6,835 research outputs found
"Nested and Overlapping Regimes in the Transatlantic Banana Trade Dispute"
The decade long trans-Atlantic banana dispute was not a traditional trade conflict stemming from antagonistic producers’ interests. Instead, this article argues that the banana dispute is one of the most complex illustrations of the legal and political difficulties created by the nesting and overlapping of international institutions and commitments. The contested Europe-wide banana policy was an artifact of nesting--the fruit of efforts to reconcile the single market with Lomé obligations which then ran afoul of WTO rules. Using counter-factual analysis, this article explores how the nesting of international commitments contributed to creating the dispute, provided forum shopping opportunities which themselves complicated the options of decisionmakers, and hindered resolution of what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward trade dispute. We then draw out implications from this case for the EU, an institution increasingly nested within multilateral mechanisms, and for the issue of the nesting of international institutions in general
Condensation and Metastability in the 2D Potts Model
For the first order transition of the Ising model below , Isakov has
proven that the free energy possesses an essential singularity in the applied
field. Such a singularity in the control parameter, anticipated by condensation
theory, is believed to be a generic feature of first order transitions, but too
weak to be observable. We study these issues for the temperature driven
transition of the states 2D Potts model at . Adapting the droplet
model to this case, we relate its parameters to the critical properties at
and confront the free energy to the many informations brought by previous
works. The essential singularity predicted at the transition temperature leads
to observable effects in numerical data. On a finite lattice, a metastability
domain of temperatures is identified, which shrinks to zero in the
thermodynamical limit. ~Comment: 32 pages, 6 figures, Late
A new function of hydrocarbons in insect communication : maternal care and offspring signalling in the European earwig
International audienc
Hydrodynamic stress on fractal aggregates of spheres
We calculate the average hydrodynamic stress on fractal aggregates of spheres using Stokesian dynamics. We find that for fractal aggregates of force-free particles, the stress does not grow as the cube of the radius of gyration, but rather as the number of particles in the aggregate. This behavior is only found for random aggregates of force-free particles held together by hydrodynamic lubrication forces. The stress on aggregates of particles rigidly connected by interparticle forces grows as the radius of gyration cubed. We explain this behavior by examining the transmission of the tension along connecting lines in an aggregate and use the concept of a persistance length in order to characterize this stress transmission within an aggregate
Self-Organized Criticality and Thermodynamic formalism
We introduce a dissipative version of the Zhang's model of Self-Organized
Criticality, where a parameter allows to tune the local energy dissipation. We
analyze the main dynamical features of the model and relate in particular the
Lyapunov spectrum with the transport properties in the stationary regime. We
develop a thermodynamic formalism where we define formal Gibbs measure,
partition function and pressure characterizing the avalanche distributions. We
discuss the infinite size limit in this setting. We show in particular that a
Lee-Yang phenomenon occurs in this model, for the only conservative case. This
suggests new connexions to classical critical phenomena.Comment: 35 pages, 15 Figures, submitte
First-principles methodology for quantum transport in multiterminal junctions
We present a generalized approach for computing electron conductance and I-V
characteristics in multiterminal junctions from first-principles. Within the
framework of Keldysh theory, electron transmission is evaluated employing an
O(N) method for electronic-structure calculations. The nonequilibrium Green
function for the nonequilibrium electron density of the multiterminal junction
is computed self-consistently by solving Poisson equation after applying a
realistic bias. We illustrate the suitability of the method on two examples of
four-terminal systems, a radialene molecule connected to carbon chains and two
crossed carbon chains brought together closer and closer. We describe charge
density, potential profile, and transmission of electrons between any two
terminals. Finally, we discuss the applicability of this technique to study
complex electronic devices.Comment: Will be coming out in JCP soo
- …