Signatures of Resonant Super-Partner Production with Charged-Current Decays

Hadron collider signatures of new physics are investigated in which a primary resonance is produced that decays to a secondary resonance by emitting a W-boson, with the secondary resonance decaying to two jets. This topology can arise in supersymmetric theories with R-parity violation where the lightest supersymmetric particles are either a pair of squarks, or a slepton - sneutrino pair. The resulting signal can have a cross section consistent with the Wjj observation reported by the CDF collaboration, while remaining consistent with earlier constraints. Other observables that can be used to confirm this scenario include a significant charge asymmetry in the same channel at the LHC. With strongly interacting resonances such as squarks, pair production topologies additionally give rise to 4 jet and WW + 4 jet signatures, each with two equal-mass dijet resonances within the 4 jets.Comment: Note added for recent developments concerning the Wjj final state. Version to appear in PRD. 21 pages, 12 figure

Survey of Human Mitochondrial Diseases Using New Genomic/Proteomic Tools

BACKGROUND. We have constructed Bayesian prior-based, amino-acid sequence profiles for the complete yeast mitochondrial proteome and used them to develop methods for identifying and characterizing the context of protein mutations that give rise to human mitochondrial diseases. (Bayesian priors are conditional probabilities that allow the estimation of the likelihood of an event - such as an amino-acid substitution - on the basis of prior occurrences of similar events.) Because these profiles can assemble sets of taxonomically very diverse homologs, they enable identification of the structurally and/or functionally most critical sites in the proteins on the basis of the degree of sequence conservation. These profiles can also find distant homologs with determined three-dimensional structures that aid in the interpretation of effects of missense mutations. RESULTS. This survey reports such an analysis for 15 missense mutations one insertion and three deletions involved in Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, Leigh syndrome, mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy, Mohr-Tranebjaerg syndrome, iron-storage disorders related to Friedreich's ataxia, and hereditary spastic paraplegia. We present structural correlations for seven of the mutations. CONCLUSIONS. Of the 19 mutations analyzed, 14 involved changes in very highly conserved parts of the affected proteins. Five out of seven structural correlations provided reasonable explanations for the malfunctions. As additional genetic and structural data become available, this methodology can be extended. It has the potential for assisting in identifying new disease-related genes. Furthermore, profiles with structural homologs can generate mechanistic hypotheses concerning the underlying biochemical processes - and why they break down as a result of the mutations.United States Department of Energy (DE-FG02-98ER62558); National Science Foundation (DBI-9807993

An Agricultural Time Series-Cross Section Data Set

The Agricultural Time Series-Cross Section (ATICS) dataset described in this Working Paper is based on the annual crop and livestock statistics collected by the United States Department of Agriculture. These statistics, scattered through a wide assortment of published and unpublished USDA bulletins and circulars, are extensive in their coverage of the agricultural sector, are highly disaggregated, and span a time period over one hundred years in length. Yet these rich sources have never been unified into a single compilation of data which is accessible, uniform, and machine readable. The ATICS dataset is an attempt to fill this gap.

Modeling critical questions as additional premises

This paper shows how the critical questions matching an argumentation scheme can be mod-eled in the Carneades argumentation system as three kinds of premises. Ordinary premises hold only if they are supported by sufficient arguments. Assumptions hold, by default, until they have been questioned. With exceptions the negation holds, by default, until the exception has been supported by sufficient arguments. By “sufficient arguments”, we mean arguments sufficient to satisfy the applicable proof standard

Appointing Arbitrators: Tenure, Public Confidence, and a Middle Road for ISDS Reform

