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 e−e+e^- e^+ 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

θ\theta Effects in Chern-Simons QED2+1{\rm QED}_{2+1} with a Four-Fermi Interaction

We investigate the effects of the Chern-Simons coupling on the high energy behavior in the $(2+1)$-dimensional Chern-Simons QED with a four-Fermi interaction. Using the $1/N$ expansion we discuss the Chern-Simons effects on the critical four-Fermi coupling at $O(1/N)$ and the $\beta$ 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 $O(1/N)$ 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 $1/N$ 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 $mX^2 \lesssim mb \Lambda_QCD$. 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 $m_Q$. Since quarks are unobservable one can suggest different definitions of $m_Q$. 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 $\alpha_s$ series; the corresponding singularity in the Borel plane is situated at $2\pi /b$. 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 $\mu$: \La (\mu ). Fortunately the pole mass $m_Q(0)$ {\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