23,356 research outputs found
A Business Entity By Any Other Name: Corporation, Community and Kinship
Forty-five years ago, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act resolved outstanding land claims between the federal and state government and Alaska Natives. The fund created by the settlement was used as seed money to establish the Alaska Native Corporations. The Native corporations have particular features which make them distinct from other business entities, these differences have been lauded by some shareholders but have simultaneously drawn ire from others. In 2015 the Alaska legislature introduced H.B. 49, a benefit corporation bill that would allow entrepreneurs to pursue both profits and social ends. This note traces the rise of the modern Alaska Native Corporation. It then weighs the merits of each business entity and assesses which is best aligned to improve the lives of Alaska Natives
Thermal effects in perturbative noncommutative gauge theories
The thermodynamics of gauge theories on the noncommutative plane is studied
in perturbation theory. For U(1) noncommutative Yang-Mills we compute the first
quantum correction to the ideal gas free energy density and study their
behavior in the low and high temperature regimes. Since the noncommutativity
scale effectively cutoff interactions at large distances, the theory is regular
in the infrared. In the case of U(N) noncommutative Yang-Mills we evaluate the
two-loop free energy density and find that it depends on the noncommutativity
parameter through the contribution of non-planar diagrams.Comment: 15 pages, harvmac. Minor changes with respect to v2. Footnote
expanded, remark added in Section 3, typos corrected and references added.
Final version to be published in JHE
Nonlinear Diffusion and Image Contour Enhancement
The theory of degenerate parabolic equations of the forms is used to
analyze the process of contour enhancement in image processing, based on the
evolution model of Sethian and Malladi. The problem is studied in the framework
of nonlinear diffusion equations. It turns out that the standard initial-value
problem solved in this theory does not fit the present application since it it
does not produce image concentration. Due to the degenerate character of the
diffusivity at high gradient values, a new free boundary problem with singular
boundary data can be introduced, and it can be solved by means of a non-trivial
problem transformation. The asymptotic convergence to a sharp contour is
established and rates calculated.Comment: 29 pages, includes 6 figure
Hybrid Natural Inflation
We construct two simple effective field theory versions of {\it Hybrid
Natural Inflation (HNI)} that illustrate the range of its phenomenological
implications. The resulting inflationary sector potential,
, arises naturally, with the inflaton field a
pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson. The end of inflation is triggered by a waterfall
field and the conditions for this to happen are determined. Also of interest is
the fact that the slow-roll parameter (and hence the tensor ) is
a non-monotonic function of the field with a maximum where observables take
universal values that determines the maximum possible tensor to scalar ratio
. In one of the models the inflationary scale can be as low as the
electroweak scale. We explore in detail the associated HNI phenomenology,
taking account of the constraints from Black Hole production, and perform a
detailed fit to the Planck 2015 temperature and polarisation data.Comment: V2: 19 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Extended discussions and new
references added. Version accepted for publication in JHE
Spiral structure of the Third Galactic Quadrant and the solution to the Canis Major debate
With the discovery of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal (Ibata et al. 1994), a
galaxy caught in the process of merging with the Milky Way, the hunt for other
such accretion events has become a very active field of astrophysical research.
The identification of a stellar ring-like structure in Monoceros, spanning more
than 100 degrees (Newberg et al. 2002), and the detection of an overdensity of
stars in the direction of the constellation of Canis Major (CMa, Martin et al.
2004), apparently associated to the ring, has led to the widespread belief that
a second galaxy being cannibalised by the Milky Way had been found. In this
scenario, the overdensity would be the remaining core of the disrupted galaxy
and the ring would be the tidal debris left behind. However, unlike the
Sagittarius dwarf, which is well below the Galactic plane and whose orbit, and
thus tidal tail, is nearly perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way, the
putative CMa galaxy and ring are nearly co-planar with the Galactic disk. This
severely complicates the interpretation of observations. In this letter, we
show that our new description of the Milky Way leads to a completely different
picture. We argue that the Norma-Cygnus spiral arm defines a distant stellar
ring crossing Monoceros and the overdensity is simply a projection effect of
looking along the nearby local arm. Our perspective sheds new light on a very
poorly known region, the third Galactic quadrant (3GQ), where CMa is located.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. Quality of Fig 1 has been degraded to make it
smaller. Original fig. available on request. accepted for publication in
MNRAS letter
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