Towards a new quantization of Dirac's monopole

There are several mathematical and physical reasons why Dirac's quantization must hold. How far one can go without it remains an open problem. The present work outlines a few steps in this direction.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of "IV Taller de la Division de Gravitacion y Fisica Matematica". Misprints corrected, references and acknowledgments adde

On representations of the rotation group and magnetic monopoles

Recently (Phys. Lett. A302 (2002) 253, hep-th/0208210; hep-th/0403146) employing bounded infinite-dimensional representations of the rotation group we have argued that one can obtain the consistent monopole theory with generalized Dirac quantization condition, $2\kappa\mu \in \mathbb Z$, where $\kappa$ is the weight of the Dirac string. Here we extend this proof to the unbounded infinite-dimensional representations.Comment: References adde

Compared to Mexico, religion's role in US society has hindered progress on legal equality for LGBT people

New research by Caroline Beer and Victor Cruz Aceves examines the puzzling finding that Mexico has offered greater legal equality for LGBT people for a longer period of time than the United States. They argue that this can be explained by the wider separation of church and state in Mexican politics and the strong importance of human rights in new democracies. Examining LGBT rights at the subnational level, they also find that states with more LGBT organizations and governors from left parties are more likely to recognize same sex relationships, but the religious makeup of states only matters in the United States, and not in Mexico