International trade policies and sustainability of nano-textiles

While a considerable part of developments in the field of industrial and technical textiles involves nanomaterials, there are increasing challenges faced across the world in their acceptability and sustainability. Their potential adverse impact has been documented in the scientific literature. European Commission and USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) have already come up with regulations that govern these materials. In future, therefore, we can expect trade sanctions by these countries on exports of nano-textiles from countries like India. In this paper, we shall discuss the technical literature that points towards potential hazards of nano-textiles and the policy aspects currently in place. Further, we employ a widely used global economic (Computable General Equilibrium) model (GTAP – Global Trade Analysis Project) to evaluate the economic and business impact of such sanctions quantitatively, in a stochastic and comparative setting

Recent Regionalism in UK and USA: A Legal and Economic Analysis

While there have been a lot of analysis currently being conducted to analyze the recent trends across the world towards a new era of protectionism, many of them are either in the realm of law or economics; there is a dearth of studies analyzing them from a combined legal and economic perspective. Our paper is a unique attempt in this regard. We show from both legal and economic perspectives, that the new regionalist policy initiatives in UK and USA potentially have more negative effects than positive effects for the entire world in the future

Recent Regionalism in UK and USA: A Legal and Economic Analysis

While there have been a lot of analysis currently being conducted to analyze the recent trends across the world towards a new era of protectionism, many of them are either in the realm of law or economics; there is a dearth of studies analyzing them from a combined legal and economic perspective. Our paper is a unique attempt in this regard. We show from both legal and economic perspectives, that the new regionalist policy initiatives in UK and USA potentially have more negative effects than positive effects for the entire world in the future

Transparency As A Way Of Attaining Quality, Safety And Optimal Food Purchases

The present extensive literature analysis and interview study, with consumers living in Washington state, USA, set out to explore consumers’ perceptions of quality, safety, and transparency and see how these influence shopping preferences. Literature review included global studies which looked at food transparency, safety, quality, food certifications and environmental concerns. The findings indicate that organic foods are often linked to health, nutrition, environmental concerns as well as presence of children, and quality is measured by assessing freshness, taste, nutrition and traceability

Trade Liberalization – Labor Productivity Nexus: The Case of Sub Saharan Africa

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the weak growth of labor productivity in poor but open economies. The main purpose of the research is to estimate the welfare effects of the reciprocal preferential trade liberalization between Sub-Saharan Africa and the industrialized countries, taking into account the differences in labor productivity be-tween the two trading blocs

Scintillation Counters for the D0 Muon Upgrade

We present the results of an upgrade to the D0 muon system. Scintillating counters have been added to the existing central D0 muon system to provide rejection for cosmic ray muons and out-of-time background, and to provide additional fast timing information for muons in an upgraded Tevatron. Performance and results from the 1994-1996 Tevatron run are presented.Comment: 30 pages, 25 postscript figure

Evidence of Color Coherence Effects in W+jets Events from ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV

We report the results of a study of color coherence effects in ppbar collisions based on data collected by the D0 detector during the 1994-1995 run of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV. Initial-to-final state color interference effects are studied by examining particle distribution patterns in events with a W boson and at least one jet. The data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations with different color coherence implementations and to an analytic modified-leading-logarithm perturbative calculation based on the local parton-hadron duality hypothesis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters

Tides in colliding galaxies

Long tails and streams of stars are the most noticeable upshots of galaxy collisions. Their origin as gravitational, tidal, disturbances has however been recognized only less than fifty years ago and more than ten years after their first observations. This Review describes how the idea of galactic tides emerged, in particular thanks to the advances in numerical simulations, from the first ones that included tens of particles to the most sophisticated ones with tens of millions of them and state-of-the-art hydrodynamical prescriptions. Theoretical aspects pertaining to the formation of tidal tails are then presented. The third part of the review turns to observations and underlines the need for collecting deep multi-wavelength data to tackle the variety of physical processes exhibited by collisional debris. Tidal tails are not just stellar structures, but turn out to contain all the components usually found in galactic disks, in particular atomic / molecular gas and dust. They host star-forming complexes and are able to form star-clusters or even second-generation dwarf galaxies. The final part of the review discusses what tidal tails can tell us (or not) about the structure and content of present-day galaxies, including their dark components, and explains how tidal tails may be used to probe the past evolution of galaxies and their mass assembly history. On-going deep wide-field surveys disclose many new low-surface brightness structures in the nearby Universe, offering great opportunities for attempting galactic archeology with tidal tails.Comment: 46 pages, 13 figures, Review to be published in "Tidal effects in Astronomy and Astrophysics", Lecture Notes in Physics. Comments are most welcom

The Origins Space Telescope

The Origins Space Telescope will trace the history of our origins from the time dust and heavy elements permanently altered the cosmic landscape to present-day life. How did galaxies evolve from the earliest galactic systems to those found in the universe today? How do habitable planets form? How common are life-bearing worlds? To answer these alluring questions, Origins will operate at mid- and far-infrared wavelengths and offer powerful spectroscopic instruments and sensitivity three orders of magnitude better than that of Herschel, the largest telescope flown in space to date. After a 3 year study, the Origins Science and Technology Definition Team will recommend to the Decadal Survey a concept for Origins with a 5.9-m diameter telescope cryo cooled to 4.5 K and equipped with three scientific instruments. A mid-infrared instrument (MISC-T) will measure the spectra of transiting exoplanets in the 2.8 20 m wavelength range and offer unprecedented sensitivity, enabling definitive biosignature detections. The Far-IR Imager Polarimeter (FIP) will be able to survey thousands of square degrees with broadband imaging at 50 and 250 m. The Origins Survey Spectrometer (OSS) will cover wavelengths from 25 588 m, make wide-area and deep spectroscopic surveys with spectral resolving power R ~ 300, and pointed observations at R ~ 40,000 and 300,000 with selectable instrument modes. Origins was designed to minimize complexity. The telescope has a Spitzer-like architecture and requires very few deployments after launch. The cryo-thermal system design leverages JWST technology and experience. A combination of current-state-of-the-art cryocoolers and next-generation detector technology will enable Origins natural background limited sensitivity