Choice Matters

The Texas Orato

Construction Cost Models

The following are a series of cost estimate models similar in format to a typical engineer’s estimate that were developed in support of our financial impact assessment report for LD 1725. The models us current material costs, labor costs, and equipment costs for the region to provide a comparative cost analysis of seven culvert replacement scenarios. The models provide information about what the cost impact of LD 1725 would be for typical culvert replacements in Maine. However, due to the inherent restrictions of the cost modeling framework we were not able to include the abundance of variables that would be present in a real world culvert replacement project. As such, the models are representative of very basic culvert replacement projects and may not reflect the tremendous variety and scale of variable could be present in an actual culvert replacement project. For example, construction costs for culvert replacement in a rural setting versus an urban setting can vary by as much as 50% due to site specific variables such as lane width, paving depth, traffic count and the presence of potentially conflicting underground utilities

Operator Product Expansion, Heavy Quarks, QCD Duality and its Violations

The quark (gluon)-hadron duality constitutes a basis for the theoretical treatment of a wide range of inclusive processes -- from hadronic \tau decays and R_{e^+e^-}, to semileptonic and nonleptonic decay rates of heavy flavor hadrons. A theoretical analysis of these processes is carried out by using the operator product expansion in the Euclidean domain, with subsequent analytic continuation to the Minkowski domain. We formulate the notion of the quark (gluon)-hadron duality in quantitative terms, then classify various contributions leading to violations of duality. A prominent role in the violations of duality seems to belong to the so called exponential terms which, conceptually, may represent the (truncated) tail of the power series. A qualitative model, relying on an instanton background field, is developed, allowing one to get an estimate of the exponential terms. We then discuss a number of applications, mostly from heavy quark physics.Comment: 59 pages, 6 figures, epsf.sty required. Revised: Styllistic changes; minor clarifications added; three references corrected; minor changes in the color-related factor

O(mc−2)O(m_c^{-2}) nonperturbative corrections to the inclusive rate of the decay B→XsγB \to X_s \gamma

It is shown that the inclusive rate of the rare weak radiative decays $B \to X_s \gamma$ contains a series of nonperturbative corrections, whose `short distance' scale is set by $m_c^{-1}$, rather than by $m_b^{- 1}$. The first correction in this series is expressed through the chromomagnetic interaction of the $b$ quark inside the $B$ meson and the relative magnitude of the effect is determined by the ratio $/ m_c^2$. Though the magnitude of this first correction is suppressed by a numerical coefficient, the sensitivity of the decay rate to the distance scale $m_c^{-1}$ may significantly limit the accuracy of purely perturbative predictions for the rate.Comment: 6 pages, LaTeX. Numerical error corrected. As a result the emphasis of the paper is modifie

Key Distributions for Charmless Semileptonic B Decay

We present theoretical predictions for a few phenomenologically interesting distributions in the semileptonic b->u decays which are affected by Fermi motion. The perturbative effects are incorporated at the one-loop level and appear to be very moderate. Our treatment of Fermi motion is based directly on QCD, being encoded in the universal distribution function F(x). The decay distributions in the charged lepton energy, invariant mass of hadrons, hadron energy, and q^2 are given. We note that typically about 90% of all decay events are expected to have M_X < M_D; this feature can be exploited in determination of |V_ub|.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures (incorporated in the LaTeX file); plain LaTe

Effects of Compudose® implants from birth to slaughter on carcass and meat traits of young bulls and steers

Implanting young bulls with Compudose® three times from birth to slaughter resulted in performance similar to that of nonimplanted bulls, but decreased masculinity development. Implanted bulls tended to have higher marbling scores, more tender meat, more youthful carcasses, and lighter lean color than nonimplanted bulls. Although both implanted and nonimplanted bulls were more efficient and gained faster in the feedlot than implanted steers, the steers showed very little carcass masculinity and had finer-textured lean. Implanted steers had more youthful carcasses and lower Warner-Bratzler shear values than nonimplanted bulls. However, nonimplanted bulls grew faster, were more efficient, had larger ribeyes and lower yield grade numbers than implanted steers. For large-framed cattle, castration and implanting with Compudose® near birth result in the most desirable combination of performance, carcass, and meat quality traits