The Brightest Black Holes

I suggest that there are two classes of ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), corresponding to super-Eddington mass inflow in two situations: (a) thermal-timescale mass transfer in high-mass X-ray binaries, and (b) long-lasting transient outbursts in low-mass X-ray binaries. These two classes are exemplified by SS433 and microquasars like GRS 1915+105 respectively. The observed ULX population is a varying mixture of the two, depending on the star formation history of the host galaxy. ULXs in galaxies with vigorous star formation (such as the Antennae) are generally SS433--like, while ULXs in elliptical galaxies must be of the microquasar type. The latter probably have significantly anisotropic radiation patterns. They should also be variable, but demonstrating this may require observations over decades. The close analogy between models of X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei (AGN) suggests that there should exist an apparently super-Eddington class of the latter, which may be the ultrasoft AGN, and a set of X-ray binaries with Doppler--boosted X-ray emission. These are presumably a subset of the ULXs, but remain as yet unidentified.Comment: 4 pages, no figures; accepted for MNRAS Letter

Thinking in Chinese vs. Thinking in English: Social Preference and Risk Attitudes of Multicultural Minds

This paper investigates whether language priming activates different cultural identities and norms associated with the language communicated with respect to social preference and risk attitudes. Our contribution is on identifying the conditions where there will be language priming effects. We conduct economic games with bilingual subjects using Chinese and English as instructions. It is found that language priming affects social preference, but only in context involving strategic interactions. In social preference games involving strategic interactions, e.g., the trust game, subjects in the Chinese treatment are more trusting and trustworthy. In individual choice games, such as the dictator game, there is no treatment difference. Further, we also find that language priming affects risk attitudes. Subjects in the Chinese treatment prefer to pick Chinese lucky numbers in Mark Six lottery. These findings suggest that the effect of language priming is context dependent.language, bilingual, biculture, social preference, risk attitudes

Low Scale Technicolour at LEP

We discuss the phenomenology of an $SU(2)_{TC}$ technicolour model with a low technicolour confinement scale ${\Lambda}_{TC} \sim 50-100 GeV$. Such a low technicolour scale may give rise to the first hints of technicolour being seen at LEPI and spectacular technicolour signals at LEPII.Comment: 12 pages+1 figure (available by post), Latex, SHEP92/93-2

Dilemmas of a ‘democratic peace’:World War One, the Zimmerwald Manifesto and the Russian Revolution

This article looks at the influence of the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915 on the peace policies of the Petrograd Soviet, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks after February 1917. It highlights the problems involved in simultaneously trying to defend a revolution, work for a just international peace, and maintain the front in a war which no longer makes any sense. It suggests that insisting on ‘peace without annexations and indemnities on the basis of self-determination of nations’ was not realistic given Russia’s war exhaustion and the war aims of the other belligerents. However, it also shows that no other peace aim had any political support within Russia

The Effect of the United Nations Convention Against Torture on the Scope of Habeas Review in the Context of International Extradition

This Note considers the law underlying the question addressed in Trinidad: can habeas courts review an extraditee’s Article Three claims? In turn, this Note considers how courts should interpret the CAT in the extradition context. Part I explores the important conceptual components of the question posed in Trinidad,including US extradition practice, habeas petitions in extradition proceedings, and the CAT’s implementation in the United States. Building on this, Part II examines competing interpretations of Article Three claims in US courts, highlighting how these claims touch on much deeper issues that remain unsettled by several hundred years of habeas corpus jurisprudence. Finally, Part III posits a simple answer to the straightforward question posed in Trinidad. Neither the CAT, its implementing laws or regulations, nor the United States Constitution allows courts to hear an extraditee’s Article Three claims. Therefore, unless Congress changes the current state of the law, Article Three claims are the exclusive purview of the Secretary

Weighing up the qualities of independence: 21 grams in focus

At the heart (literally) of 21 Grams (2003) is a concern about questions of identity; of measuring that which seems ineffable – the essence of life, or what makes us distinct, unique as individuals, or otherwise. My aim in this paper is to use the film to attempt a similar, if less lofty, enquiry into the current identity of American independent cinema, a sector that often seems equally resistant to being clearly or definitively pinned down and categorized. 21 Grams is a useful exemplar of a number of significant trends in the contemporary indie sector, including both its situation in the industrial landscape and its most distinctive formal qualities. Industrially, the film lies in a position poised between all-out independence and attachment to the empires of the Hollywood major studio-distribution operations. Formally, and in the intersection between form and content, it also occupies a something of a hybrid position: alternative in some dimensions, especially its narrative structure and the use of hyper-realistic visual textures, but also more familiar-conventional in others, including a storyline that might otherwise seem closer to the stuff of somewhat implausible melodrama. In each case, I suggest, this can be taken as representative of a significant proportion of the American independent sector more widely