Renormalized Hennings Invariants and 2+1-TQFTs

We construct non-semisimple $2+1$-TQFTs yielding mapping class group representations in Lyubashenko's spaces. In order to do this, we first generalize Beliakova, Blanchet and Geer's logarithmic Hennings invariants based on quantum $\mathfrak{sl}_2$ to the setting of finite-dimensional non-degenerate unimodular ribbon Hopf algebras. The tools used for this construction are a Hennings-augmented Reshetikhin-Turaev functor and modified traces. When the Hopf algebra is factorizable, we further show that the universal construction of Blanchet, Habegger, Masbaum and Vogel produces a $2+1$-TQFT on a not completely rigid monoidal subcategory of cobordisms

No-Trade in the Laboratory

We test the no-trade theorem in a laboratory financial market where subjects can trade an asset whose value is unknown. Subjects receive clues on the asset value and then set a bid and an ask at which they are willing to buy or to sell from the other participants. In treatments with no gains from trade, theory predicts no trading activity, whereas, in treatments with gains, trade becomes theoretically possible. Our experimental results show that subjects fail to reach the no-trade equilibrium by pure introspection, but they learn to approach it over time,through market feedback and learning.no-trade theorem, experiment

No-Trade in the Laboratory

We test the no-trade theorem in a laboratory nancial market where subjects can trade an asset whose value is unknown. Subjects receive clues on the asset value and then set a bid and an ask at which they are willing to buy or to sell from the other participants. In treatments with no gains from trade, theory predicts no trading activity, whereas, in treatments with gains, trade becomes theoretically possible. Our experimental results show that subjects fail to reach the no-trade equilibrium by pure introspection, but they learn to approach it over time, through market feedback and learning.

Pluralism is the Answer! What is the Question?

This essay provides a critical assessment of species pluralism, a popular strategy to explain the discordance characterizing contemporary systematics. Specifically, my aim is to present and scrutinize species pluralism, and to discuss whether it provides a fruitful concept in biology. The article begins by distinguishing two independent theses often associated with pluralism: ‘heterogeneity’ and ‘theory dependence.’ Next, it examines how these theses have been developed in the scientific and philosophical literature. I conclude by suggesting that the overarching expression ‘species pluralism’ be dropped in favor of more perspicuous labels

Quantifying the nonlinearity of a quantum oscillator

We address the quantification of nonlinearity for quantum oscillators and introduce two measures based on the properties of the ground state rather than on the form of the potential itself. The first measure is a fidelity-based one, and corresponds to the renormalized Bures distance between the ground state of the considered oscillator and the ground state of a reference harmonic oscillator. Then, in order to avoid the introduction of this auxiliary oscillator, we introduce a different measure based on the non-Gaussianity (nG) of the ground state. The two measures are evaluated for a sample of significant nonlinear potentials and their properties are discussed in some detail. We show that the two measures are monotone functions of each other in most cases, and this suggests that the nG-based measure is a suitable choice to capture the anharmonic nature of a quantum oscillator, and to quantify its nonlinearity independently on the specific features of the potential. We also provide examples of potentials where the Bures measure cannot be defined, due to the lack of a proper reference harmonic potential, while the nG-based measure properly quantify their nonlinear features. Our results may have implications in experimental applications where access to the effective potential is limited, e.g., in quantum control, and protocols rely on information about the ground or thermal state.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Effects of alcohol liberalization on liquor stores and rural and urban shopping patterns, The

Includes bibliographical references

SNAC-tag for sequence-specific chemical protein cleavage.

Site-specific protein cleavage is essential for many protein-production protocols and typically requires proteases. We report the development of a chemical protein-cleavage method that is achieved through the use of a sequence-specific nickel-assisted cleavage (SNAC)-tag. We demonstrate that the SNAC-tag can be inserted before both water-soluble and membrane proteins to achieve fusion protein cleavage under biocompatible conditions with efficiency comparable to that of enzymes, and that the method works even when enzymatic cleavages fail

Orbital order and chiral currents of interacting bosons with π\pi-flux

Higher Bloch bands provide a remarkable setting for realizing many-body states that spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry, offering a promising path towards the realization of interacting topological phases. Here, we propose a different approach by which chiral orbital order effectively emerges in the low-energy physics of interacting bosons moving on a square plaquette pierced by a $\pi$-flux. We analyze the low-energy excitations of the condensate in terms of two orbital degrees of freedom and identify a gapped collective mode corresponding to the out-of-phase oscillations of the relative density and phase of the two orbitals. We further highlight the chiral nature of the ground state by revealing the cyclotron-like dynamics of the density upon quenching an impurity potential on a single site. Our single-plaquette results can be used as building blocks for extended dimerized lattices, as we exemplify using the BBH model of higher-order topological insulators. Our results provide a distinct direction to realize interacting orbital-like models that spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry, without resorting to higher bands nor to external drives.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Parton distributions with threshold resummation

We construct a set of parton distribution functions (PDFs) in which fixed-order NLO and NNLO calculations are supplemented with soft-gluon (threshold) resummation up to NLL and NNLL accuracy respectively, suitable for use in conjunction with any QCD calculation in which threshold resummation is included at the level of partonic cross sections. These resummed PDF sets, based on the NNPDF3.0 analysis, are extracted from deep-inelastic scattering, Drell-Yan, and top quark pair production data, for which resummed calculations can be consistently used. We find that, close to threshold, the inclusion of resummed PDFs can partially compensate the enhancement in resummed matrix elements, leading to resummed hadronic cross-sections closer to the fixed-order calculation. On the other hand, far from threshold, resummed PDFs reduce to their fixed-order counterparts. Our results demonstrate the need for a consistent use of resummed PDFs in resummed calculations.Comment: 43 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in JHE