included using eps

Non--decoupling, triviality and the ρ\rho parameter

The dependence of the $\rho$ parameter on the mass of the Higgs scalar and the top quark is computed non--perturbatively using the $1/N_F$ expansion in the standard model. We find an explicit expression for the $\rho$ parameter that requires the presence of a physical cutoff. This should come as no surprise since the theory is presumably trivial. By taking this cutoff into account, we find that the $\rho$ parameter can take values only within a limited range and has finite ambiguities that are suppressed by inverse powers of the cutoff scale, the so called ``scaling--violations". We find that large deviations from the perturbative results are possible, but only when the cutoff effects are also large.Comment: 16pp, Figures NOT included, harvmac, minor modifications incl. wording, refs., UCLA/92/TEP/23,OHSTPY-HEP-T-92-00

Extended QCD(2) from dimensional projection of QCD(4)

We study an extended QCD model in (1+1) dimensions obtained from QCD in 4D by compactifying two spatial dimensions and projecting onto the zero-mode subspace. We work out this model in the large $N_c$ limit and using light cone gauge but keeping the equal-time quantization. This system is found to induce a dynamical mass for transverse gluons -- adjoint scalars in QCD(2), and to undergo a chiral symmetry breaking with the full quark propagators yielding non-tachyonic, dynamical quark masses, even in the chiral limit. We study quark-antiquark bound states which can be classified in this model by their properties under Lorentz transformations inherited from 4D. The scalar and pseudoscalar sectors of the theory are examined and in the chiral limit a massless ground state for pseudoscalars is revealed with a wave function generalizing the so called 't Hooft pion solution.Comment: JHEP class, 16 pages, 3 figures. Change in the title, some improvements in section 2, minors changes and comments added in introduction and conclusions. References added. Version appearing in JHE

Abelian Gauge Theory in de Sitter Space

Quantization of spinor and vector free fields in 4-dimensional de Sitter space-time, in the ambient space notation, has been studied in the previous works. Various two-points functions for the above fields are presented in this paper. The interaction between the spinor field and the vector field is then studied by the abelian gauge theory. The U(1) gauge invariant spinor field equation is obtained in a coordinate independent way notation and their corresponding conserved currents are computed. The solution of the field equation is obtained by use of the perturbation method in terms of the Green's function. The null curvature limit is discussed in the final stage.Comment: 10 pages, typos corrected, reference adde

Boson--fermion bound states in two dimensional QCD

We derive the boson--fermion bound state equation in a two dimensional gauge theory in the large--\nc limit. We analyze the properties of this equation and in particular, find that the mass trajectory is linear with respect to the bound state level for the higher mass states.Comment: 5pp, 2 figs (as a separate file), TIT/HEP-23