Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes: An Economic Analysis

The issue of bias-motivated crimes has attracted consderable attention in recent years. In this paper, we develop an economic framework to analyze penalty enhancements for bias-motivated crimes. We extend the standard model by introducing two different groups of potential victims of crime, and assume that a potential offender's benefits from a crime depend on the group to which the victim belongs. We begin with the assumption that the harm to an individual victim from a bias-motivated crime is identical to that from an equivalent non-hate crime. Nonetheless, we derive the result that a pattern of crimes disproportionately targeting an identifiable group leads to greater social harm. This conclusion follows both from a model where disparities in groups' victimization probabilities lead to social losses due to fairness concerns, as well as a model where potential victims have the opportunity to undertake socially costly victimization avoidance activities. In particular, penalty enhancements can reduce the incentives for avoidance activity, and thereby protect the networks of profitable interactions that link members of different groups. We also argue that those groups that are covered by hate crime statutes tend to be those whose characteristics make it especially likely that penalty enhancement is socially optimal. Finally, we consider a number of other issues related to hate crimes, including teh choice of sanctions from behind a Rawlsian 'veil of ignorance' concerning group identity.

The observed global warming record: What does it tell us?

Global, near-surface temperature data sets and their derivations are discussed, and differences between the Jones and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data sets are explained. Global-mean temperature changes are then interpreted in terms of anthropogenic forcing influences and natural variability. The inclusion of aerosol forcing improves the fit between modeled and observed changes but does not improve the agreement between the implied climate sensitivity value and the standard model-based range of 1.5–4.5°C equilibrium warming for a CO2 doubling. The implied sensitivity goes from below the model-based range of estimates to substantially above this range. The addition of a solar forcing effect further improves the fit and brings the best-fit sensitivity into the middle of the model-based range. Consistency is further improved when internally generated changes are considered. This consistency, however, hides many uncertainties that surround observed data/model comparisons. These uncertainties make it impossible currently to use observed global-scale temperature changes to narrow the uncertainty range in the climate sensitivity below that estimated directly from climate models.

Direct searches for dark matter: Recent results

There is abundant evidence for large amounts of unseen matter in the universe. This dark matter, by its very nature, couples feebly to ordinary matter and is correspondingly difficult to detect. Nonetheless, several experiments are now underway with the sensitivity required to detect directly galactic halo dark matter through their interactions with matter and radiation. These experiments divide into two broad classes: searches for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) and searches for axions. There exists a very strong theoretical bias for supposing that supersymmetry (SUSY) is a correct description of nature. WIMPs are predicted by this SUSY theory and have the required properties to be dark matter. These WIMPs are detected from the byproducts of their occasional recoil against nucleons. There are efforts around the world to detect these rare recoils. The WIMP part of this overview focuses on the cryogenic dark matter search (CDMS) underway in California. Axions, another favored dark matter candidate, are predicted to arise from a minimal extension of the standard model that explains the absence of the expected large CP violating effects in strong interactions. Axions can, in the presence of a large magnetic field, turn into microwave photons. It is the slight excess of photons above noise that signals the axion. Axion searches are underway in California and Japan. The axion part of this overview focuses on the California effort. Brevity does not allow me to discuss other WIMP and axion searches, likewise for accelerator and satellite based searches; I apologize for their omission.

Re-thinking the EU's development paradigm: views from Morocco and Tunisia. EPC Policy Brief, 12 January 2015

A decade of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and the standard model of business as usual remains. Is there a reluctance to take the prevailing development paradigm based on economic growth and question its suitability as a motor for development? Most ENP resources and most tangible results remain within a financial framework, with a concentration on market-driven reforms in relation to economic and social change. On this basis, the current atmosphere represents a historical opportunity for rethinking the EU´s development paradigm fostered in the region. Drawing on extensive field work in Morocco and Tunisia, this policy brief highlights limitations and contradictions of the EU´s socio-economic development policies.

