Particular concerns with regard to the Rotterdam Rules

Resumen: A medida que el proceso de fi rma de las Reglas de Rotterdam va tomando cuerpo, también cobran fuerza las voces discordantes. Este artículo o manifi esto recoge la opinión crítica colectiva de un grupo de nueve destacados especialistas en Derecho marítimo de distintas partes del mundo, pertenecientes a los sectores académico y profesional. El artículo analiza con brevedad y precisión los rasgos más destacados de las Reglas de Rotterdam, particularmente aquéllos que, a juicio de los firmantes, meritan mayor debate y crítica. La conclusión a la que llegan los miembros de este grupo de juristas es que las Reglas de Rotterdam no vienen sino a añadir más complejidad a la actual regulación internacional del transporte marítimo y multimodal. El artículo finaliza con una propuesta de alternativas que permitan aprovechar lo mejor de la regulación vigente y abrir las puertas a una actualización y complementación de dicha regulación. Palabras clave: Reglas, Rotterdam, Crítica, Alternativas. Abstract: As the Rotterdam Rules signature process gains momentum, strong dissenting opinions are also starting to be heard. This article or manifesto sums up the collective critical voice of nine worldwide leading shipping lawyers and professors. It provides a short and precise analysis of the Rotterdam Rules main features from the point of view of those issues which the authors fi nd unworthy of praise. And their conclusion is that the Rotterdam Rules simply just add up more complexity to the present shipping and multimodal international regulation. The article closes with a quest for alternatives aimed to get the best of what we already have and opens the gate to proposals based on the updating and complementation of the regulation in force today. Key words: Rules, Rotterdam, Critical, Alternatives

A Blue Print for a Worldwide Multimodal Regime

Resumen: En el nº 2 de 2010 de CDT se publicó un manifiesto del llamado “Grupo de los 9” titulado “Particular concerns with regard to the Rotterdam Rules” en el que estos destacados profesores y juristas expresaban sus dudas acerca de este nuevo instrumento internacional. Este Grupo ofrece ahora un nuevo manifiesto que supone un paso adelante en el que se indica que a pesar de la innegable necesidad de poner al día las Reglas de La Haya-Visby, y de las aportaciones efectuadas en tal sentido por las Reglas de Rótterdam, las perspectivas de éxito de estas últimas se ven ensombrecidas por su pretensión de extenderse más allá de lo que en puridad debía ser su objeto, el transporte marítimo, para convertirse en el texto de referencia para el transporte multimodal que cuente con una fase marítima. Lejos de contribuir a un verdadero y efectivo régimen unificado de la multimodalidad, plantea nuevas dudas a la hora de determinar qué régimen, de entro los existentes para cada tipo de transporte, debe ser de aplicación en cada caso. Mientras tanto, parece que para conseguir los objetivos referidos al transporte marítimo de las Reglas de Rótterdam habría bastado con la introducción de Protocolos a las Reglas de La Haya-Visby, dejando que lo concerniente al transporte multimodal continuara por la senda establecida a tal efecto por el CMR, cuyo sistema quizás debiera traspasar las fronteras europeas con el impulso de las diferentes instituciones internacionales. Palabras clave: Reglas de Rotterdam, transporte multimodal, transporte marítimo, Reglas de La Haya-Visby, CMR.  Abstract: In the issue n. 2 of 2010 of CDT it was published a manifesto of the so-called “Group of the 9” under the title of “Particular concerns with regard to the Rotterdam Rules” where these renowned scholars and attorneys expressed their doubts about this new international legal instrument. The Group offers now a new manifesto providing a step further whereby they indicate that notwithstanding the undeniable necessity to update the Hague-Visby Rules and the contributions carried out in this direction by the Rotterdam Rules, success expectations of the latter rules are hindered because of the aim to expand the scope of application beyond their object in strict sense, namely maritime transport, so as to become the text of reference as for every multimodal transport that includes a sea leg. Far from contributing to a real and effective multimodal unified regime, new doubts arise when determining which regime, of all those for each type of transport, shall apply in each case. In any event, it seems that in order to reach the objectives appointed to by the Rotterdam Rules, introducing Protocols to the Hague-Visby Rules would have been good enough, whereas all that related to multimodal transport continues by the CMR established paths, a system which should trespass European borders with the help of different international institutions. Key words: Rotterdam Rules, multimodal transport, maritime transport, Hague-Visby Rules, CMR