Many governments now join academics and activists in questioning whether ad hoc tribunals, which comprise private individuals holding no tenured role on a court, ought to be entrusted with deciding cases, where the resultant awards sometimes impose significant financial burdens on the respondent State, constrain the State’s regulatory choices, and affect the interests of third parties. Investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS), during the great expansion of its practice over the past quarter century, has relied on party-appointed arbitrators to constitute the ad hoc tribunals that hear and decide cases that investors bring. Moved by a turn of public sentiment in recent years against ISDS, the European Union (EU) leads an effort to replace ad hoc tribunals with a permanent, standing judicial mechanism. A recent behavioral economics study by Maria Laura Marceddu and Pietro Ortolani in the European Journal of International Law adduces empirical evidence that those investigators say supports the effort toward an ISDS court. According to Marceddu and Ortolani, people who look disfavorably on ISDS would place more confidence in dispute settlement outcomes if the decision-makers were tenured judges serving on a court rather than arbitrators constituting ad hoc tribunals. However, they reach that conclusion on the basis of experiments that compare survey respondents’ sentiment between courts and ad hoc tribunals without interrogating what, precisely, respondents think courts and ad hoc tribunals are and what they think about them. Behavioral economics method, as originally developed, entails a closer look at the “objective attributes” of phenomena, public response to which an experiment aims to measure. To speak confidently about comparisons between public response to courts and public response to ad hoc arbitral tribunals, the empirical agenda around ISDS reform therefore should go a step further than Marceddu and Ortolani’s pathbreaking, but as yet only introductory, effort. Further experiments, rather than just comparing two kinds of dispute settlement organs as objects, would aim to identify what about those organs leads people to have confidence in one or the other. In this article, we hypothesize, in particular, that the attributes of the people who constitute a court or a tribunal matter more than the label that the organ is given. Whom to appoint as decision-maker is a central question in the wider discussion today over ISDS reform. The EU is not alone in exploring the possibilities. The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has turned its attention to ISDS reform over the past several years. The selection and appointment of ISDS decision-makers is one of the main topics under the UNCITRAL mandate in that connection. States, nongovernmental organizations, and academics have joined the discourse, which continues as the EU now advances a new generation of investment agreements stipulating the creation of bilateral ISDS courts and the pursuit of a future multilateral court to address ISDS at global level. From our behavioral economics hypothesis about ISDS decision-making, we suggest that what influences public sentiment most meaningfully are signals of public confidence in the people who make decisions. Moving from hypothesis to policy, we suggest further that stakeholders who now are considering options for ISDS reform should seek to identify what those signals are. We tentatively advance that ethics, diversity, transparency, and demonstrated commitment through prior service in positions of public trust may be signals that influence public sentiment toward a decision-making apparatus. We close with some suggestions about how policy-makers might systematize such signals, so as to realign ISDS to address the concerns of the wider communities that institution affects

Bounce-free spherical hydrodynamic implosion

In a bounce-free spherical hydrodynamic implosion, the post-stagnation hot core plasma does not expand against the imploding flow. Such an implosion scheme has the advantage of improving the dwell time of the burning fuel, resulting in a higher fusion burn-up fraction. The existence of bounce-free spherical implosions is demonstrated by explicitly constructing a family of self-similar solutions to the spherically symmetric ideal hydrodynamic equations. When applied to a specific example of plasma liner driven magneto-inertial fusion, the bounce-free solution is found to produce at least a factor of four improvement in dwell time and fusion energy gain.Comment: accepted by Phys. Plasmas (Nov. 7, 2011); for Ref. 11, please see ftp://ftp.lanl.gov/public/kagan/liner_evolution.gi

Appointing Arbitrators: Tenure, Public Confidence, and a Middle Road for ISDS Reform

When parties bring claims under investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”) procedures, who should serve as decision-maker? Relevant par- ties ask the question in different settings and with different criteria in mind. A party in a dispute, contemplating ISDS proceedings, whether by it or against it, likely will focus on the qualities of particular individuals available to serve as arbitrators. Party-appointed panelists charged under the applicable instrument with choosing a neutral or chair, and institutional appointing authorities charged with that task or with choosing arbitrators in default of party choice, will also turn their minds to candidate assessment. Different individuals or institutions might look for somewhat different qualities, but all who are called upon to make the choice will think about how best to assess the candidates

China’s Sanctions and Rule of Law: How to Respond When China Targets Lawyers

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has begun to use sanctions against people who speak out against its policies. Well-known are the sanctions that the PRC’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson announced on January 20, 2021 against twenty-eight persons, both named and unnamed, who recently served or were then serving in the Trump administration, including the then-Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. On March 26, 2021, however, the PRC announced sanctions against a less conspicuous target: Essex Court Chambers, a set of barristers’ chambers in London known for commercial work and investment arbitration. What ostensibly provoked China’s unusual move was a hundred-odd-page legal opinion. Four barristers in Essex Court—Alison Macdonald QC, Jackie McArthur, Naomi Hart, and Lorraine Aboagye—had supplied the opinion to address whether China might have international criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghurs