Contemplating workplace change: evolving individual thought processes and emergent story lines

Drawing on topical life histories of physicians in a particularly volatile public health sector environment, we build theory around the contemplation of workplace change. Overall, our study provides evidence as to why single or multiple independent factors, such as pay or job structure, may fail to predict or explain individual decisions to stay in or change workplaces. Instead, the contemplation process we argue is a complex, evolutionary, and context-dependent one that requires individualized interventions. Our findings reveal the prevalence of episodic context-self fit assessments prompted by triggering stimuli, two mechanisms by which thought processes evolved (reinforcement and recalibration), and four characteristic story lines that explain why the thought processes manifested as they did (exploring opportunities, solving problems, reconciling incongruence, and escaping situations). Based on our findings, we encourage practitioners to regularly engage in story-listening and dialogic conversations to better understand, and potentially affect the evolving socially constructed realities of staff members

Constraining portals with displaced Higgs decay searches at the LHC

It is very easy to write down models in which long-lived particles decaying to standard model states are pair-produced via Higgs decays, resulting in the signature of approximately back-to-back pairs of displaced narrow hadronic jets and/or lepton jets at the LHC. The LHC collaborations have already searched for such signatures with no observed excess. This paper describes a Monte Carlo method to reinterpret the searches. The method relies on (ideally multidimensional) efficiency tables, thus we implore collaborations to include them in any future work. Exclusion regions in mixing-mass parameter space are presented which constrain portal models.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. [v2] This version accepted for publication in JHEP: some important clarifications made, plot schemes updated for ease of reading, new experimental results included, and a handful of minor additions and alteration

Long-Lived Neutralino NLSPs

We investigate the collider signatures of heavy, long-lived, neutral particles that decay to charged particles plus missing energy. Specifically, we focus on the case of a neutralino NLSP decaying to Z and gravitino within the context of General Gauge Mediation. We show that a combination of searches using the inner detector and the muon spectrometer yields a wide range of potential early LHC discoveries for NLSP lifetimes ranging from 10^(-1)-10^5 mm. We further show that events from Z(l+l-) can be used for detailed kinematic reconstruction, leading to accurate determinations of the neutralino mass and lifetime. In particular, we examine the prospects for detailed event study at ATLAS using the ECAL (making use of its timing and pointing capabilities) together with the TRT, or using the muon spectrometer alone. Finally, we also demonstrate that there is a region in parameter space where the Tevatron could potentially discover new physics in the delayed Z(l+l-)+MET channel. While our discussion centers on gauge mediation, many of the results apply to any scenario with a long-lived neutral particle decaying to charged particles.Comment: 31 pages, 12 figure

Diffractive Higgs Production at the LHC

We use diffractive parton distributions obtained from fits to the diffractive structure function measured at HERA to predict cross sections for single diffractive Higgs production at the LHC. The dominant background processes are also considered. Although some 5% - 15% of Higgs events are predicted to be diffractive in this model, the ratio of signal to background is not significantly improved.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX, incl. 6 postscript figures, uses epsf.st

A hypothetical proposal for association between migraine and Meniere's disease.

Meniere's disease (MD) is a chronic condition affecting the inner ear whose precise etiology is currently unknown. We propose the hypothesis that MD is a migraine-related phenomenon which may have implications for future treatment options for both diseases. The association between MD and migraine is both an epidemiological and a mechanistic one, with up to 51% of individuals with MD experiencing migraine compared to 12% in the general population. The presence of endolymphatic hydrops in those with MD may be the factor that unites the two conditions, as hydropic inner ears have an impaired ability to maintain homeostasis. Migraine headaches are theorized to cause aura and symptoms via spreading cortical depression that ultimately results in substance P release, alterations in blood flow, and neurogenic inflammation. Chronically hydropic inner ears are less able to auto-regulate against the changes induced by active migraine attacks and may ultimately manifest as MD. This same vulnerability to derangements in homeostasis may also explain the common triggering factors of both MD attacks and migraine headaches, including stress, weather, and diet. Similarly, it may explain the efficacy of common treatments for both diseases: current migraine treatments such as anti-hypertensives and anti-convulsants have shown promise in managing MD. Though the etiology of both MD and migraine is likely multifactorial, further exploration of the association between the two conditions may illuminate how to best manage them in the future. MD is likely a manifestation of cochleovestibular migraine, which occurs as a result of migraine related changes in both the cochlea and vestibule

Oscillatory and unsteady processes in liquid rocket engines

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The dynamics of correlated novelties

One new thing often leads to another. Such correlated novelties are a familiar part of daily life. They are also thought to be fundamental to the evolution of biological systems, human society, and technology. By opening new possibilities, one novelty can pave the way for others in a process that Kauffman has called "expanding the adjacent possible". The dynamics of correlated novelties, however, have yet to be quantified empirically or modeled mathematically. Here we propose a simple mathematical model that mimics the process of exploring a physical, biological or conceptual space that enlarges whenever a novelty occurs. The model, a generalization of Polya's urn, predicts statistical laws for the rate at which novelties happen (analogous to Heaps' law) and for the probability distribution on the space explored (analogous to Zipf's law), as well as signatures of the hypothesized process by which one novelty sets the stage for another. We test these predictions on four data sets of human activity: the edit events of Wikipedia pages, the emergence of tags in annotation systems, the sequence of words in texts, and listening to new songs in online music catalogues. By quantifying the dynamics of correlated novelties, our results provide a starting point for a deeper understanding of the ever-expanding adjacent possible and its role in biological, linguistic, cultural, and technological evolution

Testing CP Violation in ZZH Interactions at the LHC

We study genuine CP-odd observables at the LHC to test the CP property of the ZZH interaction for a Higgs boson with mass below the threshold to a pair of gauge bosons via the process p,p -> Z,H -> l+,l-,b,bbar. We illustrate the analysis by including a CP-odd ZZH coupling, and show how to extract the CP asymmetries in the signal events. After selective kinematical cuts to suppress the SM backgrounds plus an optimal Log-likelihood analysis, we find that, with a CP violating coupling btilde = 0.25, a CP asymmetry may be established at a 3 sigma (5 sigma) level with an integrated luminosity of about 30 (50) fb^-1 at the LHC.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, revtex