Two houses: legislative studies and the Atlantic divide

Legislative scholars have a history of stepping back occasionally to examine the development and state of the sub-discipline (Budge 1973; Gamm and Huber 2002; Loewenberg, Patterson, and Jewell 1985; Mezey 1993; Morris-Jones 1983; Pasquino 1973; Patterson 1989). Many of these existing reviews, although valuable, are predominantly of a qualitative and subjective nature and are, in most cases, now dated. This paper provides a bibliometrical analysis of the state of legislative studies in the United States and Europe by exploring the content of eight political science journals. I looked at six general political science journals, three originating in the United States and three in Europe, as well as the content of two legislative studies journals—the American-based Legislative Studies Quarterly and the British-based Journal of Legislative Studies

Supermassive black holes as sources for LISA

Some issues relevant for the formation of supermassive black holes are discused and estimates of the event rates for the emission of gravitational waves by coalescing supermassive black hole binaries are given. The models take into account recent improvements in our knowledge of galaxy and star formation in the high-redshift universe. Estimated event rates range from a few to a hundred per year. Typical events will occur at redshift three or larger in galaxies lying at the (very) faint end of the luminosity function at these redshifts.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX, 2 postscript figures included; invited talk at the Second International LISA Symposium, Pasadena, July 1998 (ed. W. Folkner, American Institute of Physics

A Two Term Truncation of the Multiple Ising Model Coupled to 2d Gravity

We consider a model of p independent Ising spins on a dynamical planar phi-cubed graph. Truncating the free energy to two terms yields an exactly solvable model that has a third order phase transition from a pure gravity region (gamma=-1/2) to a tree-like region (gamma=1/2), with gamma=1/3 on the critical line. We are able to make an order of magnitude estimate of the value of p above which there exists a branched polymer (ie tree-like) phase in the full model, that is, p is approximately 13-23, which corresponds to a central charge c of about 6-12.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 12 figure

Sequence motifs that distinguish ATP(CTP) : tRNA nucleotidyl transferases from eubacterial poly(A) polymerases

ATP(CTP):tRNA nucleotidyl transferases, tRNA maturing enzymes found in all organisms, and eubacterial poly(A) polymerases, enzymes involved in mRNA degradation, are so similar that until now their biochemical functions could not be distinguished by their amino acid sequence. BLAST searches and analysis with the program "Sequence Space" for the prediction of functional residues revealed sequence motifs which define these two protein families. One of the poly(A) polymerase defining motifs specifies a structure that we propose to function in binding the 3' terminus of the RNA substrate. Similar motifs are found in other homopolyribonucleotidyl transferases. Phylogenetic classification of nucleotidyl tranferases from sequenced genomes reveals that eubacterial poly(A) polymerases have evolved relatively recently and are found only in a small group of bacteria and surprisingly also in plants, where they may function in organelles

Large scale simulations of the jet-IGM interaction

In a parameter study extending to jet densities of $10^{-5}$ times the ambient one, I have recently shown that light large scale jets start their lives in a spherical bow shock phase. This allows an easy description of the sideways bow shock propagation in that phase. Here, I present new, bipolar, simulations of very light jets in 2.5D and 3D, reaching the observationally relevant scale of $>200$ jet radii. Deviations from the early bow shock propagation law are expected because of various effects. The net effect is, however, shown to remain small. I calculate the X-ray appearance of the shocked cluster gas and compare it to Cygnus A and 3C 317. Rings, bright spots and enhancements inside the radio cocoon may be explained.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, ApSS accepted, proceedings of the virtual jets 2003 conference in Dogliani/Italy, v3: funny and unimportant bug corrected, one reference adde

Simultaneous QCD analysis of diffractive and inclusive DIS data

We perform a NLO QCD analysis of deep-inelastic scattering data, in which we account for absorptive corrections. These corrections are determined from a simultaneous analysis of diffractive deep-inelastic data. The absorptive effects are found to enhance the size of the gluon distribution at small x, such that a negative input gluon distribution at Q^2 = 1 GeV^2 is no longer required. We discuss the problem that the gluon distribution is valence-like at low scales, whereas the sea quark distribution grows with decreasing x. Our study hints at the possible importance of power corrections for Q^2 \simeq 1--2 GeV^2.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures. Version published as a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev.