The Early Bird Waits for the Worm: May Federal Judgments Be Registered Prior to Appeal?

The federal registration statute, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1963, permits a judgment creditor to register his or her judgment in another state by simply filing a copy of the judgment with the clerk of the registering court. Registration is permitted when the judgment becomes final by appeal, when the time to appeal expires, or when the court that entered the judgment orders registration for good cause shown. The majority of courts have interpreted good cause as a showing that the judgment debtor lacks assets in the forum jurisdiction to fulfill the judgment, but possesses substantial assets in the registering jurisdiction. District courts are split, however, on whether there must be a pending appeal before registration can be ordered. Registration gives the judgment creditor power to create a lien on the judgment debtor’s property in another district. The effect of the registered judgment depends on a state’s laws regarding liens. Liens in some states may reach personal property, creating the potential for a registered judgment to have harsh effects on the debtor’s livelihood and placing restrictions on the alienability of real property. The posting of a supersedeas bond can stay the enforcement of a judgment and alleviate the need for registration. This Note argues that a judgment creditor should be permitted to register her judgment without waiting for the judgment debtor to file an appeal. However, a court should have discretion to consider whether permitting registration when the judgment debtor has not yet posted a supersedeas bond would cause irreparable harm to a good faith debtor, and if so, grant the debtor time to post a bond

The Early Bird Waits for the Worm: May Federal Judgments Be Registered Prior to Appeal?

The federal registration statute, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1963, permits a judgment creditor to register his or her judgment in another state by simply filing a copy of the judgment with the clerk of the registering court. Registration is permitted when the judgment becomes final by appeal, when the time to appeal expires, or when the court that entered the judgment orders registration for good cause shown. The majority of courts have interpreted good cause as a showing that the judgment debtor lacks assets in the forum jurisdiction to fulfill the judgment, but possesses substantial assets in the registering jurisdiction. District courts are split, however, on whether there must be a pending appeal before registration can be ordered. Registration gives the judgment creditor power to create a lien on the judgment debtor’s property in another district. The effect of the registered judgment depends on a state’s laws regarding liens. Liens in some states may reach personal property, creating the potential for a registered judgment to have harsh effects on the debtor’s livelihood and placing restrictions on the alienability of real property. The posting of a supersedeas bond can stay the enforcement of a judgment and alleviate the need for registration. This Note argues that a judgment creditor should be permitted to register her judgment without waiting for the judgment debtor to file an appeal. However, a court should have discretion to consider whether permitting registration when the judgment debtor has not yet posted a supersedeas bond would cause irreparable harm to a good faith debtor, and if so, grant the debtor time to post a bond

Chiral transport equation from the quantum Dirac Hamiltonian and the on-shell effective field theory

We derive the relativistic chiral transport equation for massless fermions and antifermions by performing a semiclassical Foldy-Wouthuysen diagonalization of the quantum Dirac Hamiltonian. The Berry connection naturally emerges in the diagonalization process to modify the classical equations of motion of a fermion in an electromagnetic field. We also see that the fermion and antifermion dispersion relations are corrected at first order in the Planck constant by the Berry curvature, as previously derived by Son and Yamamoto for the particular case of vanishing temperature. Our approach does not require knowledge of the state of the system, and thus it can also be applied at high temperature. We provide support for our result by an alternative computation using an effective field theory for fermions and antifermions: the on-shell effective field theory. In this formalism, the off-shell fermionic modes are integrated out to generate an effective Lagrangian for the quasi-on-shell fermions/antifermions. The dispersion relation at leading order exactly matches the result from the semiclassical diagonalization. From the transport equation, we explicitly show how the axial and gauge anomalies are not modified at finite temperature and density despite the incorporation of the new dispersion relation into the distribution function.Comment: 9 pages, no figures. v2: Some comments and more details added, typos fixed and reference list updated. Final version matching the published articl

Dynamical evolution of the chiral magnetic effect: Applications to the quark-gluon plasma

We study the dynamical evolution of the so-called chiral magnetic effect in an electromagnetic conductor. To this end, we consider the coupled set of corresponding Maxwell and chiral anomaly equations, and we prove that these can be derived from chiral kinetic theory. After integrating the chiral anomaly equation over space in a closed volume, it leads to a quantum conservation law of the total helicity of the system. A change in the magnetic helicity density comes together with a modification of the chiral fermion density. We study in Fourier space the coupled set of anomalous equations and we obtain the dynamical evolution of the magnetic fields, magnetic helicity density, and chiral fermion imbalance. Depending on the initial conditions we observe how the helicity might be transferred from the fermions to the magnetic fields, or vice versa, and find that the rate of this transfer also depends on the scale of wavelengths of the gauge fields in consideration. We then focus our attention on the quark-gluon plasma phase, and analyze the dynamical evolution of the chiral magnetic effect in a very simple toy model. We conclude that an existing chiral fermion imbalance in peripheral heavy ion collisions would affect the magnetic field dynamics, and consequently, the charge dependent correlations measured in these experiments.Comment: 41 pages, 14 figures, 3 appendices. Version 2: new global structure (appendix added), more explanations and additional references. Version accepted for publication in Physical Review D journa

Helicity conservation in perfect electromagnetic and chiral fluids

We derive the total helicity conservation law for a perfect electromagnetic relativistic fluid. As the conservation equation contains the derivative of the magnetic helicity, it can be reshaped as having the same form as the chiral anomaly equation if the fluid is isentropic. We also take the non-relativistic limit of the helicity conservation law, and check the agreement with the Abanov-Wiegmann equation at zero temperature, but we provide further corrections in the more general case. We then consider chiral fluids, when the chiral anomaly equation has to be incorporated in the hydrodynamical equations, together with other chiral transport effects which exist in the presence of a chiral imbalance. We finally study how the chiral imbalance modifies the helicity conservation law.Comment: 16 page

Chiral kinetic theory from the on-shell effective theory: derivation of collision terms

We show that the on-shell effective theory (OSEFT) is the quantum field theory counterpart of a Foldy-Wouthuysen diagonalization of relativistic quantum mechanics for massless fermions. Thus, it is free of the Zitterbewegung oscillations that would yield an ill-defined meaning to the semiclassical transport approach at short distances if derived from the pure Dirac picture. We present a detailed derivation of the collision terms in the chiral kinetic theory using the OSEFT. Collision integrals are derived up to order 1/E, where E is the energy of an on-shell fermion. At this order, the collision terms depends on the spin tensor of the fermion, and in the presence of chiral imbalance, it describes how a massless fermion of a given helicity interacts differently with the transverse photons of different circular polarization. In order to back up our results, we check that they allow us to reproduce the fermion decay rate in an ultradegenerate plasma with a chiral imbalance computed directly from QED.Comment: 36 pages, 2 figures, title and abstract modified, version largely extended with more details and discussions, results and conclusions unchange

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field