Interstate variation in welfare benefits and the migration of the poor: Substantive concerns and symbolic responses

Nearly all states are thinking about reforming their welfare systems, and several states--particularly those that offer high welfare benefits--are taking action. A major concern is that poor people are moving to high- benefit states in order to receive the benefits offered by those states. It is unclear, however, if this "welfare migration" is extensive enough to break the budgets of high-benefit states. Nevertheless, legislators in those states are seeking to stop it, usually through two-tier benefit schedules whereby new arrivals to a state are temporarily paid the welfare benefits they would have received had they remained in their original state. The authors discuss the extent to which two-tier benefit schedules represent substantive reform or symbolic action. In their estimation, current strategies for welfare reform fail to address the causes of poverty and welfare dependency and may only intensify the antagonism many Americans feel toward the poor.

Elliptic flow due to radiation in heavy-ion collisions

In this paper we demonstrate that radiation patterns could cause flow-like behaviour without any reference to hydrodynamic description. For that purpose we use a statistical ensemble of radiating dipoles, motivated by the investigation of the equivalent photon yield produced by decelerating charges. For the elliptic asymmetry factor we find a reasonable agreement with experimental data.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, v2: discussion on the physical interpretation of the form factor F is adde

Entropy Production During Hadronization of a Quark-Gluon Plasma

We revisit the physical pictures for the hadronization of quark-gluon plasma, concentrating on the problem of entropy production during processes where the number of degrees of freedom is seemingly reduced due to color confinement. Based on observations on Regge trajectories we propose not having an infinite tower of hadronic resonances. We discuss possible entropy production mechanisms far from equilibrium in terms of stochastic dynamics.Comment: Submitted to EPJ A Topical Issue on "Frontiers in nuclear, heavy ion and strong field physics", in memoriam Walter Greine

Nuclear and Quark Matter at High Temperature

We review important ideas on nuclear and quark matter description on the basis of high- temperature field theory concepts, like resummation, dimensional reduction, interaction scale separation and spectral function modification in media. Statistical and thermodynamical concepts are spotted in the light of these methods concentrating on the - partially still open - problems of the hadronization process.Comment: Review intended for EPJ A Topical Issu

Illusory Flow in Radiation from Accelerating Charge

In this paper we analyze the classical electromagnetic radiation of an accelerating point charge moving on a straight line trajectory. Depending on the duration of accelerations, rapidity distributions of photons emerge, resembling the ones obtained in the framework of hydrodynamical models by Landau or Bjorken. Detectable differences between our approach and spectra obtained from hydrodynamical models occur at high transverse momenta and are due to interference