Imaginary Risk, Public Health Regulation, and WTO Trade Dispute: A Rational Choice Perspective

In this essay I seek answers to the following questions: why is it extremely difficult to resolve international trade disputes caused by domestic health risk regulation against a foreign food; why does the WTO legal system not work very well in solving the disputes; and what might be done to resolve the disputes properly, from a perspective of the rational choice model. I argue that it is irrational public fear which gave rise to decades-long, complex, and serious trade disputes. If the public are free from irrational fear, then there might be no pressure to impose an import ban and, consequently, no trade dispute and no non-compliance. Therefore an ultimate solution to trade conflict due to irrational fear should be sought in addressing imaginary risk directly. I suggest that the disputing parties provide consumers with information about their own welfare loss caused by the misguided import ban so that the public can make a rational decision on the imaginary risk problem.

Hard X-ray free-electron laser with femtosecond-scale timing jitter

The hard X-ray free-electron laser at the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory (PAL-XFEL) in the Republic of Korea achieved saturation of a 0.144 nm free-electron laser beam on 27 November 2016, making it the third hard X-ray free-electron laser in the world, following the demonstrations of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) and the SPring-8 Angstrom Compact Free Electron Laser (SACLA). The use of electron-beam-based alignment incorporating undulator radiation spectrum analysis has allowed reliable operation of PAL-XFEL with unprecedented temporal stability and dispersion-free orbits. In particular, a timing jitter of just 20 fs for the free-electron laser photon beam is consistently achieved due to the use of a state-of-the-art design of the electron linear accelerator and electron-beam-based alignment. The low timing jitter of the electron beam makes it possible to observe Bi(111) phonon dynamics without the need for timing-jitter correction, indicating that PAL-XFEL will be an extremely useful tool for hard X-ray time-resolved experiments.1143Nsciescopu