Risky neighborhoods? House appreciation in underserved areas

This research project will investigate house price appreciation trends in traditionally underserved areas. The primary goal is to develop and test a methodology to determine what part of a home (appreciation)is due to structural and neighborhood effects, and what part may be attributable to other factors such as homeowners actions (including repair, maintenance, and upgrades). We will employ a space-time modeling framework to measure appreciation varying influences of structural and neighborhood, and other factors on appreciation overtime. We will compare appreciation trends across different submarkets (underserved and conventional) and for both high risk and low risk borrowers. The empirical analysis will employ thr TRW-REDI housing transaction data set for Miami MSA (USA) for the 1985-1993 period in conjunction with Census and American Housing Survey (AHS) data.

LHC Charge Asymmetry as Constraint on Models for the Tevatron Top Anomaly

The forward-backward asymmetry $A_{FB}^{t\bar t}$ in top quark production at the Tevatron has been observed to be anomalously large by both CDF and D0. It has been suggested that a model with a $W'$ coupling to $td$ and $ub$ might explain this anomaly, and other anomalies in $B$ mesons. Single-top-quark production in this model is large, and arguably in conflict with Tevatron measurements. However the model might still be viable if $A_{FB}^{t\bar t}$ is somewhat smaller than its current measured central value. We show that even with smaller couplings, the model can be discovered (or strongly excluded) at the LHC using the 2010 data sets. We find that a suitable charge-asymmetry measurement is a powerful tool that can be used to constrain this and other sources of anomalous single-top production, and perhaps other new high-energy charge-asymmetric processes.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, note adde

Electromagnetic structure of charmed baryons in Lattice QCD

As a continuation of our recent work on the electromagnetic properties of the doubly charmed $\Xi_{cc}$ baryon, we compute the charge radii and the magnetic moments of the singly charmed $\Sigma_c$, $\Omega_c$ and the doubly charmed $\Omega_{cc}$ baryons in 2+1 flavor Lattice QCD. In general, the charmed baryons are found to be compact as compared to the proton. The charm quark acts to decrease the size of the baryons to smaller values. We discuss the mechanism behind the dependence of the charge radii on the light valence- and sea-quark masses. The magnetic moments are found to be almost stable with respect to changing quark mass. We investigate the individual quark sector contributions to the charge radii and the magnetic moments. The magnetic moments of the singly charmed baryons are found to be dominantly determined by the light quark and the role of the charm quark is significantly enhanced for the doubly charmed baryons.Comment: Updated results, improved analysis. Version to appear in JHE

A look inside charmed-strange baryons from lattice QCD

The electromagnetic form factors of the spin-3/2 $\Omega$ baryons, namely $\Omega$, $\Omega_c^\ast$, $\Omega_{cc}^\ast$ and $\Omega_{ccc}$, are calculated in full QCD on $32^3\times 64$ PACS-CS lattices with a pion mass of 156(9) MeV. The electric charge radii and magnetic moments from the $E0$ and $M1$ multipole form factors are extracted. Results for the electric quadrupole form factors, $E2$, are also given. Quark sector contributions are computed individually for each observable and then combined to obtain the baryon properties. We find that the charm quark contributions are systematically smaller than the strange-quark contributions in the case of the charge radii and magnetic moments. $E2$ moments of the $\Omega_{cc}^\ast$ and $\Omega_{ccc}$ provide a statistically significant data to conclude that their electric charge distributions are deformed to an oblate shape. Properties of the spin-1/2 $\Omega_c$ and $\Omega_{cc}$ baryons are also computed and a thorough comparison is given. This complete study gives valuable hints about the heavy-quark dynamics in charmed hadrons.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures. Includes a subsection on the systematic effect

Information-Theoretic Measure of Genuine Multi-Qubit Entanglement

We consider pure quantum states of N qubits and study the genuine N-qubit entanglement that is shared among all the N qubits. We introduce an information-theoretic measure of genuine N-qubit entanglement based on bipartite partitions. When N is an even number, this measure is presented in a simple formula, which depends only on the purities of the partially reduced density matrices. It can be easily computed theoretically and measured experimentally. When N is an odd number, the measure can also be obtained in principle.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Instability and Periodic Deformation in Bilayer Membranes Induced by Freezing

The instability and periodic deformation of bilayer membranes during freezing processes are studied as a function of the difference of the shape energy between the high and the low temperature membrane states. It is shown that there exists a threshold stability condition, bellow which a planar configuration will be deformed. Among the deformed shapes, the periodic curved square textures are shown being one kind of the solutions of the associated shape equation. In consistency with recent expe rimental observations, the optimal ratio of period and amplitude for such a texture is found to be approximately equal to (2)^{1/2}\pi.Comment: 8 pages in Latex form, 1 Postscript figure. To be appear in Mod. Phys. Lett. B. 199

Electromagnetic properties of doubly charmed baryons in Lattice QCD

We compute the electromagnetic properties of \Xi_cc baryons in 2+1 flavor Lattice QCD. By measuring the electric charge and magnetic form factors of \Xi_cc baryons, we extract the magnetic moments, charge and magnetic radii as well as the \Xi_cc \Xi_cc \rho coupling constant, which provide important information to understand the size, shape and couplings of the doubly charmed baryons. We find that the two heavy charm quarks drive the charge radii and the magnetic moment of \Xi_cc to smaller values as compared to those of, e.g., the proton.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures; added discussions and references, version accepted by PL

Force Modulating Dynamic Disorder: Physical Theory of Catch-slip bond Transitions in Receptor-Ligand Forced Dissociation Experiments

Recently experiments showed that some adhesive receptor-ligand complexes increase their lifetimes when they are stretched by mechanical force, while the force increase beyond some thresholds their lifetimes decrease. Several specific chemical kinetic models have been developed to explain the intriguing transitions from the "catch-bonds" to the "slip-bonds". In this work we suggest that the counterintuitive forced dissociation of the complexes is a typical rate process with dynamic disorder. An uniform one-dimension force modulating Agmon-Hopfield model is used to quantitatively describe the transitions observed in the single bond P-selctin glycoprotein ligand 1(PSGL-1)$-$P-selectin forced dissociation experiments, which were respectively carried out on the constant force [Marshall, {\it et al.}, (2003) Nature {\bf 423}, 190-193] and the force steady- or jump-ramp [Evans {\it et al.}, (2004) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA {\bf 98}, 11281-11286] modes. Our calculation shows that the novel catch-slip bond transition arises from a competition of the two components of external applied force along the dissociation reaction coordinate and the complex conformational coordinate: the former accelerates the dissociation by lowering the height of the energy barrier between the bound and free states (slip), while the later stabilizes the complex by dragging the system to the higher barrier height (catch).Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, submitte