Cosmological constraints on Lorentz violation in electrodynamics.

Infrared, optical, and ultraviolet spectropolarimetry of cosmological sources is used to constrain the pure electromagnetic sector of a general Lorentz-violating standard-model extension. The coefficients for Lorentz violation are bounded to less than 3 x 10(-32).

Noncommutative field theory and Lorentz violation.

The role of Lorentz symmetry in noncommutative field theory is considered. Any realistic noncommutative theory is found to be physically equivalent to a subset of a general Lorentz-violating standard-model extension involving ordinary fields. Some theoretical consequences are discussed. Existing experiments bound the scale of the noncommutativity parameter to (10 TeV)(-2).