National Pastime(s)

In his new book, Baseball as a Road to God, New York University President and Professor of Law John Sexton submits that baseball can serve as a vehicle for living a more conscious life that elevates the human experience for lawyers and non-lawyers. This Essay examines the credibility of the book’s thesis in a world where human intelligence, human deliberation, and human action is being replaced by artificial intelligence, mathematical models, and mechanical automation. It uses the preeminent national pastime of baseball, and the less eminent pastimes of law and finance as case studies for the book’s thesis. It concludes that a more conscious and meaningful life is much harder to foster, but also much more important to cultivate in light of modern advances. This Essay ultimately offers a different narrative for lawyers and non-lawyers to think anew about modern law and society in light of ongoing changes in baseball, law, finance, and beyond

A note on the power divergence in lattice calculations of ΔI=1/2\Delta I = 1/2 K→ππK\to\pi\pi amplitudes at MK=MπM_{K}=M_{\pi}

In this note, we clarify a point concerning the power divergence in lattice calculations of $\Delta I = 1/2$ $K\to\pi\pi$ decay amplitudes. There have been worries that this divergence might show up in the Minkowski amplitudes at $M_{K}=M_{\pi}$ with all the mesons at rest. Here we demonstrate, via an explicit calculation in leading-order Chiral Perturbation Theory, that the power divergence is absent at the above kinematic point, as predicted by CPS symmetry.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

A remotely-operated facility for evaluation of post-combustion CO2 capture technologies on industrial sites

ACTTROM (Advanced Capture Testing in a Transportable Remotely-Operated Minilab) is a transportable test facility for bench-scale evaluation of postcombustion CO2 capture technologies using real industrial flue gases. It is designed to be remote-operable, requiring visits only once per month for maintenance and sample collection. ACTTROM is the first facility of its kind, owned and operated by academia for collaborative research in an industrial environment, and this has resulted in a number of unique developments to facilitate remote operation at an industrial host site. Specifically, it has been necessary to design the unit to automatically correct or mitigate the effects of fault conditions, and to be remotely-monitored via a user interface at 24 hour intervals

Finite Density Algorithm in Lattice QCD -- a Canonical Ensemble Approach

I will review the finite density algorithm for lattice QCD based on finite chemical potential and summarize the associated difficulties. I will propose a canonical ensemble approach which projects out the finite baryon number sector from the fermion determinant. For this algorithm to work, it requires an efficient method for calculating the fermion determinant and a Monte Carlo algorithm which accommodates unbiased estimate of the probability. I shall report on the progress made along this direction with the Pad\'{e} - Z$_2$ estimator of the determinant and its implementation in the newly developed Noisy Monte Carlo algorithm.Comment: Invited talk at Nankai Symposium on Mathematical Physics, Tianjin, Oct. 2001, 18 pages, 3 figures; expanded and references adde

Cosmological Histories for the New Variables

Histories and measures for quantum cosmology are investigated through a quantization of the Bianchi IX cosmology using path integral techniques. The result, derived in the context of Ashtekar variables, is compared with earlier work. A non-trivial correction to the measure is found, which may dominate the classical potential for universes on the Planck scale.Comment: 14, CGPG-94/2-

Photoresponsive and Ultraviolet to Visible-Light Range Photocatalytic Properties of ZnO:Sb Nanowires

100學年度研究獎補助論文[[abstract]]Zinc oxide (ZnO) doped antimony (Sb) nanowires have been synthesized for improving ultraviolet sensing and photocatalytic properties. Upon illumination by UV light (365nm , 2.33mWcm−2 ), the photoelectric current of the ZnO:Sb nanowires exhibited a rapid photoresponse as compared to that of the ZnO nanowires. A highest ratio of photocurrent to dark current of around 48.8-fold was achieved in the as-synthesized ZnO:Sb nanowires. A UV-visible spectrophotometer was used to investigate the absorbance spectrum of the ZnO:Sb nanowires, which exhibited a high absorbance ratio with redshift effect in contrast to that of the ZnO nanowires. Visible-light photocatalysis and UV photoresponsive properties of the ZnO:Sb nanowires are superior to those of the ZnO nanowires.[[notice]]補正完畢[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]電子

Quasi-Isotropization of the Inhomogeneous Mixmaster Universe Induced by an Inflationary Process

We derive a ``generic'' inhomogeneous ``bridge'' solution for a cosmological model in the presence of a real self-interacting scalar field. This solution connects a Kasner-like regime to an inflationary stage of evolution and therefore provides a dynamical mechanism for the quasi-isotropization of the universe. In the framework of a standard Arnowitt-Deser-Misner Hamiltonian formulation of the dynamics and by adopting Misner-Chitr\`e-like variables, we integrate the Einstein-Hamilton-Jacobi equation corresponding to a ``generic'' inhomogeneous cosmological model whose evolution is influenced by the coupling with a bosonic field, expected to be responsible for a spontaneous symmetry breaking configuration. The dependence of the detailed evolution of the universe on the initial conditions is then appropriately characterized.Comment: 17 pages, no figure, to appear on PR

Unphysical Operators in Partially Quenched QCD

We point out that the chiral Lagrangian describing pseudo-Goldstone bosons in partially quenched QCD has one more four-derivative operator than that for unquenched QCD with three flavors. The new operator can be chosen to vanish in the unquenched sector of the partially quenched theory. Its contributions begin at next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. At this order it contributes only to unphysical scattering processes, and we work out some examples. Its contributions to pseudo-Goldstone properties begin at next-to-next-to-leading order, and we determine their form. We also determine all the zero and two derivative operators in the $O(p^6)$ partially quenched chiral Lagrangian, finding three more than in unquenched QCD, and use these to give the general form of the analytic next-to-next-to-leading order contributions to the pseudo-Goldstone mass and decay constant. We discuss the general implications of such additional operators for the utility of partially quenched simulationsComment: 13 pages, 11 figures Version 2: Additional footnote and parenthesis in section

Hybrid meson decay from the lattice

We discuss the allowed decays of a hybrid meson in the heavy quark limit. We deduce that an important decay will be into a heavy quark non-hybrid state and a light quark meson, in other words, the de-excitation of an excited gluonic string by emission of a light quark-antiquark pair. We discuss the study of hadronic decays from the lattice in the heavy quark limit and apply this approach to explore the transitions from a spin-exotic hybrid to $\chi_b \eta$ and $\chi_b S$ where $S$ is a scalar meson. We obtain a signal for the transition emitting a scalar meson and we discuss the phenomenological implications.Comment: 18 pages, LATEX, 3 ps figure