A Three-Dimensional Voting System in Hong Kong

The voting system in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (Legco) is sometimes unicameral and sometimes bicameral, depending on whether the bill is proposed by the Hong Kong government. Therefore, although without any representative within Legco, the Hong Kong government has certain degree of legislative power --- as if there is a virtual representative of the Hong Kong government within the Legco. By introducing such a virtual representative of the Hong Kong government, we show that Legco is a three-dimensional voting system. We also calculate two power indices of the Hong Kong government through this virtual representative and consider the $C$-dimension and the $W$-dimension of Legco. Finally, some implications of this Legco model to the current constitutional reform in Hong Kong will be given

The Interlegality of Transnational Private Law

This article describes transnational private law as a decentralized and intermediate form of transnational governance that recognizes and manages the multiplicity of norms generated by plural normative systems in our contemporary world society. These include international and municipal state systems, nonstate social systems, and private ordering by parties. Consistent with an approach that views globalization as changing the nature of the sovereignty of states, the article draws on the rich tradition of private law, considered with its international dimensions, to find both a concrete example of and a model for understanding the complex role of the state in the plural normative orders of the “postnational constellation.” In this task, this article views private law understood in its international context as exemplary of an intermediate level of transnational governance

GLAST Dark Matter Search

The GLAST Large Area Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2006, is a next generation space based gamma ray telescope which will improve in point source sensitivity by a factor of 30 over that of EGRET below 10 GeV, and extend beyond EGRET up to 300 GeV. Thus GLAST offers a unique opportunity to discover WIMP dark matter through precision studies of gamma rays produced in pair annihilations. The most dense region of dark matter in our galaxy is currently thought to occur at the center; in particular, dark matter should concentrate within 3 pc of the putative supermassive black hole located at the SgrA* radio source. In fact, the 2nd and 3rd EGRET catalogs contain a significant point source coincident with the Milky Way galactic center within a resolution of 12 arcminutes. The EGRET team has determined that the spectral and temporal characteristics of this point source are consistent with dark matter WIMP annihilations. More detailed analysis has determined that the magnitude and spectrum of the EGRET source is consistent with relic WIMPs concentrated within 3 pc of the central supermassive black hole. Furthermore, the SgrA* radio emission is consistent with the synchrotron radiation expected from electrons and positrons produced in WIMP annihilations. If true, then GLAST should be able to constrain the particle properties of the postulated WIMP with 1 month of data.Comment: Poster at the XXII Physics in Collisions Conference (PIC02), Stanford, Ca, USA, June 2002, 3 pages, LaTeX, 2 eps figures. PSN THAP0

A Bayes method for a monotone hazard rate via S-paths

A class of random hazard rates, which is defined as a mixture of an indicator kernel convolved with a completely random measure, is of interest. We provide an explicit characterization of the posterior distribution of this mixture hazard rate model via a finite mixture of S-paths. A closed and tractable Bayes estimator for the hazard rate is derived to be a finite sum over S-paths. The path characterization or the estimator is proved to be a Rao--Blackwellization of an existing partition characterization or partition-sum estimator. This accentuates the importance of S-paths in Bayesian modeling of monotone hazard rates. An efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method is proposed to approximate this class of estimates. It is shown that S-path characterization also exists in modeling with covariates by a proportional hazard model, and the proposed algorithm again applies. Numerical results of the method are given to demonstrate its practicality and effectiveness.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009053606000000047 in the Annals of Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org