Applications of Quantum Field Theory, From the Formal to the Phenomenological

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Quantum computation by measurement and quantum memory

What resources are universal for quantum computation? In the standard model of a quantum computer, a computation consists of a sequence of unitary gates acting coherently on the qubits making up the computer. This requirement for coherent unitary dynamical operations is widely believed to be the critical element of quantum computation. Here we show that a very different model involving only projective measurements and quantum memory is also universal for quantum computation. In particular, no coherent unitary dynamics are involved in the computation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Distribution of the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus (L.) (Lepidoptera : Nymphalidae), in western North America

The standard model for the migration of the monarch butterfly in western North America has hitherto been movement in the autumn to overwintering sites in coastal California, followed by a return inland by most individuals in the spring. This model is based largely on observational and limited tagging and recovery data. In this paper we test the model by plotting many years of museum and collection records on a monthly basis on a map of the region. Our plots suggest a movement of Oregon, Washington and other north-western populations of summer butterflies to California in the autumn, but movement of more north-easterly populations (e.g. from Idaho and Montana) along two pathways through Nevada, Utah and Arizona to Mexico. The more westerly of these two pathways may follow the Colorado River south as indicated by museum records and seasonal temperature data. The eastern pathway may enter northern Utah along the western scarp of the Wasatch Mountains and run south through Utah and Arizona. Further analysis of distributions suggests that monarch butterflies in the American West occur primarily along rivers, and there are observations indicating that autumn migrants often follow riparian corridors. More data are needed to test our new model; we suggest the nature of the data required. (c) 2005 The Linnean Society of London.

A pragmatic 2 × 2 × 2 factorial cluster randomized controlled trial of educational outreach visiting and case conferencing in palliative care—methodology of the Palliative Care Trial [ISRCTN 81117481]

The demand for palliative care is increasing, yet there are few data on the best models of care nor well-validated interventions that translate current evidence into clinical practice. Supporting multidisciplinary patient-centered palliative care while successfully conducting a large clinical trial is a challenge. The Palliative Care Trial (PCT) is a pragmatic 2 x 2 x 2 factorial cluster randomized controlled trial that tests the ability of educational outreach visiting and case conferencing to improve patient-based outcomes such as performance status and pain intensity. Four hundred sixty-one consenting patients and their general practitioners (GPs) were randomized to the following: (1) GP educational outreach visiting versus usual care, (2) Structured patient and caregiver educational outreach visiting versus usual care and (3) A coordinated palliative care model of case conferencing versus the standard model of palliative care in Adelaide, South Australia (3:1 randomization). Main outcome measures included patient functional status over time, pain intensity, and resource utilization. Participants were followed longitudinally until death or November 30, 2004. The interventions are aimed at translating current evidence into clinical practice and there was particular attention in the trial's design to addressing common pitfalls for clinical studies in palliative care. Given the need for evidence about optimal interventions and service delivery models that improve the care of people with life-limiting illness, the results of this rigorous, high quality clinical trial will inform practice. Initial results are expected in mid 2005. (c) 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

International business research and risky investments, an analysis of FDI in conflict zones

The purpose of this paper is to examine the determinants of a firm's strategy to invest in a conflict location. To the best of our knowledge, this has not been done before. We examine this using a standard model of international business, overlaid with the fundamental approach to corporate social responsibility. We start with the population of multinationals who have chosen to invest in low income countries with weak institutions. We then split this sample in order to distinguish between firms that have invested in conflict regions compared to those that have not. Our analysis then proceeds to explain the decision of those firms to invest in conflict locations using a simple Probit model. We find that countries with weaker institutions and less concern about corporate social responsibility (CSR) are more likely to invest in conflict regions. Finally, firms with more concentrated ownership are more likely to invest in such locations. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Classification of Chenopodium Genus Populations and Species Based on Continuous and Categorical Variables

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 62P10, 62H30

Biologically inspired features for scene classification in video surveillance

Inspired by human visual cognition mechanism, this paper first presents a scene classification method based on an improved standard model feature. Compared with state-of-the-art efforts in scene classification, the newly proposed method is more robust, more selective, and of lower complexity. These advantages are demonstrated by two sets of experiments on both our own database and standard public ones. Furthermore, occlusion and disorder problems in scene classification in video surveillance are also first studied in this paper. © 2010 IEEE.

Gázolaj-jövedékiadó verseny az Európai Unióban (Fiscal competition on the market for diesel fuel in the European Union)

