279 research outputs found
Environmental Mortality and Long-Run Growth
There is emerging evidence that environmental degradation increases human mortality. This paper provides a long-run consumer optimization model in which mortality is endogenous to emissions generated by production. Emissions are assumed to follow the EKC path, first rising and then falling along with ouput. In the optimum, some deaths are accepted as an exchange for consumption. The model is estimated for the European outdoor air pollution data, showing that Europe has reached the downward sloping sement of the EKC. Economic growth will thus decrease rather than increase air pollution and the associted deaths in most countries in Europe
Probing Z' gauge boson with the spin configuration of top quark pair production at future linear colliders
We explore the effects of extra neutral gauge boson involved in the
supersymmetric E6 model on the spin configuration of the top quark pair
produced at the polarized e- e+ collider. Generic mixing terms are considered
including kinetic mixing terms as well as mass mixing. In the off-diagonal spin
basis of the standard model, we show that the cross sections for the suppressed
spin configurations can be enhanced with the effects of the Z' boson through
the modification of the spin configuration of produced top quark pair enough to
be measured in the Linear Colliders, which provides the way to observe the
effects of Z' boson and discriminate the pattern of gauge group decomposition.
It is pointed out that the kinetic mixing may dilute the effects of mass mixing
terms, and we have to perform the combined analysis.Comment: 19 pages including 5 figures, ReVTe
Pollution, Public Health Care, and Life Expectancy When Inequality Matters
We analyze the link between economic inequality in terms of wealth, life expectancy, health care and pollution. The distribution of wealth is decisive for the number of households investing in human capital. Moreover, the willingness to invest in human capital depends on agents' life expectancy which determines the length of the amortization period of human capital investments. Life expectancy is positively affected by public health care expenditures but adversely affected by the pollution stock generated by aggregate production. Our model accounts for an endogenous take-off in terms of human capital investments. Higher initial inequality delays the take-off because a given set of policies (abatement measures and public health care) is less effective in improving agents' survival probabilities. We compare a change in taxes to a change in expenditure shares on health hand abatement given different amounts of (initial) inequality. The advantage of the latter as compared to the former is the achieved increase in the tax base which induces more expenditures on health care and abatement measures, such that an even higher economic activity is compatible with a similar level of long-run pollution
EGCG, a major component of green tea, inhibits tumour growth by inhibiting VEGF induction in human colon carcinoma cells
Catechins are key components of teas that have antiproliferative properties. We investigated the effects of green tea catechins on intracellular signalling and VEGF induction in vitro in serum-deprived HT29 human colon cancer cells and in vivo on the growth of HT29 cells in nude mice. In the in vitro studies, (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), the most abundant catechin in green tea extract, inhibited Erk-1 and Erk-2 activation in a dose-dependent manner. However, other tea catechins such as (-)-epigallocatechin (EGC), (-)-epicatechin gallate (ECG), and (-)-epicatechin (EC) did not affect Erk-1 or 2 activation at a concentration of 30 μM. EGCG also inhibited the increase of VEGF expression and promoter activity induced by serum starvation. In the in vivo studies, athymic BALB/c nude mice were inoculated subcutaneously with HT29 cells and treated with daily intraperitoneal injections of EC (negative control) or EGCG at 1.5 mg day−1mouse−1starting 2 days after tumour cell inoculation. Treatment with EGCG inhibited tumour growth (58%), microvessel density (30%), and tumour cell proliferation (27%) and increased tumour cell apoptosis (1.9-fold) and endothelial cell apoptosis (3-fold) relative to the control condition (P< 0.05 for all comparisons). EGCG may exert at least part of its anticancer effect by inhibiting angiogenesis through blocking the induction of VEGF. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co
Effects in Chern-Simons with a Four-Fermi Interaction
We investigate the effects of the Chern-Simons coupling on the high energy
behavior in the -dimensional Chern-Simons QED with a four-Fermi
interaction. Using the expansion we discuss the Chern-Simons effects on
the critical four-Fermi coupling at and the function around
it. High-energy behavior of Green's functions is also discussed. By explicit
calculation, we find that the radiative correction to the Chern-Simons coupling
vanishes at in the broken phase of the dynamical parity symmetry. We
argue that no radiative corrections to the Chern-Simons term arise at higher
orders in the expansion.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures not included, LaTeX, SNUTP 92-9
Nonperturbative QCD Contributions to the Semileptonic Decay Width of the B Meson
Nonperturbative QCD contributions to the inclusive semileptonic decay of the
B meson consist of the dynamic and kinematic components. We calculate the decay
width in an approach based on the light-cone expansion and the heavy quark
effective theory, which is able to include both components of nonperturbative
QCD contributions. The kinematic component results in the phase-space extension
and is shown to be quantitatively crucial, which could increase the decay width
significantly. We find that the semileptonic decay width is enhanced by
long-distance strong interactions by +(9\pm 6)%. This analysis is used to
determine the CKM matrix element |V_{cb}| with a controlled theoretical error.