Thirty Years of heavy Fermions: Scientific Setting for their Discovery and Partial Understanding

Heavy-Fermions provide an extreme example of the utility of the idea of continuity and analyticity in physics. Their discovery and study in the past thirty years has added a fascinating chapter to condensed matter physics. I briefly review the origins of the heavy-fermion problem out of the study of magnetic moments in metals and the study of mixed-valent rare-earth compounds. I also review the principal ideas underlying the features understood in their fermi-liquid phase as well as in their anisotropic superconductivity. The unsolved issues are also briefly mentioned.Comment: This is the text of one of the talks given at the plenary symposium entitled "Thirty years of heavy Fermions" at the beginning of the International conference on Strongly correlated Electrons in Vienna in July 200

Hopf algebras and Markov chains: Two examples and a theory

The operation of squaring (coproduct followed by product) in a combinatorial Hopf algebra is shown to induce a Markov chain in natural bases. Chains constructed in this way include widely studied methods of card shuffling, a natural "rock-breaking" process, and Markov chains on simplicial complexes. Many of these chains can be explictly diagonalized using the primitive elements of the algebra and the combinatorics of the free Lie algebra. For card shuffling, this gives an explicit description of the eigenvectors. For rock-breaking, an explicit description of the quasi-stationary distribution and sharp rates to absorption follow.Comment: 51 pages, 17 figures. (Typographical errors corrected. Further fixes will only appear on the version on Amy Pang's website, the arXiv version will not be updated.

Superconductivity in the SU(N) Anderson Lattice at U=\infty

We present a mean-field study of superconductivity in a generalized N-channel cubic Anderson lattice at U=\infty taking into account the effect of a nearest-neighbor attraction J. The condition U=\infty is implemented within the slave-boson formalism considering the slave bosons to be condensed. We consider the $f$-level occupancy ranging from the mixed valence regime to the Kondo limit and study the dependence of the critical temperature on the various model parameters for each of three possible Cooper pairing symmetries (extended s, d-wave and p-wave pairing) and find interesting crossovers. It is found that the d- and p- wave order parameters have, in general, very similar critical temperatures. The extended s-wave pairing seems to be relatively more stable for electronic densities per channel close to one and for large values of the superconducting interaction J.Comment: Seven Figures; one appendix. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Open charm and charmonium production at relativistic energies

We calculate open charm and charmonium production in $Au+Au$ reactions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV within the hadron-string dynamics (HSD) transport approach employing open charm cross sections from $pN$ and $\pi N$ reactions that are fitted to results from PYTHIA and scaled in magnitude to the available experimental data. Charmonium dissociation with nucleons and formed mesons to open charm ($D+\bar{D}$ pairs) is included dynamically. The 'comover' dissociation cross sections are described by a simple phase-space model including a single free parameter, i.e. an interaction strength $M_0^2$, that is fitted to the $J/\Psi$ suppression data for $Pb+Pb$ collisions at SPS energies. As a novel feature we implement the backward channels for charmonium reproduction by $D \bar{D}$ channels employing detailed balance. From our dynamical calculations we find that the charmonium recreation is comparable to the dissociation by 'comoving' mesons. This leads to the final result that the total $J/\Psi$ suppression at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV as a function of centrality is slightly less than the suppression seen at SPS energies by the NA50 Collaboration, where the 'comover' dissociation is substantial and the backward channels play no role. Furthermore, even in case that all directly produced $J/\Psi$ mesons dissociate immediately (or are not formed as a mesonic state), a sizeable amount of charmonia is found asymptotically due to the $D+\bar{D} \to J/\Psi$ + meson channels in central collisions of $Au+Au$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV which, however, is lower than the $J/\Psi$ yield expected from binary scaling of $pp$ collisions.Comment: 42 pages, including 14 eps figures, discussions extended and references added, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Hubble Space Telescope observations of [O III] emission in nearby QSO2s : physical properties of the ionized outflows

