Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence

[Excerpt] There has been a recent increase in the level of drug trafficking-related violence within and between the drug trafficking organizations in Mexico. This violence has generated concern among U.S. policy makers that the violence in Mexico might spill over into the United States. Currently, U.S. federal officials deny that the recent increase in drug trafficking-related violence in Mexico has resulted in a spillover into the United States, but they acknowledge that the prospect is a serious concern. Currently, no comprehensive, publicly available data exist that can definitively answer the question of whether there has been a significant spillover of drug trafficking-related violence into the United States. Although anecdotal reports have been mixed, U.S. government officials maintain that there has not yet been a significant spillover. In an examination of data that could provide insight into whether there has been a significant spillover in drug trafficking-related violence from Mexico into the United States, CRS analyzed violent crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report program. The data, however, do not allow analysts to determine what proportion of the violent crime rate is related to drug trafficking or, even more specifically, what proportion of drug trafficking-related violent crimes can be attributed to spillover violence. In conclusion, because the trends in the overall violent crime rate may not be indicative of trends in drug trafficking-related violent crimes, CRS is unable to draw definitive claims about trends in drug trafficking-related violence spilling over from Mexico into the United States. This report will be updated as circumstances warrant

Multiplicities of Periodic Orbit Lengths for Non-Arithmetic Models

Multiplicities of periodic orbit lengths for non-arithmetic Hecke triangle groups are discussed. It is demonstrated both numerically and analytically that at least for certain groups the mean multiplicity of periodic orbits with exactly the same length increases exponentially with the length. The main ingredient used is the construction of joint distribution of periodic orbits when group matrices are transformed by field isomorphisms. The method can be generalized to other groups for which traces of group matrices are integers of an algebraic field of finite degree

Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence

This report looks at the nature of the U.S.-Mexico drug trafficking conflict and assessments of how the conflict could spill across the border

Asymptotics of the Heat Kernel on Rank 1 Locally Symmetric Spaces

We consider the heat kernel (and the zeta function) associated with Laplace type operators acting on a general irreducible rank 1 locally symmetric space X. The set of Minakshisundaram- Pleijel coefficients {A_k(X)}_{k=0}^{\infty} in the short-time asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel is calculated explicitly.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX fil

Harmonic maps from degenerating Riemann surfaces

We study harmonic maps from degenerating Riemann surfaces with uniformly bounded energy and show the so-called generalized energy identity. We find conditions that are both necessary and sufficient for the compactness in $W^{1,2}$ and $C^{0}$ modulo bubbles of sequences of such maps.Comment: 27 page

Critical points and supersymmetric vacua, III: String/M models

A fundamental problem in contemporary string/M theory is to count the number of inequivalent vacua satisfying constraints in a string theory model. This article contains the first rigorous results on the number and distribution of supersymmetric vacua of type IIb string theories compactified on a Calabi-Yau 3-fold $X$ with flux. In particular, complete proofs of the counting formulas in Ashok-Douglas and Denef-Douglas are given, together with van der Corput style remainder estimates. We also give evidence that the number of vacua satisfying the tadpole constraint in regions of bounded curvature in moduli space is of exponential growth in $b_3(X)$.Comment: Final revision for publication in Commun. Math. Phys. Minor corrections and editorial change

Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence

This report focuses on how policy makers would identify any spillover of drug trafficking-related violence into the United States. It provides an overview of Mexican drug trafficking organization structures, how they conduct business, and the relationship between the drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and their partnerships operating here in the United States; a discussion of the illicit drug trade between Mexico and the United States; and other related issues

On the appearance of Eisenstein series through degeneration

Let $\Gamma$ be a Fuchsian group of the first kind acting on the hyperbolic upper half plane $\mathbb H$, and let $M = \Gamma \backslash \mathbb H$ be the associated finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surface. If $\gamma$ is parabolic, there is an associated (parabolic) Eisenstein series, which, by now, is a classical part of mathematical literature. If $\gamma$ is hyperbolic, then, following ideas due to Kudla-Millson, there is a corresponding hyperbolic Eisenstein series. In this article, we study the limiting behavior of parabolic and hyperbolic Eisenstein series on a degenerating family of finite volume hyperbolic Riemann surfaces. In particular, we prove the following result. If $\gamma \in \Gamma$ corresponds to a degenerating hyperbolic element, then a multiple of the associated hyperbolic Eisenstein series converges to parabolic Eisenstein series on the limit surface.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures. This paper has been accepted for publication in Commentarii Mathematici Helvetic

BICEP2/SPUD: searching for inflation with degree scale polarimetry from the South Pole

BICEP2/SPUD is the new powerful upgrade of the existing BICEP1 experiment, a bolometric receiver to study the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which has been in operation at the South Pole since January 2006. BICEP2 will provide an improvement up to 10 times mapping speed at 150 GHz compared to BICEP1, using the same BICEP telescope mount. SPUD, a series of compact, mechanically-cooled receivers deployed on the DASI mount at the Pole, will provide similar mapping speed in to BICEP2 in three bands, 100, 150, and 220 GHz. The new system will use large TES focal plane arrays to provide unprecedented sensitivity and excellent control of foreground contamination.Astronom