A tanulmány azt a kérdést vizsgálja, hogy versenyeznek-e az európai kormányok gázolajra vonatkozó jövedékiadó-kulcsaikkal a nagyobb adóbevételekért, és ha igen, befolyásolja-e az országok mérete kormányaik adóztatási stratégiáját. Az üzemanyagturizmussal szembesülő kormányok adókivetési magatartását egy kétországos adóverseny modellel jelezzük előre, amelyben a standard modellektől eltérően a fogyasztók kereslete árrugalmas. Megmutatjuk, hogy ha a kereslet nem teljesen rugalmatlan, mint Nielsen [2001], illetve Kanbur-Keen [1993] modelljeiben, akkor a nagy ország kormányának egyensúlyi viselkedése nemcsak abban különbözik a kicsiétől, hogy nagyobb adót állapít meg, hanem abban is, hogy válaszfüggvénye meredekebb. Az aszimmetrikus adóverseny általunk használt modelljét a dízelüzemanyagoknak 16 európai ország 1978 és 2005 közötti jövedékiadó-adatain vizsgáljuk. Az 1995 és 2005 közötti időszakra vonatkozó becslési eredményeink megerősítik, hogy az európai országok szomszédaik adókulcs-változtatásának hatására változtattak saját adókulcsaikon, és hogy a területileg/gazdaságilag kisebb országok kisebb intenzitással reagáltak szomszédaik adóváltoztatásra, mint a nagyobbak. Tanulmányunk ezzel magyarázatot nyújt arra is, hogy miért erősödött fel a tagállamok jövedéki adókulcsainak méret szerinti differenciálódása az elmúlt bő tíz évben, valamint hogy miért nem sikerült az Európai Uniónak a minimumadószintre vonatkozó előírásával előbbre lépnie az egységes adóztatás megvalósításában. / === / The paper assesses spatial competition in diesel taxation among European governments. By adding an extension to the standard model, it is shown that asymmetric competition – small countries undercutting large – implies that small countries respond less strongly to tax changes by their neighbours than large countries do. An estimate is then made of the fiscal reaction functions for national governments, employing a first-difference regression model with a weighting scheme constructed from road-traffic density data at national borders. Data from 16 countries (EU-15 minus Greece plus Norway and Switzerland) between 1978 and 2005 provides evidence that European governments set their diesel tax interdependently, and moreover, that small European countries tend to react less strongly to changes in their competitors' tax rate than large countries do.

Disformal scalars as dark matter candidates: Branon phenomenology

Scalar particles coupled to the Standard Model fields through a disformal coupling arise in different theories, such as massive gravity or braneworld models. We will review the main phenomenology associated with such particles. Distinctive disformal signatures could be measured at colliders and with astrophysical observations. The phenomeno-logical relevance of the disformal coupling demands the introduction of a set of symmetries, which may ensure the stability of these new degrees of freedom. In such a case, they constitute natural dark matter candidates since they are generally massive and weakly coupled. We will illustrate these ideas by paying particular attention to the branon case, since these questions arise naturally in braneworld models with low tension, where they were first discussed.

A Search for a New Particle Decaying to Pairs of Weak Gauge Bosons with the ATLAS Detector

A search for new heavy resonances decaying to boson pairs (WZ, WW or ZZ) using 20.3 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at a center of mass energy of 8 TeV is presented. The data were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. The analysis combines several search channels with the leptonic, semi-leptonic and fully hadronic final states. The diboson invariant mass spectrum is studied for local excesses above the Standard Model background prediction, and no significant excess is observed for the combined analysis. 95$\%$ confidence limits are set on the cross section times branching ratios for three signal models: an extended gauge model with a heavy W boson, a bulk Randall-Sundrum model with a spin-2 graviton, and a simplified model with a heavy vector triplet. Among the individual search channels, the fully-hadronic channel is predominantly presented where boson tagging technique and jet substructure cuts are used. Local excesses are found in the dijet mass distribution around 2 TeV, leading to a global significance of 2.5 standard deviations. This deviation from the Standard Model prediction results in many theory explanations, and the possibilities could be further explored using the LHC Run 2 data.

Fermion Mass Generation without Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

The conventional mechanism of fermion mass generation in the Standard Model involves Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking (SSB). In this thesis, we study an alternate mechanism for the generation of fermion masses that does not require SSB, in the context of lattice field theories. Being inherently strongly coupled, this mechanism requires a non-perturbative approach like the lattice approach.

In order to explore this mechanism, we study a simple lattice model with a four-fermion interaction that has massless fermions at weak couplings and massive fermions at strong couplings, but without any spontaneous symmetry breaking. Prior work on this type of mass generation mechanism in 4D, was done long ago using either mean-field theory or Monte-Carlo calculations on small lattices. In this thesis, we have developed a new computational approach that enables us to perform large scale quantum Monte-Carlo calculations to study the phase structure of this theory. In 4D, our results confirm prior results, but differ in some quantitative details of the phase diagram. In contrast, in 3D, we discover a new second order critical point using calculations on lattices up to size $ 60^3$. Such large scale calculations are unprecedented. The presence of the critical point implies the existence of an alternate mechanism of fermion mass generation without any SSB, that could be of interest in continuum quantum field theory.