We use Hubble Space Telescope/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph long-slit G430M and G750M spectra to analyse the extended [O iii] λ5007 emission in a sample of 12 nearby (z 1.6 × 1045 erg s−1) QSO2s. The purpose of the study is to determine the properties of the mass outflows of ionized gas and their role in active galactic nucleus feedback. We measure fluxes and velocities as functions of radial distances. Using cloudy models and ionizing luminosities derived from [O iii] λ5007, we are able to estimate the densities for the emission-line gas. From these results, we derive masses of [O iii]-emitting gas, mass outflow rates, kinetic energies, kinetic luminosities, momenta, and momentum flow rates as a function of radial distance for each of the targets. For the sample, masses are several times 103–107M⊙ and peak outflow rates are from 9.3 × 10−3 to 10.3M⊙yr−1. The peak kinetic luminosities are (3.4 × 10−8)–(4.9 × 10−4) of the bolometric luminosity, which does not approach the (5.0 × 10−3)–(5.0 × 10−2) range required by some models for efficient feedback. For Mrk 34, which has the largest kinetic luminosity of our sample, in order to produce efficient feedback there would have to be 10 times more [O iii]-emitting gas than that we detected at its position of maximum kinetic luminosity. Three targets show extended [O iii] emission, but compact outflow regions. This may be due to different mass profiles or different evolutionary histories

Singular Fermi Liquids

An introductory survey of the theoretical ideas and calculations and the experimental results which depart from Landau Fermi-liquids is presented. Common themes and possible routes to the singularities leading to the breakdown of Landau Fermi liquids are categorized following an elementary discussion of the theory. Soluble examples of Singular Fermi liquids (often called Non-Fermi liquids) include models of impurities in metals with special symmetries and one-dimensional interacting fermions. A review of these is followed by a discussion of Singular Fermi liquids in a wide variety of experimental situations and theoretical models. These include the effects of low-energy collective fluctuations, gauge fields due either to symmetries in the hamiltonian or possible dynamically generated symmetries, fluctuations around quantum critical points, the normal state of high temperature superconductors and the two-dimensional metallic state. For the last three systems, the principal experimental results are summarized and the outstanding theoretical issues highlighted.Comment: 170 pages; submitted to Physics Reports; a single pdf file with high quality figures is available from http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloo

The Fueling and Evolution of AGN: Internal and External Triggers

In this chapter, I review the fueling and evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) under the influence of internal and external triggers, namely intrinsic properties of host galaxies (morphological or Hubble type, color, presence of bars and other non-axisymmetric features, etc) and external factors such as environment and interactions. The most daunting challenge in fueling AGN is arguably the angular momentum problem as even matter located at a radius of a few hundred pc must lose more than 99.99 % of its specific angular momentum before it is fit for consumption by a BH. I review mass accretion rates, angular momentum requirements, the effectiveness of different fueling mechanisms, and the growth and mass density of black BHs at different epochs. I discuss connections between the nuclear and larger-scale properties of AGN, both locally and at intermediate redshifts, outlining some recent results from the GEMS and GOODS HST surveys.Comment: Invited Review Chapter to appear in LNP Volume on "AGN Physics on All Scales", Chapter 6, in press. 40 pages, 12 figures. Typo in Eq 5 correcte

First Measurement of Z/gamma* Production in Compton Scattering of Quasi-real Photons

We report the first observation of Z/gamma* production in Compton scattering of quasi-real photons. This is a subprocess of the reaction e+e- to e+e-Z/gamma*, where one of the final state electrons is undetected. Approximately 55 pb-1 of data collected in the year 1997 at an e+e- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV with the OPAL detector at LEP have been analysed. The Z/gamma* from Compton scattering has been detected in the hadronic decay channel. Within well defined kinematic bounds, we measure the product of cross-section and Z/gamma* branching ratio to hadrons to be (0.9+-0.3+-0.1) pb for events with a hadronic mass larger than 60 GeV, dominated by (e)eZ production. In the hadronic mass region between 5 GeV and 60 GeV, dominated by (e)egamma* production, this product is found to be (4.1+-1.6+-0.6) pb. Our results agree with the predictions of two Monte Carlo event generators, grc4f and PYTHIA.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures included, submitted to Physics Letters