175 research outputs found
Tradable Pollution Permits and the Regulatory Game
This paper analyzes polluters\u27 incentives to move from a traditional command and control (CAC) environmental regulatory regime to a tradable permits (TPP) regime. Existing work in environmental economics does not model how firms contest and bargain over actual regulatory implementation in CAC regimes, and therefore fail to compare TPP regimes with any CAC regime that is actually observed. This paper models CAC environmental regulation as a bargaining game over pollution entitlements. Using a reduced form model of the regulatory contest, it shows that CAC regulatory bargaining likely generates a regulatory status quo under which firms with the highest compliance costs bargain for the smallest pollution reductions, or even no reduction at all. As for a tradable permits regime, it is shown that all firms are better off under such a regime than they would be under an idealized CAC regime that set and enforced a uniform pollution standard, but permit sellers (low compliance cost firms) may actually be better off under a TPP regime with relaxed aggregate pollution levels. Most importantly, because high cost firms (or facilities) are the most weakly regulated in the equilibrium under negotiated or bargained CAC regimes, they may be net losers in a proposed move to a TPP regime. When equilibrium costs under a TPP regime are compared with equilibrium costs under a status quo CAC regime, several otherwise paradoxical aspects of firm attitudes toward TPP type reforms can be explained. In particular, the otherwise paradoxical pattern of allowances awarded under Phase II of the 1990 Clean Air Act\u27s acid rain program, a pattern tending to favor (in Phase II) cleaner, newer generating units, is explained by the fact that under the status quo regime, a kind of bargained CAC, it was the newer cleaner units that were regulated, and which therefore had higher marginal control costs than did the largely unregulated older, plants. As a normative matter, the analysis here implies that the proper baseline for evaluating TPP regimes such as those contained in the Bush Administration\u27s recent Clear Skies initiative is not idealized, but nonexistent CAC regulatory outcomes, but rather the outcomes that have resulted from the bargaining game set up by CAC laws and regulations
Branonium
We study the bound states of brane/antibrane systems by examining the motion
of a probe antibrane moving in the background fields of N source branes. The
classical system resembles the point-particle central force problem, and the
orbits can be solved by quadrature. Generically the antibrane has orbits which
are not closed on themselves. An important special case occurs for some
Dp-branes moving in three transverse dimensions, in which case the orbits may
be obtained in closed form, giving the standard conic sections but with a
nonstandard time evolution along the orbit. Somewhat surprisingly, in this case
the resulting elliptical orbits are exact solutions, and do not simply apply in
the limit of asymptotically-large separation or non-relativistic velocities.
The orbits eventually decay through the radiation of massless modes into the
bulk and onto the branes, and we estimate this decay time. Applications of
these orbits to cosmology are discussed in a companion paper.Comment: 34 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, uses JHEP
Casimir Energies for 6D Supergravities Compactified on T_2/Z_N with Wilson Lines
We compute (as functions of the shape and Wilson-line moduli) the one-loop
Casimir energy induced by higher-dimensional supergravities compactified from
6D to 4D on 2-tori, and on some of their Z_N orbifolds. Detailed calculations
are given for a 6D scalar field having an arbitrary 6D mass m, and we show how
to extend these results to higher-spin fields for supersymmetric 6D theories.
Particular attention is paid to regularization issues and to the identification
of the divergences of the potential, as well as the dependence of the result on
m, including limits for which m^2 A> 1 where A is the volume of
the internal 2 dimensions. Our calculation extends those in the literature to
very general boundary conditions for fields about the various cycles of these
geometries. The results have potential applications towards Supersymmetric
Large Extra Dimensions (SLED) as a theory of the Dark Energy. First, they
provide an explicit calculation within which to follow the dependence of the
result on the mass of the bulk states which travel within the loop, and for
heavy masses these results bear out the more general analysis of the
UV-sensitivity obtained using heat-kernel methods. Second, because the
potentials we find describe the dynamics of the classical flat directions of
these compactifications, within SLED they would describe the present-day
dynamics of the Dark Energy.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figure
de Sitter String Vacua from Supersymmetric D-terms
We propose a new mechanism for obtaining de Sitter vacua in type IIB string
theory compactified on (orientifolded) Calabi-Yau manifolds similar to those
recently studied by Kachru, Kallosh, Linde and Trivedi (KKLT). dS vacuum
appears in KKLT model after uplifting an AdS vacuum by adding an anti-D3-brane,
which explicitly breaks supersymmetry. We accomplish the same goal by adding
fluxes of gauge fields within the D7-branes, which induce a D-term potential in
the effective 4D action. In this way we obtain dS space as a spontaneously
broken vacuum from a purely supersymmetric 4D action. We argue that our
approach can be directly extended to heterotic string vacua, with the dilaton
potential obtained from a combination of gaugino condensation and the D-terms
generated by anomalous U(1) gauge groups.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur
Differential Patterns of Synaptotagmin7 mRNA Expression in Rats with Kainate- and Pilocarpine-Induced Seizures
Previous studies in rat models of neurodegenerative disorders have shown disregulation of striatal synaptotagmin7 mRNA. Here we explored the expression of synaptotagmin7 mRNA in the brains of rats with seizures triggered by the glutamatergic agonist kainate (10 mg/kg) or by the muscarinic agonist pilocarpine (30 mg/kg) in LiCl (3 mEq/kg) pre-treated (24 h) rats, in a time-course experiment (30 min - 1 day). After kainate-induced seizures, synaptotagmin7 mRNA levels were transiently and uniformly increased throughout the dorsal and ventral striatum (accumbens) at 8 and 12 h, but not at 24 h, followed at 24 h by somewhat variable upregulation within different parts of the cerebral cortex, amigdala and thalamic nuclei, the hippocampus and the lateral septum. By contrast, after LiCl/pilocarpine-induced seizures, there was a more prolonged increase of striatal Synaptotagmin7 mRNA levels (at 8, 12 and 24 h), but only in the ventromedial striatum, while in some other of the aforementioned brain regions there was a decline to below the basal levels. After systemic post-treatment with muscarinic antagonist scopolamine in a dose of 2 mg/kg the seizures were either extinguished or attenuated. In scopolamine post-treated animals with extinguished seizures the striatal synaptotagmin7 mRNA levels (at 12 h after the onset of seizures) were not different from the levels in control animals without seizures, while in rats with attenuated seizures, the upregulation closely resembled kainate seizures-like pattern of striatal upregulation. In the dose of 1 mg/kg, scopolamine did not significantly affect the progression of pilocarpine-induced seizures or pilocarpine seizures-like pattern of striatal upregulation of synaptotagmin7 mRNA. In control experiments, equivalent doses of scopolamine per se did not affect the expression of synaptotagmin7 mRNA. We conclude that here described differential time course and pattern of synaptotagmin7 mRNA expression imply regional differences of pathophysiological brain activation and plasticity in these two models of seizures
Overlapping Intellectual Property Doctrines: Election of Rights versus Selection of Remedies
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