The status of the heavy quark expansion for inclusive B decays is briefly reviewed from the perspective of confronting theory with data and of extracting the heavy quark parameters. A good agreement between properly applied theory and new precision data is observed. Some recent applications to the exclusive heavy flavor transitions are addressed. I recall the ‘ 1 2 > 3 2 ’ paradox for the trans...

We argue that there is strong experimental evidence in the data of band c-decays that the pattern of power suppressed corrections predicted by the short distance expansion, the heavy quark effective theory and the assumption of local duality is not correct for the non-leptonic inclusive widths. The data indicate instead the presence of 1/m corrections that should be absent in the above theoreti...

We provide a brief overview of some current experimental and theoretical issues of heavy quark production.

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The 3 P 0 decay model is briefly reviewed. Possible improvements, partly motivated by the examination of a microscopic description of a quark–anti-quark pair creation , are considered. They can provide support for the one-body character of the model which, otherwise, is difficult to justify. To some extent, they point to a boost effect that most descriptions of processes involving a pair creati...

Non-trivial patterns of quark and lepton masses and mixings can arise without there being any underlying flavor symmetry that distinguishes among the three families. Two realistic examples are given.