Airline Alliances, Carve-Outs and Collusion

In this paper, we ask how antitrust immunity subject to a carve-out affects collusion incentives in international airline alliances. We show that the gains from economies of density due to higher interline traffic under the alliance strengthen the incentive to collude on the interhub segment, while the accompanying revenue gain heightens the incentive to defect from collusive behavior. These two effects exactly cancel in the case of linear demands and linear economies of density. Under this approximation, the incentives for interhub collusion are no different before and after the emergence of an airline alliance subject to a carve-out.collusion, carve-out

On the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD

We discuss the phase structure and thermodynamics of QCD by means of dynamical chiral effective models. Quark and meson fluctuations are included via the functional renormalization group. We study the influence of confinement in addition to the impact of fluctuations by comparing the results of the chiral models to their Polyakov-loop extended versions. Furthermore, we discuss the mass sensitivity of the phase structure and thermodynamics and find interesting modifications close to the chiral limit.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures; Appendix added; published versio

Jets in 200 GeV p+p and d+Au collisions from the STAR experiment at RHIC

Full jet reconstruction in heavy-ion collisions is a promising tool for the quantitative study of properties of the dense medium produced at RHIC. Measurements of d+Au collisions are important to disentangle initial state nuclear effects from medium-induced kT broadening and jet quenching. Study of jet production and properties in d+Au in combination with similar studies in p+p is an important baseline measurement needed to better understand heavy-ion results. We present mid-rapidity inclusive jet pT spectra and di-jet correlations (kT) in 200 GeV p+p and d+Au collisions from the 2007-2008 RHIC run. We discuss the methods used to correct the data for detector effects and for background in d+Au collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Hot Quarks 2010 conference proceeding

Towards the spatial resolution of metalloprotein charge states by detailed modeling of XFEL crystallographic diffraction.

Oxidation states of individual metal atoms within a metalloprotein can be assigned by examining X-ray absorption edges, which shift to higher energy for progressively more positive valence numbers. Indeed, X-ray crystallography is well suited for such a measurement, owing to its ability to spatially resolve the scattering contributions of individual metal atoms that have distinct electronic environments contributing to protein function. However, as the magnitude of the shift is quite small, about +2 eV per valence state for iron, it has only been possible to measure the effect when performed with monochromated X-ray sources at synchrotron facilities with energy resolutions in the range 2-3 × 10-4 (ΔE/E). This paper tests whether X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses, which have a broader bandpass (ΔE/E = 3 × 10-3) when used without a monochromator, might also be useful for such studies. The program nanoBragg is used to simulate serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) diffraction images with sufficient granularity to model the XFEL spectrum, the crystal mosaicity and the wavelength-dependent anomalous scattering factors contributed by two differently charged iron centers in the 110-amino-acid protein, ferredoxin. Bayesian methods are then used to deduce, from the simulated data, the most likely X-ray absorption curves for each metal atom in the protein, which agree well with the curves chosen for the simulation. The data analysis relies critically on the ability to measure the incident spectrum for each pulse, and also on the nanoBragg simulator to predict the size, shape and intensity profile of Bragg spots based on an underlying physical model that includes the absorption curves, which are then modified to produce the best agreement with the simulated data. This inference methodology potentially enables the use of SFX diffraction for the study of metalloenzyme mechanisms and, in general, offers a more detailed approach to Bragg spot data reduction

Accurate ab initio anharmonic force field and heat of formation for silane, SiH_4

From large basis set coupled cluster calculations and a minor empirical adjustment, an anharmonic force field for silane has been derived that is consistently of spectroscopic quality ($\pm 1 cm^{-1}$ on vibrational fundamentals) for all isotopomers of silane studied. Inner-shell polarization functions have an appreciable effect on computed properties and even on anharmonic corrections. From large basis set coupled cluster calculations and extrapolations to the infinite-basis set limit, we obtain TAE_0=303.80 \pm 0.18 kcal/mol, which includes an anharmonic zero-point energy (19.59 kcal/mol), inner-shell correlation (-0.36 kcal/mol), scalar relativistic corrections (-0.70 kcal/mol), and atomic spin-orbit corrections (-0.43 kcal/mol). In combination with the recently revised \HVSI{0}, we obtain $\Delta H^{\circ}_{f,0}[SiH_4(g)]=9.9 \pm 0.4 kcal/mol$, in between the two established experimental values.Comment: Mol. Phys., in pres

Semantics of Exceptions

We describe a trace semantics of exceptions and then derive a weakest precondition semantics. A program that contains exceptions terminates in one of two possible ways (if it terminates at all): either it terminates exceptionally or it terminates normally. We will therefore consider weakest preconditions that are functions of two postconditions. As a preparation we study aribitrary functions of two arguments, and their compositions