Lectures on bulk reconstruction

If the AdS/CFT conjecture holds, every question about bulk physics can be answered by the boundary CFT. But we still don't know how to translate all the questions about bulk physics to questions about the boundary CFT. Completing this bulk-boundary dictionary is the aim of the bulk reconstruction program, which we review in these lectures. We cover the HKLL construction, bulk reconstruction in AdS/Rindler, mirror operator construction of Papadodimas and Raju, and the Marolf-Wall paradox. These notes are based on lectures given at ST4 2018.

Old Story, New Results and Analyses

An eye-tracking and an electrophysiological experiment using a sentence/picture matching task were carried out in order to assess whether there would be significant differences between semantic restrictiveness properties of Prepositional Phrases (PPs) vis-à-vis those of Relative Clauses (RCs), attached as modifiers respectively to a local PP or to a non-local DP (e.g. the horse with the parrot with brown spots/the horse with the parrot that has brown spots). Two hypotheses were entertained, namely, (i) an operator construction such as an RC would be construed non-locally, that is, would attach high as a default, even if there is semantic bias attracting it to a low attachment; (ii) a light constituent (PP) has no prosodic autonomy and will be more available to local attachment and therefore would tend to attach locally as a default, even if there is semantic bias attracting it to a high attachment. Results in both experiments were in favor of the hypotheses and we speculate whether they could be more deeply grounded into the representational alternatives projected by linguistic theory itself.

Prohibition on Changing Workplaces and Fatal Occupational Injuries among Chinese Migrant Workers in South Korea

We assessed the risk of fatal occupational injuries among migrant workers with two different types of employment permits in South Korea. This observational study used national data from January 2007 to September 2018 and analyzed 42,089 cases of occupationally injured migrant workers of Chinese nationality. Fatality rates were analyzed according to year, sex, age, occupation, industry, and type of employment permit. Chinese workers were permitted to work for one employer and prohibited from changing employers, whereas Korean-Chinese workers were permitted to change their employer. The adjusted fatality rate of occupational injuries of Chinese migrant workers was significantly higher (1.80-fold, 95% confidence interval 1.31–2.46) than that of Korean-Chinese migrant workers. The prohibition on changing workplaces; male sex; age ≥ 45 years; machine operator; construction industry; and agriculture, livestock, and fisheries industry were risk factors for fatal occupational injuries. The results imply a need for revision of the migrant-worker employment permit systems and implementation of occupational safety and health policies for all workers to promote health equity.