Implications of the phase-space effects for the nonleptonic decay widths of b
hadrons are briefly discussed. The experimental evidence for the phase-space
effects is pointed out.Comment: 16 pages, Latex, 3 eps figures included, published version
(discussion extended, references updated, the main result unchanged
Shape-Function Effects and Split Matching in B-> Xs l+ l-
We derive the triply differential spectrum for the inclusive rare decay B ->
Xs l+ l- in the shape function region, in which Xs is jet-like with . Experimental cuts make this a relevant region. The
perturbative and non-perturbative parts of the matrix elements can be defined
with the Soft-Collinear Effective Theory, which is used to incorporate alphas
corrections consistently. We show that, with a suitable power counting for the
dilepton invariant mass, the same universal jet and shape functions appear as
in B-> Xs gamma and B-> Xu l nu decays. Parts of the usual alphas(m_b)
corrections go into the jet function at a lower scale, and parts go into the
non-perturbative shape function. For B -> Xs l+ l-, the perturbative series in
alphas are of a different character above and below mu=mb. We introduce a
``split matching'' method that allows the series in these regions to be treated
independently.Comment: 33 pages; journal versio
Hadronic Invariant Mass Spectrum in B -> X_u l nu Decay with Lepton Energy Cut
We discuss the implications of charged lepton energy cut to the hadronic
invariant mass spectrum in charmless semileptonic B decays. Charged-lepton
energy cut is inevitable in order to remove secondary leptonic events such as b
-> c, tau -> l, and to identify the chaged leptons at detectors experimentally.
We consider three possible lepton energy cuts, E_l^{cuts} = 0.6,1.5,2.3 GeV,
and found that with the most probable cuts E_l^{cut} = 1.5 GeV and M_X^{max} =
1.5~(1.86) GeV, 45 ~ 60 % ~(58 ~ 67 %) of decay events survive. Therefore, B ->
X_u l nu decay events can be efficiently distinguished from B -> X_c l nu decay
events. We also discuss the possible model dependence on the results.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure
The Pole Mass of The Heavy Quark. Perturbation Theory and Beyond
The key quantity of the heavy quark theory is the quark mass . Since
quarks are unobservable one can suggest different definitions of . One of
the most popular choices is the pole quark mass routinely used in perturbative
calculations and in some analyses based on heavy quark expansions. We show that
no precise definition of the pole mass can be given in the full theory once
non-perturbative effects are included. Any definition of this quantity suffers
from an intrinsic uncertainty of order \Lam /m_Q. This fact is succinctly
described by the existence of an infrared renormalon generating a factorial
divergence in the high-order coefficients of the series; the
corresponding singularity in the Borel plane is situated at . A
peculiar feature is that this renormalon is not associated with the matrix
element of a local operator. The difference \La \equiv M_{H_Q}-m_Q^{pole} can
still be defined in Heavy Quark Effective Theory, but only at the price of
introducing an explicit dependence on a normalization point : \La (\mu
). Fortunately the pole mass {\em per se} does not appear in
calculable observable quantities.Comment: 22 pages, Latex, 6 figures (available upon request), TPI-MINN-94/4-T,
CERN-TH.7171/94, UND-HEP-94-BI
Strong Phases and Factorization for Color Suppressed Decays
We prove a factorization theorem in QCD for the color suppressed decays B0->
D0 M0 and B0-> D*0 M0 where M is a light meson. Both the color-suppressed and
W-exchange/annihilation amplitudes contribute at lowest order in LambdaQCD/Q
where Q={mb, mc, Epi}, so no power suppression of annihilation contributions is
found. A new mechanism is given for generating non-perturbative strong phases
in the factorization framework. Model independent predictions that follow from
our results include the equality of the B0 -> D0 M0 and B0 -> D*0 M0 rates, and
equality of non-perturbative strong phases between isospin amplitudes,
delta(DM) = delta(D*M). Relations between amplitudes and phases for M=pi,rho
are also derived. These results do not follow from large Nc factorization with
heavy quark symmetry.Comment: 38 pages, 6 figs, typos correcte
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