The chronology of the 2002-2003 SARS mini pandemic.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was a new human disease in the autumn of 2002. It first occurred in Southern China in November 2002 and was transported to Hong Kong on February 21, 2003 by an infected and ill patient. Ten secondary cases spread the infection to two hospitals in Hong Kong and to Singapore, Toronto and Hanoi. In March 2003 a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV) was found to be the causative agent. Within 11 weeks from the first SARS case in Hong Kong it had spread to an additional 27 countries or special administrative regions. The mini pandemic peaked during the last week of May 2003 and the last new probable case was on July 13, 2003. There were a total of 8096 probable cases and 774 deaths. Sixty-six per cent of the cases occurred in China, 22% in Hong Kong, 4% in Taiwan and 3% in both Singapore and Canada. Twenty-one per cent of all cases occurred in healthcare workers

Effects of heavy Majorana neutrinos at lepton-proton colliders

We discuss the prospects of detecting the processes $e^+p\to\bar\nu_e\ell^+\ell'^+X$ and $\nu_ep\to e\ell^+\ell'^+X$ ($\ell,\ell'=e,\mu,\tau$) under the conditions of the present $ep$ collider HERA and of future colliders. These high-energy processes are assumed to be mediated by the exchange of heavy Majorana neutrinos (HMN). We consider two simple scenarios for the HMN mass spectrum: the effective singlet ($m_1\ll m_2<m_3...$) and the effective doublet ($m_1<m_2\ll m_3...$). For the latter case, the cross section includes information about CP-violating phases.Comment: 5pages, 2 figures; published in conference proceedings: Particle Physics in Laboratory, Space and Universe, 11th. Lomonosov Conf. on Elementary Particle Physics (Moscow, 21-27 August 2003) (Singapore, World Scientific, 2005

Spacetime and vacuum as seen from Moscow

An extended text of the talk given at the conference ``2001: A Spacetime Odyssey'', to be published in the Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 21-25 May 2001, M.J. Duff and J.T. Liu eds., World Scientific, Singapore, 2002; and of Historical Lecture ``Vacuum as seen from Moscow'' at the CERN Summer School, 10 August, 2001. Contents: Introduction; Pomeranchuk on vacuum; Landau on parity, P, and combined parity, CP; Search and discovery of $K_L^0 \to \pi^+ \pi^-$; "Mirror world"; Zeldovich and cosmological term; QCD vacuum condensates; Sakharov and baryonic asymmetry of the universe, BAU; Kirzhnits and phase transitions; Vacuum domain walls; Monopoles, strings, instantons, and sphalerons; False vacuum; Inflation; Brane and Bulk; Acknowledgments; References.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure

Do Human Resource Practices, Employee Remuneration And Employee Benefits Have Significant Influence On The Retention Of Childcare Teachers In The Childcare Service Industry?

This study investigates the impact of human resource practices, employee remuneration and employee benefits on childcare teachers' intentions to stay in the Singaporean workforce. This mixed methods study focuses on current qualified childcare teachers, their perspectives on human resource practices, employee remuneration and employee benefits in their workplaces and their intentions regarding whether to continue working in the childcare sector in Singapore. In the first phase of the study, which was qualitative, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 current qualified childcare teachers. In the second phase of the study, which was quantitative, 202 current qualified childcare teachers in Singapore participated in a paper-based and web-based survey. The findings indicate that childcare teachers in Singapore want to be rewarded with fair human resource practices and employee wages are not the only dominant factor on the retention of childcare teachers in the Singaporean childcare industry. This study addresses a knowledge gap about childcare teacher retention in the childcare service industry in Singapore

Spin light in neutrino transition between different mass states

The spin light of neutrino is considered in the process of a neutrino radiative transition between two different mass states in presence of medium. By this study we investigate the influence of background matter on the initial and final neutrino states in the process of massive Dirac neutrino decay due to the non-zero transition magnetic moment. We derive corresponding corrections to the total width of the process over the matter density in most important for applications cases.Comment: 5 pages in LaTex, to appear in proceedings of the 9th Conference on Quantum Field Theory Under the Influence of External Conditions (Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK USA, September 21-25, 2009), eds. Kim Milton and Michael Bordag (World Scientific, Singapore, 2010